Alright. Off to the corner store for some legal cancer delivery systems, then to the sunrise spot to usher in a new sleepless set of hours. But first a tinkle because my bladder is telling me there are some liquids that need to be returned to the wild.
Back in the day, Johnny Carson started a toilet paper shortage. As a joke, he mentioned on his show that there was a nationwide lack of toilet paper. The public, being their usual sheepish selves, rushed to the stores to stock up on as much as they could cram into their station wagons. The aftermath left empty shelves.
People were going into stores, and upon seeing these empty shelves cried to the heavens.
“Oh my God! There’s no toilet paper! When will this shortage end? Who can save us? Oh the humanity!”
All the while there was no shortage. The people created their own illusion like idiots.
Other times throughout history the need to ensure butthole cleanliness resurfaced. Y2K caused a lot of people to believe the hype that the world might end, and in response they hoarded toilet paper. Most recently the Rona sent people to their local wipeadashery in a vain attempt to soothe their puckered output shafts with, you guessed it, hoarding toiler paper.
I think this means most people at their core are just gigantic poopy assholes.
I never worried about it. It seemed like I could find alternative solutions in a pinch.
Heh heh.
Pinch.
Anyway, it took a long time for me to realize that my brain didn’t work like others. I mean I should have seen the signs. I was the guy letting people cheat off me. I was the kid who didn’t have to study and still got straight A’s. I was the nerd who didn’t have to put any effort in understanding what was being taught. I could just absorb it and spit it back out in the format the education system expected.
In some regards this was to my detriment. I took a lot of things at face value. Mostly because I didn’t care. I had one edict. Get good grades or collect an ass whoopin’. I didn’t spend a lot of time analyzing what was being fed to me. I wasn’t curious about what was accurate and what was skewed. I was only concerned with the “right” answer in the context of who was asking.
All while trying to avoid both punishment at home as well as from the kids around me who didn’t take too kindly to this fucking nerd who made them feel bad for being dumb. It didn’t help that I was also funny enough to make others laugh at them. Couple this with my whopping 125 pounds stretched over a 6’1 frame and it is a miracle I survived.
I was about 16 when I began to rebel.
I blame gangster rap.
In reality I think I was just waking up to noticing how poorly my parents were doing. Not only did their rules and expectations not fit my generation, it made no sense to follow the guidance of people demonstrating a complete lack of success. I don’t blame them. Society changed around them and what worked for their parents was no longer the play. That later realization didn’t soften the angst of living under a bunch of rulesets I wanted nothing to do with.
Still, once I opened the door to questioning what I was told, a new reality came flooding in. First of which was the realization that public school is run by the state. The state doesn’t have a vested interest in promoting anything that undermines the state. Anything bad the government did was glossed over or patently ignored, and the constant undercurrent was to buy in to the system and don’t ask too many questions.
Pledge your allegiance.
Sign up for your selective service.
Don’t forget to vote.
Why? Because we said so. What are you a Commie?
What saved me is I didn’t have any base programming. My parents never took me to church, nor did they really talk about God. The culture was a majority Santa Claus and Easter bunny so I had the Christianity Cliff’s notes, but I was not told what to believe. Granted I lived in one of the most evangelical places on the planet so I was encouraged, but I only had 2 days off a week and I wasn’t about to spend one of those congregating.
My parents also weren’t politically vocal, or if they were I was never around to hear it. I was latchkey from age 6, and there was always the threat of getting in trouble for something or another so I avoided my parents at all costs. Most of my political leanings came from MTV and Caroline’s Comedy Hour, which is to say I was trained to poke holes in everything.
I am grateful for it. I have met a ton of people who spend a lot of energy and experience years of strife trying to escape their programming. I had the luxury of a growing up with a bare bones operating system. I was given the gift of thinking for myself and deciding on what to believe based on arguments from many sides.
Fucking glorious.
That was until I ran face first into the momentum of popular opinion. Keep in mind, this is not popular fact. This is the cultural beliefs individuals demand of other individuals despite evidence to the contrary. This is where you have to make the decision on whether to take the easy road and succumb to the pressure, or stand against the wind and take what whips at you.
The youngin’s don’t get it. For a man to have an earring was a rebellious act, and employers would ask you to remove them. Tattoos had to be covered if you had any hope of getting an office job. If you put loud bass speakers in your car the cops would pull you over and cite you, and your sexuality was kept in closet if you knew what was good for you.
Want to skateboard?
Get the fuck out of here hooligan.
In response I got piercings and tattoos. I rocked 12” woofers and hung out with the gays. I never skateboarded but I did smoke weed at a time when you could get thrown into a cage for even smelling like it.
The more I used my brain the more I realized I was a part of the counter culture. To me, the normies were the nerds, and I began to resent the preppy aesthetic. I couldn’t understand how people could be so oblivious to what seemed so obvious to me. It took me a long time to understand people are just following their programming.
Even in my friend group I felt like an outsider. They could see the issues with the culture, but they couldn’t act outside of it. They could listen to the music, they could do the drugs, they could move with the comfortable changes, but they could not rage against the machine.
They wanted to prosper on the terms society deemed successful. In many ways I wanted some of that too, but I just couldn’t violate the principals I had developed. I couldn’t shake the beliefs I spent so much time thinking my way through, the realizations I had drawn despite the noise of the world telling me to look the other way.
My friends found success.
I found struggle.
I had developed my own program and I was just as much a slave to it as they were.
I mean I did raise two incredible kids despite taking a lot of heat about raising them on organic food and limited sugar. This was before organic was just a label. I had to go to specialty stores and remind people not to feed my babies bullshit behind my back. I fought off the slings and arrows over how my kids needed their holiday candy, their birthday cake, and their here, have some candy because candy.
All from people with health problems.
Don’t get me started on how I denied them the Santa Claus experience, and I can’t even mention the V word. . .
Those conversations were nightmarish.
I took a lot of shit from all sides about how I was raising my kids. All from people who did a real shit job of raising theirs. I had to nod my way through tons of conversations about tradition, and this is they way it has always been done. Phrases about how “I grew up with this that and the other, and I turned out okay.”
But did you?
Did you really?
I mean I wasn’t perfect. My choices weren’t always the best. Not every cultural norm needs to be uprooted, and most of them can be navigated with grace instead of rebellion. I didn’t like the manual I was presented for life and there wasn’t a revised version for me to follow so I did the best I could, and I did okay. It merely came down to a lot of gut feelings based on real research.
My grade would likely have gotten me a session with the belt, but so far I am passing.
The one thing I can hold on to is, I never hoarded toilet paper. I didn’t have to. I hadn’t spent my life swallowing the garbage being offered. I didn’t end up with fear diarrhea. Granted there are things that have shaken me and there are aspects of life that have built up around me that shake me still, but I am not fool enough to believe that a closet full of bog rolls is going to save the day.
Any survivalist not trying to sell you an overpriced bugout bag will tell you, lean on your knowledge more than your gear. You can’t eat toilet paper. Well, you can, but you aren’t going to have the best time. I am also not trading food for comfortable wiping. Preparation is not just amassing a bunch of shit you may or may not need, it is amassing the knowledge to get what you need from what is available.
I could be wrong. I often am. I am also trying to update my software as often as possible and recognize when the program is guiding me. All the while holding tight to the reality that I have always been able to wipe my ass, and I never had to fight someone in a megastore parking lot for that luxury.