Story – Mutual Responsibility

January 20, 2013

The Continuing Story of The Integral Kids—1. Bobby

Dusk at Farringdon - November 2010 - Lucky Shot

[This is the first story in a series of stories titled, The Continuing Story of the Integral Kids. The Integral Kids don’t know for certain if you’ll like them or not (the stories, not the Integral Kids—who wouldn’t like them?) but think that if you don’t like them you’ll definitely have a greater appreciation for why you don’t after you’ve read them, as well as for all those other things you don’t much care for, do care for, and life in general with all of its grand mysteries and wonders.]

Integral: Necessary to make complete; essential or fundamental.

Kid(s): A child or young person.

You couldn’t make out distinct noises. Everything that gave off sound, even those things you wished you could isolate, that is—you would have wished you could isolate them if you knew those sounds were there—cause if you’d been aware of their presence your ears would have sent certain signals to your brain letting it know that those were the kinds of sounds that made life, life—all jumbled together to become one big whirling, twirling kaleidoscope.

To give you more of an indication of it, it was the kind of situation that if you were to shout in a fella’s ear real close up, and that fella didn’t see you do it, then he’d probably not even notice; meaning, you could get away with a whole lot of stuff if you happened to be a particular type of person who liked getting away with particular type stuff when the situation allowed for it—or as those particular type people would say with a wink—called for it.

This one kid though, Bobby, was a different kind of person altogether.

Well, he was six year old. That’s one. I’m not exactly sure when a kid starts being a person; but if I had to wager, I’d lay odds that he already was one. Anyway, he didn’t want to get away with anything. He wanted to grow up though. I suppose that’s something most kids think about. Although the funny thing is, they maybe don’t think about it as much as their genes, parents, and social environments do for them. Mostly they just think about having fun and not getting lost or trampled in the sea of legs.

The train station was packed because his mom, Bobby’s that is, was on her way home after having spent time in the sanitarium. It was a pretty common affair. In fact, everybody at the train station was waiting for their dads, moms, grandparents, and you name it really, to return home from the sanitarium. It was the kind of thing the State decided was pretty good for you to do every three to six months, depending on the types of thoughts you reported in your thought journal. Kids didn’t get the privilege of filling out thought journals. You had to be thirteen for that.

Bobby thought the sea of legs looked a bit ornery today so he gave a couple good tugs on the pair of pants being occupied by his dad’s legs. It was code for, “Pick me up.” Sitting on his Dad’s shoulders he was one of the biggest there. In fact, it was just him and the other kids sitting on shoulders who were the big ones now. They didn’t like to be up there. It wasn’t because they were scared of heights or anything, but because they were leaving their posts. It was because each kid considered himself an explorer in the sea of legs, or the garden of dress pants, or the land of belt buckles, or, well you get the idea—each kid’s got a different take on what it is. And so just go try telling him that it’s really the sea of legs [garden of dress pants] [land of belt buckles]!

They all nodded and gave each other sympathetic looks which seemed to say, “I know, but what could we do? The sea [garden] [land] was ornery.”

Bobby shrugged it off and got caught up in something else. It was the boarding area. He saw a bunch of people running to catch the train that was slowly leaving the station. There was one certain lady wearing a big floppy hat with a tulip shooting through it that really caught his attention. She was running full bore, all her body parts jiggling with each step she took, hoofing like mad to make the train, and yet everyone was passing her by; because she was what some nice people call a full figure lady and some other not so nice people call a fat lady.

Bobby didn’t know it yet, and even if he were a real person, and not just some six year old kid your narrator thought might be a person, he probably still wouldn’t have known, that what was about to go through his head would come to change his life forever.

One by one the late boarders shot past the lady not paying her any mind. She was slowing down now, gasping for air. She touched one of them before it was over, some real lanky fella who looked like he didn’t mind much showing up late to catch a train. Their eyes met. She looked at him desperately, like he could do it, he could save her. He could take her with his slender hand and they would make the train together! He brushed her aside.

Finally she raised her arms to signal, “Wait for me!” but the train’s wheels only moved faster now, and soon it was completely gone. She was the only one who hadn’t made the train before it completely left the station. But Bobby saw something different. He didn’t see that last bit, well he did, but only later, how the runner looking guy left her behind. What he saw was how the tulip hatted lady looked at the fella and how the fella looked at her with twinkles in his eyes, and then how the fella yelled out with a surprisingly deep voice for being so lanky, “Come on everybody!”

Then some big lumberjack with a red flannel shirt peeked his head out of the still relatively slowly moving train, and pointed down the tracks and off to the side where the lady and the runner looking fella were. Then suddenly a bunch of people shot off the train and ran down to where the lady and runner fella were. Well no, one ran down to where the lady and runner fella were, but the rest spread out along the distance that led from the lady and the runner fella all the way back to the train.

