Now that I’m fully aware of what a horrible person I am it’s becoming harder and harder to be honest. Horribleness. It’s the one thing that our culture seems to have raised the bar on. Everywhere else our standards are plummeting but somehow the expectation that people stop thinking horrible things remains.
Take for example police officers. The other day I get pulled over and as I’m fumbling in my glove compartment I hear the obligatory “License and registration please” from the window. I turn, license and freshly-acquired registration in hand, and see only the top of a policeman’s hat out my window. I lean over and look down on a little person in blue.
Please note I did not say midget like I’ve been known to do in the past. I recently got an angry e-mail from a little person after one of my less politically correct stories and made a vow to be more sensitive. How did I know it was from a little person?
None of the letters were capitalized.
So anyway, I’m looking down on a little policeman and I’m suddenly filled with the urge to open the door and make a run for it just to watch him give pursuit. Being chased by a little person has always been on my bucket list. Who wouldn’t want to run from a midget policeman?
Shit. I said midget didn’t I?
You could see a little policeperson coming years ago as the standards for cops kept being lowered further and further.
Same in the military. The Navy Seals just issued different standards for female candidates. How long will it be until we have blind people, gun in one hand and cane in the other, tap tap tapping their way to the front lines? Probably getting indignant if the enemy refuses to make any noise to help them know where to shoot. So everyone is fine with us having an entire platoon of special needs paratroopers jump behind enemy lines and spend the entire war trying to get themselves out of trees but I’m not allowed to think horrible things?
Things like special needs paratroopers flailing around suspended in trees?
People are ok with them actually hanging there helplessly kicking and yelling but I can’t think it.
Now before you leap to the conclusion that I think I’m not a horrible person and just prone to flights of fancy let me assure you I am. Just last night I was out to dinner and I hadn’t even ordered my drink when another group was seated next to me. Among this group was a man whose age I put in the ballpark of a hundred and thirty.
When it was time for them to order his son leaned over and said “Hey Pops, they have brisket.”
His father gazed ahead.
So his son repeated the sentence a little louder. Then again. A little louder. Now keep in my in mind I’m sitting within earshot the whole time.
“Hey Pops, they have brisket.” Repeated a tenth time in a voice that could have been heard on the tarmac underneath a landing 747.
Finally his dad responded in a puzzled manner … “I’m a brisket?”
“Yes!” I bellowed in my head “You are a fucking brisket. That’s what your son has desperately trying to communicate to you, that you are a brisket! He felt it was important enough to continually interrupt everyone in the restaurant’s meal.”
Then I thought it.
“Now hurry up and just get in the fucking box already so your family can move on and I can enjoy my meal!”
The jury would not need to deliberate any further; Lance Manion is a horrible person.
It’s exhausting pretending otherwise.
I just hope when they come for me, and make no mistake they most certainly will, they send a squad of little SWAT members to take me in. You can be sure it will be a merry chase.