Category: Platypus people

The introduction of the platypus was such a shock to the British scientific community, in the early 1900’s, that they considered the monotreme an elaborate, well-conceived hoax. They thought they had the animal kingdom all figured out. Those of us who know some platypus people empathize, for when they began to express themselves we thought they were joking. We thought we had human nature all figured out. As we learn more about them, we realize they’re not kidding, and our shock turns to intrigue, as we begin to think they might be able to teach us more about ourselves from their funhouse mirror perspective.

Let Your Freak Flag Fly!

Rilaly10 Comments

“Some of the times you just gotta let your Freak Flag fly,” my aunt said to her brother. I had no idea what they were talking about, and I didn’t really care, but I didn’t think any definition of this otherwise illusory idiom could remedy my dad’s issues. If Freak Flag is actually a thing and not something my aunt just made up, I thought, my dad may have been as far from having a Freak Flag as anyone on Earth. His primary goal in life was to fit in, and he did anything and everything he could to make that happen. My aunt was the opposite. She did everything she could to stand out as a hip, cutting edge, and appear young, or her definitions of all of the above. She knew more about the hip artists and songs in Billboard Top 40 than I ever have, she wore hip, cutting edge clothing better suited to women ten years younger than her, and she dropped whatever hip terms she heard young people say. When she dropped the term Freak Flag I thought it was yet another one of her embarrassing attempts to appear hip, but that particular phrase stuck with me for whatever reason. I never used it, but when I later heard someone on a hip, top-rated television show say it, I knew something was afoot. Then, one of my friends said it in school, and a week later I began hearing it everywhere.

“Where did you hear that phrase?” I asked my friend.

“Dude, I don’t know. I’ve been saying it for decades,” he said. Unbeknownst to me, this was the key to keeping it cool in the phraseology universe, for no one ever seems to know where they hear hip, cutting edge terminology first. To be fair, it can be difficult to remember where we first heard a phrase we’ve been saying for a time, but purveyors of this particular phrase appeared to conveniently forget where they heard it to leave the impression that they started it.

There’s apparently a lot of prestige wrapped up in starting a phrase, and if someone gets a taste of it, they don’t give it up willingly. Whatever the case is, when obsessively curious types pursue such matters, we often receive everything from blank faces to evasive and defensive responses. Even if the user just started using the phrase last February, those who are evasive and defensive want us to think they’ve been saying it for so long that they dismiss all questions about its origins as uncool.

If we found a truly reflective individual who didn’t mind talking about the first time they heard the phrase, it might result in a humdrum response, “My Cousin Ralphie is da shiznit, and when I heard bra say it I wanted his awesome sauce all over me.” If this individual were that honest, they might run the risk of being so over as to be drummed out of the in-crowd, for the clique might deem that confession a violation of the binary, unspoken agreement those in the in-crowd have designed for the world of phraseology. In their world, users want their audience to consider them the originator of the phrase, and anyone who insists on pursuing this line of interrogation runs the risk of being drummed out on an “If you have to ask …” basis.

Another unspoken rule in the hip, phraseology universe is that we better hurry up and use the terms we enjoy saying as often as we can before a kool kat steps in to declare that the days of using the phrase are now over. “Stop saying that. I’m trying to get the word out that that is so over. Tell your friends.” We might be disappointed to learn that we are no longer able to use words, phrases, or idioms that we enjoy using, but we know that when kool kats step in to warn us that it’s over, it’s a serious blow in this artificial architecture, and we know that by continuing to use such a phrase, we run the risk of being so over. This begs a question to the arbiters of language who declare they’ve been saying this for decades, how is it that you never encountered some kool kat who declared your favorite phrase so over in that time span? Did you ignore them, and if you did, why should I listen to you?

A work associate of mine attempted to play the kool kat by correcting me in front of a group of people. “Dude, stop saying that,” he said inadvertently using the tired phrase to end phrases. “I’m trying to get the word out that that phrase is over. Tell your friends.” Anytime we hear someone issue such a condemnation, it’s human nature to assume that it’s rooted in something the speaker learned from a person with some authority on the matter. In my experience, however, most of these self-professed arbiters of language consider starting a hip phrase fine but ending one divine. Those with no standing in the hierarchy of cool often take it upon themselves to issue such a condemnation without knowing anything more on the matter than anyone else, but they hope that by pushing us down a notch they might improve their standing in the hierarchy.

Like most of those in the lowest stratum of this hierarchy, I knew nothing about this confusing world of using hip, insider, kool kat language, so I was in no position to question my work associate, but by my calculations this feller was a doofus. He was such a complete doofus that I would no sooner consider seeking advice from him on language than I would his words of advice on dating. I still don’t know if this fella assumed a level of authority on this matter based on the idea that he considered me inferior, of if he heard this news from a more authoritative figure, but I decided he did nothing to earn a seat on my personal arbitration board. That situation led me to wonder how we determine our arbiters of words and phrases. My guess is that most people will not heed such advice from just anyone, as that might unveil their status in this hierarchy. My guess is that we make discerning choices based on superficial, bullet point requirements we have for those issuing them? Put another way, if the doofus was more attractive and a little less chubby, I may have been more amenable to his guidance on the matter.

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For fact checkers, a decent search on “Let your Freak Flag fly” suggests that it first appeared in a Jimi Hendrix song If 6 was 9 in 1967. It was later popularized in a David Crosby song Almost Cut my Hair that he wrote for the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young album Déjà vu. Due to the fact that these first appearances occurred in an artistic venue, however, we can guess that the phrase made its way through the “in-crowd” circuit long before Hendrix or Crosby used it in their songs.  

The Urban Dictionary defines “Letting Your Freak Flag Fly” as: “A characteristic, mannerism, or appearance of a person, either subtle or overt, which implies unique, eccentric, creative, adventurous or unconventional thinking.” 2) “Letting loose, being down with one’s cool self, preferred usage to occur in front of a group of strangers. Your inner freak that wants to come out, but often is suppressed by social anxiety.” 3) Unrestrained, unorthodox or unconventional in thinking, behavior, manners, etc. One who espouses radical, nonconformist or dissenting views and opinions that are outside the mainstream. When traveling through the bible belt of the U.S., it’s best not to let your freak flag fly high. Otherwise, you’ll be harassed and attacked by these backwater, backward thinking theocrats.

Typical Freak Flag Flyers make very specific decisions to avoid titles. They tend to be abstract thinkers who believe they fly high over those of us who believe in nouns (i.e. people, places, and things). Freak Flag Flyers tend to know more about those nouns than the average person, “Because those people haven’t done their homework.” Some Freak Flag Flyers base their outlier status on anecdotal information of these nouns to whom others swear allegiance, on the idea that if we knew what they, the Freak Flag Flyers know, we would be just as sophisticated in our skepticism about allegiances.

