I finished the art project. Here is Dilsey Murphy as she looked in 1990 while wearing her dad’s old Carl Eller Minnesota Vikings jersey from the 70’s. I wasn’t sure I could finish it this quickly, but the colored pencils blaze with speed when you are coloring someone you love.
Filed under artwork, characters, kids, Paffooney
Mary Murphy, mother of Dilsey and Little Sean… among others.
If you have never written multiple novels about the same set of characters, you will not have inside knowledge of the process I am going to talk about in this goofy blog post. Because you don’t fully understand what I am talking about, you are welcome to call me an obsessive-compulsive fool. I am definitely a fool, but I prefer to believe the obsessive-compulsive part is off base.
I fell in love with Dilsey Murphy.
“You’re kidding!” you say with a disbelieving smile. “You fell in love with a fictional character from one of your stupid hometown fantasies? Nonsense! Not only is she not real, she’s just a supporting character.”
I think that might be the one thing I love most about Dilsey. She’s never the one demanding to be on center stage. She’s a shy, sweet-natured girl from a big family who does the best she can to avoid being the ant under her brothers’ magnifying glass. And yet, when she is called upon for empathy, or a little bit of sister wisdom, she mines the gold from King Solomon’s mine.
A new picture of Dilsey Murphy wearing her father’s old Carl Eller T-shirt.
You may not know this if you are not a writer of fiction, but a lot of the character-building process consists of compiling the character’s personal facts, personal history, and back story, developing an in-depth storehouse of details that may, in fact, never get used in any book, short story, or other writing. In order to create a character that feels real to the reader, an author must know the character far more intimately than the reader will ever be made privy to.
Dilsey is a member of the Murphy family who live in Norwall, Iowa. Her parents are Warren Murphy and Mary Murphy. Her father was a member of the infamous Murphy Boys, all of them brothers, that played brutal linebacker defense for the Belle City Broncos high school football team in the 1960’s. Mary Murphy is famous for being a small woman with a very large personality. The family is Catholic and of Irish heritage, determined to avoid church and yet hoping to get into heaven. They ar e also devout Minnesota Vikings football fans.
Dilsey’s older brother is Danny Murphy, a skinny, goofy kid that grows up into a reliable problem solver and mature young man. Danny eventually falls in love with Carla Bates, the sister of Blueberry Bates, Mike Murphy’s girlfriend. Danny and Carla marry in 1992.
Dilsey is the second oldest, born in 1977, so she is a young teen in most of the stories she appears in.
Mike Murphy is her younger brother, a member of the Norwall Pirates, a kids’ gang and 4-H softball team. Mike is a year younger than Dilsey. His girlfriend, Blueberry Bates, has a terrible secret, one that makes Mary Murphy turn resolutely against her even though she previously loved her. Mike and Dilsey refuse to abandon Blueberry even when Mike is forbidden to see her any longer.
Tim Kellogg is Mike’s best friend. Dilsey believes him to be a jerk and a hopeless goon. And yet, even though Dilsey hates him and is a year older than Tim, he is the only boy she dreams about naked. They eventually go on dates in high school and it is rumored that they will be married in 2000, though my hometown stories never progress beyond the 20th Century.
Dilsey is based on my unmarried sister and my daughter, though she really isn’t very much like either one in the long run.
Okay, so I know I haven’t sufficiently explained why I am so much in love with Dilsey Murphy. I, of course, take that as a challenge. I will write more stories. You will fall in love with her too.
Filed under artwork, characters, goofy thoughts, humor, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney
Adagio 1 – Googol Marou
Sometimes a good historical tale requires the right story-teller to really explain it correctly. Sorry, you are stuck with me, Professor Googol Marou. I am an astronomer and physicist, not the kind of story-teller I knew so well when the events I will try to relate to you actually happened.
