Spoiler Alert!

Spoiler Alert: For those who prefer not to know the outcomes of their bad decisions, don’t read beyond this line.

Scenario 1. You let your young son eat whatever he wants because you want him to learn at an early age how to make his own decisions (and deep down you are simply too overworked or lazy to make him eat healthily). He “decides” that he only wants to eat French fries, fried chicken and frozen ice cream cakes, so that is his diet for the next fifteen years. One day, you walk through the living room to find a 400 pound comatose stranger reposed upon your broken couch. You cry when you realize it is your son and that his poor decision-making has led to his downfall and severe diabetes. You vow to help him turn his life around by belatedly teaching him how to make sound nutritional choices, but you are sad that he has to spend a month in the hospital. You dive into a bag of chips to drown your sorrow.

Scenario 2. You tell your young daughter that she can have anything in the world she wants and that it is all there for the taking. You pat her affectionately on the knee, glad you had this nice father/daughter chat. The next week, you are unhappy when her Principal suspends her for stealing an iPod from another girl’s locker. You explain that you meant that if she works hard she can have whatever she wants. Another knee pat and you are off to your office to watch some more online porn. She returns to school and considers each of her classmates and realizes that most of their parents live off the system, as does her own father. She decides that you are full of shit, so she steals again and again until she is finally caught and sent to a juvenile detention facility. She is okay with that, though, because now she is far away from your hypocritical lectures. Soon she is pregnant with the first of five children she’ll have by five different men, and she learns to milk the system for every dime she can get without ever having to work a day in her life. She smiles, showing her four remaining good teeth, because she has proven her father wrong.

Scenario 3. You set a pound of frozen hamburger out on the counter to defrost. You know you are supposed to let it thaw out in the refrigerator, but you need it for supper tonight, so you think just this once it will be all right. You leave to do a bit of shopping and while you are out, the temperature slowly climbs into the high 90s. You forget that your air-conditioner isn’t working properly. While opening your car door, you break a nail and decide to visit the manicurist for a quick fix. There you run into an old friend and decide to go for a drink. The drink becomes six, and you have to have a local good-ole-boy drive you home. He decides to try his luck with you in your driveway, but you fight him off, breaking that nail you just had fixed. You stumble inside and realize that your house is a sauna. You see the hamburger packet lying in a congealed pool of its own blood. You poke it and are pleased to find that it is completely thawed. You begin to make meatloaf. You serve it to your family, but since you are feeling ill after those six margaritas you knocked back with your long-lost friend, you decide not to eat. In the morning, you awake to the sound of four people vomiting. Good thing you are now sober and can call the paramedics.

Scenario 4. You give in to your seven-year-old son’s whining in the electronics department at Wal-Mart and buy him the latest handheld gaming system. This is followed in quick succession with the purchasing of hundreds of games to keep his now ADHD-addled mentality occupied on those long 20 minute drives across town to his therapist. Later, you buy him the complete home gaming system and soon forget he even exists as he now spends hours and even days at a time behind his closed door “competing” against other “pro-gamers” across the world. One day, your husband asks, “Where’s Billy?” to which you reply, “Who?” Don’t worry. The stench of his decomposing body will lead you to him.  At least he beat BlAsTeRbOy2227 before he kicked the bucket. You can be proud.

Scenario 5. You tell your precious toddler that she is a princess and deserves to look pretty every single day. You buy her fancy clothes and dress her up like a doll. Everybody “oohs” and “aahs” over how cute she is. You let that go to your head and buy her even fancier clothes. You put makeup on her when she’s four, and you pierce her ears and buy her diamond necklaces and earrings. You get her weekly pedicures and spray-on tans. As the years go by, her body changes and so does her taste in clothing. She’s used to being the center of attention, and since she’s no longer little and precious, she starts using that credit card you gave her for emergencies to buy a whole different style of wardrobe. Forget cute and frilly; she’s now into skimpy and slutty. She pierces other parts of her body – some that you can’t see. She dyes her hair and bakes her skin to a crisp. Since she’ll always be your precious little girl, you don’t see her the way others see her. You also think that she has more of a fashion sense than you do, so you start trying to dress like her. You lose your job, and since you are now penniless and can no longer pay for her trashy wardrobe and she is embarrassed by your attempts to emulate her dress, she moves out of your house and in with her sugar-daddy.