Most people fly under a flag: Americans fly under the Stars and Stripes; the Irish fly under the Irish tricolor; and the British fly under the Union Jack. There are some people, however, who fly under no flag, and they eagerly provide this information to anyone who asks. Don’t expect them to admit to flying under a Freak Flag either, for the very essence of flying under a Freak Flag is designed to give its flyer an open-ended, free lifestyle persona that doesn’t conform to societal definitions such as allegiance or definition … Even if such a definition extends itself to a Freak Flag. They aren’t proud members of a country, political party, or a coalition of freaks. They’re just Tony, and any attempt we make to define them as anything but Tony –based on what they do and say– will say more about us and our need for definition, than it does them. Freak Flag Flyers tend to be moral relativists who ascribe to some libertarian principles when those political principles adhere to matters they find pleasing –those who suggest, as Dave Mason did, “There ain’t no good guys, there ain’t no bad guys. There’s only you and me and we just disagree”- but they tend to distance themselves from economic libertarian ideals, for that might result in too much libertarianism.

Some Freak Flag Flyers raise their flags in political milieus, but most Freak Flags involve simple eccentricities and peculiarities. An individual who prefers to listen to complicated and obscure music could be said to fly a Freak Flag in that regard, but they usually keep that information close to the vest when their more normal family members and friends are around. An individual who enjoys various concoctions of food, philosophies, and other assorted, entertainment mediums could be said to have a Freak Flag, but most of these people live otherwise normal lives. We can have a Freak Flag without being a freak, in other words, but the general term Freak Flag is reserved for those activities we engage in and those preferences we have that could be embarrassing if they found their way back to our normal friends and family members.

Even if we don’t have what others might call a Freak Flag, we can identify with the mindset of those who once dared to let theirs fly. Now that we’re all normal and stable, we might not remember the days when we strove for some sort of definition, or we may be embarrassed by it, but most of us can recall a day when we dared to be different.

A Freak Flag Flying friend of mine, a Dan, worked in a Fortune 500 corporation, and he was a corporate joe from head to upper calf. To maintain some semblance of his Freak Flag status, however, Dan wore a wide variety of loud socks and skater shoes that appeared out of place with the rest of his business casual attire that it was impossible not to notice. I’m not sure if it enhanced Dan’s Freak Flag flyer status or took away from it, but he did have flames of fire on those Converse Chuck Taylors, and he wore these notoriously short-lived Chuck Taylors for about a decade, so he must’ve purchased them on an annual basis to keep his preferred characterization alive.

When I asked Dan why he wore that ensemble, he said, “I just like it” in the typical “I’m just Tony” Freak Flag Flyer vein. I dug deeper, of course, and I saw a man who wanted to succeed in the corporate climate by being everything his boss wanting him to be while not being a complete corporate sellout. He wanted the best of both worlds, and he thought some flames on his feet allowed him to let Freak Flag fly.

I’ve met the “I’m just Tony” Freak Flag Flyers who can’t articulate their need to fly one, and they attempt to nullify any questions about their nature by asking you why you think they’re different. Some think we’re putting them on trial, and we are, sometimes. Sometimes, we’re just interested in their essence. I’ve met others who were just different people, and they were quite comfortable draping themselves in a Freak Flag. They taught me that the ultimate definition of a Freak Flag flyer is a relative concept defined by the individual. It’s almost the complete opposite of my aunt’s attempts to be younger and hipper than her peers, as the true Freak Flag flyer does not engage in Freak Flag flying, they just are who they are in a manner that is more organic than any character my aunt might dream up.

The Thief’s Mentality

Rilaly2 Comments

The best thief I ever knew accused me of stealing, lying, and cheating so often that I began to question my integrity. A woman I dated cheated on me so often that I’m still embarrassed that I wasn’t more aware of her infidelities. Her octopus ink involved her accusing me of cheating on her, and she did it so often that I forgot to pay attention to what she was doing to me. If their goals were to prevent me from analyzing them, they did an excellent job because I spent most of my time defending myself around them. Some might call what they did projection, others might call it deflection or obfuscation, but I believe the games these people played fall under a comprehensive, multi-tiered umbrella I call the thief’s mentality.

Kurt Lee introduced me to the confusing mind of a deceptive person. The art of deception was such a key component of his personality that he thought he was able to spot transgressions gestating in the minds of those around us. In the manner a professional saxophone player spots nuances in the play of another, Kurt Lee spotted the intricacies of manipulation around him, and he did so from the same angle of admiration. Yet, he put so much effort and focus into tuning into their frequencies that his instincts often led him astray.

Kurt taught me more about deception than any other person I’ve encountered, movie I’ve watched, or book I’ve read on the subject. He would serve as my prototype for those who would exhibit a wide array of similar traits, traits I would only later deem the characteristics of the thief’s mentality.

The most interesting aspect about him, a characteristic that might defy that which I will describe throughout this piece, was his charm. When it served him, Kurt Lee could be the nicest, most engaging, and infectious person you’ve ever met. He was also a funny guy, and genuinely funny types have a way of disarming us, unless we stick around long enough to learn more about the games they play.

Those who knew Kurt Lee, on a superficial level, envied him for the ways in which he openly defied authority figures without guilt. Those who actually spent as much time around Kurt Lee as I did, however, witnessed that for all the charisma a piece of work (POS) displays, they ultimately end up destroying themselves from the inside out.

One afternoon while on a city bus, Kurt decided to play with the crocheted ball on top of the stocking cap of the elderly woman who sat in front of him. My role in this spectacle may be one of the things I have to answer for on Judgment Day, because I found his appalling act hysterical.

I was young, we both were, but I was so fascinated by this that I now ask myself why? I was learning and learning takes all shapes. We learn Geometry, History, and what to do and what not to do from our peers. We also learn answers to the question of why a young male, in the prime of his life, shouldn’t play with ball atop an old woman’s stocking cap. We learn the difference between a Kurt Lee and ourselves, and the answers are fascinating. Is it all about morality, I asked myself, or does it have more to do with common decency? My mother taught me that when a young, healthy male sees an elderly woman sitting alone, he should smile at her and try to think up something kind to say to brighten her day. My mother taught me to hold the door for her, and she said that I should consider it a privilege to give up my seat to that woman on the city bus, if no other seats were available.

