I am old. And it is true that I am not as old as the Rolling Stones. After all, they are living proof that prehistoric fossils can actually still sing. But I am nearing the end. My health is rapidly deteriorating. And while medical technology has advanced worldwide, and is probably the only reason I have lived for 60 years, the cost of that technology to Americans is beyond what I can afford. I am living now in a house that I saw in my dreams back in college. In that dream from when I was twenty, I saw myself sitting in an easy chair that is now in this house. The sky outside was pale orange. And an angel came to me and said, “This is it. This is the end. You must come with me.”
So I am expecting the angel any day now.
But there is so much in this life, in this world, left unfinished. I have novels left to write, and novels I have written that still are not published.
Page Publishing has my Magical Miss Morgan book and I have to argue now with editors to keep them from totally mangling it. They even want to change Miss to Ms. in the title! Don’t they know that kids never say Ms. to a female teacher? Will the angel have to wait while I labor through the process of correcting those danged ding-batty word-misers?
And the Arizona football Cardinals have not won a championship in the NFL since 1947, nine years before I was born. I wanted to see them win once before I leave with that angel. But the team that was practically unbeatable last year lost their seventh game this year to the Dolphins yesterday, and are probably defunct for this year. It would take a miracle now for them to get funct again and make the playoffs. Maybe I have to put the angel off for another football season.
And the world has ended in 2016. The Great Orange Face has won the battle for leader of the free world. He will institute policies that will make him richer, but will kill me, and eventually destroy life on Earth. And remember, the Cubs won a World Series again, 108 years after the goat curse was set upon them. The four horsemen of the Apocalypse are dusting off their saddles right now, and the pale guy is sharpening his scythe. How can I leave behind such a world for my children? The angel is getting impatient and tapping his foot quite a lot.
“You know, it is quite possible I will look like this the next time you see me, Mickey.”
So, I am really not satisfied quite yet with the way things are going. The Rolling Stones have some sort of secret going for them. They are never satisfied according to the song. So maybe that is what is keeping them still singing after most of them have already died and simply refuse to lay down, get buried, and keep quiet. Maybe I need to learn to sing.
Catch a Falling Star 
Special Snowflakes
When conservative cultural warriors, Twitter Trolls, or dyspeptic gasbags like Rush Limbaugh call you a “Special Snowflake”, I have discovered, to my chagrin, that they don’t mean it as a compliment. In their self-centered, egotistical world you have to be as emotionally tough and able to “take it” as they believe (somewhat erroneously to my way of thinking) they themselves are. They have no time for political correctness, safe spaces, or, apparently, manners polite enough not to get you killed on the mean streets where they never go. Being a retired school teacher who was once in charge of fragile young psyches trying to negotiate a cruel Darwinian world, I think I disagree with them.
Have you ever tried to draw a snowflake? Believe me, it is difficult. Snowflakes are hexagonal star-shapes with enough lace and filigrees in them to make it a nightmare to draw it with painfully arthritic hands. The one above took me an hour with ruler and compass and colored pencils, and it still doesn’t look as good as a first grader can create with scissors and folded paper. Much better to use a computer program to spit them out with mathematical precision and fractal beauty. That’s how all the tiny ones in the background were created. But even a computer can’t recreate the fragile, complicated beauty of real snowflakes.
You see how the fragile crystalline structures will break in spots, melt in spots, attach to others, and get warped or misshapen? That is the reason no two snowflakes are alike, even though they all come from the same basic mathematically precise patterns generated by ice crystals. Life changes each one in a different way.
And that, of course, is the reason this essay is really about people rather than mere physical artifacts of cold weather. Our fragilities and frailties are earned, and they make us who we are. I have a squinky eye like Popeye from playing baseball and getting hit by a pitch. I have a big toe that won’t bend from playing football. They both represent mistakes that I learned from the hard way.
As a teacher, I learned that bipolar disorder and anxiety disorders are very real things. I lost a job once to one of those. And I spent a long night talking someone out of suicide one horrible December. Forgive me, I had to take fifteen minutes just there to cry again. I guess I am just a “special snowflake”. But the point is, those things are real. People really are destroyed by them sometimes. And they deserve any effort I can make to protect them or help them make it through the night.
But people are like snowflakes. They are all complex. They are all beautiful in some way. They are all different. No two are exactly the same.
And I really think boorish bastards have no right to insist that we need to take safe spaces and sanctuaries away from them. Every snowflake has worth. Winter snow leaves moisture for seedlings to get their start every spring. If you are a farmer, you should know this and appreciate snowflakes. And snowflakes can be fascinating. Even goofy ones like me.
1 Comment
Filed under 1000 Voices Speak for Compassion, artwork, battling depression, commentary, compassion, humor, metaphor, Paffooney, self portrait, Snow Babies, strange and wonderful ideas about life
Tagged as compassion, humor, snowflakes