Thankfulness...

I’m a simple guy. I’m thankful for simple things. One of these things is showers. A shower is my version of a massage; it’s one of the few times in a day when I can just relax and let all of the pain and aches from the day drip off my back. I turn the water up really hot so the steam gets inside my lungs, and once that happens, I’m beginning to fall asleep. It’s wonderfully soothing….

Of course, once I get in the shower, I don’t want to get out. It’s a welcome break from life, but I know that I’ll have to get out eventually. That’s just the way it is I suppose. Eventually, I’ll start guessing that it’s, what? 10:30? 11? The voice inside my head will start telling me: “You should get out of the shower and go to bed.” Then the other voice inside my head will say: “You can spare five more minutes.” The whispered battle of the two voices rages for at least ten minutes.

Once I’ve decided to listen to the first voice, and decide to get to bed, a new challenge arises. Suddenly I become acutely aware of the environment around me; specifically, I gain an intrinsic knowledge of hot and cold. I know that I have to get to bed. Yet, I also know that I don’t want to leave the warmth of the water and step into the freezing air. I spend (at least) another 10 minutes strategizing; determining the optimum way to retain warmth and comfort. I’m a mathematical type of person, so I consider as many variables as possible, and eventually, my complete attention shifts to a towel.

I get ready. I place my left hand on the shower control knob and my right hand on the edge of the shower curtain. I visualize my next movements as well as the extreme comfort that will soon be mine once I’m wrapped in the towel.

I take a breath.

3-2-1, GO! In an incredibly graceful and cohesive move, the shower is turned off, the curtain opened, and the towel wrapped around my dripping body. I smile. My extensive and thorough planning worked!

Except there was one problem. I felt cold. Terribly cold. The air began to curl around my body, gripping me with it’s icy fingers.

Then I realized my dreadful mistake. Despite my extensive considerations, I had forgotten one variable: I was not the only person who took a shower tonight! Oh the inconvenient truth! The towel was wetter than I was! My brother took a shower less than an hour ago!

I didn’t plan my next moves. I knew what I needed to do. I searched like a madman for a dry towel, looking everywhere in the bathroom for something to save me from the icy cold of the bathroom air. My search was useless.

Finally, I stopped searching and stared at myself in the bathroom mirror. I sighed. Twice. I took one more look around the bathroom, and my eyes came to rest on the pile of clean clothes that I was planning to change into once I was dry. I had no choice. My clothes became my towel, forcing me to take the short trip from the bathroom to my room bare. What else could possibly go wrong?

In this season of thanksgiving, I must say that I am extremely thankful for DRY towels. Yes, it is a simple thing among the many things that I am thankful for, but after this incident, dry towels hold a special place in my heart.

Alcoholism....

Disclaimer: I have not and hope not to live with an alcoholic. Nevertheless, I doubt my opinions would be affected if I had to live with an alcoholic.

My project focused on the causes of homelessness in The Glass Castle. Specifically, I explored alcoholism as a cause of homelessness. I showed the connection between alcoholism and poverty, and then showed the clear and obvious connection between poverty and homelessness. Thus, alcoholism is a cause of homelessness.

However, I believe there is a deeper level to this cause. Yes, alcoholism is a cause of homelessness, but poor decisions, selfishness, and lack of discipline cause alcoholism.

If this project was not so objective, I would have focused upon how poor decisions and the character of Rex contributed to homelessness. Now, I get to dive into that realm…

Disgusting. That is the first word that came to my mind after I read this book. Let’s be honest. Rex is a loser. He’s smart, and he has tons of potential, but he’s a loser. He’s described as the “town drunk” (183), and it’s his chain to alcoholism as well as his inability to turn from alcoholism (because he knows that his alcoholism is wrong…when he’s sober) that makes him a loser.

Rex’s decision to become an alcoholic says multitudes about his character. In this excerpt, Jeanette recalls the series of events that led up to Rex’s alcohol problems: “Mom said Dad was never the same after Mary Charlene died. He started having dark moods, staying out late and coming home drunk, and losing jobs” (28).

Wow. This guy should not be a father. Why? Look at why he did it. Rex felt bad because his daughter died, just as anyone would. However, he was not able to carry himself, nor his family, through that difficult time. In turn, he took action to “numb the pain” (aka…get drunk). He was only thinking about himself in this situation. As the leader of his family, he should have been thinking about his family first instead of himself. However, Rex acted selfishly and tried to numb HIS pain. Though his action numbed his pain, it increased the pain of his family ten-fold in the long run. Alcoholism may provide temporary relief, but it has so many permanent consequences. One of these consequences was homelessness for the entire family.

Notice Rex’s lack of discipline. The man could not control himself. No, I’m not saying that he doesn’t have the right to feel horrible for what happened to him. I’m saying he let it get out of control. Ok, so let’s say this happened to you, and you have one drink. Fine. However, Rex took it to the next level. He became an alcoholic. That is undisciplined. He let his feelings take control of him, and lost sight of his purpose in life: to provide for his family. Instead, he started providing for himself (providing in the sense that he felt good and fulfilled his desires). That is selfish and undisciplined.

And let’s not forget – Rex’s selfishness and undisciplined behavior is repeated throughout the memoir. He continues to be an alcoholic, selfishly fulfilling his desires because he doesn’t have the discipline to pull his family (or himself for that matter) back together.

Then the blame game begins. Here are some reasons that have been posed which explain why we should not blame Rex for his alcoholism.

1. Some may say “Rex needed to be an alcoholic so that he didn’t have to feel so terrible about the horrible position in which life had placed him. It was inevitable.”