I am not calling this bit “Chapter Two” like an ordinary writer with writing sense would. No, I am following the unscientific metaphors that Ged Aero himself always used when telling a story. He talked about the universe as if it were a symphony played by musical instruments that don’t make sounds. Their musical notes are actually lights and energies, physics, if you will, or some such nonsense as that. So the first chapter was called a “Canto”, a section of poetry or lyrics, intended to be sung out loud. This little pile of narrative nonsense is primarily exposition, a part that is probably good to know about, but it won’t kill you if you skip it. It won’t kill the story either… hopefully. I may also use “Nocturnes” in the course of this tale, classical movements of romance and sensual beauty. And I am looking forward to the “Scherzos”, the short interludes of comic musicality and brief relief from the heavier fare.
My over-all plan for this tale is to tell you how a group of teachers were able to make history and change the Imperium of a Thousand Worlds, turning it into the New Star League, even though the stars in it were billions of years old.
Now, you might wonder how it is that a group of teachers were able to conquer and realign the very stars, especially since they didn’t know they were teachers at the outset, but I swear it is true. I’m not the liar Trav Dalgoda was. And, even though I didn’t personally witness everything I intend to tell you, I did participate a bit. And, I was able to learn even more through my special telescope.
Space in the era of this history was already partially colonized by human beings who originated on Earth. Four branches of Earthers had reached out to the stars and planets of the Orion Spur of the Sagittarius Spiral Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Texans had created the Coreward Union of Inhabited Worlds, also known as the Pan Galactican Union. Those fools in their plasticized cowboy hats had a way of running roughshod over the galaxy until they met forces more determined and self reliant than they were. I don’t apologize for Space Cowboys, there really is no excuse for them, but they were a necessary part of the cultural mix that preceded the New Star League.
The Japanese had reached out to the Trailing Area of the Spur and their colonies disappeared from known space. Many thought they had run afoul of a powerful alien menace. In some ways, it was probably the truth. Still, the inscrutable Space Samurai would come back to haunt us in a new incarnation. It would prove to be the right thing at the right time.
The Southern European Union had branched out towards the Nebulas of the Leading Edge of the Orion Spur. There they founded an exclusive humans-only Empire called the Classical Worlds. They were so pig-headedly convinced of their own perfection and superiority, that they took to living everywhere as Space Nudists, shaping the environment to accommodate the human form rather than making any adaptations themselves. These descendants of the French, Italians, and Greeks adopted Greco-Roman dress and culture, and I mean the Ancient form that had served the original Greeks and Romans back on Earth, the culture of social nudity and reverence for the naked human form. They were very enlightened about philosophy and science, but as buck-naked people, they had absolutely no fashion sense. They were also unusually prejudiced towards any intelligent being that wasn’t human. They never seemed to figure out that most humans weren’t really intelligent beings. Still, in the long run, we needed them too. Good thing we didn’t have to look at them often… well, unless we really wanted to.
And finally, the Eastern European Space Initiative had made maximum use of their discovery of the humanoid lizard Galtorrians discovered in the Delta Pavonis Star System on a planet known as Galtorr Prime. They established their Imperium in the center of the Orion Spur. Something about the Germans and Russians just naturally dove-tailed with the lizard peoples of Galtorr. The Galtorrian lizard-men and humans became the first genetically altered, melded race in known space. They were able to take advantage of the many genetic similarities between humans and reptiloids for the purposes of making the two species into one, the Galtorrian Imperial Lizard Race. They were like humans in every way, even mostly blond-haired and blue-eyed, but their snake-like eyes had vertically slitted pupils. They discovered they could thrive in Earth-like worlds and hostile Galtorr Prime-like worlds equally well. They used their supposedly superior breeding to field vast space armies and navies of powerful starships and began conquering their neighbors. This, of course, included the conquest and devastation of the Earth itself.