Not only did Kurt Lee ignore those conventions, he chose to pursue the opposite. He chose to violate the sense of security of one of most vulnerable member of our culture by playing with the ball atop her stocking cap. It was wrong on so many levels, of course, but it was also a fascinating exploration of human nature. How would this old woman react? How would a real POS counter her reaction? Why did he do it in the first place? Did he think he would get away with it? Did he even care? I would never know the answer to the latter questions, because I didn’t know Kurt on that level, but my fascination with the answers to the former led me to urge him on with laughter. That was wrong, too, of course, but I now believe my laughter was borne of curiosity. I wanted to learn more about the moral codes by which we all abide. I hoped to learn all that by watching another solidify my rationale, with no regard for the consequences of violating them. My thinking was not that complex, at the time, but I couldn’t wait to see how this episode would end, and I dare say that most of those who are more successful in abiding by the standards our mothers taught us would not have been able to look away either.

The vulnerable, elderly woman eventually turned on Kurt, and she did so with an angry expression. She allowed the first few flicks of the ball atop her stocking cap go, presumably taking a moment to muster up the courage to tell him off, and then she gave him that angry look. Kurt Lee appeared ready to concede to that initial, nonverbal admonition, until he saw me laughing. Egged on by me, he did it three more times before she reached a point of absolute frustration that led her to say something along the lines of, “Stop it, you young punk!”

To that, Kurt began thrusting his hips forward in his seat, while looking at me, whispering, “She just wants unusual carnal relations!” As a teenager trying to elicit more laughter from another teen, Kurt Lee did not use that term. He selected the most vulgar term he could to describe his extrapolation of her desires.

***

Had Kurt Lee decided to stick his middle finger up in the face of a healthier, younger adult, it would have been just as difficult to avoid watching. The fact that he chose such a sacred cow of our culture for his rebellion, however, made his actions over-the-top hilarious. In my young, unformed mind, this was a real life equivalent to David Letterman’s man-on-the-street segments, taken up ten notches on the bold-o-meter. I would later learn that Kurt’s motivations did not involve making profound statements about our societal conventions. He just did things. He was a doer, and doers just do what they do and leave all of the messy interpretations of what they do to others. I would later learn, by watching Kurt Lee, that he selected his victims based on their inability to fight back. In this vein, Kurt Lee was something of a coward, but I couldn’t know the full scope of Kurt Lee at the time. At the time, I found his actions so bold that I couldn’t look away, and I couldn’t stop laughing.

I encountered a wide variety of thieves in the decades that followed Kurt Lee, but they paled in comparison to his mentality, his philosophy, and what drove him to be so different from everyone I had ever met. To listen to him speak on the topic, however, there was nothing different about Kurt Lee. He believed he simply had the courage of his convictions. He ascribed to the more conventional line of thought that we were all afraid to be like him, but he added that the rest of us have had this part of our makeup denied to us by our parents and teachers for so long that we now believe we are different. The import of his message was that this was not about me, and it was not about him. It’s about human nature and the thief’s mentality.

“If you could get away with it, you’d do it too,” was his answer to questions we posed. “You mean to tell me you’ve never stolen anything? Ever? All right then, let’s talk about reality.” Kurt Lee was a thief, and like most thieves, he did not defend his position from the position of being a thief. He would substitute an exaggeration of your moral qualms regarding thievery, claiming that any person who has stolen even once is in no position to judge someone who steals on a regular basis.

In short bursts, and on topic, Kurt Lee could lower the most skilled debater to the ground. We called him a master debater, with the innuendo intended, because it was almost impossible to pin him down on specifics. It was a joy to watch. Prolonged exposure, however, opened up all these windows into his soul.

When we asked him how a guy from the sticks could afford the latest, top-of-the-line zipper pants, a pair of sunglasses that would put an employed fella back two weeks’ pay, and an original, signed copy of the Rolling Stones, Some Girls. He would tell us, but even his most ardent defender had a hard time believing Santa Claus would be that generous to even the nicest kids on his list.

Kurt Lee stole so often by the time I came to know him, the act of shoplifting lost much of its thrill. He decided to challenge himself in a manner top athletes, and top news anchors do, by hiring third-party analysts to scrutinize the minutiae of their performance. He asked me to watch him steal baseball cards from a baseball card shop owner that we agreed needed to learn a lesson, because the man refused to buy our cards 99 percent of the time. On those rare occasions when he agreed to buy them, his offers were so low they were almost insulting.

I posed a theory about our transactions with this shop owner. I theorized that the intent behind his frequent refusals to buy our cards was to establish his bona fides as a resident expert of value. That way, when he informed us that any of our cards were of value, we were ready to jump at the chance, no matter what amount he offered. “By doing so,” I concluded, “he actually makes us feel more valuable, because we think we finally have something worthy of one of his offers.”

“You’re right,” Kurt Lee said. “Let’s get him.”

I felt validated for coming up with a theory that Kurt Lee accepted, but in hindsight, I think Kurt Lee would’ve used anything I said to motivate me to conspire against the owner.

“One thing,” Kurt Lee said before we entered. “I don’t know if this needs to be said, but I’m going to say it anyway. Don’t watch me, don’t talk to me, and be careful about how often you look at me. Don’t try to avoid looking at me either.” When I laughed at that, a laugh that expressed some confusion, he added, “Just don’t do anything stupid or too obvious.”

I had reservations, of course, but I considered this an invitation into a world I never knew, and Kurt Lee’s provisos might have been necessary, because I was not only excited by Kurt’s invitation, I was just as nervous and scared. I was what a number of senior citizens called a good kid, and up until the moment I met Kurt Lee, I led a very sheltered existence. Before entering the baseball call shop, I considered the idea that my foreknowledge of this crime could implicate me as an accessory, but I couldn’t shake the asexual intimacy Kurt Lee was sharing with me, with this invitation into his world.

Standing near the door stop, Kurt Lee opened his pockets, in the manner a magician might, and he asked me to confirm that he had no cards in his pockets. I considered that an unusual act of bravado, but I didn’t stop to think about what it implied in the moment.

Throughout the course of our hour spent in the shop, I didn’t witness Kurt Lee steal one thing, and I mocked him for it. “What happened? I thought you were going to steal something,” I said as we stood outside the store. “I’m beginning to think you’re chicken.”

He allowed me to mock him without saying a word. When I finished, he opened his jacket to show me his inner pockets. What I saw knocked me back a couple steps. I actually took a step back when I witnessed the number of baseball cards that lined his inner pockets. I would’ve been impressed if he displayed one card, and three or four would’ve shocked me, but the sheer number of cards he stole without me noticing one act of thievery, led me to believe that Kurt Lee wasted his abilities on the petty act of shoplifting. I considered telling him to try his hand at being a magician for I thought what I just witnessed the skills of a maestro of deception. I was so shocked I couldn’t think of anything to say. If I could’ve managed words, I would’ve said something nerdy about how I thought Kurt should find a way to employ this skill in a marketable way. 

