A stark visage of the Gloomy Boomer

Monday 11 March

The Office.

I’m sitting here with Norm.

Norm is short for Normal Guy.

Normal Guy is a character from my novel, Log Of The Yardbird.

(Hit the link and read the free excerpt to learn why I call him Normal Guy.)

Here’s what Norm looks like:

I guess he doesn’t want you to know what he looks like.

See that guy in the background there, sitting alone at the round table? I’ve known that guy going on twenty five years. He comes in here occasionally. We were neighbors for about a year back when I lived on a houseboat. 2001, I think. During that year we’d shoot the breeze like neighbors do. I moved off the houseboat (rent too damned high) but stayed in town. I’d run into him frequently. Say hi how ya doing, etc… Time passed and I’d just smile and wave before moving off. Then came the day we no longer knew each other. I saw him and simply ignored him.

Now I look at him. He looks right back.

We look through each other like windows.

He just got up to leave. Walked by, blank faced.

By the way. Norm left too.

He said, so long.

I said, catch you later.

It would be much harder to X out Norm.

After all, he’s a character in my Novel.

I could write another novel where I kill him off. But he’d still be alive in the flesh. So that won’t work. I guess I’m stuck with him for the time being.

You can’t actually X anybody out

As long as we’re still living in the material world, as George Harrison said, we’re stuck with each other. Even the people we X out. It’s impossible. You can’t actually X people out. The fact is, I’m stuck thinking about this fellow. Every time I see him, I think, there he is, the guy I X‘ed out. Then I gotta pretend I don’t know him.

So all you can do is pretend. Does this bother me?

Very little. Not with him, at least.

There’s 30 billion people on the planet I don’t talk to. They’re not X’ed out. They don’t need to be. Christ. There’s so many people out there I get depressed thinking how many people there are. I mean, you start killing them, it would never end. Because more get born than we kill. It’s truly a very ugly situation, the Human Race. Best to have a few people you like. A tribe sort of. The rest, well…I suppose the rest can take care of themselves.

Which brings me back to that dude I no longer know because I sort of X’ed him out. Or pretended I did. Now I’m thinking about him, it’s not like he deserves to be ignored. He never did nothing to me. I’m just saying. He never did nothing. It’s more like he got X’ed out for being a nothing.

A non-entity.

Certain people deserve to be X’ed out. These people are the only excuse I can think of for Maximum Security Prisons. There are a lot of really bad people out there. I’ve been bad myself. There are occasions when I’ve done things I’m not proud of. Still, I’m not always bad. And I’m less bad today than I was yesterday.

I’m increasingly less bad as I go along.

I have not been working on being less bad. It just sort of happens as I grow older. And older. And still older. I get less bad.

You could almost say it’s a general rule for most of us more or less normal people. As we age, we become–for want of a better word–nicer. Or mellower. Or more Tolerant. Or whatever term you like. The bottom line, we become Good.

It’s a process. A river runs through us. Call it a river of Love. Or a river of Hate. We pick a direction. I don’t know if the choice is entirely up to us. I’m not digging into that. All I’m saying, it is what it is. You get better or you get worse. You don’t stay put. One day you open your eyes and you say to yourself…this is not what I wanted to be.

I think you get to choose until almost the very end.

It’s hard to grow more bad. A hard road to travel. I actually have a kind of sympathy for these sour ass angry hate filled people. Because Badness grows like a cancer. It destroys the host. A dude that nurtures his Badness becomes reviled to the point where he offs himself or he simply festers in his T.V. chair. He may croak from sheer meanness.

I know what you’re thinking. What about Donald Trump? Well, there are always exceptions. And Politicians are a breed apart. Many of them actually thrive on Badness. Lump your Mob dudes into that batch, as well. I think there’s a medical term for these kinds of people: psychopaths. But for the bulk of us otherwise normal people running our normal rat races, those of us with feelings, I think my goodness/badness rule has a degree of merit.

Anyway, to sum it up:

One day, in the not too distant future, as long as I stay the course, I’ll be Genuinely Good. That’s right. I’ll be a thorough going GOOD PERSON. I may have a little bad in me for spice. But nothing to affect my general goodness.

On Reflection

I’m thinking next time I run into that guy I X’ed out I may just confront him. “Hey, remember me? We used to be neighbors.” See what he says. Because like I said, he did nothing to deserve being ignored simply because he was a nothing.

Nobody deserves to be treated like a Nothing.

You see there?

I’m working on Goodness even while I don’t think I am. Next thing you know, I’ll be fighting the good fight.

Probably not.

Well…maybe for now I’ll just play a song about it.