Read My Lips - the blog

Life or Somethin' Like it

A lengthy storytellin' hopefully worth the effort:

It ain't somethin' for which ya stand in line to volunteer. In fact, ya have no choice 'bout it at'all. Ya find yourself dragged into it, kickin' and screamin', totally unprepared and improperly dressed to face the cold, cold world. Ya spend the next year or so layin' in your own filth unable to do anythin' 'bout it but cry 'cause you have not yet succeeded in gainin' sufficient control over your own body so as to move more than a few feet. Even if you could move more than a few feet, you so often find yourself caged and confined. This confinement often exists beyond the period in which you finally do succeed gainin' the necessary control over your physical abilities, gain your feet, and attempt to explore your surroundin's. Those responsible for draggin' you kickin' and screamin' into this world only allow you enough freedom to provide for their entertainment, delightin' in your failures, as you fall after takin' a few short, hesitant steps on your first few attempts at propellin' your body 'cross the familiar expanse. Although they continually spew a slurry of strange sounds, the larger creatures communicate to you by various loud barks or by painfully strikin' you. Eventually, you slowly gain the ability to understand these strange sounds and find so very little of what is bein' said to you is of any real interest. The larger creatures seek solely to suppress your own intuitive sense of curiosity as you seek to explore and examine ever'thin' you see. Regrettably, you find very little of it to be very tasteful tasty.

Your keepers soon begin to throw tirades about your bodily waste, bein' slower and slower to respond to your cries for clean-up duty and you soon find a major change in wardrobe. No longer do you have the major paddin' the softened those blows to your behind that seemed to come so often when you tried to pick up that interestin' object from the coffee table because it looked too delicious to pass up bein' taste-tested. Soon, it seems, you are pushed to work on disposin' of your body waste by usin' a smaller version of some object in that room where you were often taken durin' earlier points and dunked under water so many times, you were sure they were tryin' to drown you. It actually seems harder than it had been to stand on your feet and walk ‘round than it is to be on top of disposin' your body waste on a regular timely basis, but after months and months of practice, you seem to be able to get through a whole day without bein' forced to change your clothes because you were too late again with your body waste elimination duties. Makin' it completely through the night, however, is still a problem, but even that is soon overcome.

Finally, with overcomin' the problem with gettin' ‘round on your own and bein' able to handle that nasty body waste situation, you seem to have found your legs and are ready to rule the world. Your keepers, however, are still much larger than you, and you are actually beginnin' to understand those strange sounds they keep yellin' at you at ever' opportunity. One word seems to be shouted more than any other: "No." A few choice blows soon convince you that such word means to stop whatever activity you were involved in immediately. And, as seems to be the case, you find, that word seems to come out of your keeper's mouth jes' ‘bout the time you find somethin' really fun to do. It soon becomes your utmost duty to find ever' fun thing you can possibly do without bein' detected by one of your keepers and forced to stop. When evidence of your fun is discovered, you soon find it is best to immediately deny any involvement in the matter so as to alleviate any chance to feel those painful blows again, but, often, it seems there is no explanation that will deflect the blame away from you, and you feel the force of physical power those larger than you have over you. Your personality begins to raise its head in an attempt to come to grips with this power struggle, and you rebel against this forced authority.

Your keepers, however, are not totally tyrannical, and, provided that you generally do their biddin', often end up caressin' and pettin' you on a fairly regular occasion. Despite your disagreement with their fun-deprivin' control, you soon discover that, despite your desire to do so, you are not yet able to do without their assistance. From their generosity, they begin to shower you with objects that they profess are yours, but control how and where they must be placed within the space they also claim is yours. As you more fully begin to understand the language they use to communicate, you discover those pretty movin' pictures on that box they often sat you in front of from the time of your arrival have messages to give about interaction with others, behavior on a general basis, and amazin' discoveries others have made about things and places that exist beyond the small world in which you have found yourself. Beside the interior of your regular domain, you have come to know parts of other places: McDonald's, Gran's, Uncle Pete's and on and on. You are often left free to explore the outdoor surroundin's of most of these places, but often get scolded if you actually come into contact with any of the surfaces and end up with traces of such on your clothes or person. You begin to wonder when this fun-suppression comes to an end.

Over time you grow stronger and stronger, and, although, it feels as if you are compelled to learn things you could never possibly use forever and ever, and yet your brain gets continually filled with facts and figures, dates and data from ever' direction. Duties are assigned to you within your own domicile and your keepers begin to demand more and more that it is their turn to be kept. You begin the master the rudimentary means of economic exchange and find that no matter how much money you come up with, it is never enough to get what you really want. Still, you easily find a way to spend all you can get. You also begin to experience a need to compete with others of your own age group, whether physical, mental or of some sort of social angle. You quickly find your place among your peers, and, likely extremely dislike where you found yourself in the social peckin' order. Still boys are boys and girls are girls, and neither seems ready to mix with the other quite yet. This slowly changes as the constant pictures of the perfect future show such depends upon the selection of the perfect mate, so despite any real physical compulsion to do so, the social peer pressure forces you to mix, mingle, and fit in with the group. No matter how hard you try, you feel so out of place.

Before you are quite ready for it, you body, which has only steadily grown upward to this point, begins makin' more drastic changes, affectin' the voices of the boys and makin' them hairier, while causin' stranger developments to the female physique. The chemicals inside you body react and counteract and cause your skin to explode into painful mounds of escapin' poisons as the hormones associated with these changes wreak their havoc in your midst. Soon you begin to long for the touch of another person, but not that of your keepers or even your own siblings, and seek ever' opportunity to explore and experience members of the opposite sex, as well, in many case, or, alternatively, in some other cases, members of your own gender. Soon this compulsion overtakes your psyche and becomes the drivin' force behind your actions, whether it is plannin' so as to be where you can be seen or shoppin' for eye-catchin' clothin' or preparin' oneself for grandiose physical feats to impress those whose eyes you hope to catch.

Sometimes jes' after reachin' adulthood, if it takes that long, you begin to experience the ultimate pleasure of couplin' with another person, sometimes with the consequence of beginnin' the seeds of another life.

Posted by Tiger at November 19, 2004 08:02 PM | TrackBack