Miserable Memories

Under a torrential rain - down pouring like sheets of glass - drenched to the core I reminisced:

I think about my time growning up a lot while encumbered by the best that Mother Nature can throw at me (at least to the level of my tolerance). It is during these times - when saner folks do not forgo the ride and only the dimmest of Darwin's next cruel joke walk - that I tend to fall back on the few memories not rendered useless by years of living. My immediate thoughts fled back to, when I was in the second grade and left at a local Chucky Cheese's (somewhere between the Animatronic Jamboree and the ball pit). It was on a bitter Fall evening when I mistaked who I was to go home with and instead emerged myself into an cunning game of skee-ball. By the time I came back up from showing that parlor game what's what, I noticed the party I was with had vanished (they did not know they were to take me home). Well I tried to signal some responsible adult, though the only responsible adults were hormone raged teenagers and the creepy manager... at the time - and still today - I think I made the safer decision to just walk home.

Now the location of the Chucky Cheese's was maybe a mile to two miles from my house. In fact the shopping center in which it was located is where I would find employment during my raging hormone teenage years as well, but perspective may be perception on this one. I know what you are thinking, why didn't I just call home.... well because this was before helicopter parents force tech industries to make two way pagers for kids and because I did not know my telephone number. Now not knowing my telephone number put me in a precarious situation; leaving me young, alone, and ignorant of seven simple numbers (never said I was a bright kid) and tasked with a long, cold, wet, and dark walk back to my abode. I tried to work around my ignorance by dialing the operator and asking them to put me through to the Gushue residence, thinking that if it worked in 1950s television shows it would work for me. Alas all I learned at that moment was that television lied to you and it also rotted your brain to the point of not even knowing one's own telephone number.

Since I am writing this you can assume I made it home - logic does abide - and, alas, I did make it home. However I wonder if that night wired me to not think about how shitty life can be but to just deal with the circumstances we come across everyday. Yes it was completely stupid and dangerous to walk home alone, at night, along a busy road, virtually putting myself at the mercy at all those men explained via the after school special (you know, the ones thin mustaches, driving around in vans, and giving out the best candy).

eh hem!

Moving on.

So yeah, it was stupid and dangerous, but no further damage came my way. Lucky? Damn straight. Would I do it again? Hard to say.

I do know that such flirtations with sketch and danger elevate the senses and make life a bit more enjoyable (if for only having the story to tell later). However, I am not a big risk taker in the sense of major bodily harm. I just like to wander and to adventure. I figure in most situations if I keep my wits about me most adventures are going to turn out just fine.

It is amazing what shitty weather can do to the mind.

The Human Hive

The mob mentality fascinates me, from eagerly obedient religious types to the hegemony of gated community dwellers the individual tends to get lost in the collective. In the group, especially one driven by emotion, the human is not a single unit, rather a part of a machine that emulates animal pack behavior more than the sophistication that humans have attained in the 12000 years since sedentary agrarian life.

I was reminded of this fact when watching a Sky News clip of the ongoing riots in Greece. In the link below you can see the tension growing on both sides of the conflict between the law and the anarchists (anarchists stated by the commentator).

Sky News - Greek Riot

So the intriguing part starts at around 1:40 into the clip and hits a crescendo at around 1:55. At 1:40 you will notice a man hammering away at the the wall in the background, this is to provide projectiles for hurling at the police officers. At 1:55 (after a radical zoom out) the motion of activity around the accruing rock pile emulates a swarming hive. Even in the frantic and excited actions of the stone wielding (and chucking) mob a natural rhythym in the chaos is evident. I just find it interesting how intelligence of an individual can digress to absent rationality of the mob giving appropriate emotional and environmental triggers.