It's wicked to mock the afflicted

Life is mostly monotony and tedium. This is not news. For some lucky few they have obsessions and addictions to give purpose and distraction from this regretful banality. I have my loves and my passions but none so overwhelming to my senses and attention to save me from the contrite reflection of the totalling pointlessness that caused my teenage self to produce poetry using words like “scream” and “blood”. Melodrama that, I suppose, I still have not completely abandoned. That is why when I find some individual or the evidence that such a person has passed my way, I take childish delight. I mean individual in a very strict sense; someone who has still retained a unique perspective on our common existence or at the very least just saw one little thing just enough differently to momentarily amuse. My mood can be completely turned for the better by a simple act of graffiti that says something more intelligent that the advertisement that it defaces. I fall in love quickly with people who benignly ignore or reject all the pointless matters of etiquette. Invariably these people have a great sense of humour and if ever there is a motto for my family it is “We laugh, to save ourselves from crying”. One most wonderful human being whom I love dearly like a beloved aunt is my dearly beloved Aunt Rose. Aunt Rose is a handful and a half, but she is beautiful. In my mind’s eye I see her standing in her tiny kitchen crammed full of an elephant’s graveyard of bric-a-brac from the seventies. There’s the tiny glow of her halo as she makes grilled cheese sandwiches. She turns to me and asks, what do you think is wrong with Pigeon? Pigeon is one of her three enormous German shepherd mutts. I don’t know. What’s he been doing? Well he’s been watching price is right with me. We discuss and attempt to diagnose the odd behaviour of her dog. The final conclusion is that Pigeon has decided he is human. Far be it from Aunt Rose to tread on the ambitions of her pet. She now indulges the beast to the point where milkshakes and hamburgers are decided to be part of its diet. Nothing changes for the other animals, the remainder of the animals remained content not to watch Bob Barker or eat Chubby’s. Chubby’s was the local fast food restaurant around the corner from her house from which I was usually sent to retrieve Pigeon’s lunch.