Soon after recovering from that shock, I began to wonder how one acquires such a deft hand. As with any acquired skill, there is some level of trial and error involved, and nestled within that lies the need to find a utility that permits the thief to proceed uninhibited by shame. A skilled performer in the arts or athletics delights in displaying their ability to the world, in other words, but a thief has to operate in the shadows, and they acquire their skill with a modicum of shame attached. Success as a thief, it would seem to those of us on the outside looking in, requires the potential thief to either defeat that sense of shame or find a way to manage it.

Shame, some argue, like other unpleasant emotions, becomes more manageable with greater familiarity. When a father introduces shame to his child, in the brutal assessments he makes regarding the value of his kid, the child becomes intimately familiar with shame before they are old enough to combat it. When such brutal assessments are then echoed by a mother’s concern that their child can’t do anything right, the combined effort can have a profound effect on a child. When those parents then console the child with a suggestion that while the child may be a bad seed, but they’re no worse than anyone else is, something gestates in the child. The moral relativism spawned from these interactions suggests that the search for the definitions of right and wrong is over, and the sooner the child accepts that, the more honest they will become. Seeing their mother scold a teacher for punishing their child for a transgression only clarifies this confusion a little more. In that relativist scolding, the child hears their mother inform the teacher that their child can do no wrong, and they see her unconditional support firsthand. Over time, the child must acknowledge that their parents will not always be there, so they will need to develop internal defense mechanisms in line with what they’re learned. The child also learns to accept these realities for what they are, for the Lee family has never had the courage necessary to commit suicide.

I hated discounting the level of individual ingenuity on Kurt Lee’s part, but he was simply too good at the various forms of deception for it to have been something he arrived at on his own. Attempting to source it might be a fool’s errand, but I wondered if I were able to sort through Kurt’s genealogical tree, if I might find sedimentary layers of grievance, envy, frustration, and desperation that worked their way down to him. To those who consider seeking evidence of foundational layers a bit of a stretch, I ask how much of our lives do we spend rebelling against, and acquiescing to parental influence, and how many of us can say we are entirely free from it?

Poker players tell me that everyone has what they call a tell, which is a twitch, a habit, or a characteristic that we cannot hide when we’re attempting to deceive. “It’s your job to find it during the game,” they say. I don’t doubt what they say. I’m sure we all have tells, and I probably have a ton of them, because I get nervous when I’m being deceitful. When I stole, I felt guilty, ashamed, and I had anxiety issues. What if I kept doing it? What if I had decades of experience? Would I get better at it, and would I find a mechanism to drain the shame of it all? Some in the field of neurology even suggest that research shows that our brains change when we lie more often. Does someone with a thief’s mentality hone the ability to manage emotions most of us normally experience with theft, lying, and cheating so well that it would take a maestro of deception to spot them in the poker game?  

I was so obsessed with this, at one point, that I accidentally stepped over the line between being curious and badgering, something Kurt Lee made apparent in his volatile reaction:

“You think you’re better than me?” Kurt Lee asked, employing the universal get-out-of-judgment free card of moral relativism. This time-honored redirect relies on the lessons taught to us by our mothers, that we are no better than anyone else is, but Kurt’s rant began to spiral out of control when he tried to pivot to what he believed its logical extension.

If no one is better than anyone else is and everyone resides on the cusp of whatever Kurt Lee was, the logical extension required the inclusion of an individual that many perceived to be so harmless it was almost laughable to suggest otherwise. The individual, in this case, was a kid named Pete Pestroni. If Kurt Lee’s arguments were going to hold water, the idea that Pete Pestroni was a wolf in sheep’s clothing would have to become an agreed upon fact. I’m still not sure why Kurt Lee went down the Pete Pestroni road so often, but I suspect it had something to do with the idea that if Pete was immune, in one form or another, everyone else had to be too. In Kurt’s estimation, Pete was just too weak, or too scared, to let his inner-wolf run wild. We would laugh at the implausibility of Pete Pestroni having a Kurt Lee trapped inside, a thief dying to come out, but our intention was to laugh with Kurt Lee. He wouldn’t even smile, however, because some part of him believed that if everyone was a thief, then no one was, at least to the point of separating the thief out for comparative analysis. This was a sacred chapter in Kurt Lee’s personal bible, and an ingredient of the thief’s mentality that took me decades to grasp completely.

The thief’s mentality is a mindset that involves a redirect of exposing an uncomfortable truth, or a hypocrisy, in others, so that the thief might escape a level of scrutiny that could lead to an uncomfortable level of introspection. An individual with a thief’s mentality may steal, but that person is just as apt to lie and cheat. The thief’s mentality begins as a coping mechanism for dealing with the character flaws that drive them to do what they do, but it progresses from those harmless, white lies to a form of deception that requires a generational foundation. 

The thief’s mentality requires deflection, by way of subterfuge, as a means to explain the carrier’s inability to trust beyond the point that they should be trusted, but some thieves’ outward distrust of others reaches a point of exaggeration that says far more about them than those they accuse. Their cynicism is their objectivity, and others’ faith in humanity is a subjective viewpoint, one that we must bear. We live in a dog-eat-dog, screw-or-be-screwed world in which those who trust anyone outside their own homes are naïve to the point of hopelessness. If the listener is to have any hope of surviving in such a world, it is incumbent upon them to see passed the façades and through the veneer, others present to the truth.

The truth, in Kurt Lee’s worldview, held that TV anchors with fourteen-inch parts, and perfect teeth, ended their days by going home to beat their wives. He didn’t believe that a person could attain wealth by honest means. He insisted that because some states convicted some Catholic priests as pedophiles that meant all Catholic priests were, and he had a particular fascination with infidelity in the White House. “You think JFK and Clinton are different? They’re just the ones that got caught is all.” There was also his contention that little old ladies who complained about having someone toy with the balls on the stocking caps just want to have unusual carnal relations. As with most tenets of a person’s worldview, there was some grain of truth in Kurt Lee’s, but he often had to put forth a great deal of effort to support it.

In most such discussions, Kurt Lee’s audience was immune. “I’m not talking about you,” he would say to his audience, so they might view the subject matter from a shared perspective. If we began to view ourselves as an ally, we might join him in convincing our world that he’s not that bad, or the world is as bad as he is. Yet, our agreed upon immunity from his charges begins to fracture in the course of the thief’s logical extensions. When that happens, the thief turns their accusations on us. We might consider ourselves all virtuous and moral, but the thief knows everything there is to know about hidden agendas. They maintain a perpetual state of readiness for that day when we break free of the constraints of morality and loyalty to expose our evil, naked underbelly to the world. The thief has us all figured out, because they know those lies we tell. It’s the thief’s mentality.

