Bad Day for Raccoons

There must have been four dead ones on the way up to the mountains.  They all looked headless, as if their identities had been erased.  Do raccoons move a lot in August? Can't be mating season, can it?  Aren't they active at night -- maybe they get killed crossing the road in the dark just before dawn.

Of course, there are guys who will speed up and veer to kill any little beasty in the road.  There's a lot more mean in the world than that.  You think a guy who gets a grin from crushing small creatures is great to work with or share the supper table with, or a bed?

So I got to thinking about the nature of mean and Kathy said -- You should come see the hummingbirds.  So I stood at the window and watched one hummingbird perch atop the feeder and chase off another little guy who kept trying for a meal.  The aggressor didn't eat, just chased of the other one time and again.

Just like people, I said, stupid an mean.  Not everyone's stupid and mean, said Kathy.

It's just like her to say that.  Not everyone, I conceded.  There's her and there must  be someone else.

My first job was at a daily newspaper -- they are fast disappearing thank God but the cable news networks replacing them are worse.  Anyway, there were two Managing Editors.  One was stupid and the other one was mean, a true Irish bully.

The mean one would stroll up the aisle of desks the reporters sat at like he was expecting us to strew flowers in his path.  He would stop at Jim's desk.  Jim's shouders would rise up his neck.  It looked like he wanted to pull his head into his body like a turtle's into its shell.  Jim was the meekest of men -- a decent fellow who held his modest reporting skills in even lower regard than deserved. Today we'd say he had a self esteem problem.

The ME would ask a seemingly innocuous question about the story Jim was working on or had written for the previous edition.  Whatever Jim's answer, what followed would be a scornful, bile fillied disatribe about his poor work.  Jim would try to agree to whatever inadequacy was cited and pledge efforts to improve.  That brought even more scorn and sarcasm until the ME wound down and sauntered away, sublime in his mastery of the world.  Damned if any of us ever rose to Jim's defense, to our eternal shame.  Mostly we were relieved we'd escaped the beating, like soldiers who are secretly glad they weren't the one killed in a skirmish.

In my life, in addition to bosses who were mean, I have had coaches who were mean, colleagues who were mean, teachers who were mean -- like the American History teacher who would throw chalk at the slowest kid in the class and never missed a chance to make him feel dumb. And there were some kids who tittered and smiled at his slighting remarks.  I feel a measure of pride that I never did.

I've known guys who disowned their daughters for marrying a guy of a different religion, who smacked their kids in public and practically yanked their arms out of their shoulders (how the hell can you do that) and even one guy who punched his pregnanat wife in the belly.  And it was in front of a whole bunch of people including me and no one knocked his teeth in for him. Said to myself I was only 15 and skinny.  But I could have grabbed something heavy.

I've known mean cops, mean lawyers, mean judges, mean waiters, mean tailors (and there aren't hardly any of those any more) and mean bankers (heck, at least they're supposed to be mean).

I knew a head of a banking division whose style was to have one of her department heads waiting outside her office early in the morning.  They would sit uncomfortably a half hour beyond their scheduled meeting time because she was "so busy" and to demonstrate her absolute authority over them.  Everyone on the executive floor knew a meeting first thing in the morning meant they were in trouble.  That was part of the punishment.

Then the door would open and the division head would act half surprised that the victim was waiting there.  And then an hour's rebuke and new assignments piled on to an already impossible long and arduous list. But every Christmas season she baked her subordinates cookies and expected lavish thanks.

If you think there's any hope for world peace and harmony ask how often you find it at any workplace or school or any place where more than two peope are.  There are all kinds of theories about why wars happen -- econimic, ethnic -- nationalism, militarism, capitalism, fascism, socialism. Hardly anyone gives enough attention to mean.  If it's a kick to crush a raccoon under the pick-up truck's wheels how much more fund to drive a tank over "bad" Serbs.  Mean is always with us.