Incoherent Little Story

Incoherent Little Story

There’s something highly upsetting about thinking you might die. On the other hand, there’s something quite calming about truly believing you’re about to die. The two ideas sound like they’re worlds apart yet, the journey from one to the other is surprisingly short; just about seven feet or so if I recall correctly.

Seven feet, how many inches is that? Doing math under pressure, when was the last time I dealt with that? High school I suppose. High school was pretty fun; a bunch of young idiots too stupid to worry about anything but having a good time. I think that’s what that saying, “ignorance is bliss”, means. I guess then it’s not fair to say we were stupid, simply ignorant.

What’s the difference though? I think ignorance is just that you don’t know any better because you haven’t had the opportunity to learn better yet. So what is stupid then? Does that mean you have had the opportunity to learn but still haven’t learned? So that means ignorance is just stupidity with an excuse. I guess that sounds right; I wish I could look them up in a dictionary.

I wonder what seven feet is in the metric system. I think a meter is about the same as a yard so I suppose it would be around 2 meters and some, I don’t know, centimeters I guess. Isn’t the United States pretty much the only damn country in the world that doesn’t use the metric system now? What’s up with that? Why don’t we learn that stuff in school along with, or even in place of, inches and miles and all that? The whole world uses it but most Americans probably know as little about it as I do. How stupid.

Is it true that most other countries hate the United States? I heard that somewhere. Does it have anything to do with us not using the metric system? It does seem kind of arrogant. It’s like saying we don’t care what all of you are doing we’re going to do our own thing and you’re going to deal with it. Sounds kind of childish I think. Well the United States is a young country compared to a lot of others. Hell some countries have furniture older than the U.S. Maybe countries are like people and the U.S. is in its teenage rebellious years.

Did I go through a rebellious time? I don’t think I did anything really rebellious but I suppose I didn’t have much to rebel against. What do kids rebel against anyway, their parents maybe? My parents trusted me and were understanding almost to a fault; I felt no need to rebel against them. The police perhaps? Well I did drink and party under the legal age to do so, and I even committed some crimes; petty vandalism and that sort of thing. I suppose that could count as rebelling. I didn’t have anything in particular against the police or laws. I was just being young and stupid, or was it ignorant? It wasn’t like I didn’t know what I was doing was illegal. Does that mean I really was stupid?

Maybe I was a rebel without a cause like that old movie. I never saw that movie though; it was before my time. The phrase stuck around, ‘rebel without a cause’. What does that mean anyway? Don’t you need a cause in order to rebel? I suppose it could just be one of those clever titles. If you need a cause in order to be a real rebel what would a rebel without a cause really be? I guess they would simply be a troublemaker. What causes people to go through that phase in life? It’s usually around the same time in people’s lives, their teenage years. It might not happen with everybody but I think it does with most people, at least enough that, ‘teenage rebellion’, is considered a common occurrence. It can’t be a coincidence, there has to be a reason for it.

My best guess is that kids spend their whole childhood being told what to do and around their teenage years they simply get sick of it. That sounds good to me; I’m going to believe that answer. Someone somewhere has probably asked the same question and done research and tests and study groups and all kinds of stuff to figure it out. They probably have an answer to it and it’s probably pretty simple to find their answers normally but now isn’t exactly normal.

There’s another one. Normal, what the hell is normal? Is it the same thing as majority? That’s the only thing I can think of for normal; if most people do something a certain way then that way is what’s normal. If you don’t do things the normal ways then you’re considered abnormal, odd, weird, et cetera. I’ve never liked the concept of normal because it makes people something they aren’t.

Let’s face it people are strange. Most people have a very strong need to belong, to fit in, to be normal. At the same time most people also seem to treasure their individuality. Maybe that’s part of people’s rebellious times too, they simply don’t want to be the same as everyone else so they strike out at conformity and the authorities that hold them to it. These are both very strong needs that seem to directly conflict with each other. How do people balance it all out? Quite frankly I don’t think we do. I think most people choose one need and sacrifice the other in order to function. If not we’d be constantly arguing with ourselves and wouldn’t get much done. You might change your choice from time to time to suit the needs of the time but you can’t have both at once. The trouble as I see it is that we still have the needs at once but can never have them both fulfilled together. There’s no such thing as a normal individual.

So many questions and I’m just making up my own answers as best as I can. No choice really; time’s up and I can’t exactly run to the library or ask anyone else for the answers. I don’t like not knowing the answers to questions. I don’t know why that is but I think it’s the same for pretty much everybody. I think that’s why we have religions. People need answers to questions they have. If we can answer it ourselves then great but if it’s beyond our comprehension at the time then that’s where the religions and gods come in. They fill in all the holes and give us an answer to currently unanswerable questions.

Long ago before we understood what caused thunderstorms and the real world physical explanation was far beyond our comprehension yet we still saw the lightning and heard the thunder and felt the rain and we knew there had to be a reason for it. We didn’t know the reason and it hurt not to know; it felt like a huge gaping hole in us somewhere. It’s there and it’s awesome and we don’t understand it but something must cause it. That thing must be an awesome power to create such a thing as thunder and lightning and water falling from the air. And so people created their own explanations for it all. Different people had different explanations for the same things due to differing location and good old human individuality so there became different religions. First it was polytheism. It started out with a god for each unanswerable question but the questions became too many and so with time religions simplified into monotheism. And so God was born from man in our own image to be our universal answer. Then again, how do I know? Maybe I’m wrong and I’ll get all the answers soon. That would be nice but even now I still doubt that.

I wonder if I’m dying right. Isn’t your life supposed to flash before your eyes? Is this what my life was? Where are all my family and friends? Maybe that’s simply all life is, just a bunch of random thoughts, ideas and memories. I wonder if I lived right.

Two times seven; fourteen; one; seven; eight; eighty-four inches in seven feet. What an odd thing to make me smile at a time like this.