The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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The Pope came out the other day to issue one of his proclamations to the World. He said the people who had pets instead of children were selfish. God meant us to procreate, not pamper Fido. Ordinarily I don’t pay much attention to the Holy See, not being Catholic and not being a very religious sort even, but this caught my attention, I suspect, because we never had kids and for quite awhile, and I’m a little embarrassed to tell you, we had a dog, old Dr. Gonzo who has now gone to Pet Heaven along with our cat Kitty. And while I’m in full confessional, we had some goldfish too, albeit briefly, plus some tetras and a couple of angelfish. But no kids. Not one.

How were we to know the level of selfishness this was? And now, of course, we’re a bit beyond child bearing age and probably couldn’t even adopt kids from some agency even if we wanted. Not even Afghani orphans, I’m betting. At any price. We didn’t know we were egocentric back when we made our choice. We thought, geez, there’s billions of human beings crowding up the planet, maybe a few of us ought to resist the urge to make babies. We thought we were being moral, magnanimous even, for slowing down our carbon footprint by a helluva lot, taking one or two or six future mouths to feed and clothe and buy I-phones for out of the equation. We thought we were doing the Right Thing.

Besides, we didn’t really want kids, tell you the truth. Me, I didn’t think I’d be a very good Dad. I wish a lot of folks took that into consideration. There’s way too many grandparents taking care of their kids’ kids once their children realized drugs were way more fun than child rearing. And who knows, maybe having kids made them turn to drugs. But I’ll leave that to the psychologists and the Pope himself. All I know for sure is if you want to have kids, you ought to really want to have kids, not fall into it by accident or because you were lonely or your friends were having kids or your parents wanted grandkids. You should want them because you want them. Period. And with apologies to the Holy See, I think it’s okay to have pets too, you know, if you plan to take care of them. Even if you don’t have children.

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I suspect most of you slip into the Metaverse with an avatar that’s, well, for want of a more polite description, just this side of reality’s Goodwill fashion. Let’s assume that you’re new to the Meta, just feeling your away around the virtual possibilities, not exactly comfortable yet, sort of like the new student in the big high school your family just dropped you into when their job transferred them. Been there myself so I understand. But c’mon, it’s time to up your game. You want to hang with the geeks and the losers, fine, but if you want to play with the In Crowd, you need shoes. I’m talking NFT,non fungible token Nike sneakers, bro. I’m talking about taking a walk in style through the Metaverse.

And that’s just the first baby steps, Amigo. The Metaworld can be your oyster if you learn to navigate. It’s the wild wild west meets the raw excitement of venture capitalism. Need some digs to crash between adventures? No problema, pal, we got real estate, comfy and virtual. We’re selling properties and the market is red hot. An investment today may mean riches tomorrow if you’re courageous. The folks who think oh, land isn’t real, houses aren’t real, those Nike fashion statements on your avatar’s feet are only virtual, well, I got news for those slackards, the virtual world is most definitely real, as real as a bitcoin, brother and getting more real every nano second.

You got something you want to advertise, rent a billboard in Virtual World! You want to make some fast crypto, buy the billboard and rent it to the rest of the Metaverse. Grab up some mall properties and become the next gen’s landlord! The Meta is expanding, my friend, and you are at the threshold of dreams. This is no time to be a shrinking violet. This is not your mama’s world and you are no longer mama’s boy. Grab the virtual reins and boldly go where no corporeal man has gone before. If it sounds fantastic, BINGO!, you’re right on target. So snatch up a pair of those NFT Nikes and stride into the virtual universe. The future belongs to the brave!

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Down here in the soggy trailers of the South End we got plenty of folks who find it impossible to throw out anything. We call them Hoarders. Cars sit strangled by blackberry vines out back, garage is full of old parts rusting slowly, closets are jammed with clothes that haven’t been worn in years, sheds are piled high with lumber being eaten by powder beetles. You ask them why they keep that crap and they’ll give you the fish face like you were a complete idiot and tell you they might need that lawnmower that stopped running a decade ago for parts. The lumber they might build another shed with … you know, to store more crap.

Believe me, I’m not casting the first stone. I got way too many sheds myself filled with stuff from 30 or 40 years ago when money was tight and all those plumbing and electrical left-overs were kept ‘just in case’. Just in case comes along about as often as sunshine in November down here. Truth is, we’re too lazy to haul it to the dump. Although, some of us are serious and serial Hoarders. I have a buddy who has tunnels in his shack to navigate between the kitchen and bedroom and bathroom. He lives like an ant, burrowed into the ground. His place is a Black Hole, the gravitational pull sucking everything in, allowing nothing out.

