Adversity

  • Saturday, May 23, 2015

He was homeless, a happy-go-lucky vagabond who'd been dumped off in a neighborhood so someone might take him in and give him a home. He's a handsome guy looking to be part lab, part shepherd, part husky, and the rest is either traveling salesman or mailman. But he's also a water-dude. After he'd been with us a week or so he just disappeared and it took three days to find him, a couple of miles away. He'd apparently followed the creek far enough to get confused about where he was and took off through the woods in the wrong direction when he figured it was time to come home, winding up with an elderly couple who fed and tended to him until we located them.

As we drove the 27.2 miles down from Yonder Mountain toward McD's to celebrate his homecoming with a round of McDoubleCheeseBurgers for them and a large McCoffee for me, I couldn't help but notice how much the rest of The Gang was happy to see him, and he them.

Boo and Ms. Sassy licked his face. Ms. Annie, having assigned herself duties as the fun police immediately upon taking up residence at our hacienda, gave him down the road for being gone so long. Sparkie… The Sparkster remained his usual stoic self and did nothing, which is his way of showing acceptance. He normally growls, bares teeth, and says “you touch me I'll eat you” to intruders of his territory until they understand who's the boss. Watching them brought a little smile as I took a drag on the cigarette held gently in my nicotine-stained fingers.

That wasn't working.

These new filters just don't draw well with spit in 'em, which apparently happened while trying to get all five happy heatherns back in the car to leave. So I field stripped that one out the window, threw the butt in the floorboards, and lit another. Taking a long, deep drag on that new fag it occurred to me that some of us have experienced real adversity while others only complain about their perceived lots in life.

Take, as an example of adversity, The Sparkster, given name SparkPlug. Holding a vehicle's spark plug in one's hand while turning over the engine might be a good way to describe our first meeting. He was only about 3 or 4 pounds but bit the bejeebers out of my hand the first time we met, then ran between Jack's feet and gave me his “go ahead and try to touch me again, Big Boy” look. Understanding Jack had just rescued him after being kicked down a flight of stairs his behavior wasn't too surprising. Had I known then what I know now, we probably should have made a couple phone calls to some daddies and dudley, who considered himself studly, would have awakened in the dumpster, stiff and sore from receiving the treatment he'd been giving Sparkie and his mistress for some time. But that was about 45 pounds ago, for Sparkie, and he does like pretty girls, so who am I to complain?

Tough guys… their lives oh so terrible.

Not long before that trip to McD's, one Mr. Oshea Smith was involved in a prayer meeting with a Hamilton County judge. She did the meeting. To look at his mug shots… oh my goodness, such a tough hombre. One must wonder what he's ever done in his short 20 years besides lay up with some girl who's been taught not to respect herself enough to tell him to buzz off. But he's been kept his entire life, a pet; first as a little boy and then a full grown child as he jumps from free bed to free bed, beds those of us who get up and go to work every day pay for. He's bad to the bone, don't you know… but he learned a judge is badder.

Gosh she's cute when she's mad… at S-O-M-B-O-D-Y-E-L-S-E, almost as cute as another judge who, with a smile on her lips and that twinkle in her eye, told former Chattanooga Mayor Littlefield, of Ron's Excellent Adventure fame, that 10,000 Chattanooga voters couldn't be wrong.

I hate when a girl gets mad at me.

We live in the greatest nation to ever grace the face of Planet Terra, yet there are those who, even after spending more than $22 Trillion tax dollars for President Johnson's war on poverty, tax dollars confiscated from hard working Americans with the force of a government gun, who would have us believe their lives are terrible, they have no opportunities, and they just can't get a break. If we use simple math, without assigning funds properly or taking the time to determine the administrative cost of programs, if this money hadn't been thrown away frivolously we, as a nation, ignoring interest and compounding, or even the increased products had those funds not been wasted, could easily have almost $5 Trillion buckaroos in the bank… with no national debt and much lower taxes for those of us who pay them.

