Restrooms and War

Every time I go into the restroom at work I bump into the rubber doorstop on the floor. And every time that happens I am immediately afraid that I've bumped someone's face. In my mind, I go through a scenario where the other person clutches his face while I scramble to the sink and
wet a paper towel. Outwardly I am very concerned and expound my deepest apologies. I am very reverently sorry for the pain I've caused. Inwardly I find the situation comical. "What a funny thing to happen. The jerk shouldn't have stood so close to the damn door.", I say to myself. Meanwhile, he writhes in pain, making sure that I am fully aware of the pain I've caused. He is civil, though. He puts the towel to his face, lightly touching his mouth with it, and checks out of the side of his eyes for signs of blood. Sometimes he makes a joke. Sometimes he yelps "Oh wow!". Inwardly he finds the situation interesting. "Why does this have to happen to me? what a damned idiot he is. I can tell he's laughing. The jerk! It is kind of funny though.", he says to himself. We part ways after our ritual. I am not convincingly sorry and he is not convincingly calm or hurt.

Every time I hear the phrase "punch ‘em right out" I am reminded of a former helicopter pilot who sometimes described his exploits in Vietnam to me and the guys. “I’d duck behind a hill when I got a fix on the tank, pop up just as they were coming, slam a TOW into them and punch ‘em right out." Another time he told us that he found almost as much pleasure throttling his 2402 around curves as he did when he was "flying low and killing people." He said that with a gleam in his eye. But he lowered his head in a slightly reverent gesture (to make sure we didn't think he was a complete monster) and cracked a wide grin - just kidding, ha.

When the Vietnam war was just becoming a well cooked conflict, my sisters, my brother, and I, quite unaware of our empathetic connection with the helicopter pilots in the world, declared war on flies. At least they knew we were killing them for a reason. We reasoned that if we killed enough of them that the other flies would soon get the message not to bother us. We were delighted by the thought that there were flies flying back to where flies come from on wounded wings saying "Fellow flies, beware of the Lewis’ yard. The people there will kill you dead. They are terrors."

After millions of earnest swats we got tired of our work. It seemed that the wounded flies were not admonishing their comrades to stay away from us but, instead, were wobbling hac.k to where flies come from, boasting of their wounds, and saying, "Fellow flies, there's a real war out there. Go fight for the glory of flydom." It seemed that the flies got even worse as that California summer dragged on. We gave up killing flies. I don't think they've ever forgotten about our war