We recently moved my old man from his house in Wisconsin to an apartment at the assisted living joint down the road, a downsizing that required tossing half his stuff. Considering that we moved him from Georgia over 15 years earlier and tried to downsize Mom and him then, encountering nothing but resistance, we told them we’d be back in 6 months with a U-Haul so they needed to do it themselves, no ifs ands or buts. We ended up needing two giant U-Haul trucks to move them. Most of what we moved was worthless junk. So years later we still had that worthless junk to sort through, toss, take to Goodwill or find someone to take the stuff. It took us nearly a week. Then a month later we had to move him again to a less independent apartment. Took us four days. And a month ago we moved him again into the nursing unit. Three days. Same drill, same junk.

Believe me, you do that for your parents, you’ll take an unjaundiced eye to your own closets and sheds once you come home. I took three large loads of clothes I hadn’t worn in years to the thrift stores. The dump loads barely make a dent, but it’s a start. Someone offered me a very nice cabinet the other day, something a few years back I would have grabbed, but not now. No more stuff! It’s the wrong direction now. It’s time to let go of these things. I don’t want to live in an ant farm when I’m decrepit. And I don’t have kids to clean out the debris of a lifetime.

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January 6th is today. Donald Trump and his kids were just subpoenaed a few days ago. Jeffrey Epstein’s pimp was found guilty of procuring underage girls for their pleasure palace and the Theranos CEO was convicted of corporate fraud. Omicron is lashing the country with record infection rates and I’m noticing more and more folks in the grocery stores defying the mask mandate. It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhood.

The Civil War, yeah, that Civil War, rages on. And you thought it ended at Appomattox when Lee surrendered to Grant. Or when Clark Gable walked out on Scarlet…. C’mon, the War never ended. We call it the Culture Wars now, but it’s the same battle. White vs. anyone not white. Fundamental Christians vs. anyone not their sect. Heteros vs. anyone different. Rural vs. Urban, Fox News vs. Hollywood. Trump roared into office with dog whistles and barely concealed racism. Build the wall, build the wall! Keep em out, lock em up, knock em down! Don’t let them tear down the statues to the Confederate heroes! Don’t teach any history that blemishes our proud heritage! Whitewash it! Our kids don’t need to hear that stuff!

Make America Great Again! Bring back the Eisenhower era and declare Joe McCarthy the courageous commie fighter, bring back Father Knows Best, pretend to go to church, the True Church, not the synagogue or the mosque. Worship the True God, not Allah. Abide by the scriptures, no homosexuals, no equal rights for women. Times were good back then. People knew their place! We knew who the Enemy was.

The Enemy is us, we the people. January 6th is a day of reckoning. Democracy, that great experiment, is a far more fragile enterprise than we thought for most of our lives. Maybe we were just naïve….

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My neighbors in the suburb across the road have a Homeowners Association. Which is a simpler way of saying they have created a set of complicated bylaws that promote factions between themselves to fight for – or against – additional dues on tree cutting – or growing if they’re over 17 feet tall – water restrictions, weed control, building requirements, paint color schemes, roof materials, on street parking restrictions, beach trail maintenance, bulkhead repairs and nationality of their prospective spouses. In essence, they’ve manufactured the potential for their own small civil war.

Of course if they didn’t have covenants, bylaws, rules and regs, board meetings and various committees, I’m sure by now anarchy would rule, neighbors would be shot, trees would block views of the Sound and the Olympics, vacant lots would grow weeds and abandoned lawnmowers, windows would be boarded over, some houses would sport fuchsia paintjobs and the whole she-bang would look like our very own Kabul.

Welcome to the South End! Welcome to my neighborhood! When the turnip truck I rode in on dropped me off back in ’77, the ‘hood was a cut over woods across the road. For 40 years house after house got built, one or so a year, folks came and then left, the politics shifted, money rolled in, new owners remodeled, outbuildings were added, the well was updated, the bulkhead was replaced, the wealthy outnumbered the less wealthy, and, of course, dividing lines shifted accordingly. Welcome to America!

Lately there’s a new disruption in the Force. The Big Storm of ’21 knocked multiple trees on the current bulkhead built decades ago and knocked a 30 foot section out into the wind and waves which promptly tore the logs away. Replacement had already been on the table, some folks arguing against it, some for, some wanting to wait, some wanting immediate action. The Storm left a gaping hole in all those plans as well as in the bluff behind the breach. Think of a hornet’s nest slapped with a big stick. Think of million dollar houses sticking off the bluff. Think of refugees pouring in from across the road to our side, tent encampments, razor wire, U.N. aid, cholera, a community gone mad. Welcome to the World!

All I can hope for now is me and the mizzus become the new waterfront. Good luck, I guess, to the old neighbors. They may have to relocate to some other island with less stringent covenants.

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