The lumber jack then nodded, still on the train, and grabbed the hand of the closest person not on the train, then that person grabbed the hand of the next closest person further from the train, and on and on until eventually that runner looking fella grabbed some guy’s hand, and with his other hand, grabbed the hand of the tulip hatted lady and smiled. Then they all walked and pulled together so that everyone, even the tulip hatted lady, got on the train in the nick of time, just before the train had sped up too much for anyone to catch it.

When they got back home Bobby’s mom told his dad and him that it was really nice that she’d had to go away again, and that they think they might have fixed the problem this time. She didn’t shake nearly as bad as she did the last time either Bobby thought, although her memory seemed to be a little funny. She went on quite a bit about how it was good to be small, and that ants have it the best, cause they don’t know too much, and they’re better off for it.

Later that night she came in Bobby’s room to tuck him in. He noticed now that the treatment took off a different patch of her hair from the last time. She was twitching a little bit too he noticed. She wanted to make sure that he remembered what she’d told him earlier, that it was good to be an ant. Bobby remembered what he’d thought about the tulip hatted lady and lanky fella and agreed.

“If we were all like ants then we’d all help each other,” he said. “Cause no one’s higher in an ant village Mom. They all pull together, huh?”

But she didn’t answer like he thought she would. Actually, she didn’t answer at all. She just got up real slow from the side of his bed with a real blank stare. He couldn’t tell for certain, but it seemed like she was trying to hide something. It seemed like she might be really scared.

“Mom—What’s wrong?”

“Go to bed now,” she said.

“ Aren’t you going to tell me about the kinds of thoughts I should have?”

She shuffled towards the door and flipped the light switch off.

“Not tonight.”

She turned the light off and Bobby couldn’t help but feel that something was wrong, something was very wrong—and he was right. In the morning it would all change. The State would come. Life would now be different forever. And somewhere amidst it all, the integral kids would come calling his name.

Image: “Dusk at Farringdon – November 2010 – Lucky Shot” by mwmbwls on Flickr.

December 31, 2012December 30, 2012

Remembering Henry Addleton’s New Year’s Resolution

Usually, he’d think it: “You’re your own man. You make your own destiny.” Occasionally, he’d speak it, sometimes with the addition of a final exclamation mark, or in particularly dire times, a question mark. It was his mantra, his constant psychological companion. “And why shouldn’t it be?” he’d think. “After all, it’s the kind of adage grandfathers bestow to toddlers on their knees. It’s the spiritual pronouncement of self-made men!”

But for Henry Addleton, it had yet to bring him fortune or fame. Had he done something wrong? Was there perhaps some set of instructions that certain individuals possessed, and he did not? And if so, why them and not him? Why was it always that Henry, delightful Henry, time and again suffered the cruel hand of fate? How could it be that such a lovably affable, miniature, stooped, stout, near sighted, hard of hearing, bow legged, missing the index finger on his left hand, inexplicably somehow never stricken with polio, bald man could not be asked to the table, to partake in the feast of victory, if but only for an aperitif?

And to make matters worse cherished letter writers, the good years, if they were ever really good, had now long since faded into the should-have and could-have-been’s of yesteryear. So in the quiet of his one room apartment on the outskirts of Cleveland, on one particularly rain soaked New Year’s Eve, Henry made a resolution. He wrote it in big black bold letters, so he wouldn’t forget it. He wrote it with a permanent marker, so it would always remain.

He wrote it on every door, every window, and every wall. He wrote it on his dog. It was a proclamation and reminder, that on that night, that fateful New Year’s Eve, one minute from midnight, sixty seconds from Auld Lang Syne, sixty thousand milliseconds from never getting his security deposit back, and sixty million microseconds from the irreversible consummation of Two Thousand and Thirteen, Henry Addleton and the world would never be the same again.

He reinvented it. He took what used to be called, “the only game in town,” and twisted it into a novelty. Well, he helped. He contributed his part to take ruthless-at-any-cost-competition, the predominance of statuesque looks, born into money privilege, it’s about who you know license, male centered misogyny, the taller the better heightism, xenophobia, etc. — and spun it all so hard, so fast, and for so very long—the whole alignment of the game, its way of functioning, shifted irreparably. And in that one minute [Editors Note: It was actually a series of moments, over many, many years.], when all was askew, a strange thing happened. After all the trembling, turning, and twisting had ended, something remarkable and completely inexplicable took place.

For the first time since Henry Addleton had been born into the Virgo Cluster fifty-two years ago, in one of its fifteen hundred galaxies known as the Milky Way, on that third distinguished planet from the Sun, on the continent of North America, in the country of the United States, in the Midwestern state of Ohio, many agreed with him. And if this letter writer was a philosopher and betting man, given to long-term interstellar bets, he’d stake that alien life forms baring no likely countenance to our familiar, also gathered together, lights years perchance apart, conveying their own exacting forms of expression, fins, antimatter, and what not, in raising praise for Mr. Addleton’s accomplishment.

