Lost Cause

BLM WHM SMN SCH THF RNG BRD MNK WAR DRK PLD > 99

Ok so I just woke up from a dream where everyone thought I was a sexist so I apologize for that. 

If I was working with Rachel I wouldn't refer to her body parts or talk about Alex's this or that and I wouldn't go on with people about SECupp's face behind her back somehow.  In fact, I am sure of that because people long ago would often try to talk about people in my presence and I wouldn't allow it.  But I sure do seem to be making up for all those years of assininity here on this blog right?  Have NO problem talking about people now do I, even though I know it's wrong?  Hmmf.   Again I apologize but at the same time this blog is kind of for me so try to read these things with a grain of salt.  Thoughts aren't what I would normally say to people and part of the reason I don't just come out and tell who I am is that most of this stuff I wouldn't say out loud. 

Now, another thing that bothered me was that kid that shot 9 people.  I might have gone too easy on him.  I am going to take you back now to a time when I was a volunteer at a church.  I was there all summer working for McDonald's food at night which I didn't expect but that they paid for anyways.  

Because the church was on a highway, we often got drifters.  People who traveled ON the I-10 and what do you know, it's a church, it's time to ask for some charitable work and sustenance before I go back to not caring about people.  Now, this never occurred to me when I was a little boy, which I was at the time.  Well, let's just say I was a teenager.  Because I was a nice boy and all, I was open to many things and one time we got this guy that looked like he didn't have two pennies to rub together.  Here we were, paying for private school at the church and here he was driving us "elite" types around town, usually for the sake of socializing on a certain night.  

It's funny to think back because if I would have realized that right there next to me was a doctor's daughter that if I had asked for his permission to marry her, would have led to an entirely different life for me.  But REALLY, I was too young.  Both me and her and you could say we were all just virgins then with no urges except to be "enough" cool to get along with the other kids that age.  

So this guy is driving us around town and I think he is just the neatest guy.  He is funny but humble but mean-looking in a way that you would not expect from any other person at church.  Sometimes he would hold up his fist at us and if we disrespected him or something he would say "boy, I'd hate to have to ... Break yo face.."  lol.  It's funny even now because he would always smile after.  

Well, one day we go off to this party for other teenagers and lo and behold a whole bunch of them are gathered in the kitchen for some reason.  I thought this was a church event but with kids from other churches and honestly to think back I can't remember why we were so excited whether it was Christmas or some other holiday I can't remember, but they are all gathered in the kitchen and one of the kids has his finger in the lock-cutters and a bunch of other kids are daring this other guy to chop off his finger.  Several minutes later we are running.  ALL of us are hauling butt to the school bus and noone knows why we are leaving but I remember hearing someone say "he's turning pale".  Who WERE those people?  

Still, I think we all kept that a secret that night because we honestly didn't know squat about those people and I just told my mother about it the other day and she didn't know squat about it either from the church people.  

Still, I didn't attribute that whole incident to this guy driving the bus at all because all he did was drive the bus, I thought, but he was kind of responsible for us wasn't he?  

Still another night we all decide to roll paper the doctor's daughter's house.  Everyone knew I kind of liked her but I wonder if she said something sour or I think they just stopped coming out with us or something so he got it in his head that had to "roll" their house.  Now I remember specifically not wanting to do it and I am sure that I don't remember throwing toilet paper on their stuff but I DO remember how pissed everyone was after it happened.  Boy, it was like the Dead Poet Society scene when ALL those guys come rushing in about to get to the bottom of this big scandal.  Everyone that participated(btw, rolling someone's house means throwing toilet paper rolls all over it) was forced to go there and remove the toilet paper.  And as it turned out the toilet paper they THREW up over the tree in the front lawn, could not be removed so their house "looked" nasty until the toilet paper finally disintegrated away.  And that was the last time he was trusted to drive us around and since noone else had all of this "free-time" like he did, we basically didn't go out with the church bus at night like we had been doing.   

I still didn't see what he did that was so wrong.  As a teenager, your eyes are like well he should have been punished for a while but why was this so awful.  I think I can see now why because he was teaching us how to vandalize.  Even if it was harmless vandalism, it was vandalism.  

He's not even the worst guy though.  He was sweet to us through and through.  But there was this OTHER guy that was umm... not so much.  He had these firefighter boots and trappings for clothes and weird looking hair.  The pastor had taken him in and offered him work while he was building his new church but he always had a strained look on his face near this guy.  

While we swept and cleaned as part of volunteering I would often look over at the guy and wonder about him.  What must that be like?  Walking the highway, being homeless, needing food, what's that like?  But then one day he is sitting there among us eating McDonald's with us and he speaks up and says he needs more pay and I look at him like "DUDE you don't even do a good job cleaning."  This part I kept to myself of course.  Still another night I remember him saying I'm going to have to leave unless I get more pay he would say.  Later I remember him saying that he like my friend Danny because he was the one that cared about him and I thought to myself that after the pastor put him up for the night and fed him and gave him work he was still ungrateful for what he had.  

And I remember thinking as I looked at him as he started to feel this hatred for the pastor, that we were all in danger somehow.  It was something I had never felt before and I wondered to myself, why?  

And that's what I think about now when I hear about those 9 people that were shot for taking on someone wild into their fold is that maybe some poor people just can't be shaped.  Maybe it's a lost cause with some people.  In any case, my pastor was one of those that had faith in people and even if he didn't believe in his actions to help the homeless... he still DID HELP the homeless. And that's one lesson for you about me about having faith in people is that it's not about them, it's about you.  In your mind, if you believe yourself charitable, you won't come across as a hypocrite, you will propagate charity as expected and as something people can count on.  

I don't know.  I feel bad for the boy that shot them since he was just a boy and not a LIFER homeless guy like this other person, but at the same time, church people, charitable people, PEOPLE LIKE ME, are the ones that have to suffer first when they treat as normal, people that are perhaps... lost causes.  

PS.  Btw, we spent all day today fixing the mower.  At first wwe thought the belt had come loose but it hadn't.  We took it off.  Put it back on.  Then we bought another one but it seemed to be the same size so we didn't use it.   I went to the computer and printed out a diagram and the manual even showed how to disassemble the mower, the part with the blades from the rest of the engine, so as to replace the belt which was all we could think up was causing the blades not to engage when we tried to engage them.  Every time I would slowly move the lever up to the lock position to engage the blades, something would slip and it seemed like the belt was what was doing it.  But late in the day, and it was a long and hot day in the garage, I saw my father moving the blades on the right.  They made this sound like they weren't greased and it occurred to me that maybe there was resistance there?  I mean those blades have to spin effortlessly and if not maybe there was trouble.  But my dad said, hey look man 18 horsepower man.  There's no way that little bit of resistance was gonna slow down 18 horses, so that kind of made sense.  I am much more forgiving in my old age.  When I was younger I wouldn't even listen to other people because they would always suck.  They would come up with things I had already thought of and it was almost always a waste of time to even listen to other people when it came to problem solving but over time I have learned that I have to ALLOW them to believe that they are helping mostly so they don't begin to act against me.  But you know what, his idea, actually helped and that was that the blade had resistance so I checked the blade on the right and sure enough, those were the blades that I remember got stuck on the root I ran over.  Trying to move THAT blade got it stuck on the side of the cover and to look at it further it seemed that the other side of the blade was bent, so now it seems that all we need is to replace the blade and reassemble to mower and it will be fixed.  Still, I got the impression that my parents think that I knew this all along or that I messed up the mower on purpose.  I didn't.  In any case, it was a very frustrating afternoon/day.