A Day In the Life . . .
I woke up, got out of bed, dragged the comb across my hair; I spoke to a duck, I was kind to a lizard; a human spoke, I went into a dream
An editorial on the human condition.
I am successfully battling cancer and winning against my mental health malaise, one that invades from time to time, with medical professional monitoring, prescribed drugs, a sheer force of freewill . . . and lots of writing. Lots. Musings about film, music, broadcasting, technology, and philosophy, as well as picking at my screenplays and more seriously composing novellas. Some say I am a hack (funny how the real, actually thin-skinned hacks call out the “hackness” of others). Other say I am just dandy. Others say my work is pretty darn fine. It really doesn’t matter what anyone thinks, as long as I am fulfilled by the efforts.
Not a day goes by I do not miss my younger, adopted, autistic half brother — actually my cousin, Michael— who shuffled off this mortal coil, succumbing to his additional medical issues, some years ago; he was 5 and I was 7. We grew up, matured together: we were inseparable. He made my childhood and teen years, especially my more private life-desired twenty-something years, a little bit different: for the people in my life, those friends and co-workers who showed too much curiosity about how I lived my life — a constant stream of ignorant judgements and unsolicited advice on how to live my life.
I sometimes miss those people I cut loose. I sometimes am disappointed; I thought we’d be friends for life: at least that’s how I cultivated those friendships. Most times: I am glad their poisons are gone from my life. I’ve run into three of them over the years: we exchanged glances of recognition as our encoded, past experiences rushed forth from our individual hippocampus and temporal lobes — as we walked on by without a word. Then again, I am giving them too much credit: the narcissist recalls nothing of their past ignorance.
To their chagrin: I was living life: the one I was blessed with by God — and I wouldn’t change a thing. I was “winning” then. I am “winning,” now. I always “win” the game at the buzzer. “Play the hand you’re dealt” is not an attitude; not a “game” I play. God doesn’t deal bad cards as a test of faith or loyalty; Satan doesn’t deal bad hands to torture one for enjoyment. For I was meant to be — alongside my other immediate family members — Michael’s team-compass. I wasn’t going to break the compass — split the family — to assuage the snickers of the ill-informed “nebinskis,” as my grandmother would say.
The nebinskis: Perpetual gossipers and rumor mongers; the nosy people lacking in the art of “inner voice” who relish their free will-inhibiting “outer voice” bullying skills. I’ve had a lot of “outer voice” people in my life: Illegitimi non carborundum.
Yeah, goodbye and good riddance to those can’t-keep-it-to-themself’ers. No regrets. No backsies.
The Duck Incident
So, I am outside, cleaning the driveway of leaves and wiping the early morning light’s annoying mixture of morning dew and fine dirt from the just-a-week-ago, newly washed and waxed car: there’s outside-the-house daily chores to do with and for mom— and I despise driving a car that is less than shining under the sun.
There was a lone Egyptian Goose standing in the road just at the foot of the driveway, bothering no one. There’s a lot of geese, as well as non-native, invasive moscovy ducks, in the neighborhood. We’ll get to the lizards, later.
Yes, I’ve been known to toss bread and crackers, as well as stale cookies, to the neighborhood’s friendly fowl. Yes, I’ll buy a Dollar Tree (U.S thrift discount retail chain) bag of chips to dump into the shopping center parking lot to feed the hungry birds picking at a non-nutritious, callously crumbled-tossed food bag or take-out container. Yes, I’ll buy a Dollar Tree can of cat food (with pull tab) and dump a bag of off-brand hard food for the parking lot’s stray cats wandering the asphalt and cigarette-butted landscaping. No, humanely trapping those feral cats is not an option: no government-backed agencies or non-profit shelters will accept and help them. I tried. So, all you can do is feed them and hope for the best. I did, however, meet a nice lady in the parking lot one day who traps them, has them spay or neutered on her own dime, then releases them — into an area more conducive to feline survival than a shopping center parking lot. Yes, she then returns to that “new home” to feed the cats.
Anyway: back to the goose, well, one of them.
That driveway goose’s mate — unknown to me in the moment — was up in the tree that stands tall and strong next to the driveway (but still a yard work nuisance I’d rather not deal with), the entire time; it spooked the hell out of me when it flew off . . . with the driveway mate; my cat screeched and ran like hell across the yard, too. Yes, I have two cats: The one who ran is the outdoor cat; she doesn’t go far and keeps in our yard. She loves sitting in the shade under the tree, watching the world. The indoor one, perched on the windowsill, watches watches the outside one.