I beg to differ. Numerous crappy personal decisions put Rex and his family into homelessness. I have news for all of you: crap happens. You can’t control what happens to you, but it is possible to control your reactions and decisions resulting from what happens in life. The fact that you need to use something to “numb your pain” shows that you are afraid and aren’t disciplined enough to suck it up. We cannot place the blame on anyone else except Rex. He made decisions that would truly hurt his family and his life.

2. Some say “alcohol is a person’s way of slowing down the world, so they can figure out how they can get out of their troubles.”

I vehemently question this reasoning, simply because alcohol hinders the mind’s ability to function, thus skewing whatever sense of reality Rex already had.

How can we possibly sympathize with this man? How can we as sensible people try to shift the blame elsewhere? Look at what he did to his family and to his life! I was raised to be self-disciplined. I try to be as unselfish as possible (no I’m not perfect, and I can be very selfish at times). I cannot sympathize when his character completely contrasts mine, especially when Rex understood that he was hurting his family. I was not raised to be like Rex, which is the reason why you’ve been infused with the stench of my strong opinions in this blog.

Selfish. Undisciplined. These are not the characteristics of a good father. He must be held completely responsible for his actions. He should take all the blame. As leader of the household (or lack thereof), he is the reason for all of the hurt and turmoil that the family went through – the homelessness and financial crises. I wouldn’t be so angry at him if his actions did not affect so many people in negative ways. He wanted to feel good, but his actions hurt himself and those around him horribly.

Will we as a society refute or support such behavior? I hope it is the latter. However, in a society where mediocrity is encouraged, Rex is the type of person that will live off the government and look down from his room in a safehouse upon the street to see disciplined members of society with PhD’s who struggle to pay the rent every week.

Where is society going? What next?

Citation: Walls, Jeannette. The Glass Castle. New York: Scribner, 2005.

Justified?

About 80 pages into Tim Obrien’s The Things They Carried, we’re confronted with a grotesque and inhumane scene. Curt Lemon just had his life snatched away by a booby trap, and his best friend, Rat Kiley, took it pretty hard. After Lemon got a dustoff, the platoon came across a baby water buffalo, chased it down, and tied it up. After supper, Kiley went up to the water buffalo, stroked its nose and offered it some rations. The water buffalo did not take any of the food. Kiley shrugged, and then proceeded to shoot the buffalo. He shot the buffalo meticulously: at the knee, ear, hindquarters, back, twice in the flanks, the mouth, tail, and below the ribs. Before long, the whole platoon began to watch, as Kiley went automatic, shooting randomly at the buffalo. Eventually, the buffalo fell to the ground, and Kiley shot it in the nose and throat. Finally, the buffalo died. Kiley began to cry, and then went off by himself.

Was it justified? Do we have a right to let our emotions go? Did Kiley have to take life to avenge a lost life? Granted, he was feeling the emotional pain of losing one of his best friends. But, did he take it too far? Did Kiley need to take his anger out on something in such a grotesque and inhumane manner? I don’t think so.

Losing a loved one sucks. I’ve been there, and I have a fair idea of what Kiley went through. However, I completely disagree with the way he dealt with the situation. Kiley could not control his emotions. I’m not an animal-rights activist or anything, but he definitely crossed a line. Kiley may have been one of the thousands who was drafted into the war, and this action may have been a physical manifestation of the anger and discontent that had been brewing inside of him for many months.

BUT - what is self-control? You can handle yourself in the heat of battle, but you can’t let that carry over into all aspects of your life? As a soldier, your job is to be a heartless, ruthless, killing machine. Part of being a soldier is to put the lid on your emotions. Be a man and suck it up! If you can’t maintain self-control, you’re not doing your job. As far as we know, Kiley did not seek any help or guidance from those in his platoon. He did not have enough self-control to do that. What if all the soldiers who lost something or someone acted in the manner Kiley did? Obviously, they wouldn’t be taking their anger out on just water buffalo. For all we know, soldiers might go on their own personal vendettas, wandering to other towns and killing innocent people, just so they can let go of that anger. Running rampage is not the mark of a soldier - especially an American soldier - in any shape or form.

So he cracked. But then someone from the masses will say: “It wasn’t his fault that he over-reacted.”

So this was “society’s” fault? His environment “forced” him to take brash and uncontrolled action? His anger is this just another byproduct of the terrible war? I beg to differ, dear friends. Yes, what happened to him was the result of his environment/society, but his REACTION to Lemon’s death was something that came from within him.

Notice the LACK of society in this whole situation. In America, Kiley would’ve faced jail time, lawsuits from animal rights activists, and other penalties if he tried to shoot through a buffalo enough times to see light come through it if he were caught. However, Kiley isn’t in America; he’s in a war. He is free from the rules and regulations of American society. He’s fighting a war, where anything goes. The effect is that Kiley is given freedom to deal with this situation in whatever way he chooses. And he let his emotions loose. What does this tell us about our own nature? Are we evil right down to the bone when rules are not placed over us and bad things come our way? This is a humbling thought, and many people don’t have the self-control to consider it.

The soldiers recognized something was different. After Kiley left, Tim Obrien says: “For a time no one spoke. We had witnessed something essential, something brand-new and profound, a piece of the world so startling there was not yet a name for it” (Obrien 79). The men in the platoon had never truly seen a man act out of pure, uninhibited, and genuine emotion; they had never seen such a clear glimpse into the heart of a man. And it moved them.

It’s scary to see what we can really be. Human Nature undoubtedly had a factor in Riley’s actions.

You didn’t get drafted to have a party. Next time it might be you who receives the satisfying thud of lead into some part of your body. Crap Happens. That’s life. Move on. Stay alive.


Citation: Obrien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway Books, 1990.