Senseless

Originally Posted Friday, September 26, 2014

I grew up with a lot of kids who went to juvie.  I was in a small, southern hamlet and there was little oversight and not much of anything to do, so boys. . . you know. . . they are trouble.  And most of these kids, really, were chromosomal misfits.  Probably one too many Y chromosomes or maybe they were missing one.  That seemed to be the two types.  And of course Klinefelter's kids who were the necessary victims, usually not of direct violence but of being made to do ridiculous things. 

"Hey fatty, take off your clothes and run across that field to that pear tree and steal us some pears."  Of course the Klinefelter's kid didn't want to do this, but he didn't want what was coming if he didn't, and in some weird way he got to be part of the troupe.  He got picked on, but he was also protected. 

I'm sure there were other non-diagnosed chromosomal problems, too. 

Kids got arrested for a lot of things like breaking into coke machines or refreshment stands at the ballpark at night, or breaking into cars or houses.  The one thing that we all knew, though, is that we didn't want to end up in Marianna Reform School for Boys.  Everyone had heard of it.  It was the one place you did not want go. 

Turns out, we were right (link).  Terrible things went on at that torture farm in the Florida outback.  It was the Ur vision of unchecked legal authority.  They could do whatever they wished to boys with chromosomal problems.  Fortunately for me, I was not of that ilk.  I always went home when the breaking and entering began.  I never joined them when they decided to run away from home.  I was an only child and happy enough in my bedroom away from their hooligan shenanigans.  I knew the world of chromosome deficiencies was not for me.  Well, I didn't know about chromosomes then, but I was well aware of the phenotypes.  And unlike other relatively normal kids who needed to fit in with the aberrational crowd, I didn't sniff glue until I was more like them.  I was a good kid, a sweet boy, a mere victim of my surroundings. 

But it has served me well.  I can see a miscreant a mile off and know how to avoid trouble.  I am often amazed at the naiveté of people who grew up in better environs, especially liberals.  They think for some crazy reason that god made all people equal.  I know this is not the case. 

"Don't talk to that guy.  He's got a screw loose.  He'll pop you in the nose," I'll tell people. 

"Really?  Do you know him?"

"No, I just recognize the type."

"Oh.  You really shouldn't stereotype people that way." 

"O.K.  Go talk to him.  I'll watch." 

Most times it turns out O.K.  Sometimes not.  But I can smell broken genes and crazy badness really well. You are safer when you are with me, I promise.  I've had to get my liberal political friends out of the shit many times, but it is always more difficult with women.  They don't believe that I grew up as I say, think I make it up to seem tough.  I am a mythologizer, of course, and love to personalize it, but when it comes to trouble, you can find me heading the other way before others know it is coming.  It is not a gift.  It is a learned survival skill, not born of toughness but of necessity. 

Yes, I grew up in the broken, twisted, psychotic south.  I am never as shocked by meaningless violence as others.  Still, I can't make heads or tails of this (link).