That's a bunch of jing.

Still, after all that money being spent over the past 50 years, there are those who complain about the adversity they've grown up with and still experience in their daily lives. Here, in these United States of America, where our poor enjoy a higher standard of living than those considered the upper crust of society in other parts of the world, those very same “poor” people have the audacity to complain about what's given to them, often for no more reason than they breathe in good air to exhale carbon dioxide and other noxious gases that drive the greenies nuts.

My late father always said if one wants to find the best kimchi, a Korean food similar to our southern delicacy chow-chow, he needs to look for the pot with the widest circle devoid of vegetation around it. In that search I discovered “fermenting” is just another verb meaning “rotting.”  Those of us fortunate enough to have traveled the world at the expense of our uncle, Uncle Sam, can always tell a young trooper's just made his first trip to the Philippine Islands… when they come back from town asking “Do you know what they eat out there?” Google balut. Those young troopers are sometimes fortunate enough to spend time with soldiers from other nations… and see them scramble for such local delicacies as rice bugs or fried grasshoppers. Like yogurt (fermented milk), none of those has ever knowingly passed between these two lips… nor will they. It was always fun to see the look on a young GI's face when handed a bowl of soup soba (chicken broth with spaghetti noodles) and chop sticks from a roach coach in Japan, but that's societal not adversical. Adversity is having to eat what the rest of the world might find disgusting, because there's nothing else, like those North Korean civilians who must eat grass… bladed, not leafed.

Some complain about the jobs they must take to earn their keep, or that they must work at all instead of laying on the couch watching television and eating bonbons. I've watched people be evicted from a taxpayer-subsidized, aka section 8, apartment because they refused to pay $25 per month for rent and utilities. One must wonder if these could survive having to live like the girls diving for coins and trinkets GIs tossed from the bridge in Olongapo City, the Philippines. There's a reason they were called (poop) river queens… they were swimming in the (poop) river.

Some will complain of ancestors who served as slaves to Mighty Whitey, of Jim Crow laws, but have never experienced one minute of slavery themselves, except as a slave to government checks funded by those who work hard every day. Then the complainers demand “reparations” from those who had nothing to do with their ancestors' hardships. We're all provided a taxpayer funded education through our first 12 grades, but some demand more… because they didn't apply themselves and are allowed to blame everyone else for their personal failures. Tweetie-birds certainly were effective in bringing back those girls kidnapped from schools in Nigeria, weren't they.

It's okay to destroy our own neighborhoods and the property of others if we're angry, isn't it. Then we can complain that no one wants to build nice homes and buildings for businesses in our 'hood. Why should they?

Homosexuals attempt to destroy the lives, businesses, and families of those who refuse to participate in their lifestyles. Never mind acceptance, or ignore-ance, they demand participation. Less than three percent of our population demands the rest change to suit them… and we allow it. Wonder how that works in other parts of the world, where they execute homosexuals. Hint: it doesn't.

We're preached to about tolerance, but our language has been bastardized so that tolerance doesn't mean leaving others alone to live their lives the way they wish, they demand we accept and even participate in their lifestyles… if we're Christians.

As we send our nation's finest off to live and fight in some of the worst crap-holes on the face of God's green earth.

One must wonder how many of these might be singing another tune if they ever experienced true adversity, lived in nations where they shoot one another, belay that, we do, maybe overthrow their governments with the force of weapons, have soldiers in airports sporting M16s at sling arms, or neighborhoods built of tar-paper shacks.

One thing's for sure. There's going to be one less adversity suffered by the fur-balls here at Yonder Mountain. There shall be no more names picked out by girls. None. That's how we get a pit bull mix named BooBoo Bear, a Boston terrier mix named Annie Bannanie (code name 'Nanners), and a lab/shepherd/husky/whatever named Elvis. Whatever happened to Rex or Spike or Jaws?

I'd be a little anti-social too… if some chick was calling me Sparkles.

Royce Burrage, Jr.
Royce@Officially Chapped.org

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