The Galtorr Imperium had been established almost 500 years before Ged and Ham Aero started the Great Outworld Expansion of 5526 C.E. People would come to call the Imperium the “Thousand Planets” because of the 1,212 inhabited worlds in the 882 stellar systems it had conquered or colonized. It was not the securely settled Orion Spur that I am sure you enjoy now. It was necessary to keep an active scout service even in the heavily populated center of the Imperium. Information traveled only as fast as the fastest starships, and one end of the Imperium rarely knew what was happening in the other end. There had been a need for the Galtorrians to fight three Jihads and five Unification Wars. Pirates and Privateers were everywhere.
No merchant traveled safely. New colonies often disappeared without a murmur. Delivering goods meant risking life and limb. Of course, some of my best friends were pirates at one time. You shouldn’t really hold that against them. But, it is no wonder that an outworld expansion required someone of great courage and character to step out of the general darkness.
Now, I’m sure you are wondering, “Who are you, Professor Googol Marou, to be telling us about the distant past over so many light years of space?” Well, that would be a good question. I’ve been described as a “total nut-job” on many occasions. I know what I’m talking about, though, because I’ve studied history in action through the Marou Ancient Light Holo-Assembler Telescope (the MALHAT). It takes the collected light from the stars and planets we see, and reassembles it in a holo-recording that shows what happened at the moment those light particles reflected off the event. The true genius, of course, was in finding the quantum shape-memory in photon particles and building a re-assembler. That means that to view the past as it was 500 years ago, all you have to do is look at it from 500 light years away and gather 500 year old light. This I could do from the relative safety of a space platform or space ship. I mostly preferred a scientifically-oriented lab ship, but also found Ham Aero’s quaint little hunting ship serviceable as well. And, I invented this wonderful thing.
I won’t lecture you now on the fierce repressions of the Galtorr Imperium. Most of that goes without saying, and if you’ve heard of them at all, you know it is true.
I know you are probably still marveling over the simple brilliance of the Marou Ancient Light Holo-Assembler telescope! I can’t blame you. I’m still amazed that I invented it. It makes me have to stop in the middle of my thesis just to marvel at myself. Wow! Aren’t I wonderful?
What I will tell you, though, is that the Aero brothers left known space because Ged was slowly transforming into a rare form of Psion known as a Shape-Changer. Like the telepaths, pyros, savants, teleporters, and telekinetics who made up the usual run of Psions, shape-changers could make use of their entire brain system in a conscious way to control the universe around them by mind power alone. That is not to say that they were any smarter, wiser, or more moral that the rest of us, just unusually gifted with special brain powers.
The Imperium hated Psions because they were so much harder to control. They actively hunted, persecuted, and, often, even executed Psions. I, myself, am not a Psion, but you will note in the course of this history, when I come into the picture to play a key role, that I have a real affinity for Psions and their way of life. So, as the story continues, please don’t doubt the veracity and mental stability of my observations. I’m a genius, after all. My inventions prove it.
Filed under artwork, heroes, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, science fiction
I admit it. I binge-watched Stranger Things 2 this weekend, just like everyone else who fell in love with the original.
The monster is bigger and scarier this time. It uses new versions of last year’s monster for minions. The characters are growing and changing and falling in love. If anything, I love the characters as people even more than last time.
The whole thing is very seriously set in 1984. You know, the year of Ghostbusters as a summer blockbuster. References to D & D, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and visual homages to Speilberg movies, gritty urban dramas like The Warriors, and the video game Dragon’s Lair don’t merely set the scene, they are cultural references artfully used to weave the story together and move the plot, providing short-hand explications of science-fiction-y ideas and Steven King tropes. There is story-telling mastery to be marveled at here.
And my favorite thing of all here is the satisfying collection of resolutions to ongoing issues. Eleven re-connects with her past and separates herself from it again. She finds a place for herself and someone to love her, in more ways than one. Jonathan and Nancy and Steve work on their love triangle. And Joyce and Hopper move closer together in spite of the tragedy that tears Joyce’s world apart. (I can’t talk about Bob. I identify with Bob. He is just like me in so many ways. And what happens to Bob? Ack! There have to be horrors in horror movies. And the best ones rattle the foundations that you live on.)