But fellow letter writers, this is the real reason I write you today: We have forgotten. We have overlooked that this New Year’s Eve, Two Thousand and Fifty Two, rapidly approaching Two Thousand and Fifty Three, marks the fortieth anniversary of the “Colossal Shift.” And yes, we know well the modern comforts that we have been luxuriously afforded today as a consequence, the pleasant life that living with respect for our integrality has brought us. But although we have pledged to forever move forward, to persistently progress from strength to strength, to relentlessly forge a stronger and more just world, we should also remember, nay not forget, those brave ones who paved the way for this lofty future of which we are now a part.

For in every era, throughout our collective history, there have always been those brave men and women the likes of Henry Addleton. There have at all times been those who would not go silently into anonymity, those thinkers, feelers, those lovers of justice for all, and hatred for none. They are the ones in every generation, the perennial torchbearers, those that we must hold and cherish as a species, as residents of this planet, this galaxy, and this universe.

So on this New Year’s Eve, Two Thousand and Fifty Two, remember the likes of Henry Addleton, men and women who stood up with such a sound that others joined them. Remember their cries against inequality, for love to reign over tyranny, for justice to prevail, for empathy, and for selfishness to end at last. Remember their pledge to live and lead by example, a life of mutual responsibility letter writers, and be forever thankful for their sacrifice.

Author: David Prosser

Image: “Looking at the Ball in Times Squar” by joewcampbell on Flickr.

November 30, 2012December 4, 2014

If You Pay Attention, You Might Just See How Interconnected You Are

Old key chain in the shape of a small Earth globe

“Ahh, time for rest,” George said, lying down on his side of the bed. “Well, goodnight.” “Goodnight,” Sarah said. They turned off their matching bedside lamps. A moment passed. “Do you ever think about how interconnected we are?” she said. “Have you been waiting to ask me that?” “It just came to me.” “Did I do something wrong?” “No. Just-” “You know, that’s a helluva thing to ask when I’m about to fall asleep.” “Is it?” “Yeah, well, I think so.”

“So, do you?” Sarah asked. “Do I what?” “Do you ever think about it?” George turned his lamp on. “Why’d you do that?” “So I could see just how crazy you looked.” “I’m serious,” Sarah said. “I am too.” “You’ve never thought about it?” “Yeah, I’ve thought about it.” “Really?” “Of course. We’re married.” “No,” she said. “I mean with others. How we’re interconnected with others, with people we’ve never even met before.” “I’m turning the light off now.” He turned it back on.

“Maybe I don’t want to meet them. You ever think about that?” “I don’t know,” Sarah said, a broad smile forming. “I think I’d like to meet them.” “They’d probably ask me for money. That’d just be my luck. ‘Connected? Really? Gee in that case how about giving me some dough?’ No thank you.” “But that’s just the thing George. Whether we meet them or not we’re still connected. Somehow, someway, we’re all connected together. You should really think about it sometime.” “Why? What for?” “Because if we’re all connected it means we’re all interdependent too. And that means…”

“Well don’t just leave me hanging in suspense. What’s it mean?” “It means that we rely on each other.” “I’m turning the light off now,” George said. “We rely on them, and they rely on us.” “Alright, you can believe what you want.” “But it’s not belief. All you have to do is pay attention.” “Then how come this is the first time I’ve heard you utter a peep about it?” “Cause I just started paying attention.” “Alright, alright. I’ll pay attention. Now can I go to sleep?” “Promise?” “I just said I would didn’t I?” “Yes, OK. Goodnight.” “I only say goodnight once in a night. You already got yours.”

“George.” “What?” “You said it again.”

The Next Morning

The time was half past seven. In his Swedish bed with sheets from Michigan, pillows from England, and blankets from Italy, George awoke. Down from his bed onto the wooden floor manufactured in Portland, assembled from lumber cut in Japan, he carried out his daily routine.

Step 1: Turn on shower facet made in Taiwan. Let run.

Step 2: Place Columbian coffee in German coffee grinder. Grind. Deposit ground coffee into Turkish coffee filter. Brew in French press coffee maker (patented by an Italian), over a Milwaukee produced stove.

Step 3: After showering, select suitable clothes for work from China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Peru, Italy, or France. Dress and walk downstairs.

Step 4: Drink Columbian coffee. Eat breakfast made by Sarah from Pakistan consisting of eggs from Los Angeles, bacon from Chicago, English muffin (called an American muffin in the UK) from Columbus, and a glass of orange juice from Brazil.

Step 5: Grab briefcase made in Holland, kiss Los Angeles born kids Samantha and Patrick made from Sarah and George, grab phone made in China involving nine companies located in four countries, and drive to work in automobile produced in South Africa made from parts from Germany and Austria.

“What was that she said?” George thought. “Oh yeah. Something about being interconnected and interdependent. To pay attention.” He was nearly to the office now, one branch in a communications firm with offices in Houston, Los Angeles, Holland, and Switzerland (involved in North American, South American, European, and Asian markets).

“Pay attention she said,” he shook his head. “Just exactly what am I supposed to pay attention to?”

Author: David Prosser

Image: “Old key chain in the shape of a small Earth globe” by Horia Varlan on Flickr.