Here's another excerpt from Second Day Reported. Thanks for reading!
My friend Melissa and I had a strange, insular friendship. We’d met in the fifth grade, both volunteering to help the teacher at lunch rather than facing the horrors of recess, that time of social burden. Our first discussion was about the nightmare of Hitler and what he had done. He took people’s skin and used it to make lampshades! People thought they were going to take a shower and got gassed! They had to dig their own graves! We knew no Jewish people, people who seemed as exotic as the big city. We couldn’t remember if an anti-semite meant that you liked Jewish people or hated them.
And so each recess we spent cutting out laminated hand-outs and discussing the tragedies of the world, all those distant killing fields. We only had limited first-hand experience with the muted racial tensions of Mineral Wells, the fear and contempt some people had for the black part of town and their social work center, named after Paul Lawrence Dunbar, know as the Dunbar. Although we heard people say nigger, nobody we knew had decorated his house with body parts. Of course, we couldn’t know about Ed Gein yet and his plan to create a suit for himself out of women’s skin, not so far from us after all. A small thing comparatively, but it does give one pause.
Michelle's Spell of the Day
"We've survived by believing our life is going to get better." Paul Simon
Cocktail Hour
Drinking television suggestion: Californication (Going to write a post on this one --really good stuff!)
Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Wednesday! I love Cheri's question and want to write a whole post to answer. The short answer is absolutely. I still have the Virgin Mary post to do as well as my review of Isabella Moon which I am loving. I'll be in Texas this weekend for a wedding, but I should get caught up with everything by next week.
11 comments:
There's that prom dress again. It is a good color on you M, much, much better than the poorly preserved material of Gein, Mengeler and the others who would use the murdered human body for decoration.
How strange are the things some humans are known for. Better that an 11 yr old, or a pair of them, not know about this twist in the human consciousness.
Yes, Mark's right, too bad we all have to grow up to find out about the Ed Gein's of the world, and about the tension between races and genders.
first off: jews are not the ONLY semites, the race includes arabs, and others... so the term 'anti-semitic', used indiscriminately to mean 'anit-jewish', is laughable
but yes, perverted 'humans' do exist, even today :(
you still have a rotary phone? wow!
Hell yeah!
I'm such a brat.
Hitler was a best-selling author before he became Der Fucker.--Artie Johnson
Mein Kampf is a bestseller among the Palestinians.--Yasser Arafat
I looked good in a uniform. What else can I say?--AH
Sept 10,2001 . Lt colonel Dave Grossman, retired Army Ranger,Psychology professor came and talked to us today about his book Killology. He warned us that day, that something was coming, he had been talking about Kids and their video games verses real life, the fact that some childern had killed trying to mimic the games they had been playing. He had all the case history to back it up. He is a very captivating speaker.
In his new book Killology he described the world in very simple terms. There are basically 3 types of people in this world,described as animals.
You have the Wolfs who will kill anything, anytime, anywhere. The predetors.The Ed Geins of the world.
The Sheep, who become the Wolfs pray.
The last one is the Sheep dog, he guards his flock from the wolfs.
Growing up sux, I hope I never do.
Who would of ever thought the next day would be Sept 11,2001. The day that the wolves took a bite out of our ass.
Always take time to pause and look around. The Ed Geins of the world are just waiting to strike.
Michelle, I hope I did not stray to far from the subject, I enjoyed the piece, kind of like a history lesson.
This is too ironic...
Yesterday I was contacted (out of the blue,) by my sole friend through public school. We were social outcasts...to the point where I volunteered to work in the school libraries during lunch to avoid the usual harassment & humiliation. I grew up in a major, Jewish neighborhood, however (Gold Coast of Long Island.) My friend was one of the few goyim at our school. Years later she would date a man who honestly believed that Jews had horns on their heads.
Strange...
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Great post Michelle. I remember being that age and hearing about the tragedies of the world, thinking how awful things were but not really comprehending the full extent of horrors, what with my fifth grade mind thinking more about the cute blonde girl with the pink coat who I was afraid to talk to than worldly things.It wasn't until later that I was able to see the world as it really is, a cruel place where evil can present itself anywhere, and no one is really out of its grasp - no matter where you live.
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