I am the Uncritical Critic. I only tell you about the things I love when it comes to movies, TV, books, and music. And I definitely love this.
Filed under art criticism, commentary, humor, movie review, review of television
In Texas a little girl who has cerebral palsy committed the crime of crossing a border patrol station near Laredo on the way to having life-saving gall bladder surgery. So the border patrol followed her to the hospital, waited until the surgery was finished, and then took her to a detention facility for deportation. Wow!
We are a heartless people. We elect heartless representatives to congress to make heartless laws to punish people for being poor, or not being white, or not being patriotic enough at football games during the playing of the national anthem. We elected an orange-faced creature with bad hair to the presidency rather than electing a human being with a beating heart. And why did we do that? Because too many people were in favor of health care laws and regulations that help people we don’t like. We elected him to send a message to all the people we don’t like. That message was, “Screw you, why don’t you just die already?” We like that message because we are a heartless people.
But while we are only thinking of ourselves and vowing to let everybody else go to hell, somewhere the music of the dance begins to play. Hear it yet?
Somewhere children are laughing.
Somewhere Santa Claus is real.
Holidays are approaching and, with indictments sealed and in the hands of prosecutors, possible impeachment looms. The happy dance is about to begin again.
Or maybe it never really went away. People did care, do care, about the crisis in Puerto Rico. After the hurricane, Dippy Donald Dimwit tossed paper towels to survivors, apparently suggesting that all he needed to do was that to symbolically get all the people cleaning up while holding on to their own bootstraps and pulling with all their might. Apparently heartless people believe you can levitate if you pull upwards on bootstraps. But Tesla gifted the city of San Juan with solar panels and batteries and started set-up of an island-based solar power grid to get Puerto Rico back online in the modern world. And Elon Musk is taking the steps towards building the future that the pumpkinhead in chief can’t even conceive in his empty pumpkin head. The music sways and builds. The dancers circle each other and first steps in ballet shoes begin.
We are a heartless people. We suffer in our cubicles alone, angry at a heartless world. “Why don’t you love me?” each one of us cries, “aren’t I worthy of love?” But crying never solved a problem. No, counting our regrets and hoarding the list of wrongs done to us never started a heart to beating. But the music builds. Try smiling at that hard-working clerk who takes your information at the DMV, and then thanking them at the end for their hard work even though they have to deny you the permit because there are more bits of paperwork that have to be found and signed. Try making a joke in line at the post office that makes the other hundred and ten people actually laugh while waiting interminably. Do your best to bring light to the darkness, not for yourself, but for other people. The music builds. Do you know the steps to the dance? No? Well, the steps won’t matter if you begin to move to the music, begin to glide… And the heart starts pumping, and we begin to feel alive again. Hallelujah! We are dancing towards the light again.
For much of my role-playing-game lifetime, I did not play the actual Dungeons and Dragons game. I played with a lot of kids from my classes in the South Texas middle school where I spent the majority of my teacher-life. And while most of my players were Catholics, it was the Southern Baptists, including the county sheriff, who were intent on policing what kind of thought went on in the minds of the people in their town. D & D had demons and devils in it.
So, I had to make a significant shift in my story-telling games. The Baptist preacher’s son and the sheriff’s son were two of my most avid players. I also had the high school physics teacher’s son on my adventurers’ team. So, we turned wizards and warlocks into astrophysicists and mad scientists, rogues into space scouts, and knights into space knights. We started playing Traveller, a science fiction role-playing game.
That is where the stories that eventually became Aeroquest came from. My players instantly took a liking to the game and star journeys into the unknown reaches of the Spinward Marches, a fictional region of the Orion Spur of the Sagittarius Spiral Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy (our actual address in space). Real science, astronomy, physics, and biology went into adventures that were easily as swashbuckling and exciting as Star Wars, Star Trek, and every other sci-fi show we stole ideas from.
