I keep almost having a flash; fiction, not menopause. Not that it’s anyone’s business, but I’m more like 2x speed than pause. You never think of male menopause but it must be a thing. I’m demonstrating my problem; focus. Focus might not be terribly important to flash fiction but it seems like a coincidence that my focus is off and I can’t manage a readable flash; I don’t believe in coincidences. Ok, that’s not really true, but it’s one of those things that doesn’t get questioned; I don’t believe in coincidence. I believe that when a coincidence happens that it’s a coincidence.
Belief shouldn’t have anything to do with empirical events. It does, but it shouldn’t. Most people believed the world was flat, that didn’t make it even a little bit flatter. On the other hand certain terminal patients can stave off the inevitable with hope, a sort of generalized belief in not everything sucking, generally. Also, some people still believe the world is flat and some nominally healthy people think they have horrible diseases. That’s not the opposite of belief, but it’s not what people mean by belief.
Belief usually has positive connotations or sarcastic connotations by scoffers. Belief causes people to do crazy things, heroic things, plain old regular mundane things. That old saw about mommies lifting trucks when their kid is trapped underneath? Usually it’s not taken out of the toolbox to explain the hormones and chemicals flooding from the adrenal glands. Let’s just say it’s belief that if you want something enough and believe enough that you can encourage the world to bend to your will (Ok, I took a short-cut, but, more or less, in a kind of general objective way, that’s why that saw comes out of the toolbox). How shitty does that make the mommies who just stand there screaming clutching to an EMT while their kid is crushed by a truck?
I’m just typing, I’m not trying to make a point about the virtue or flaws in beliefs. Just saying people have them. Not religious people, particularly, or superstitious people, particularly, just people. Mommy bears do a lot of things when their cubs are threatened, but they don’t lift trucks. It’s possible that some have tried, I don’t know. I’m not entirely convinced one way or the other that the human mommy lifting a truck is or isn’t an urban myth. If the mommy bear tried it’s because mommies have to try. With humans there’s a whole sauce of rational and irrational thought, a cocktail of emotions (including, and pardon my rudeness, a sense of relief that they no longer have to worry about all the terrible shit that could happen to their kid) and … other stuff.
We wouldn’t need a box if one old saw covered everything. It’s an extreme example. Most of us don’t live extreme lives, but we all have that tool box. I mean I raised two kids to maturity without them ever being caught under a truck (my son was under a sedan once looking for oil drips …). Perhaps it’s because I’m not a mommy …?
How many times have you nodded a greeting to a dog? For me; every time. If asked I’d shrug. It’s like saying Hi to a passing stranger. Perhaps for some there is a belief that if you say hi it’s like saying ‘I mean you no harm, please say hi back because, frankly, you are a little creepy.’ I’m not suggesting that’s how most people think, though I’d correct the word think. I’m just suggesting that perhaps someone does and it would fall under the category of a belief. Hi is kind of meaningless. It’s not like strangers are taking notes on whether you are polite or not, I’ve said hi to people as I passed and never looked back. It’s a bit like nodding at a dog. I’m not afraid of the dog and if I were I can’t rationally imagine my nodding would prevent an attack. I’ve also not said hi to someone and not looked back and I’ve managed to live to tell the tale. It’s not a very interesting tale; I passed a guy wordlessly and nothing happened. See?
People don’t seem to part their hair to the left or right as much as they used to. When the grand whelp was here and I sat for him he liked watching those tween shows from Disney. Most of the male leads had some version of Justin Bieber hair (He didn’t create the style, he’s just the first person I could think of with that kind of hair style that y’all might recognize). It’s like a comb over for people who have a lot of hair. A few of trumps toupees have a similar style. I honestly have never heard that Trumps hair isn’t his own, but c’mon, I mean come the fuck on. Who, besides the no-longer-in-the-news Bieber, would shape their hair to look fake?
Hmmm, I didn’t plan that, but it does dovetail into beliefs. In America, and probably out of America, there’s this unspoken belief that a celebrity knows something that us mere mortals don’t. That’s, in part, why they get to speak at political fundraisers, fashion shows, sales meetings. Justin Bieber could have, for instance, a few years back, endorsed both Trump and Tres Somme shampoo. Whether or not it influenced anyone or not is beside the point, a gifted poly sci master’s student with great hair wouldn’t have gotten the gig, or, if he had, that’s not who’d the carrion eaters at the water cooler would be talking about. They’d be talking about Justin’s hair and how cool they were for not thinking this teenage boy with a pop song on the charts was not cool. Beliefs.
When we talk about belief systems this is not what we mean; yet it fits. Abstract thinking, thinking about stuff that isn’t occurring or what possibly precipitated the stuff, or whether we could rescue our kid from under Trumps wig. What the fuck is the GOP thinking? Seriously. Like the splinter fringe tea party nutjobs were not sabotage enough. Apologies if I’ve offended nutjobs. Or splinters. Or fringes.
I forgot what my intentions were when I sat down to type. Focus. Need some. One small intent, like a kid under a truck, was to adjust the position of my lovely and shapely ass for the benefit of my not so lovely and shapeless back. How could such a mean and mediocre back terminate into such a lush and extraordinary ass? I kid, lovely and extraordinary, yes, lush, not so much. I never quite got the hubba-baloo over Jennifer Lopez’s ass, you know, back in the day, but I appreciate that it has yet and is unlikely to ever endorse Trumps … anything.
I believe my ass would like another change of view.
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