Oh, yeah. Speaking of talking to ducks: I sing made up songs to cats as I pet them. I talk to them in weird voices, as well.
I am a real loony tune.
Ugh, again . . . back to the goose.
I am also the invasive species; those fowls were living here (well, their ancestors, long before the bulldozers plowed through their habitat to create the neighborhood I habitate. So, while my neighbors curse the ducks for defecating their sidewalks, driveways, and cars — pulling out the hose once or twice a week to keep the peace with my feathered friends is no bother. What can I tell you: Those are the neighbors whose trash receptacles remain at the curb after refuse collection the entire day and into the next — as they continue to drive over, and over and over again — the once-a-week, wet and flat-as-a-pancake sales and coupons papers delivered to our driveways. Me, I subsequently clip those papers as I “shop n’ save” at the grocery store. Our two-homes-down neighbor has four “coupon pancakes” in their driveway. The other, six houses down, has six of pieces of paper mache driveway art.
Ugh, back to that goose at the foot of the driveway.
As I finished leaf blowing away the leaves from the driveway and off the car — as the goose never once wavered; it actually rose up on its webbed feet and shook its feathers in the “wind” from the blower — I began to wipe off the car.
So, as I make my way to the car trunk, and get closer to the goose, I say, “Hey, Mr. Goose, where’s your flock? Why are you standing around all alone, today?”
And here comes one of grandma’s “nebinskis” to add a little excitement to the day.
“F*ck*ng moron, talking to a duck,” under-the-breath laments the crusty old dude — who I did not notice in my Dr. Doolittle moment — who exercise shuffle-foots the neighborhood every morning.
Hello, sir. There’s this thing called “inner voice” I’d like to tell you about; it’s real easy to use: think it, don’t speak it. Oh, and it’s a goose, not a duck.
Luckily for him: I am not a road rage-inclined alpha-male jackass with an overly-sensitive trigger who assaults humans for the most innocuous infractions and inconveniences of life. And crusty old dude went on his unmerry way as I went on my merry way . . . and he lived unhappily ever after to spew unwarranted, unnecessary comments to others . . . in the grocery store like another delightful individual we will soon discuss. But first: the lizard.
The Tegus Incident . . . and the Motorized Scooter Chair Guy
Now, the tegus, as well as the iguana, are an evasive nuisance . . . but I am not going to kill them. They didn’t ask to be kidnapped from their natural habitats, shoved in crates, shipped to the U.S, then purchased by the nonconformist, tattooed and pierced, pot-dispensary vaping masses who thought then caging that wild reptile in glass box would be “cool” as it was humane, so as to impress their friends — who probably have a snake in a coffin-like box on the floor of a spare bedroom (an ex-girlfriend from way back “babysat” a snake-in-the-box of her neighbor, once). Then, when the “coolness” of holding an innocent reptile hostage fades away in the backwash of the financial cost of caring for reptiles cuts into their ability to buy weed and party: the lizard is dumped — illegally — into their backyard. Good riddance. Fend your yourself, my scaly ex-friend.
I digress. Let’s back to the big lizard in my back yard.
They’re on the fence: all the time. Every now and then two, bright lime green geckos stroll that same fence rail or appear on the side of the majestic tree trunk in my front yard or the backyard neighbor’s that shades my yard. I leave them be.
So, on another day — not the day I cleaned the car for another day of chores where the crusty old shuffle foot guy verbally accosted me— we are on the way home from grocery shopping.
As I drove — less than the too-fast 25 miles-an-hour neighborhood backstreet to our house (now and then I get the old headlights-flash from a car behind me for not going “fast enough” through a street where kids play) — a HUGE reptile: a tegus, suns itself in the middle of the street. I slow down, wait . . . beep the horn . . . reach out the retracted driver-side door window and bang the metal body. Mr. (or Ms.) Tegus finally scurries off into another house’s vegetation.
