Tag Archives: terror

Dancer

Dancer: (n) a person who dances professionally

In the world of fruits and vegetables, it would be pretty well assumed that string beans would make good dancers, but cantaloupes and pumpkins–not so much.

Matter of fact, when you see a rotund human dancing, it normally is on a YouTube, which has many views by people who find it hilarious to spy such a sight.

I don’t know whether it’s the mixture of the bouncing jowls in the face, the pinking of the cheeks or the extra blubber shifting like the tide.

But it’s pretty well accepted that those who dance on Broadway live on lettuce and smells.

So when I—more in the melon family of appearance—put on a play many years ago which demanded some dancing and found myself unable to cast one of the major parts, I was encouraged by the other cast members to take on the challenge, break down some barriers and hoof my way through the performance.

I’ve always been pretty athletic. (Candidly, when you’re fat, athletic can be walking through a china shop without knocking over some bullshit.)

So I learned the dancing, practiced it, and got to the point that I could do the numbers without completely gasping for breath.

But as I stood backstage on opening night, getting ready to make my entrance, hearing the mumbling of the audience, I was completely terrified.

All the stereotypical reactions about “prancing fat boys” raced to my brain and did their own little tap dance all over the state of my confidence.

And sure enough, when I entered the stage in my costume and began the shuffling of my feet that would lend itself to dancing, I heard giggles from the gallery.

I was humiliated.

I was frightened.

But I also realized that doing it halfway would only make it look worse.

So I sold out.

And—as often happens when one sells out—half of the audience admired the hell out of me, and the other half was pissed because I made them feel a little naughty about their judgment.

I am not a dancer.

At best I am an agile beach ball, bouncing on the sand—scurried by the wind.

 

Damage

Damage: (n) injury or harm that reduces value or usefulness

Hello, stranger.

Pardon me, I don’t know your name.

I’m not really trying to introduce myself. More or less, I just want you to understand my position.

I’m not sure if I would be gregarious even if the option were available to me. Since you are unfamiliar to my world, I feel compelled to go slowly—perhaps stop.

It’s nothing personal.

I see you’re a little put off and perhaps don’t understand my misgivings, but that’s because you haven’t lived in my world or my time, surrounded by a topsy-turvy environment, nurturing terror.

There are blessings.

But as people, both religious and secular, will concur, the trials and difficulties greatly outweigh the payoffs.

It may seem like a negative way of looking at one’s lifespan, but still, all in all, it is safer to embrace caution and to ignore any temptation to take a risk by pursuing new relationships, new friends, ethnicities or environments.

Understand?

Haven’t you been hurt?

Healed of the wound, the scar and internal blistering is still sensitive.

Is it not nature’s way—to give us a constant reminder of our foolishness, our sins and our naivete by leaving behind bruises and discoloration?

Perhaps you’re a fine person.

Let me rephrase that. I don’t know you’re a fine person. That’s why I must treat you as if you’re not. I simply can’t afford to take on any new conflicts.

I have damage.

It has been addressed, discussed and I suppose might seem covered by the grace of the Divine. But still, it quietly lies within me, warning me of the many troubles of those who wander too far from reclusion.

Perhaps there will be a day when you will be better known to me or my damage will once and for all be contained.

Perhaps not.

Here is what I see:

After meeting thousands of people, we eliminate all the comers to two or three we claim to hold dear, but still maintain our intimacy at arm’s length.

Daddy-longlegs

Daddy-longlegs: (n) Also called harvestman, a spiderlike arachnid with a rounded body and extremely long, slender legs.

I had nearly decided not to do any research whatsoever.

I so enjoyed the old tale about the Daddy-longlegs spider.

If you’re not familiar with it, let me enlighten you.

The Daddy-longlegs is actually one of the most poisonous spiders in the world.

But because it has such a tiny body to accompany its long-leggedness, its fangs are too small to bite human skin.

Now, isn’t that fascinating?

That doesn’t take away from how scary it looks.

But if Daddio ended up being as poisonous as he is ugly, well let’s just say, our lives would be fraught with terror.

Yes, and it also makes for a great object lesson:

If it ends up that you have a little head filled with poison and you have too many legs to walk around and hurt people, just pray that God has given you a mouth that’s not able to spread your venom.

 

Crossed Eyes

Crossed eyes: (n) a condition in which one or both eyes turn inward.

Today’s essay is very simple.

Wordings that grownups find clever often terrify children.

Let’s start with:

“Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

Or:

“I’ll leave the light on in the hallway so the monsters will be scared away.” (What if the bulb burns out?)

Or the one I always hated:

“Don’t cross your eyes like that or make that look. Your face might freeze.”

At this point, the grownup turns his head and giggles.

But terror fills the soul of the young child.

Face freezing—a whole new idea.

Is it possible that this respectable adult is sharing a truth which needs to be harkened to, or one might find oneself going through life becoming the frozen-faced monster, with crossed eyes, that children fear coming in the middle of the night to torture them?

 

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Competence

Competence: (n) the ability to do something successfully or efficiently.

Sometimes those two words do war.

I’m talking about “successful” and “efficient.”

They aren’t the same.

After all, many things in life appear successful, but they’re hardly efficient. The government immediately comes to mind.funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

And there are things that are extremely efficient–like the daily actions at your local ant hill–but will probably not make the nightly news as successful.

To achieve both–in other words, to have a sense of accomplishment and a feeling of relaxation while achieving your aspirations, demands that you stop listening to the world and cease to submit to your fears.

The world wants things difficult.

It is an atmosphere believing without tribulation there is no true progress.

Our fears want to convince us that we are incapable, ill-prepared or insufficient to achieve anything resembling our wishes.

When you take the pressure the world brings to complicate matters and add on your own fears, you have the formula for failure or the makings of stress and debilitation.

I want to be successful.

I want to be efficient.

I want to achieve my purposes.

But I don’t want to do it through strife and vanity.

It requires me to turn my back on what the world considers to be truth, and ignore what my insecurity contends is correct and find my own system, which is free of fretting, minus manipulation and taken away from terror.

 

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Chagrin

Chagrin: (n) distress or embarrassment at having failed or been humiliated.

Life waits around, waiting for human beings to express disappointment so it can squash them like that bug you found in your tent during the
 campout.

Even though we contend that a certain amount of disappointment, embarrassment, disgust or sadness is predictable for certain occasions, those who indulge themselves in such a luxury often find that they are left out of the next flow of human activity.

You can be disappointed, but no one really cares.

It’s not because they’re uncaring–it’s because deep in their hearts, each one of us knows that disappointment and embarrassment are useless emotions which must be dispelled as quickly as possible, lest they explode and destroy our will to live.

So when we see this in other people, there is a small part of us that wants to be sympathetic and a huge part that wants to run away in terror.

So beware of the instinct to share your heart if that emotional revelation is filled with chagrin–because even though we all suffer slings and arrows, most of us have learned the wisdom of ducking.

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