The stars were the limit with a simple gaming system that required only a set of six sided dice and lots and lots of graph paper… and plenty of imagination for fuel.
Filed under Dungeons and Dragons, science fiction
So, I understand that the JFK documents are now released to the public. Old George HW Bush stipulated the date in 1992, 25 years ago. So I should be thrilled, right?
Here is Politico’s article on what you should do about the document dump; How to Read the JFK Assassination Files
But, of course, Donald Trump held back some of the files at the request of the CIA and FBI for reasons of (supposedly) national security. Because, of course, the Russians and the North Koreans could obviously make use of the knowledge of what the Secret Service agents were having for breakfast in 1963. It couldn’t be because there might be clues to a connection between the CIA, the assassination plot, LBJ, and agents who are still living, or whose loved ones have enough money to hire lawyers and make trouble.
What was that smile and wink about on Air Force One in the aftermath?
And we shouldn’t believe that after 53 years the CIA and FBI haven’t had enough time to clean up and sanitize the document trail that might’ve connected them to the plot hatched at Clint Murchison’s house before the event happened with LBJ and J. Edgar Hoover present at that party. They couldn’t have been talking about the murder the way LBJ’s mistress claimed in interviews, right? If conspiracy theorists are to be believed, the delay in releasing the documents was authored by Poppy Bush who may have been there at the event and may have been working in the CIA at the time despite the protestations that he wasn’t there, and wasn’t in the CIA, and those pictures that look like him weren’t really him at all.
Actor Bill Paxton was identified in this photo as having been in Dallas that day. Is that why he died before the release of these documents?
I have heard government and FBI types already telling us that there is really nothing to be found in these documents that will prove anything conspiracy theorists say. There will be no smoking gun. (Why would there be a gun among documents anyway? And the smoke would have to be coming out of it for over 50 years.)
So the documents will be pointed to as proof that Oswald did it, and the questions people have are pointless and meaningless and we should stop asking them. After all, the history books are already written. So why should we care?
It is true that some conspiracy theorists are red-faced rage machines like Alex Jones. Some will claim that shape-shifting lizard men from outer space are behind everything. But the public face of conspiracy madness is often used by perpetrators to aid in covering up the truth. How many know about the work of reporter and Kennedy Friend Dorothy Kilgallen, what it had to do with revealing the truth, how she mysteriously died, and how her work then disappeared? Here is a Daily News report about Dorothy Kilgallen.
Can you read that article and still think that there is no reason to believe anyone but Oswald did it? Do you really believe that the government is telling us the whole truth? Even with the latest document dump?
Personally, based on the first picture I put in this post, I think the whole thing is a mistake. The shooter was really trying to kill Trump, and hit JFK by accident.
Filed under conspiracy theory, goofy thoughts, politics, Uncategorized
The guy holding the big pencil used to be me. I know you are thinking, “But, Mickey, you are not a rabbit!” Well, that’s true, but it is also true that the whole thing is a metaphor, and metaphorically I was always Reluctant Rabbit, pedagogue… teacher… the holder of the big pencil. It is a writing teacher thing. The best way to teach kids to write is to have them write. And the best way to show them what you mean when you tell them to write is to write yourself. You learn to read better by reading a lot. You learn to write better by writing a lot, reading what you wrote, and reading what other people wrote, especially if those other people were holding the big pencil in front of the class.
I was recently reminded by people who know me that once I held the big pencil in the front of the class. They both asked me, “Really? You were a teacher?”
I suppose it is hard to believe when once you’ve gotten to know me, at least a little bit. I don’t strike people as the sour-faced, anal-retentive English-teacher type. I smile and laugh too much for that. They can’t believe that someone like me could ever teach.
But over the years, I got rather good at holding the big pencil. I learned, first of all, that anyone can be a good teacher. You only have to be competent in the subject area you are trying to teach, and open to learning something new about teaching every single day for the rest of your life.