Scenario 6. You’re born. You learn all sorts of neat things. You get a college degree and a great job. You make a lot of money and buy yourself all sorts of fancy things. You get a bigger house to hold all your neat things and a three car garage for all that stuff you need to maintain your lavish yard. You die. They hold an auction. Other people have your stuff now.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cut. Fade to black.

It's a zoo out there!

For the past two summers, my daughter has been a youth volunteer at one of the best zoos in America (it's actually the best, so you can figure out which one easily enough), so I spend three hours every week walking around the zoo while I wait for her. It is great exercise, and after seeing every exhibit multiple times, I now know the animals so well that I find myself mentally correcting every inane comment I overhear. For example, just the other day I heard a mother trying to entice the cheetahs to growl for her two children. Cheetahs don't growl! They chirp, which I realize is an odd sound for a large cat to make, but even I knew that about cheetahs well before I started living at the zoo part time, so why didn't this woman know this?

Since I enjoy writing, I use it to express my impressions when I am either very much in awe of something or very much disgusted by something -- and sometimes for a combination of the two. Often, I write a poem, albeit not a wonderfully literary poem, to more succinctly verbalize my thoughts.

Here is a poem I wrote about the zoo last summer. I am reminded of it every time I return to the zoo.

Lessons learned from the zoo

Big cats can urinate up to six feet BEHIND them.

A rhino's head alone weights 1,000 pounds!

The correct pronunciation is o-KAH-pee.

Burmese pythons do not belong in Florida.

A giraffe's tongue is almost two feet long.

Sea lions have ear flaps, seals do not.

Zebras are actually white with brown stripes.

Fruit bats are freakishly beautiful to watch.

Ostriches will not walk on large rounded rocks.

A polar bear's skin is black and its fur is clear.

Peacocks do not like being chased by ignoramuses.

Other lessons learned:

Americans, as a whole, are grossly overweight.

Children, too often, are spoiled and naughty.

Tattoos do not look good on anyone anywhere.

Too many people are lacking common manners.

A child on a leash isn't really under control, now is he?

If the sign says "Birds bite," it doesn't mean:

"Birds bite other people, but not you -- you're special."

I wonder which species really belongs in the zoo,

Caged for the other to mock, pity, observe and ponder.

The "civilized" ones are on the wrong side of the enclosure

Surrounded by bars, fence, glass wall, water barrier or ditch.

They watch us, as we watch them, and are happy not to be human.

Take offense at my poem if you like -- that only means you are one of the types I mock. The main things I've come to notice about the people at the zoo is that they seem to be there primarily to share the experience with their children. I use the word "seem" on purpose. They seem to want to teach their children about the animals and to share the wonder of seeing a meerkat or a shark up close while still keeping themselves and the animals safe from harm; however, they spend the vast majority of their time rushing through the zoo in order to see everything, and this causes them to NOT really see anything at all.

In addition, their children get tired and cranky, so then the parents end up yelling at their children and yanking on their leashes to pull them back to their sides. Sorry, I can't get over the fact that parents put their children on leashes. I managed to raise two children without every having to tie them up at any time. And, seriously, if a parent has a child who is so wild that she fears that he will run off and jump a fence to join his brethren monkeys, then perhaps she should wait until he is older to bring him to the zoo.

Here are my tips for those going to the zoo:

1. Take your time and really look at the animals. Read the information cards and don't make asinine assumptions about them out loud because you just look like an idiot to those of us around you who actually have read the cards.

2.  If your kid is a brat, do everybody else at the zoo a favor and DON'T GO!

3.  For the love of God, wear something decent. Others have come to see the animals, not your saggy and exposed cleavage or the belly hanging out from under the t-shirt that maybe fit you in fourth grade.

4. Act like people. Try, please try to be more civilized than the creatures you've come to gawk at.

Non-readers

I don't get non-readers, or perhaps I should clarify that I don't get people who not only claim they don't read but also freaking brag about it as well. So this tirade that you're about to witness is for those people.

First of all, dumb ass, it is physically impossible to be a non-reader in our society. The only way to be a non-reader is to be completely illiterate, and if you're illiterate, then I either apologize for calling you a dumb ass or I want to further yell at you for not taking the initiative in your life to get the necessary education to become literate (of course, the only way you are hearing me yell at you is if a literate person is actually reading this to you.) As long as you actually CAN read, then you are a reader. There is no getting around it. Seriously try to get through a day without reading anything. It ain't happening, my friend. Not with our reliance on social media, not with the need to read the street signs to find your exit, not with hunger gnawing at your belly and urging you to hurry up and read the menu and choose something, not with all the inane reports we have to fill out every day at work, not with the constant scroll of words flowing by at the bottom of our TV screens updating us on the weather and breaking news, and not with the plethora of other things we do every single day that REQUIRE us to read something.