Uh, oh . . . here comes Billy-Bob the redneck — complete with the ubiquitous baseball hat and those ridiculous, angular military-grade I-can-see-your-eyes-but-you-can’t-see-the-drunken-blood-shot-mine corded sunglasses — in an equally ridiculous, gas-guzzling, jacked-up and raised up pick up truck with tires where the rubber of one of its tires makes up two of my car’s meager tires.
“You should have driven over it, f*ck*ng idiot!” he shouts.
Oh, the all-inclusive “f-word” spewed once again. You gotta love the English language for creating a word that works as a noun, a verb, and an adjective. I’ve never heard any f-bombs used as adverbs, but I am sure someone in the world slapped an “-ly” on the end of one in a moment of anger.
So, back to the crusty old shuffle foot guy offended by my duck conversation: If I was a hair-triggered bully myself: The morning news broadcast the next day would report: “Road Rage . . . next,” as you have your toast and coffee.
Because — if you knew me — it always comes back to a Seinfeld episode.
The Motorized Scooter Chair Guy
Mirror, mirror on the wall: Who’s the surliest, pick-a-fight d*ckhead of them all?
“A bulky, 60-something man in red Lark while today grocery shopping, meet you will,” replies my reflection (my reflection always speaks like Yoda).
So, I always bag — I am OCD that way — the groceries. I unload the cart to the cash register conveyor belt in an OCD-order: hard-heavy items to the soft. So, bags of potatoes and cans to the front of the line; bread and eggs to the back; eggs on the bottom of the bag and bread on the top.
Our register aisle had just run out of those I-miss-paper-bags-sometimes-handle-snapping, end-capped hanging plastic bags. I needed two more bags.
“Do you have anymore bags?”
“No, and they screwed up again on the order and we’re running short of bags, again” our cashier — whose aisle we pick every week because mom likes her — tells us. “There’s bound to be some around here, but I can’t get them at the moment. Take a couple from there,” she points to the opened, next aisle to the right.
So, I reached over into the next aisle and yanked the two needed bags.
“Hey, stay in your own aisle, don’t take my bags,” the motorized red motor scooter chair guy loudly bellows. Both cashier’s eyes widened. I heard him, but ignored him, as I continued to bag.
A chunky, 65-ish guy in a Lark of all things: a fat f*ck (oops) that has one of those “looks like trouble faces” about him. He’s not “handicap” per say because, as I sat in the car with mom — after the fact — I watched him as my curiosity got the best of me; I wanted to see what he does: Yes, he gets up walks just fine — without a limp — from one side of car to the other. He loads his bags, gets in the car just dandy. So, he probably just can’t walk long distances due to his weight; possibly arthritic knees. Who knows.
Maybe, considering his ornery attitude on life that leads to meltdowns over plastic bags . . . he is just plain junk-food lazy and, like Doug Heffernan (more U.S television references), if he doesn’t have to walk: he won’t.
The exact model! I kid you not!
So, I ignored him as I bagged. As I go from register end cap and turn to the cart to place the bags: I make eye contact.
“Yeah, I am talking to you!” he daggers at me, his face is visibly red. His nose is scrunched; he eyes thinned.
I kept about my business; he continued his burn-a-hole-gaze through me via my peripheral vision. “You believe the nerve of this guy, like he’s the only one in the world. Reaching over taking my bags,” he bellows to his cashier. She continues to scan his items without comment.
“Give me my plastic grocery bag or give me death!”
— Patrick Henry, 2025
Yes, Lark-guy was genuinely pissed off; you could see the ANGER in his face. I seriously thought he’d rise out of the Lark. I seriously thought I may have to defend myself — against a guy in a wheelchair, or if he can’t rise: he’d toss a can of beets at me. Mind you, he’s not at the end cap of his register aisle where his meager food haul is collecting: he’s back in the aisle near the register watching the charges scroll on the register screen as his clerk scans. I am no where near him when I pinch those two plastic bags.
Now, our cashier has wide eyes. The other cashier’s face has I-can’t-believe-this smirk on her face. Mom’s looking at me in shock as she tap-pays for the groceries. As we leave, we do not look back at angry wheelchair guy; however, he is still staring us down via our peripherals. He wanted a response. He wanted a fight: verbal or physical.
“Oh, my god. I am so proud of you,” mom says as we cross-exit the automatic doors’ threshold to freedom. “You handled that perfectly. I thought he was going to hit you.”
