That’s a
provocative question. Also ironic, for two obvious reasons: I’m a man, my
spouse is a man. Hardly the likely person to be asking the question.
Well, I
did, right there in my black armchair, as I was cheating at electronic Sudoku.
Yes, you can cheat—my version of iPad Sudoku allows you three wrong answers and
will still declare you a winner. So, hey, why not? And I give you this
tip—added value, as we used to say in Wal-Mart!—to help you along. Your guess should
always be for the little box that helps you the LEAST! If putting the 8 in the
lower-right hand box would give the next three answers—don’t. Put it in the
lower left box—which gets you nothing. Most of the time you’ll be right. If
you’re wrong, well, you have two more guesses AND those three other answers.
See?
By
cheating, I manage to play expert Sudoku (I say this with pride) and win most
of the time.
Today…I
lost.
OK, it
doesn’t make me a bad person, as Jeanne used to say. And then I wondered—maybe
it does. Not losing, but cheating. Jack wouldn’t have approved.
It was that
old rigid morality I wrote about in Iguanas. That fire and brimstone, sulfurous
hellfire, miserable sinner stuff. Didn’t believe in it, but he was still shot
full of it….
I wondered
about it because I was pondering an email Cousin Ruthie sent me—and when she
writes, you read! (She correctly diagnosed Santorum—“a lizard!”—and is bang-on
about Romney—“a snake in the grass!”) She had read a post about Lexapro 20mg po
qd. And then remembered her nursing days. (She held out three years, I managed
a decade….)
Well, both
of us remember some of the same stuff—the endless notes we had to do to cover
our asses, writing out medication charts at 3AM, those funny Latin
abbreviations: qd, qid, tid, PO, SQ. She also remembers the guy who tried to
grab her boobs every time she walked in the room….
She
asks—anyone try that on me?
Errr…no.
And she
mentions Clarence Thomas, and how her parents were shocked when she assured
them that of course he had come on to Anita Hill, and then told them about her
nursing days.
Well, her
father and mine were cousins. But
they both had that morality thing. And then I remembered the female colleague
of Jack’s who approached my mother on the day of Jack's memorial service.
“I want you
to know, John Newhouse was the only male reporter that EVERY woman felt
comfortable with alone in the news room at night….”
Franny was
shocked.
I’m
shocked.
And
Clarence Thomas? Well, I believe Anita for one reason.
I don’t
believe any woman could invent the story of a pubic hair on a Coke can.
Frankly,
the whole thing is drenched with testosterone. And only an androgen-flooded
mind could conceive of it.
So that
got me thinking about the four guns James Holmes purchased to kill the 12 / injure
the 71 in Aurora, Colorado yesterday.*
They were
purchased legally, and the vendors correctly performed the necessary background
check!
Well,
GREAT!
How
relieved the families of the 12 / 71 victims must feel! What solace to know
that your loved one had been slaughtered / maimed with legal weapons! One
imagines them at the graveyard, peering down six feet at the coffin. Mother
bursts into sobs, Father holds her, and whispers, “But at least the guns were
legal!”
She fishes
for the handkerchief, dries her eyes, squares her shoulders, and looks brightly
into the future!
And here’s
where I asked the question—should men be allowed?
Nor was it
the case that I asked the question because James Holmes is a man. (Although
name me, Dear Readers, one massacre committed by a woman….)
Yeah, he’s
a guy. He’s also emerging—I write this in case you’ve just come out of 24-hour
seclusion—as one of the most dangerous of the schizophrenics.
Bright,
tightly wound, wildly violent.
OK—circle
around. Is the US the only place
that produces this type of schizophrenic?
Don’t think
so.
We may be,
however, the one place in the world that reveres guns to such an extent that we
allow them on our streets.
That
delicate last sentence may be a disservice to the 12 / 71 of Aurora.
How’s this?
A man’s gun
is his dick. And nothing, nothing, NOTHING will take that away from him!
Breathe, Marc….
_____________________*These numbers correspond to the original figures and may have been updated since.
