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Was it Walt Whitman?
Just suppose that you are the type
of person to harbor a grudge and forty years have passed
since a major injustice was perpetrated on you and time
has not diminished your feelings of shame at all.
This individual that caused this life-long embarrassment
crawled along the rear of the stage, while you, in all of
your sixth-grade nervousness, stood center stage in the
school auditorium reciting your declamation. Suddenly a
pair of hands appeared through the curtain on either side
of your pants and the next thing you knew, midway through
Walt Whitman, your pants, both outer and under, are lying
around your ankles and the entire world is laughing at you.
And the red-headed, gap-toothed culprit takes a grinning
bow and flees.
Some months later he moves away but you never forget his
face or the humiliation and over the years whenever you've
spotted a red-headed person around your age you plot his
demise--sometimes by a quick bullet or a garrote, and sometimes
by way of a slow and painful and degrading death. You have
experienced dozens of these scenarios and you enter into
a trance-like condition that lasts for minutes or just a
few wonderfully fulfilling seconds.
On one of these episodic days, this ne'er-do-well, this
bully, this egg-sucking sidewinder, this four-flusher, materializes
from your past and appears in the cross-hairs of the windshield
of your Mercury Sable on a foggy dark night, on a lonely
stretch of road with no other car in sight except for his
with the hood up and the emergency lights flashing. Each
time your wiper reaches the upright position you see the
cross-hair and that red-headed felon standing in your path
next to his car, waving his arms trying to flag down help.
In your reverie you pride yourself on split-second thinking
and timing and you turn towards him as if to pull over to
help and just ten feet away you punch the gas at that no
good stick-it-in-your-guts from childhood humiliator and
just before the thud of his body attempting to occupy the
same space as your hood you see his eyes and the terror
therein and you remember in a fraction of a second the same
terror that was caused to you on one sixth grade day. You
remember the terror and the humiliation in that nanosecond
just before you envision him getting pinballed from your
hood to his trunk and imagine him flying awkwardly, limbs
askew, back down to earth and then you are aware of the
sound of your screeching brakes skidding and your mind begins
to formulate your alibi.
Another exercise--another innocent.
One cloudy night you are driving home after having gone
through four erroneous sightings in as many nights and you
are exhausted--the moon and its light are darting in and
out of the clouds, and you see an older red-headed priest
standing next to a broken-down car by the side of the road
and he reminds you of that heinous individual and you wonder
if you could wipe out those never ending nightmares and
headaches and mind-destroying grudge thoughts by wiping
out a look-a-like. After forty years it makes sense and
you go around the block knowing full well that it is not
him but something has to change so as you turn the corner
you start to pick up speed only to suddenly realize that
someone has stopped to help your intended victim and redeemer.
Reflexively you slow down and keep an even foot on the gas
and cruise by slowly and look over, only to see the vapid
stare of your very enemy looking back at you, grinning his
gap-toothed grin, as he helps the priest to his waiting
police cruiser.
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