I Ought To Know Better

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Nobody likes being around people they can't trust. I'm writing about thoughtless people that even dummies like me can't trust to do the right thing by them. Who wants to be around people who can't even trust themselves. I'm a little like that myself. I too have sinned. I can't be trusted by people who can't be trusted. Who would blame anybody for that?

It's a wonder to me that I'm still alive after having been taught from childhood to be a trusting and trustworthy person. It might have been better for me if I'd been raised in the ghettoes of some big city where people learn at an early age to not trust anybody, but I don't think I would have learned much about life.

A couple of days ago I went into the restaurant I've eaten at for a good long time. There wasn't any open booths to sit at, but an old man I was familiar with by sight and sound was sitting alone, so I asked if it would be okay if I sat with him. He allowed as that would be alright, and I sat down across from him.

I didn't know much about him. I'd heard him say he was 81 years old and lived alone. I didn't know what he had done for a living, so I thought I'd ask him as a way to start a conversation. It didn't take long for me to gather that he was insulted that I didn't know about him. I reckon I ought to have, but I don't keep up with the local gossip the way I guess I need to in order to be a man of means with no means.

When he began to explain to me just how important he was, the only thing I could do was to keep my mouth shut and listen. It seemed like he knew quite a bit about me or at least he thought he did. He didn't know the things about me that should have warned him not to take the gossip he'd heard about me too literally.

I never have understood why people in general haven't made themselves aware of the concept of projection, but talking down to me and telling me about the faults he'd heard I have was not exactly a brilliant move. Now I know what he considers to be his own faults. He'll never hear the end of it.

I didn't dream much last night. I had a visitor in the late afternoon. We sat around and caught up on what had been going on in our lives since the last time we got together. Nothing much had changed. He finally got a decent car to drive after driving a junker that required a lotta attention on a frequent basis. I went to bed soon after he left, perchance to dream, and I did dream a little dream about this person, but it wasn't very flattering.

I did have a quick, shocking dream about my first wife as the beautiful young woman I fell in love with. It was a garden scenario with tomato plants with bright yellow flower buds, and a watermelon vine with one sagging small watermelon that was flat on the bottom suggesting that it was in a state of decay. She walked up to me and snatched some magazine I was holding out of my hands, and told me "we" didn't have time for that. It woke me up fast. Ah, the good ol' days. '-)

At breakfast at the same place yesterday morning I sat with some people I went to high school with. It doesn't surprise me that they all grew up to be conservatives. They automatically assumed I was of that political bent too, and I was sort of included by nod in their diatribes about how Obama will be the downfall of the country, and the latest opinions from Fox News.

I mentioned in an off-hand way that the same people who watched and catered to the party line via Fox News was the same sort of people who patronized the National Enquirer at the check-out lines down to the Wal-Mart. They like to live in a sensationalized world whether there is any truth to it or not. Many people around here find that an interesting way to look at life even though some of them attempt to disguise it to seem different. No blame.

I probably hurt my brother's feeling by being honest with him about how I felt about us taking our constitutional walks together. I've learned the hard way that honesty is not always the best policy, but being subtle about having to cater to his life style in order to do something I'd been doing on my own wasn't working. So, I felt as though I needed to be more plain-spoken to keep from saying what I had to say in anger.

For some silly reason I frequently conclude that people in general oughta be able to discern that I don't respond predictably to them copping to authoritative attitudes toward me, and presuming upon our already tenuous relationship to serve their personal needs as if a privilege. One acquaintance seems to make a habit out of tacitly proposing that our friendship depends on me manufacturing patented objects he can sell for a profit on the black market.

Maybe he's not as clever as I give him credit for being when he presumes I'm not quick enough to see through his translucent, child-like ruses. I do that myself when I talk to people like they are capable of understanding concepts that's taken me years, even decades to comprehend, and I casually utter those very complex ideas in a diffident manner to make it seem easy when it's not.

Trusting that people understand what I mean has never worked out for me that well. They like me doing it. Why would they not? Sometime, when I make that mistake, people will go along to get along, even though they don't have a clue of the possible implications when they repeat what I say without the depth. They predicate their wisdom on academic facts instead of their own experience. It backfires on them and I get blamed. I oughta know better.

It's not formal education itself that I have a bad attitude toward. It's the fact that it's forced on people who shouldn't have to endure it or end up with their parents going to jail if they run away from such repressive measures. These laws have only been in place since the industrial revolution took place when the capitalists needed more literate workers.

It only happens so the rich can get richer. The various governments made it a law that everybody has to have their creativity educated out of them and replaced by rude political polemics implemented by government agents who rationalize living off the State by calling themselves professional teachers and foolishly demanding respect for their crude, uninspired behavior.

Forcing all children to submit to this government indoctrination venue makes it difficult for the people who actually want to pursue a higher education. They are forced to compete at the lowest common denominator level in order to get jobs that bore them silly. This perverted education system makes perfectly sane people as crazy and violent as all get out. Who needs that?

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