So, now that we know and acknowledge that it is, in fact, impossible to be a non-reader as long as you can actually read, let's move on to the real thing that grinds my gears -- the morons who BRAG that they don't read -- they are usually referring to the fact that they don't read books. You might as well slap a sticker on your forehead and announce to the world that you are a pathetic loser and you prefer to remain an ignorant idiot in the sea of knowledge all around you. Reading is what separates us from every other species. Reading is what empowers us, teaches us, helps us grow and continually raises us to new heights with each generation.

When they want to subdue a people, they burn their books. Think about that. Why burn the books? They're just books, right? Wrong! They are the bastion of freedom and of everything that truly matters to a culture. Saying you are a non-reader is like saying you are not an American, or whatever nationality you claim. Saying you are a non-reader is like saying you are a non-Christian, or whatever religion you embrace. Saying you are a non-reader is like declaring that you simply don't give a damn about anything. And, since you probably wouldn't go around bragging to the world that you don't care about anything, not one damn thing, then you should stop announcing that you don't read books.

Rather than wasting time telling everyone you don't read and thus verbally sharing your stupidity with all who even care to listen to you, you should try picking up a book and actually reading it. You just might surprise yourself. After all, to paraphrase a really smart man, if you're not reading books then you might as well be illiterate because it has the same result.

If you don't know the true quote or who said it, then pick up a book of quotes and look it up! If you've read this, then you're not a non-reader, and if you still try to claim you are, then I invite you to truly "schtick this!' Only put it where the sun don't shine. I'll be in my hammock enjoying a good book and the feel of the sun on my skin while you're walking around with a large tome shoved up your ass. Have fun.

Weeds!

If I could tell anything in the world to regularly "schtick this," it would be the weeds of this world. I'm not only referring to the actual weeds that grow in my yard in abundance, but I'm speaking of anything that chokes the life out of something else and takes the space in which the good things were meant to grow. I have just come in from pulling a small portion of the nasty buggers -- some hardy strain of clover, I think -- from my yard, and in doing so, I've uncovered the brown, dead grass below. I can only hope that once free from the evil weeds, the lovely grass will revive, but who knows. I'm not very good at maintaining my yard, and now that I'm beginning a  new phase of my life (minus one giant weed), I've made a commitment to do a better job of taking care of everything. The grass is me, and I'm ridding it of all the weeds that prevent it from being as good as it can possibly be.

If you think about it, who couldn't benefit from a weed-free life? And, no, I'm not talking about the kind of weed that one smokes, although it's best to stay away from that as well. What I'm talking about is getting rid of every weed that tries to get a hold on your lush greenness. Yank it out as soon as you can, and be sure to get its root, so it doesn't come back. I know I'm better off already without a certain giant weed that once cast its ugly shadow over my life, and since I'm no longer concentrating on getting rid of the one monster-sized weed, I'm now noticing the other weeds that I barely saw before, and it's time for them to go as well.

Nasty comments from certain "friends" about anybody for any reason at all -- toss them to the curb for the garbage man to pick up with the rest of the trash. Excess weight due to eating wrong and watching too much TV at night with "the big weed" -- eat a lot more fruit, walk every day and write this blog in twenty minutes instead of sitting on my ass on the sofa for three hours. Worries about money -- save a little each month and watch it grow like a beautiful flower. Old friends who  only grew in the shadow of the "big weed" -- plant new friends to fill in the gaps in the lawn.

The world would be a better place to live if all the weeds could be eradicated. Racism, sexism, wars fought over religious beliefs, wars of any kind really, ageism, stereotypes that debase others, animal cruelty, alcoholism, drug abuse, physical abuse, theft, greed, pettiness, stupidity, and many other weeds that choke the otherwise beautiful landscape of our humanity.

This might have become a bit deeper of a blog than I originally intended, but I see symbolism in almost anything, and, to me, a weed that covers and kills what is growing beneath it is something that needs to go just like the things in our lives that cover and kill the good in us need to go. This summer while I work to improve the appearance of my lawn, I will also be working to improve myself. I like who I am, but I know I can be better with some tender loving care. So, "schtick this!" you damn weeds!