INSANE ASYLUM EMPLOYEE

INSANE ASYLUM EMPLOYEE

Ever feel like you do not quite fit in?  I mean at work, school, on the playground, around the coffee pot, …?!  Your efforts at conversation are met with an uncomfortable look of confusion?  Your silence during mundane, at best, and/or crude joviality and coarse conversation, maybe a bit better, is interpreted as disinterest or maybe arrogance?  There are those rare times when hearts touch with that rare soul mate; but, far too often you feel like a crystal marble in a bag of dried buffalo turds, touching, but you’d just as soon not?!

Some people just stick out.  They are different.  They seem like a lost child looking for the door while everybody else is rushing in to play at an arcade.  They do not care about the latest fad, nor do they get excited about what’s hot or in.  Different drummer echoing in their head?  Fresh fruit vs. fruity pop-tart?  Maybe they remember something far too many have forgotten?  Maybe they have seen something that too many are trying their best to ignore?

But, the crowd hates them?  They belittle them with humor, at best, or at worst, bully them until they beat the life and spirit out of them.  And, the whole time, they smile as if they are doing humanity a service?  They are making the world a better place?  Everyone should be like them and everything would be synchronized and systematic.  Harmony would reign?!

Maybe I am one of the outcasts?  But, sometimes, probably not often enough, I feel like an insane asylum employee.  I think, seriously, that I am one of the few normal ones.  “They” are busy redefining life and the “new normal”.  Up is down and black is white.  Some seem to be debating over what is the color of smell of seven.  Nonsense!  Romans one begins to seem contemporary?!

Less serious signs of changing times include some petty, but prophetic, degenerations.  My wife and I married with home-made decorations, a simple cake for the reception, and similar blue suits for the groomsmen.  My wife made the dresses for her attendants.  Nowadays, couples have the best wedding that their attendants can afford, because they are expected to buy expensive gowns that are never to be worn again, and the groomsmen have similar expectations.  Some couples even rent a hall at a lavish vacation location and expect everyone to pay their own way to the event.  On and on it goes:  cell phones for 8 year olds (not the freebies that come with basic plans!), $40K vehicles for 16 year olds, on and on it goes.  And, these kids’ parents have separate bank accounts because they do not trust each other.  The two have NOT become one, in any sense other than the bedroom?!

I suppose what set off this tirade was an incident at work recently.  Two co-workers, from a different part of the mill showed up at our afternoon break, selling raffle tickets for a volunteer fire department.  Good cause?  Sure.  But, they were raffling off the OLD ice machine at their station because they had bought a new, larger ice machine?!!  So, they wanted us to buy a chance on their old unit?  (and, why do they need an ice machine?)  Then, after some bought a ticket, they turned to me and I quietly said that I was not interested in a raffle ticket (company policy?  gambling? greed? …) but that I could make a donation.  But, they missed that remark, I guess, and began to ridicule and shame me into a ticket.  And after I refused the third time, one of the firemen said that I should not call them if my house caught on fire.  Did I miss something?

My tithing and charity is my business, between me and my God.  I believe in living simply so that others can simply live.  I do not have, nor want a beach property, nor a BMW.  I take Matthew 25 seriously.  But, I will not begin to defend nor explain myself.  I am stubborn and old-fashioned.  I believe people should pay their own way.  I do not particularly like subsidizing insurance rates for beach house owners.  If they want to live on a hurricane track, that is their problem.  I change my own oil, usually.  I cut my own grass.  Somehow, I still believe in one man/one woman/for life!  And, I support Chick-fil-A.

But, I will keep mopping up the messes on my ward, if I can figure out how to adjust this uniform jacket.