Thieves may even believe their exaggerated or false accusations, regardless of all we’ve done to establish ourselves as good, honest people. The validity of their accusation, however, pales in comparison to their need to keep us, the subjects of their accusations, in a perpetual state of trustworthiness. Kurt Lee, and my adventurous ex-girlfriend, made their accusations to keep me in check in a manner they knew I should’ve kept them in check. The import of that line provides us a key to understanding why an individual with a thief’s mentality would make such a charge against us, and the Pete Pestronis of the world who are so honest it’s laughable to suggest otherwise. Some might call such accusations psychological projection, the inclination one has to either deny or defend their qualities by exaggerating comparative examples in everyone else. Others might say that it’s some sort of deflection or obfuscation on the part of the thief, but I believe it all falls under a comprehensive, multi-tiered umbrella that I call the thief’s mentality. Still others might suggest that Kurt Lee’s accusations were born of theories he had about me, the people around him, and humanity in general. If that is the case, his theories were autobiographical.

Whether it was as complex as all that on an unconscious level, or some simple measures Kurt Lee developed over the years to prevent people from calling him a POS, I witnessed some try to turn the table him on the accusations by telling Kurt Lee that other people trust them. “What are you talking about?” they’d ask when Kurt would start in on one of his ‘You’re no better than me’ rants. “My guess is when you come over for family reunions, your aunts and uncles hide their wallets and purses. They don’t do that to me, because I don’t steal, cheat and lie.”

Kurt Lee’s response to this was so clever that I thought it beyond his years. Again, I hate to discount individual ingenuity, but it just seemed too clever for Kurt to deliver as quickly as he did when he said:

“So, if someone trusts you think that means that you’re trustworthy?” Kurt Lee responded. He said the word trustworthy, as if it was an accusation, but that wasn’t the brilliant part of his response. As brilliance often does, his arrived in a section of the argument where the participants will say whatever they can to win, regardless what those words reveal. Kurt Lee suggested, in different words, that those who consider themselves a beacon of trustworthiness are suffering from a psychosis of another stripe. The reason I considered this response so perfect, as it pertained to this specific argument, was that it put the onus of being trustworthy on the person who challenged Kurt Lee’s trustworthiness. It also put further questions regarding Kurt Lee’s character –or what his inability to trust the people in his life said about him– on the back burner, until the questioner could determine whether the level of his own trustworthiness was a delusion that group thought led him to believe.

Crafting the Frame

With all that Kurt Lee taught me about this fascinating mentality, always fresh in mind, I’ve had a number of otherwise trustworthy friends ask me how to deal with the thief in their life. They failed to understand why their loved one couldn’t trust them in even the most benign arenas of life.

It stressed one of my friends out, “I don’t know what I did to damage his trust, but no one’s ever accused me of half of the things he does.” She said that she considered herself a trustworthy person, and she always had, but  she was insecure about it, as we all are. “How do I win him back? How do I regain his trust?” she asked.

“It’s not about you,” I told her. “It’s the thief’s mentality.” I didn’t enjoy saying this to her, because I was basically telling her that she was trapped in a relationship with the afflicted. I explained the mindset of the thief, as I learned it from my personal experiences with Kurt Lee, and she later told me that it helped.

“It helped in a weird way,” she said. “I finally had a name for what he did. Every time he accused me of cheating on him, or wanting to cheat on him, I’d think, it’s the thief’s mentality. It didn’t stop the accusations or the insecurity I felt afterwards, but it helped in a weird way to know that someone else went through all this. It sort of helped me frame him in a way I never considered before.” 

When I told her that she wasn’t trapped in the relationship, she said, “Oh, I know. I could dump him like yesterday’s trash,” but she never did. She ended up marrying the guy. So, whatever short-term relief she experienced with this idea that her loved one was never going to trust her anymore than he trusted himself dispelled it.

The damage thieves, like my friend’s lover and Kurt Lee, incur is irreparable. They likely do not enjoy the lives they’ve created for themselves, and the idea that they can’t even trust the one person in their lives that they could, or should, but their accusations do allow them to spread their misery around a little. It lightens their load to transfer some of their toxins to others. It also gives them a little lift to know that we are a little less trusting than we were before we met them. They must find some relief in the belief that they are not such an aberration, but this relief is temporary, as the toxins that have made them what they are as endemic to the biological chemistry as white and red blood cells. Nevertheless, it must please them to know that after our interactions with them, we now view humanity in the same cynical, all-hope-is-lost manner they do.

If it’s true that a mere two percent are self-aware and reflective, then the lack of self-awareness, at least as it pertains to what we are, and what we are to become, is as endemic to the thief’s mentality as it is in every other walk of life. Like the rest of us, thieves do not believe they live on an exaggerated pole of morality. Rather, they believe they reside in the middle, alongside the rest of us, somewhere just north of the good side of the fuzzy dividing line. They also know that we’re all tempted to do that one thing that could tick us over to the south side. What separates them, to their mind, is their lack of fear, coupled with their refusal to conform to the norms their parents and other mentors taught them. They are also keenly aware that we place most of humanity on their side of the fuzzy line because we all have problems trusting those we don’t know well enough to determine whether they will make moral decisions in life. Some take this natural state of skepticism a step further. Some thieves’ exaggerated, outward distrust for those around them says far more about them than about those they condemn and accuse. It’s the thief’s mentality.

The Balloonophilia Conflict

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“Welcome to the group, our group, of balloonophiles,” a group moderator, who chose the name Olive Branch, said to open the proceedings. “Some people call us loonies and loonatics. I see some fresh faces here today, so I’d like to welcome you all to our group.

“We balloonophiles enjoy blowing up balloons and watching others do so,” she added.

She went around the room and allowed everyone to say their name and a few things about themselves. (“Hi. My name is Jordache, and I like green olives and Octopuses”). After the tedious greetings concluded, Olive opened the floor for the discussion of the day.

In the general discussion that followed, we fresh faces learned of the philosophical divide between the two factions in Balloonophila. A group called the poppers were on one side of the aisle, and the non-poppers were on the other side. 

“Most of us use the common latex balloon,” one of the poppers explained, “but we will use the higher-quality Mylar when we have disposable cash on hand.”

“Segments of the popper faction of the balloonist community enjoy popping with a pin,” another popper explained. “Others enjoy flames, but some loonatics use shoe heels for maximum impact.”

“We non-poppers use Mylar balloons almost exclusively,” another said, “because Mylar holds up better to the oven baking process we use to make them stretchier.”

