Dysfunction Junction
“Good times….bad times…you know I’ve had my share.” Good Times, Bad Times by Led Zeppelin
When someone asks me casually, “How ya doing?” or “Are you doing okay, today? I always answer curtly, “Not good, not bad.” The rationale for my stubborn and practiced response is simple. If I reply, “I’m doing good,” then, of course, I would be straight up lying because who in the F could truthfully be doing much of anything good while serving time and life in the joint? Conversely, if I self-servingly whine about the reality of my station in life, then, I would only be crying when I admitted I wasn’t doing okay.
I am not into lying. And, I am not into crying either! On top of those considerations, today’s generation talks too damned much, anyway, which conflicts with a convict’s golden rule of “don’t cop to nothing.” So, what we have here is either a failure to communicate or, perhaps, a pebble of constraint lobbed into today’s vast ocean of fake assed, pathetic gibber jabbering. I often feel like a harried husband who looks at the yakking, love of his life and mentally screams, “Bitch, PLEASE!” Or, even more accurately, I feel like the cranky ol’ dude who lives in the beat up, hillbilly hovel at the end of the block who wants to shake his fist at the little punks around him and bellow, “Shut the hell up!”
Those are my private mental interactions to each day’s opening gambits made by cats who do not honestly give a damn if anyone may be doing good, much less okay. Publically, I answer in the neutral which is not much of an answer at all. But, then, my non-answer is as devoid of substance as the conventional greeting which prompted it. I would rather respond that way than to enter into an exchange based upon deceit or whining.
Not to infer that everyone is insincere. There will always be those who do care and some who are curious. But, one of today’s realities is simply that most who exchange greetings in the conventional manner are not really seeking the answer to the inquiry. Our present culture of instant information gratification has begun to condition thinking to transform into drone-like reaction. Slowly, passing away is the value that comes from individual, self-reliant thought.
How easy it would be at this point in my lamination to reach for the current scapegoat of the self-righteous and verbally kick the ol’ big butt, Kardashian chicks in the kiester. But, no matter how shallow minded their game may seem, one must never fail to see a hustle for what it is….business. When you are out surfing and the shark chomps your leg, do not get mad at the shark for doing his job. It is his business; he swims, he eats. The Kardashian Klan does not cause people to become nitwits, people act like nitwits because they have lost the courage to think as their own person. It is comfortable for a nitwit to invest in someone else’s identity because it absolves one of the effort and responsibility of having to think for themselves. To mean what they say, good or bad. To say, what they mean.
One of the motivations of this column is that Badfish wanted to cut it up with you brothers and sisters, today, and ask you to think about what you are saying the next time you greet someone. If you really mean what you are asking then
I commend you for your honesty. However, if you are bumping your gums for conventions sake, why not put a sock in it? My dear ol’ country girl, Mom, used to urge me to always remember, “If you don’t have anything good to say, then don’t say anything at all.” Boy, was that ol’ girl right!
To take it one step further, how about if you do not mean what you say…..then shut the F up! That is what is going on in Badfish Corner. But, like I always say, “things are tuff all over.”