So, I always take the cart back inside the grocery store — any store, be it a Target, Walmart, or any mart. I’m OCD that way, plus: I am getting in those extra, healthy steps. What am I saying? It’s not OCD. It’s being a respectful, good human being by picking up after yourself, as it were.
“No, don’t go back inside. He’s still in there,” mom warns.
“I haven’t hit anyone since the 10th grade. I am not going to break my vow and hit a guy over plastic grocery bags — especially a handicapped one,” as I remind mom of my high school incident: the last time I ever hit someone.
INT. SCHOOL CAFETERIA — DAY
A jello cup flies through the air to the sounds of kids gathering for and eating lunch.
BEGIN FLASHBACK:
The Cafeteria Jello Incident
As I held my tray of dried-out hamburger, tater tots, and corn and walked passed my bully’s table: He tossed his paper-molded jello at me, stained my cherished April Wine concert tee-shirt, and called me a “f*ggot,” as sexually confused and repressed bullies did back in those less understanding, non-inclusive analog-and-celluloid days of yore. His posse — now I know how Roger Wilson felt during his alleged encounter with Leonardo Dicaprio’s “pussy possy” ¹ — chuckled, as the “posses” of even weaker followers of the bully, always do.
It was a moment where I had enough.
So, while he was disadvantaged-seated, I nonetheless headlocked my bully (hey, I got headlocked and into-the-lockers shoved a more than a few times by him) and got in three solid shots to his head before a dean and two football-bred cafeteria monitors-for-school-credit (none from our school made the NFL . . . or even the semipros, natch) pulled me off my bully and dragged me — and him — to the front office.
Upset. I puked on my shoes.
In that moment: I blacked out. As those punches landed; the feel of my curled knuckles hitting skull . . . a sick feeling washed over me. It was the worst feeling I had ever experienced in my life. Total blindness. Darkness. An emotional upheaval surging my blood vessels and nervous system cutting through the dead blackness.
Needless to say: I was the “villain” of this scenario in the eyes of the Dean; the very same “counselor” I made an appointment with a week prior to speak with: with a heart-felt request to transfer me out of the gym and math classes I shared with my bully.
“I can avoid him the rest of the day, please, transfer me. I’ll just sit in the L.C (aka “The Learning Center,” for the given-up incorrigibles) and do the math assignments.”
Instead, I got convoluted reasons on how the “licensed” counseling dean couldn’t, can’t, won’t, wouldn’t, shouldn’t — all in the name of “education” and I have to be with a “certified teacher” for the math course and “a student has to complete gym credits. You can’t not take gym. It’s a state law.”
“I didn’t say I don’t want to take gym. I just want transferred into a different gym class in another period.”
Nope. Impossible. Can’t be done, the Dean tells me. Class room size. Bar charts. Graphs or whatever the reasons he concocted not to help me.
So, now . . . I am in his office, lectured and chastised. “You can’t just go around sucker punching defenseless people sitting while eating their lunch,” the Dean reasons. The fact that I had a jello cup thrown at me — isn’t resonating in his Ph. D. mind with whatever useless teaching degree he possesses.
“I came here last week asking you for help and you did nothing to help me,” I replied. “I told both of my teachers like you told me. They told me “they’re not babysitters” and “there’s 30 other students, not just me.”
So, for defending myself from a year of bullying, I got a choice of three strikes of the paddle or three-days suspension. My bully got no choice: he was given a three-days suspension.
“Well, your son is no angel, here, either. He did push this young man to his limits,” the Dean tells the bully’s obviously defending “my son’s a good boy” mom over the phone. “No, he’s not going to be arrested and the police are not going to be called over a school yard scuffle,” the Dean gazes at me. Yes, it seems, over-reacting bully-mom is as much a sociopath as her son. (She and angry Lark-guy would make a great couple . . . and produce another bully-boy.)
So, since I was tanking my Algebra II course, anyway — as I kept having pencils thrown at me, spitballs shot at me, and even a tack placed on my chair before bell by the d*ckhead kid sitting next to me at the front of the dean’s desk — I took the three-days suspension: I needed the vacation. Oh, I forgot: there was one headlock bum-rush into a filing cabinet — which the math teacher saw and scoffed.
