Ramadan Night 17 - The Third Entry

And when they hear vain talk,
They turn away therefrom
And say: "To us our deed,
And to you yours;

Peace be to you: we

Seek not the ignorant."
S.28 A.55

This is a great example where one verse gives me two perspectives to work on:  Not listening to negative talk at all, whether or not I like the source, and to be more tactful when I disengage from someone I am not fond of. I am working on not producing negative comments, or joining in on a bad conversation. This is the next level - avoiding such talk and doing so with grace.  This will not be easy for me, for I have learned a terrible truth: Many people will gravitate to you if you share gossip and slander, they may even appear to love you for it.

I have also found that such talk opens communication, good and bad, but that a virtuous stance shuts a lot of doors. Not having information is difficult, and closing conduits, no matter how detrimental, can isolate one. Being out of the loop is lonely, but far out shadowed by the damage aversive affiliation  brings.  This will be a big change for me, learning how to operate without ill gotten information, but I am determined to continue to regain my integrity whether or not it hampers me.  And I don't think it will deter me for long, for as hard as integrity is to purchase and maintain, it makes a wonderful pillow to lay my head upon each night.

 

Naivete' - The Sequel

More tales from the education of a reformed knucklehead (some may be recycled from previous posts, if so, forgive me for I cannot keep up with myself):

20,000 What?

At some point in my Junior High career, I was told to read Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.  Once I heard it was a submarine story, I was sold.  I was even motivated to look up the measurement mentioned in the title.  I learned that a league was about two and a half miles, and it set me on a ponderous ponder - which part of the ocean was 50,000 miles deep?

I Do What?

When I was in the fourth grade, a very pretty girl approached me and asked me if I wanted to be her ex-boyfriend.  I was just on the fringe of love/hate with girls, the brink I would ironically return to forty odd years later, and the idea sounded intriguing - perhaps it was the way she said it, the siren's smile she was perfecting.  Before I dashed wildly in, I asked her what it meant to be an ex-boyfriend, a level of ignorance I would learn never to admit to a woman again.  With a very pensive expression she explained: "well I have lots of them and they throw candy bars at me."  I looked at her, thought about it for a bit, then decided I'd rather have the chocolate.  Who says you gain wisdom as you age?

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

Of all the conflicts I had with the priests in my catechism course, this one got me busted, literally a handful of times (poor pun for it was a paddle that did the busting).  I must have been tuning out some critical information, for somehow I was under the impression there was only one Mary in the "Jesus stories" I was learning.  When asked if I knew what the Christmas miracle was, I earnestly replied that it had something to do with Mary convincing Joseph she was a virgin, given her line of work.  Sometimes the honest mistakes hurt the worst.

Last Request

I was in the sixth grade, visiting a friend at his house.  He had enticed me over that day with the promise to expose his father's hidden cache of Playboy magazines.  I believe I was over before the phone was back in its cradle.  I don't remember the details of our reading habits that day, but I do remember the horrified clamour when his mother burst into the room.  I was sent home with no hope of beating the telephone call that would admonish my mother for her corrupting son's work.  When I got home, my mother was in the doorway, looking at me as if I had murdered the cat and eaten it raw.  All she could do was yell at me and tell me what my step-father was going to do to me when he got home.  She must have been convincing, because I truly believed my life was in eminent peril.  I contemplated my fate, and chose the only logical course of action given my limited hours on earth - I snuck out and back over to my friends house to look at as many magazines as I could, a condemned man's last request.  Well. we were caught again, and I was banished permanently from the place, an evil influence expurgated.  I avoided my mother and slipped through my bedroom window, waiting to face my doom as a man at peace with his maker, with a vivid image of Miss January burned brightly in his head.  My step-father returned, solemnly listened to my mother's sordid report, then called me in.  I walked bravely up to him and raised my gaze to his.  He broke into a wide smile and said, "that's my boy."  I took it in stride and walked past my mother victoriously, knowing she never again would regain the ability to condemn me to death.

Ipso Facto Wacko

I was with the same friend some months later after the pornography scandal had subsided, and we were out for a long walk in the countryside, searching for tadpoles to collect, anything else to kill.  We had our BB guns, and had even upgraded to pellets.  We were armed and we were perilous. I had noticed over the months that he was sort of odd, odd in the sense that even as a sixth-grader, he was a bit erratic.  I think I was his only friend, and I knew he spent a great deal of time out of class, either with the vice-principal or the nurse.  He talked about strange things, strangely.  I ignored most of that because he was willing to explore with me, to get me out of my house as often and as long as possible.  He had gotten me in a lot of trouble though, not just over the contraband periodicals, there was the GI Joe raid on the Barbie party that I paid a heavy price for - I didn't know at the time that a primary duty of all soldiers was to ravish women, and when I followed him into my sister's party with our GI Joes, I had no idea what was in store for the poor Barbies, Ken was not very valiant, and I paid.......anyway, we were out that day just reconnoitering, shooting at things and missing, enjoying the great outdoors.  We wandered much further that day than normal, and came upon a large concrete structure with lights on top of it.  As he was my cultural informant on all things in the area, I asked him what the lights were for.  He responded confidently, "to keep planes from hitting the tower."  I then asked the question that should have begged the  punchline  but did not, I asked what the tower was for.  Without a moment's hesitation he said, "to hold up the lights."  I looked at him, decided that he was completely serious, and dropped the matter.  I did decide then and there that he was either a genius or a madman.  A few years later I heard he was limiting his philosophic discourse  to the other inmates at a teen-aged psych ward.