Except for the few anecdotal examples provided below, most balloonophiles engaged in these activities in conjunction with various sex acts.

“I saw a GIF the other day where a military man, a grunt, forcefully contorted a balloon into shape,” said a man called Andy. “He didn’t want to hurt the balloon, but he enjoyed making it squeal.”

Most of the introductions the loons provided were less personal than Andy, as they preferred the more instructional rhetoric to describe the philosophical conflict that developed in Balloonville between the popper and non-popper factions. Members of each group later informed me that, in a few cases, their past discussions grew heated, but for the most part, any tension that occurred between the two factions involved a subtle undercurrent that can develop between any parties who have philosophical differences. The speakers maintained that their disagreements were peaceful, and they repeated that so often that I began to believe it. Even the most peaceful arguments have sides, however, and there are always going to be some who feel the need to bolster their ranks.

“Poppers prefer to have their carnal explosion occur in conjunction with the balloon’s,” a non-popper named Elliot said to try to explain what he considered the crux of the argument. “Non-poppers, on the other hand, prefer to use the same balloon repeatedly. We consider a popper’s enjoyment of popping a balloon as unnecessarily violent, even a little sadistic.” Elliot’s characterization was the most interesting, of course, but I didn’t give it the attention it required at first. I considered it a natural flow of such discussions, as one person will always try to outdo the others, but when Elliot continued, using other devices to bolster his argument, he convinced me how important this characterization was to him.

I figured Elliot was probably a nice guy, as I watched him carry on and provide far too many details of the plight of the non-popper. I figured he was a man who followed the rules and treated people the way he wanted to be treated, but he had his moments. We all do, and we worry about what they say about us. We might think about them, and some of us might obsess over them, but the mirror can only provide so many answers. I figured that questions of morality plagued Elliot so much that he needed to find a way to soothe his soul. So, he joined a group. I wondered if Elliot had any interest in balloons before he joined this group. The first question, of course, is how would one find such a specific group without very specific needs? Maybe a friend told him about the group, like my friend told me. Maybe he thought it would be hilarious to hear people talk about sex with balloons, like I did, but somewhere in the midst of that search, he found a level of affinity for these people that led him to form some level of solidarity. Maybe he was just a lost soul in need of a group, and he just happened to find these people.

There’s nothing wrong with joining a group, of course, as we can find friends and feel a part of a community, but such groups can lead the individuals involved to develop an us versus them mentality. When we get caught up in the group mentality, we find ourselves using comparative analysis more often than self-reflection. We attempt to persuade our group, and anyone else in between, of our virtues. We hope to persuade them to our point of view to bolster the view we hope to have of ourselves, but we accidentally develop a us vs. them mentality. 

Elliot said that poppers do what they do, because “they are so unnecessarily violent that they might be sadistic”. The first question that comes to mind, when one hears such a thing is, we’re still talking about balloons right? As one who obsesses over word choices I’ve often found that the audience should consider excessive use of modifiers, particularly the adjectives they use to warn us about the other’s intentions. I’ve often found that we use our modifiers to persuade/manipulation the perception of the subject of their scorn. Elliot could’ve simply said poppers enjoy popping balloons and I don’t, but by adding those modifiers he hoped to persuade those of us with no rooting interest that those who pop balloons are bad guys, which he hoped led us to consider him a good guy by comparison.

This Elliot guy was talking about popping balloons, so the reason I didn’t pay enough attention to the guy at first. It was a silly topic on a silly evening as far as I was concerned. When this guy rambled on about how poppers were on the wrong side, I realized there was something about human nature, in general, involved in his characterization. I thought about how many philosophical arguments I’ve been in where the person I was arguing with went beyond saying I was wrong to saying I should reconsider my views before someone, somewhere called me a bad guy.

My reaction to Elliot’s comments were not an epiphany, as I had these thoughts before, but most people don’t go as far as Elliot did to label their philosophical opponents bad guys. It struck me, even as Elliot was speaking, that there is a sliding scale that some try to instill in their audience. If Elliot was able to convince those of us who have no rooting interest that poppers are wrong, he receives short term, situational satisfaction if we consider him right. If he is able to convince us that they’re bad, he might hope that we consider him good by contrast. If he convinces us that their unnecessarily violent and sadistic tendencies could be characterized as evil, then we are almost required to recognize Elliot as the beacon of virtue.

I also gleaned from the testimonials and the many comments made in the meeting that non-poppers tend to believe they attain more from a balloon in what could be termed a monogamous relationship, and this is more often than not the case when that balloon is made of Mylar and filled with air as opposed to helium. They never defined the word more in their descriptions, nor did the non-poppers ever use the word monogamous. Many in the non-popper community approached the ideas in different ways, however, and they left them as a standalone, which I assume to be a self-evident proposition of theirs.

The testimonies were such that I gathered that the non-poppers were the more sanctimonious of the two, but the poppers had their own level of sanctimony. Some of the poppers alluded to the idea that the non-poppers were complete wusses for their aversions to loud noises.

“…And the loud noises are where it’s at,” said a man with the alias of Jim (his preferred moniker if I should ever publish this piece). “There is something exhilarating about rubbing your fingers along a balloon that is inflated to maximum capacity. The sounds it makes does something that those with an aversion to loud noises will never understand, they’re like screams or something.”

✽✽✽

“There are a number of theories regarding the origin of the balloonophile,” Olive Branch said after the intros were complete, and the discussion of the differences between the two factions subsided. “I know we’ve discussed them before, but I thought we might address the issue again for some of our newer members.” Olive didn’t look at me when she said this, but the energy of the room made an obvious shift in my direction.

I wasn’t sure if I was the lone new member, as that was never addressed, even in the introductory period, but I apparently stood out more than the others did, because most of the speakers chose to direct their focus on me.

“Some have suggested that balloonophiles are borne of castration anxiety,” Olive continued, “or a denial of breastfeeding. They also suggest that some go too far in their endeavors that they advance to a stage in their pursuit of therapy when they manage to replace the natural need for human contact and become irretrievable in a psychological manner. How many of us think these theories hold any measure of truth?”

A chorus of “No’s” went around the table. They expounded on their rejection of these ideas a little, but as with most attempts to disprove theories regarding the essence of one’s nature, the ballonophiles didn’t feel a need to bolster their rejections of these notions with what I considered constructive refutation.

Terrance Gill, a non-popper, chuckled at the very idea that castration anxiety was even a theory, and a few others parroted his position with soft chuckles of their own.

“What about the Freudian breastfeeding theory?” Olive asked.

