 |
| Truer words, never spoken. |
I don't consider myself a particularly fearful man. I don't think of myself as a coward. To the best of my memory I have only ever done one cowardly thing in my life, and that was because a friend made a horrible decision and I had to back said friend's play by doing something stupid. I'm no longer friends with that person, and I think about that moment often and don't like talking about it at all, so we'll leave it at that.
But I recently realized I may have done something else cowardly, and it bothers me.
A little background. I don't have any children (and I've been pretty fucking careful to ensure that never happened). I don't ever intend to have children. I'm probably too old for that by now, anyway. If I had a kid in nine months, I'd be in my sixties when that kid becomes a teenager. I don't want to be in my sixties chasing a shithead teenager around. That's strictly for the birds.
And for all my bluster about despising children, I kinda don't. Yeah, they're annoying and filthy and stupid and generally disgusting, but when it comes down to it I'd rather hang out with them than their awful adult counterparts. I kind of view them like Eric Northman in True Blood.
Why don't I have kids? First and foremost I'm a child myself. I'm the oldest eight year old boy I know. I'm irresponsible and I'm selfish. When you have kids, you're supposed to put them first, and I have absolutely no desire to do that.
But a major concern of mine was that I'd wind up just like my stepdad, a drunk who beats his wife and kids. Even before I became a teenager I could feel his hatred and rage in me. I still feel it to this day. Sure enough, I became a drunk. I've never intentionally hit a woman in my life. I accidentally slapped a girlfriend while rolling over in my sleep. It wasn't the impact that woke me up but the feeling of her face on my hand after. It wasn't forceful, and she didn't even wake up. I was just startled because I don't really sleep well around other people, and it kind of surprised me that someone else was in bed with me. It took me a moment to reorient myself and remember who she was.
And though I've wanted to many times, I've never struck a child. But I knew that was in me, and I didn't want to pass that down. Child Abuse: The Next Generation. I wanted to make sure that whatever thing that lived in my stepfather would die with me. And I think about how he got to be that way sometimes. I have a sneaking suspicion that his dad was a Nazi. I don't mean that figuratively. I mean, the guy fought in WWII for Hitler.
Anyway, that's what I was thinking about when I considered the coward's way.
Not too long ago I watched what is possibly my favorite episode of Supernatural. It was about the life of Bobby Singer. This would probably be considered a spoiler for the show, so if you haven't watched it, maybe skip the rest of this.
The episode is called "Death's Door." In the previous episode Bobby is shot in the head. He's still alive in this episode, but he's struggling for what, at first, you think is his life. He's trapped in his memories, and he has to relive some of his deepest regrets in life. Before this episode you know him as the gruff and ornery surrogate father to the Winchesters. He's a no-nonsense kind of guy with more than a tinge of paranoia. He's also the most knowledgeable hunter the boys know. They go to him when they don't know what kind of monster they're facing.
But we learn more about what makes Bobby tick in this episode. You see, his Reaper has showed up to take him to the other side, but like I said he's struggling to succeed at something before that happens. He has to run and hide from the Reaper, and he learns the best way to do that is to find his worst memories and stick with them.
His absolute worst memory is of his father and why he doesn't have kids, either. His father beat his mom. He beat Bobby. Often. And li'l Bobby did what I'd always fantasized about when I was his age. He killed his abuser. Shot him in the head. And he swore to himself that the cycle of abuse would die with him.
And so he raised Dean and Sam as best as he could when their real father was hunting monsters. He didn't always raise them like John wanted. Sometimes he let them play hooky from target practice so they could play a little ball instead.
And Bobby realizes, in these moments before the Reaper catches up to him, that his deepest regret was not having kids. It had been the coward's way. You don't just avoid evil. You step in its path and fuck it up as best as you can. The truly heroic thing would have been to take a stand against the evil within himself and NOT LET IT WIN. To be the best father he could have ever been.
And he manages to do the one thing he was really struggling to do as he stood at Death's door. He helped the boys one last time and died.
Fear stands in our way a lot more often that we'd like to believe. We do something or we don't do something because doing the opposite scares us in ways we can't even comprehend. When I discover I'm afraid of something, I usually just do it anyway, but in this one case, where it might have mattered the most, I didn't.
And that's one of the regrets I may have to hide in when my Reaper comes for me.
 |
| IDJITS. |
One more thing. Gramps had a saying. "'Balls!' said the Queen. 'If I had two I'd be king!'" This went back to his high school days, apparently. I was thinking about it earlier tonight and decided to look up where it came from. No one knows, like no one knows who came up with the song that says, "Milk, milk, lemonade, 'round the corner doody made." Or the one about what King Kong went to Hong Kong to do. But Gramps never told me there was a second part to that. The King responded by saying that it takes 12 inches to make a ruler.
No comments:
Post a Comment