Harker Dawes asleep was certainly no prettier or better looking asleep than he was when he was awake. You know how people will say about a demonically possessed child that causes chaos and havoc and dread in the lives of the people who gave life to him, “He looks like such an angel when he’s sleeping”? Well, no one ever said that about Harker. Even when he was a child, he looked more like a deformed potato with its eyes shut when he was sleeping. His balding head had an odd dent in the crown that had been there since birth. His kinky-curly red-brown hair was only a fringe around his ears and the back of his head that could accurately be described (and usually was by local Iowans) as Bozo-the-Clown-hair. His eyes were somewhat bugged out of their sockets, giving him a look of being permanently surprised by life… or more accurately… permanently stupefied. Mercifully those goofy-looking eyes were closed in slumber.
It was a benefit to Harker himself that his eyes were closed and he was sleeping. And this was because he had accidentally fallen asleep on Poppy’s grave in the Norwall cemetery. And also because he was currently surrounded by skeletons, members of the local un-quiet dead, standing in a semi-circle and ogling Harker with their eye-less eye sockets.
“Do we have to eat him?” asked the tall male skeleton with the seed-corn company baseball cap on his head. “I mean, if it’s all the same, I’d really rather not.”
“I think you only have to eat his brain,” said the little boy skeleton. “I don’t know for sure because that Night of the Living Dead movie didn’t become popular around here until years after I died and video tapes became popular.”
“How do you know about that then?” asked the church lady skeleton. It was obvious that she was the remains of a church lady because she still had quite a bit of long white hair on her skull, along with a pillbox hat, and she was dressed in a tattered church-lady-type dress of green rayon with a printed pattern of red roses turned brownish gray by years under the mud.
“When I wandered into town one Halloween night in the 80’s, I looked in the living room window of the Martin family, and the two boys were watching that movie on what they call a VCR.”
“Was the movie any good?” asked the skeleton in the cap. “I heard of it in life, but never watched it. It would’ve been too scary for my daughter, the Princess.”
“The zombies were all fake. And when they ate human flesh, you could tell it was all special effects. They should’ve asked me. I could have shown them how it really looks.”
“Heavens!” said the church lady, “They don’t actually kill people when they make a movie, do they?”
“I don’t think so,” said the boy. “That may have changed since I passed away in the 60’s.”
“I still don’t think I really want to eat him,” said the skeleton in the cap, “even if it’s just the brain.”
“We can’t start the Zombie Apocalypse without eating brains and making new walking dead,” said the boy.
The other two skeletons turned and looked at the little boy skeleton. Both of them let their bottom jaws drop open, but without flesh, it was impossible to tell if that was an expression of surprise, disgust, or… hunger.
“Do we really need to end the world with a Zombie Apocalypse?” asked the church lady. “I’m not sure eating living people’s brains is a very Christian thing to do.”
“Aren’t there supposed to be bad consequences for falling asleep in a graveyard?” asked the skeleton in the cap.
It was then that they noticed a fourth skeleton had joined the group.
“Why, Bill Styvessant,” greeted the church lady, “I haven’t seen you in half a century!”
“True. You were but a girl in the late 40’s when I passed on from a broken heart.”
“You remember me in life?” asked the church lady.
“Of course I do. You are Ona White. I sat with you the night you died, under the street light on Pesch Street. You were mauled by those two dogs that shouldn’t have been loose. I tried to comfort you as you passed away from shock and blood loss.”
“I thought you were an angel, Bill.”
“I was. Angels take many forms. An angel is merely a message from God.”
“Wait a minute! How can a skeleton know who another skeleton was in life?” asked the skeleton in the cap. “Especially if you died many years before she did?”
“It’s in the nature of angels, Kyle. I know you too. I watched over your family several times when evil lurked near… for a couple years after your suicide. You are ready to take over that job now.”
“Kyle Clarke?” asked the church lady. “You’re Kyle Clarke? What’s this about a suicide?”
“You died before me,” said Kyle, “so you wouldn’t have heard. I lost a third of the family farm to the bank in the early 80’s. The shame and despair was so overwhelming that I shot myself to death in the barn. It was the stupidest act of my entire life.”
“Well, I should think so,” said Ona White.
“Is that why we walk the Earth?” the child skeleton asked Bill. “We all had a tragic death and were doomed to walk for all eternity? How did you die, Bill?”