One balloonophile informed the group, “I might have been breastfed too long, according to what my mother told me.” Two others offered anecdotal attempts to refute the breastfeeding theory until it became obvious that most of the attendees were more comfortable with their personal, anecdotal refutations. Various members began branching out from these refutations to personal experiences they had with other theories, and their refutations of them teed up other members to bolster their refutations with quick affirming tidbits. At the end of this particular stretch, the otherwise combative groups appeared satisfied with themselves for offering the new attendees the group’s version of Origin of Species.

I, however, didn’t think any of them offered one piece of solid refutation. They seemed obsessed with distracting and obfuscating the central point of Olive Branch’s question. I was a quiet observer at this point, nothing more and nothing less. My smile was level and polite throughout. I even allowed most of the rejections of theories to pass without comment. It wasn’t in my nature to remain silent for long, however, and this aspect of my personality was even more difficult to maintain as the attempts to defeat what these individuals believed to be anecdotal theories proved so anecdotal.

“Everyone is not a damned anomaly!” I said.

At that, the group was shocked. If shocked is a self-serving description, how about silent. In the wake of a challenge of what I considered their self-serving descriptions, they said nothing. In the space of the silence that followed I realized that they might have thought I argued from some point of certitude that I was right and they were wrong. If I thought of it at the time, I would’ve disavowed them of this notion, for how can one be right or wrong on such matters? I did recognize the general idea that I was a bit ahead of myself, and I probably overstepped my station by questioning them in such an outburst.

“I’m sorry,” I said, too little, too late. “It just gnaws at me when people invest so much energy in telling people what they are not, and they fail to put any thought in what they are, or how they came to be.

“Most people are much more comfortable telling an interested party that other’s theories about them are either wrong or that they happen to be anomalous to those theories,” I continued. “They want people to believe that anyone who tries to figure them out is wasting their time. I have no problem with the idea that you think you’re complicated. Don’t get me wrong. That said, let’s dig through those complications. Let’s try to find a truth that lies somewhere between simple logic and what I consider a lack of objectivity on your part.”

“No one is objective,” Elliot said. “I’m not objective. You’re not objective. Even if the only team you’re rooting for is your own, you still have a rooting interest.”

“Fair enough,” I said, suspecting that Elliot was parsing my words and attempting to divert the subject with my poor choice of words. “But we’ve developed simple rules of logic in our studies regarding human nature, to govern our ways of life. Within those agreed upon understandings lies a belief that I turned out the way I did, because of the conditions in which my parents raised me. The economic conditions in which they raised me played a role, the locale of my upbringing, and various other social conditions affected the person I am now. While there will always be some anomalies to these findings, not everyone can be one. The fact that most people believe they are anomalous to every rule just reiterates to me that self-examination is sorely lacking, but I don’t think it suggests that there is anything wrong with the general rules we’ve established. I’ve asked various people if it’s true that those from their specific locale tend to be, and believe, what others tell me they believe. They say, “Oh, that’s such a generality.” We’ve all fallen in love with that line, as if it refutes the general rules we’ve established. They don’t say anything else, and they expect us all to walk away, as if that’s an acceptable answer. I’m saying stop that. We need to find a way to expound on the reasons why the general rules we lay out are generally incorrect. I don’t care if you and your second-cousin Janet are specific exceptions to the general rule. If you are anomalous to the theories Olive just laid out, we should dig deeper into these theories, to see if there are any commonalities. If there aren’t, we should explore that possibility to locate the countervailing realities we share. Aren’t you interested in what makes you who you are?”

One is never sure how others will receive such a rant. We’d like to think we present such profundity that the silence that follows is just a pendulum, waiting to swing the group in our favor, but I had no such delusions. I was, however, confident in the idea that what I had to say was thoughtful and that my conclusions were, at the very least, worthy of consideration. That belief, like many presumptions and assumptions proved false.

“They just are,” non-popper, Vicki Lerner, explained. She looked around for a brief, pregnant moment. “We just … are.”

That gained Vicky some good vibes from the others. No one offered her words of thanks or congratulations, but the positive energy of the room swung in her direction.

I smiled at her words and the unspoken accolades that followed, but I intended that smile to conceal my fatigue. A second after Vicki said that, I realized I should’ve qualified my statements, “And you cannot just say, ‘We just are.’ You cannot say, ‘And on the eighth day, God created the balloon people.’” 

“There has to be a reason some of you have this predilection.” I said. “I can pretty much trace all the things that led me to being the way I am.”

“Why do you need labels?” Terrance Gill asked me. “Balloonville is not about labels.” 

They all enjoyed that. Captain Federico, an obvious toucher, even reached out to touch Terrance’s leg. He pointed to Terrance’s face, and then pumped his eyebrows at Terrance.

“You spoke of a lack of examination,” Jim said. “Let’s examine you for a moment. Why do you need very specific answers to your specific questions? Is there a part of you that abhors chaos so much that you pledge to fight the random wherever it rears its head? Have you always been this way? Do you think you have life all figured out? On the other hand, maybe you’ve reached the point when matters such as these make so little sense that you have to jam sense into it. Why can’t they just be? Why can’t we just be? Some of the times, things are random. Some of the times people are just different. Sometimes people just become what they are by a random series of events.”

“That is true,” I said, “It’s undeniably true, but I think if we all examine our differences and those events that seem to be random, we might find some correlations that lessen the randomness of it all.”

The idea that the group never welcomed dissent into their origin-of-species discussions was obvious by their initial, silent shock and the follow-up counterpoints. I won’t bore the reader with the remaining counterpoints, as most were redundant and circuitous and they focused on the agreed-upon theme that balloonophiles are just what they say they are. We did arrive at one collective conclusion, albeit an unspoken one, that I was the one with the problem, and the discussion that followed suggested that we all grew a little closer in the aftermath of that conclusion.

“I view the use of balloons in foreplay as an indicator of confidence,” a man named Mel said. “I don’t use balloons as often as some in our group do, but it’s an excellent device to use when trying to switch things up. Most people feel weird involving balloons in foreplay, yet they have no problem with other, more acceptable devices. Most people don’t know what we can do with balloons, and when they find out, they’re weirded out by it. A person who can work their way past that displays an overwhelming amount of confidence I find sexy.”

As the only person to confess that his fascination might be deep rooted and psychological, Mel stated that he saw balloons as “a physiological substitute that, when ingested by a female, can achieve excitation. This is often the case when said female pops the balloon upon total immersion.” As a member of the popping camp, Mel admitted to “having an inflation fetish that occurs in a manner similar to sudden expansion of body parts.”