Here’s something you have to learn about teaching to be any good at it; Discipline is not about making kids behave. You can shout, stamp your feet, and hit them with a ruler and you will never get them to do what you want to them do. It has to be about limiting the choices they have for what they will do. Yes, one of those choices is to be removed from the classroom to go have fun sitting in the uncomfortable chair next to the assistant principal in charge of discipline’s desk, but the good teacher knows you should emphasize that they can either sit like a lump and imitate a rock, or they can participate in the activities presented. And in my classroom, activities led to jokes and laughing and trying new stuff… some of it hard, but most of it easy. Kids don’t end up having a hard time making the right choice.
Here’s something else you absolutely have to learn to be any good at it; You have to like kids. Not just the well-behaved teacher-pleasers, but also the class clown who’s too smart to sit still for stuff he already knows, the shrinking violet who is a wonderfully complex well of deep thoughts who is only a little bit too scared to actually speak in class and share her thoughts, and the dark snarky demon who is quietly plotting the next outburst that will make your life a living hell so he or she can spend time with their old and dear friend, the chair in the assistant principal’s office. If you don’t like them, you can’t teach them, and driving dynamite trucks in war zones is an easier job. It pays better too.
I often try to picture Donald Trump teaching English to seventh graders. What a slapstick comedy that would be. The man doesn’t know anything. He is always angry. And he hates everybody except his daughter Ivanka. My fourth period class wouldn’t merely eat him alive, they would skeletonize him faster than a school of piranhas could ever hope to match. And it might be entertaining to watch (assuming it was metaphorical, not literal).
And I sincerely wish I could hold the big pencil in front of class again. It was the act that defined who I was and what purpose I had in life. But it isn’t gone since I was forced by ill health to retire. I held the big pencil for over two thousand students in the course of thirty-one years. And I will always hold the big pencil in their memories of it. It is a sort of immortality for teachers.
I grew up in a small rural town in North Central Iowa. It was a place that was, according to census, home to 275 people. That apparently counted the squirrels. (And I should say, the squirrels were definitely squirrelly. They not only ate nuts, they became a nut.) It was a good place to grow up in the 60’s and 70’s. But in many ways, it was a boring place.
Yes, there were beautiful farmer’s daughters to lust after and pine for and be humiliated by. There was a gentle, supportive country culture where Roy Rogers was a hero and some of the best music came on Saturdays on Hee Haw where there was a lot of pickin’ and grinnin’ going on. There were high school football games on Friday nights, good movies at the movie theaters in Belmond and Clarion, and occasional hay rides for the 4-H Club and various school-related events like Homecoming.
I lived in a world where I was related to half the people in the county, and I knew at least half of the other half. People told stories about other people, some of them incredibly mean-spirited, some of them mildly mean, and some of them, though not many, that were actually good and actually true. I learned about telling good stories from my Grandpa Aldrich who could tell a fascinating tale of Dolly who owned the part of town called locally “Dollyville” and included the run-down vacant structure the kids all called the Ghost House. He also told about Dolly’s husband, Shorty the dwarf, who was such a mean drunk and went on epic temper tirades that often ended only when Dolly hospitalized him with a box on the ear. (Rumor had it that there were bricks in the box.)
And I realized that through story-telling, the world became whatever you said that it was. I could change the parts of life I didn’t love so much by lying… er, rather, by telling a good story about them. And if people heard and liked the stories enough, they began to believe and see life more the way I saw it myself. A good story could alter reality and make life better. I used this power constantly as a child.
There were invisible aliens invading Iowa constantly when I was a boy. Dragons lived in the woods at Bingham Park, and there were tiny little fairy people everywhere, in the back yard under the bushes, in the attic of the house, and building cities in the branches of neglected willow trees.
