Ever see that episode of the Twilight Zone where a family is held hostage by a little boy with psychic and telekinetic powers? I think it was Billy Mumy of Lost in Space fame, anyway the family was terrified of the boy and tried to appease him constantly, fearing violent reprisals. That was my life from age five to seventeen, except I wasn't that little boy, my bane was a six foot tall, two hundred-seventy pound giant and his powers weren't psychic, they were physical.
My step-father was a violent man, even more so when he was drunk, and he drank most every day of his life. He was a union electrician, and could find work whenever he needed to. Life was good in the mornings and afternoons - he was gone. It was that time between 5pm and 1am that I dreaded. If he came home right after work, he would be in a bad mood, but he would be sober and I could usually avoid him. But if he was late, he was drinking, and good or bad mood, I would pay. A buoyant mood meant a family meeting in the middle of the night that had a fifty-fifty chance of ending in some kind of slap. A bad mood often meant broken furniture and an escape out into the yard as the neighbors ducked from their windows, switching off their lights. The best we could hope for was that he would pass out early. I suppose I replayed this gambol four thousand times before I left home at seventeen.
I have discussed this in other posts, so I won't go into further detail about those dreadful hours, other than to examine a singular lesson I learned from my step-father and a few other people in my life: I won't pander to moody people, desperately praying for positive affection. If you are moody, I will pick the mood that suits me and treat you accordingly. That usually translates to "you are a jerk and I will ignore you, nice or not"
Sadly, I have seen an increase in the number of ill-mannered people in my universe. I call it the "Diva Effect" whereby the reward for their talent, hard work, or sheer luck is to treat the rest of us like we are dirt. Vain, shallow, and capricious behavior reign, and they would have us scramble and grovel for the few morsels of decency they can conjure up each day. I am not so mystified that these people exist as they do, but I am mortified at the number of young people that lust after the same status.
I think the need to treat others in this fashion is just the manifestation of inner cruelty let loose by an indolent society. People that tolerate these folk do so secretly hoping they can be transformed as well into solipsistic creatures navigating their days like regal ogres feeding on the weak, secretly despising themselves. For how could they love this inner ugliness? This petulant pettiness?
And if they haven't been elevated to official diva status by society, they will turn inward into their own environment and find minions and sycophants even more self-despising upon whom to wield their odious whims. This audience is sadly populated by children, outcasts, and people with no where else to go.
I have found that when I show no interest in these people, they tend to be nicer to me for a bit - that period of time where they hope to draw me in to inevitably hurt me in direct proportion to my disdain for them. This doesn't happen, as I just don't relent, for as tempting as it might be to gain affection from these trolls, I remind myself of all the others they hurt and the need to gain exclusive favor, temporal as it might be, evaporates into pity for these would be tyrants.
I watch tv sometimes and wonder why there is such a market for conflict and animosity, and how pitiful, ugly creatures come to occupy center stage. The stooges on the stage of Jerry Springer don't bother me (after all, they are just chasing their Warholian prophecy), it is the audience near and far that frightens me. Perhaps it was my 35,000 hours of "reality" that makes tv so repugnant. I just cannot figure out what it was that I missed from that experience that so much of the world finds fascinating.
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