Gary and God, a Journey in Life (492 hits)
Category: GeneralRating: 1.25 on 5 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by travis (View user info) at 2005-08-17 22:39:40 EDT
This story begins with a few directions. If you want to take part then you'll have to obey. Think back to your childhood, the time when God was real. Now, skip forward to your present age, retain that faith, but make a radical modification. God smokes weed. Okay, got that? God exists, but he's a huge pot head. Great. Now, we can begin.
Gary is a teenaged guy who lives in the world this pot-smoking God created. He was born in a suburb, it doesn't really matter which. More precisely, he was born in a hospital - his mother thankfully not being one of those natural birth freaks - but we're not pedantic or cruel so we won't focus on those details, except we just did. Anyway, Gary's parents brought him home from the hospital a while after his birth and two thoughts were battling in that sort of hive mind only parents and twins seem to possess.
These thoughts were ostensibly about Gary, but in reality they were not. The thoughts in Gary's parents' minds concerned Gary's parents and Gary's parents only. Gary was just the catalyzing package. The first thought was a happy thought. Gary is an angel sent from above, destined to bring meaning to our lives. An optimistic thought, perhaps a little selfish, but well meaning. It was completely at odds with the other thought. Gary is a Satanic deathbringer, forced onto us by an unknown but certainly cruel power. Which power? Nobody knows. Certainly a demon, at the very least, most likely a Gorgon. This second thought was a tad hazy, probably due to its scariness, but it held one point as axiomatic: Gary is going to ruin our lives and we won't be able to visit nightclubs anymore. That was basically the second thought, no more nightclubs.
God, being a pot smoker, knows these conflicting thoughts are natural, but Gary's parents didn't and they probably still don't. Everytime the second thought appeared - usually when Gary cried, soiled his diaper, or did both at the same time - Gary's parents felt a little mental stab somewhere in their average brains. Perhaps little isn't the right word. Perhaps big is the right word. Yes, that's the right word. Gary's parents felt a big stab in their average brains every time they thought of gary as the devil child who'd permanently banned them from fun.
The years rolled by, and the stabs kept coming, as Gary grew and grew. Sometimes, he'd cry, as children are wont to do. His dear parents loved him so, but the louder Gary screamed the easier it was to recall the second thought, the nightclub thought, and over time Gary became known to his parents as a bad little boy. Gary's parents weren't bad folk, they punished their child because that's what seemed to work. He was their child, they cherished him, but as managers let's just say they weren't Goldman Sachs material. That's assuming Goldman Sachs ever finds the child-looking-after market lucrative enough to take the plunge, which they very well might.
Coping with what a child believes is his prerogative seems impossible for most parents, Gary's included, especially considering the miserable remuneration, i.e., zero dollars per century. What I mean by a child's prerogative is precisely this: Gary sometimes thought it proper to throw his bottle at Daddy's head, and he could see no reason why he shouldn't. So he did it, often. Throwing a bottle at a head is a perfectly acceptable impulse, for a child, but completely unacceptable for its parent. The obvious reason being that bottles hurt when they smash into your head. The less obvious reason being that children should really learn to stop throwing bottles by the time they reach, say, the age of three. This is so they won't graduate to other, more dangerous weapons, such as He-Man figurines and Bazookas.
Faced with the daunting task of taming Gary's juvenile temper, his parents were often at a loss. Discussing the metasocial existential crises between succeeding familial generations with a toddler seemed futile to Gary's parents. Also, they didn't know what the words "metasocial" "existential" or "familial" meant. They knew what the words "crises" and "toddler" meant, and although quite proud of that education, they were nonetheless not comforted by it, since their toddler crises seemed to be replicating like a horde of soldier ants. So, existential discussions with Gary the toddler were out; they were quickly thrown in the "too hard, don't try" basket and conveniently forgotten. Why bother with all that theoretical stuff when it never seems to work? Smacking Gary's bottom seemed to work, so that's what they did to him.
Now, all of this might make Gary's parents seem like inferior people, but if you think that then you are wrong. Wrong and bad. Naughty, to be exact. Gary's parents weren't bad folk. In fact, they were well respected by their friends and they were trying their hardest to raise Gary as someone who would also show respect and be respected. The biggest criticism you could make of them is that perhaps they could have taken a course in child psychology before having unprotected sex in the cheap hotel room where Gary was accidentally conceived. Not that Gary's parents could afford any decent courses in psychology, their choices would have been confined to several encouragable but, let's face it, disgustingly-underfunded community colleges.
Perhaps it's time to formally introduce Gary's parents. Simon and Melissa, those are their names. Simon is a boilermaker. Boilermaking is an extremely interesting occupation, provided your IQ hovers somewhere around nine. Being more cognitively gifted than that, with an IQ of about 103, Simon doesn't particularly enjoy his "career" or the meagre living it affords. Simon's wife, Melissa, was a highschool prom queen. If you were magic, and had a machine that could see back into the past, you could trace Simon and Melissa's relationship back to that very prom night, where Melissa was abandoned by her studly boyfriend and given a lift home by the knightly Simon. Melissa is an extremely attractive lady, even though she's in her 40th year. Sadly, for Melissa and also for Simon, Melissa still thinks her senior highschool year was the peak of what she now believes has become a uniformly mundane life. She hasn't had a job in 17 years, since before Gary's birth, not that she ever particularly wanted a job. Who, apart from Dan Rather, does?
Like I said, Gary's parents weren't bad folk. Over time, they tried to focus mostly on the first thought, the happy thought. You know, the one about how Gary is an angel? The small problem here is that most of the time in a decade is about seven years. That leaves three years of parental brain stabs and smacks to Gary's behind. It's not like the periods of angel Gary and Gorgon Gary were mutually exclusive, there wasn't seven years of perfect Gary and three years of devil Gary. We're talking about a mixture, a heterogeneous solution. Nevertheless, three years of brain stabs and bottom smacks will take its toll on even the Abraham Lincoln of families. Not to suggest that Abraham Lincoln himself was ever a bunch of separate people, but I guess you know what I mean. Hrm, maybe you don't. Just in case, I will explain. The point, I guess, is that sometimes Gary's parents wished they never had Gary and that meant they yelled at him and at each other for reasons nobody, except God the eternal pot smoker, could understand. The yelling and smacking came from anger and frustration, but what it really produced was sadness. Yes, it's fair to say that young Gary's family had its share of problems.
User Reviews
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2006-09-09 00:43:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by enraged_baboon (user info) at 2005-08-18 08:00:44 (#)
Ranking: 0
I guess I should have said it's the first chapter of something I'll probably never finish
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Never finished...
Submitted by enraged_baboon (user info) at 2005-08-18 08:00:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I guess I should have said it's the first chapter of something I'll probably never finish
Submitted by lordofthedance (user info) at 2005-08-18 03:14:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
What whiplash said.
Submitted by Whiplash (user info) at 2005-08-17 23:38:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I feel like I've been waiting for a punchline that never came. What just happened?
Submitted by Jeanneee (user info) at 2005-08-17 23:13:46 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Interesting.