I reached out to the world around me as an artist, a cartoonist, and a story-teller and plucked details and colors and wild imaginings like apples to bake the apple pie that would much later in my life feed the novels and colored-pencil pictures that would make up my inner life. The novels I have written and the drawings I have made have all come from being a small town boy who dreamed big and lived more in stories than in the humdrum everyday world.
Catch a Falling Star 
Giving and Taking Stupid Advice
Let’s begin with some stupid advice. I don’t have time to write a lot today because the Princess is ill and must go see the doctor in Plano. So the advice is; Set aside time for writing and always allow plenty of time for it. You will probably notice already that I am giving you advice that I am not taking myself this morning. So don’t follow that advice. It is stupid advice. I have given it to creative writing classes for years and thought I meant it. But looking back on real life, I realize, it has never been true for me. My best ideas, my best writing, always seem to come in the middle of the pressure-cooker of daily struggle and strife. I have battled serious illness for most of my adult life. I have the luck of a man who tried to avoid letting a black cat cross his path by crashing his bicycle at the top of a hill covered in clover with only three leaves each and then rolling down the hill, under a ladder, and crashing into a doorpost which knocks the horseshoe off the top. The horseshoe lands on my stupid head with the “U” facing downward so the luck all drains out. Bad things happen to me all the time. But it makes for good writing. Tell me you didn’t at least smile at the picture I just painted in your mind. You might’ve even been unable to suppress a chuckle. I am under time pressure and misfortune pressure and the need to rearrange my entire daily schedule. So it is the perfect time to write.
This essay, however, is about bad advice. And I am a perfect person to rely on as a resource for bad advice. I am full of it. Of course, I mean I am full of bad advice, not that other thing we think of when someone tells me I am “Full of it!” So here’s another bit of writing advice that is probably completely wrong and a bad idea to take without a grain of salt, or at least a doctor’s prescription. You should stop bird-walking in your essay and get to the damn point!
I know a lot about the subject of depression. When I was a teenager, I came very close to suicide. I experienced tidal waves of self-loathing and black-enveloping blankets of depression for reasons that I didn’t understand until I realized later in life that it all came from being a child-victim of sexual assault. Somehow I muddled through and managed to self-medicate with journal writing and fantasy-fixations, thus avoiding a potentially serious alcohol or drug problem. This is connected to my main idea, despite the fact that I am obviously not following the no bird-walking advice. You see, with depression, Bad advice can kill you. Seriously, people want to tell you to just, “Get over it! Stop moping about and get on with life. It isn’t real. You are just being lazy.”
I have been on the inside of depression and I know for a fact that not taking it seriously can be deadly. In fact, I have faced suicidal depression not only in myself, but in several former students and even my own children. I have spent time in emergency rooms, mental hospitals, and therapists offices when I wasn’t myself the depression sufferer. One of my high school classmates and one of my former students lost their battles and now are no longer among the living. (Sorry, have to take a moment for tears again.) But I learned how to help a depression sufferer. You have to talk to them and make them listen at least to the part where you say, “I have been through this myself. Don’t give in to it. You can survive if you fight back. And whatever you have to do, I will be right here for you. You can talk to me about anything. I will listen. And I won’t try to give you any advice.” Of course, after you say that to them, you do not leave them alone. You stay by them and protect them from themselves, or make sure somebody that will do the same for them stays with them. So far, that last bit of advice has worked for me. But the fight can be life-long. And it is a critical battle.
So taking advice from others is always an adventure. Red pill? Green pill? Poison pill? Which will you take? I can’t decide for you. Any advice I give you would probably just be stupid advice. You have to weigh the evidence and decide for yourself. What does this stupid essay even mean? Isn’t it just a pile of stupid advice? A concluding paragraph should tell you the answer if it can. But, I fear, there is no answer this time.
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Filed under artwork, autobiography, battling depression, commentary, compassion, Depression, empathy, healing, insight, Paffooney, sharing from YouTube, strange and wonderful ideas about life
Tagged as depression, writing advice