“Of a broken heart,” the old skeleton said. “My wife died while mourning our son Christian who died in Germany during World War Two. I lived alone for a short while and then simply expired from the weight of my sadness.”
“You didn’t join your loved ones?” asked Ona.
“Of course I did. The same way you joined your father and mother, Ona. Also the way little Bobby Zeffer here was joined by his father a couple of years ago.”
“You are Bobby Zeffer?” asked Ona, surprised. “The little boy who died of Hemophilia?”
“Of course. Who’d ya think I was?”
“But I don’t understand,” moaned Ona, “how did we get to be walking dead when we already have one foot in Heaven?”
“People die, Ona, but the memory of them lives on, and they continue to impact people’s lives in many ways. We walk not as ghosts, but as metaphorical spirits of the past. No man could live in the present if there had not been those who walked the Earth before him. A life doesn’t end with death. And the word angel has many meanings.”
“So we don’t have to eat this man who is sleeping on the grave of his father?” asked Kyle.
“Of course not. I think that might have a very negative effect on the poor man’s dreams.”
“I don’t think he would taste good anyway,” said Bobby. “He looks like a deformed potato, and I hate potatoes.”
“You can all go back to your rest,” said Bill. “I’ll watch over this one and protect him.”
The skeletons all faded gratefully from view.
Harker Dawes woke up, stretched his arms and yawned. He looked around at the graveyard and the dark of the night. He smiled to himself. He only ever seemed to remember the good dreams.
.
Catch a Falling Star 
Hurtful Words
Yesterday’s post got me thinking about how words and the power behind words can actually hurt people. They can you know. Words like “brainiac”, “bookworm”, “nerd”, “spaz”, “geek”, and “absent-minded professor” were used as weapons against me to make me cry and warp my self-image when I was a mere unformed boy. I do not deny that I was smarter than the average kid. I also recognize that my lot in life was probably better than that of people assaulted with words like “fatty”, “moron”, “loser”, and “queer”. Being skinny as a child, there was actually only one of those deadly words that was never flung my direction. Words like that have the power, not only to hurt, but even to cripple and kill.
We all stand naked at times before a jury of our peers, and often they decide to throw stones.
I try to commit acts of humor in this blog. Or, at least, acts of verbal nit-witted goofiness that make at least me laugh. I have been told by readers and students and those forced to listen that I only think I am funny, and I am a hopelessly silly and pointless old man (a special thank you to Miss Angela for that last example, used to tell me off in front of a science class I was substitute teaching years ago.) But those words do not hurt me. I am immune to their power because I know what the words mean and I am wizard enough to shape, direct, and control their power.
I have stated before that I don’t approve of insult humor (usually right before calling Trump a pumpkin-head, or otherwise insulting other members of the ruling Empire of Evil Idiots). And I don’t mean to shame others or make them feel belittled by my writing. But sometimes it happens and can’t be helped.
This blog isn’t about entertainment. I am not a stand-up comedian working on joke material. I use this blog as a laboratory for creating words and ideas. It is mostly raw material that I mean to shape into gemstones that can be used to decorate or structurally support my crown jewel novels. I use it to piece ideas together… stitch metaphors and bake gooseberry pies of unusual thinking. I use it to reflect on what I have written and what I have been working on. And sometimes, like today, I use it to reflect on how readers take what I have written and respond or use it for ideas of their own. That’s why I never reject or delete comments. They are useful, even when they are barbed and stinging. I made an entire post out of them yesterday.
I try hard myself to be tough in the face of hurtful words. You have to learn that essential Superman skill to be a middle school and high school teacher. It is there in those foundries for word-bullets that the most hurtful words are regularly wielded. The skill is useful for when you need the word-bullets to bounce off you, especially if you are standing between the shooter and someone else. But I can never feel completely safe. Some words are kryptonite and will harm me no matter what I do. Some words you simply must avoid.
Anyway, there is my essay on hurtful words. If you want to consider all of that being my two cents on the matter… well, I probably owe you a dollar fifty-five.
1 Comment
Filed under angry rant, blog posting, commentary, humor, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life, William Shakespeare, wisdom, word games, wordplay, writing humor
Tagged as humor, hurtful words, insult humor, resisting hurtful words