“The popping can be violently dramatic when it’s timed just right,” a stage performer who engaged in total balloon immersion in her act, said to agree Mel’s assessment. She was excited by Mel’s confession, and she was all but hopping in her seat throughout. She said “Yes!” three times before Mel concluded, and she could begin. “The fascination with balloons and their relationship to some kind of allure is more widespread than even this group realizes. A performer has to know how to do it though. It can be very theatrical in experienced hands, with proper attention paid to detail and timing. To those who watch my act and assume it’s easy, I always say, ‘You try it!’” 

Non-poppers do not all have a general aversion to loud noises, just like not all poppers demand well-timed explosions. Some non-poppers view well-timed, loud noises as arousing, as opposed to the ligyrophobic terror they experience with other, sudden loud noises.

This idea of ligyrophobia, or the fear of loud noises, was introduced by a non-popper named Brett. “Some kids grow out of it, I never did. I hole myself up in my apartment during July 4th, and try to block out all sound as best I can, but for some reason I enjoy popping balloons on occasion. It’s like a controlled, non-threatening way to tweak my fears,” said a man named Brett. “Gil here calls me bacurious.”

“Balloon curious,” Gil added to everyone’s enjoyment.

Captain Federico, a non-popper, was far more open than his counterparts were. He claimed to have selected his nom de plume from a Star Trek character, and none of the group members knew his real name.

“I initiate visual contact with my balloon while on all fours,” he said, detailing non-popper foreplay for us. “I begin barking at the balloon, until I believe I have achieved a level of dominance. I then crawl back to my balloon in a cautious, submissive manner that leads to embraces and comfort. Next, I roll onto my back, during the supplication phase of the tryst, to allow the balloon full exploration of my body.”

There were no immediate reactions to that confession. I can only guess that most of the balloonists found the revelation uncomfortable, as they feared the new observers in the group might attach it to them. After that cloud of awkwardness lifted, Terrance Gill touched Captain Federico’s shoulder and let his touch linger for a second, and the two of them shared a warm smile. That appeared to be a sign of gratitude for the Captain’s courage in coming forth with that confession, but I figured the gesture returned the sentiment Federico displayed earlier, when he touched Terrance’s leg.

Some of the balloonists lived stressful, non-balloon oriented lives, and they considered their acts of balloonophilia relaxing and therapeutic.

“I work sixty to seventy hours a week for a company that doesn’t appreciate me anymore,” said a man named Leo. “I have a wife and two kids who don’t even greet me at the door anymore, and the boy doesn’t even look away from his gawd-damned PlayStation long enough to acknowledge that I’ve arrived home from work. I can’t force them to be appreciative or gracious, and I’m tired of yelling at them. They don’t listen, and, hey, I’m not hurting anyone. Why does anyone care what I do in my free time?”

“My evenings with balloons are not sexual and tend to involve a wide variety of adults blowing up balloons and trying to keep them airborne. It doesn’t always have to be a sexual thing,” said a woman named Ana who claimed no one would hire her, other than the “stressful, unrewarding field of telemarketing.”

✽✽✽

In the immediate aftermath of the group meeting, I became obsessed with refuting their refutations of my questions. I didn’t think I was obsessed, but my friends did. They said I was repeating the exchanges I had with the group members so often that it was obvious to them I was obsessed. I wanted objective feedback from parties that could provide third-part analysis, but I decided to drop the matter and display a little mercy. I took to the internet and found a number of articles that would bolster my presentation in the Balloonophilia meeting next week.

Two days after writing up my presentation, however, Olive Branch emailed me, “Although balloonophile meetings are open to the public, and you can still attend if you want to, the group has decided that it would be in everyone’s best interest if you decided otherwise.” Further reading of the email made the disdain with my attendance clearer: 

“The group decided that balloonophile meetings are intended for balloonophiles and for those interested in becoming a balloonophile. Various comments and physical gestures that you made throughout the meeting made it clear that you are not interested in joining our group.”

It was my first excommunication, and I didn’t know how to deal with it.

The import of this email was that I was not only a naysayer. They viewed me as an opponent of Balloonophilia, an anti-balloonophile or an anti-loonite, but that is certainly not the case. The nature of the balloonophile fascinates me still, because of what I think it says about humanity in general.

One particular internet article I found better encapsulated what I was trying to say, and I was excited to present it to the group. Even if they allowed me to introduce his findings, though, I didn’t really expect it to change any minds. If the balloonophiles taught me nothing else, they convinced me that there is nothing to cure. They are not sick. They enjoyed doing what they do, and they preached their philosophy well enough for me to acknowledge that they are not seeking debate on this topic. I did hope my findings might raise some eyebrows, but I would not expect them to change their ways one iota based on a quote from someone that knows nothing about their individual situations. No matter what information I presented, I knew they would declare themselves an exception to that rule.

“So you failed to convince a bunch of loons that you’re correct? So what?” That has been the general reaction to my complaints about the meeting. Another common reaction is “Is your ego so huge that you can’t take it when everyone doesn’t agree with you?”

After some reflection, I think I can now admit that I was obsessed with the issue, albeit not for the reasons one might assume. Do I have an almost overwhelming desire to have my notions proven correct, and does this desire lead me to do things that compromise friendships with those who have a couple of fun ideas that don’t settle well in my system? Yes and yes, but I think the ideas we discussed that evening say a lot about where we’re going as a culture. We are now so attracted to the sympathetic, compassionate, and understanding lexicon that we think the peak of understanding is to avoid any attempts at understanding. We are to default to Vicki Lerner’s assessment that “we just are”, but if we’re proud of who we are, shouldn’t we trumpet it out to those who are simply curious and have no rooting interest?

Few enjoy a challenge to our core beliefs. Most of us want others to take our side. The art of playing devil’s advocate is not only lost, it’s dismissed with an all-encompassing name, or some accusation of being unable to accept differences for what they are. This, I believe, results in us being so pleased with ourselves for not recognizing our differences that we refuse to spend any time truly analyzing them. Differences are what they are, and we believe there is something so beautiful about that that we don’t take the time to try to understand what really makes us tick.

If you enjoyed The Baloonophilia Conflict, you’re going to love these:

Busybody Nation “Don’t do that!” They scream in our parks, our grocery stores, and in any public setting where you don’t think you’re hurting anyone. Well, you’re wrong, and they’re not afraid to tell you how wrong you are, and if you continue to do it, they’ll tell.

The Complaint Cloud “These onion rings are just gross!” they complain. We knew it was coming, because we know her. We’ve dined with her before, and we know twelve seconds after the server places food before them a complaint cloud will darken our table.

The Thief’s Mentality “How do they hurt so many people and get away with it?” we wonder. They’re awful people, and awful people don’t care. They’ve been so awful for so long that we can only guess they came from an awful home, with awful parents, who came from an awful family tree. We know them, and we know they’re not smart, but they’re so clever that we have to think they got it from somewhere.