Deans. School counselors (most teachers). Both are absolutely useless tax payer drains on county school boards. They “dean” and “counsel” nothing. Absolute zero. They’re great at drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes — on campus where smoking is banned — though. Yeah, there’s always time for a nicotine and caffeine jolt, but not helping the kids, you know, the ones they gave up on and tossed into the “L.C” and forgot. The “learning disabled” they disposed. And the ones being pummeled down by the fence line while you enjoy your ciggy and coffee under the pavilion.
Ugh. Back to the Jello bully.
After I got in my lunch room shots: My bully never bothered me again and his posse gave me a wide berth because, back then: a good ass-kicking was enough to make it all stop. Yes, even the posse was afraid of me now because: no one wants their skull pummeled by a fist.
In our new, digitally-infected today: My bully would have returned with a weapon and a planned retaliatory strike that would have been cheered on by other students who filmed the assault and posted it to TikTok because their social virality is more important than helping their fellow man in the throws of an assault. Oh, and the bully would have written about it on his social media prior, had it pointed out to the school, who subsequently dismissed it — with convoluted, Ph. D. reasoning about the post (or any innocent of assault) being made “off campus and out of our purview” and “infringing on his right to free speech.”
And, we breath, deep. . . .
Years later . . . as I gained an understanding in religions and philosophy, I understood what that “sick” feeling was that washed over my body and shut down my vision as my fist met another’s skull: I was misusing my freewill. I utilized my freewill — even though my bully was constantly violating my own — to impeded his freewill; however, since he was a clinical narcissist and sociopath: he found happiness in the adrenal and endorphin rush of impeding the freewill of others. Me: the adrenals and endorphins made me ill — to the point I went blind-into-darkness.
So, on that day: I vowed that I would never, ever, allow that evil, that emotional groundswell, to enter my soul. I would never, ever, raise a hand to another human.
I never have.
Meanwhile . . . when my bully stands before our maker, he must relive the anguish, the pain he inflicted on others across his entire, pitiful cycle life before he can reincarnate to the next life. Hopefully, he’ll learn from the experience and make better choices in that life.
END FLASHBACK:
So, since one can exit through the automatic entry in-doors — they open only from the outside and will not open from the inside — one must loop back out of the store through the exit doors. As I exit, there he is: Angry Wheelchair Lark-guy is just outside the doors, in the grocery store breezeway of the shopping center, his back to me, penny-fiddling with his lottery scratch tickets.
Since fate is a cruel mistress: he probably won, big.
Anyway . . . referring back to the crusty old shuffle foot guy offended by my goose conversation and Billy-Bob the redneck offended I didn’t commit vehicular homicide against a lizard: no one watched a security-camera complemented “Handicap man sucker punched at a local grocery store” report on the local morning news. I strolled the higher path of spiritual consciousness and walked passed “Mr. Lark” to the car. Did I fall into his peripherals? Did he hold back saying something? Don’t know. Don’t care. If his friends — if he even has any, and they were also handicapped in Larks —would they have Seinfeldian-proclaimed, “Get the bikes!” and chase me to my car?
Oh, if you really knew me: my obsessive Seinfeld episode cross-referencing to life incidents would annoy you. Jerry Seinfeld’s comedic brilliance helps put a spin on things so I can continue to love life.
‘You Can’t Live With Them’
“ALL people are like women: You can’t live with them . . . and you can’t live with them,” my bastard of a late, chauvinistic uncle said to my meek-as-a-bird, Edith Bunker-sweetheart-of-an aunt during a Christmas holiday party evening of my youth. As my dad never spoke that way in that tone to my mom: it was a shocker. My uncle frightened me: he was as loud as he was rude as he was uncouth as he chain-smoked and guzzled his Black Label beers. (No, while he had all the requirements for the job — my cousins genuinely would shudder when his voice raised — he never became a school guidance counselor.)
It was teaching moment.
First, I’ve never taken that tone with any woman I’ve dated or established relationships. I never took up smoking (tobacco or weed) and never consumed alcohol. There was another uncle my dad and I would fish with: He’d get so drunk that he’d stagger in the folding lawn chair. Twice, he lost fishing rods: He passed out, drunk, sitting up: he caught a fish and the fish pulled the reel into the waters. Once, he stumbled and knocked a tackle boxed filled with a couple hundred dollars of high-end fishing lures and paraphernalia off a lake’s cliff-overhang into the murky depths.
Unlike my Christmas Party-uncle: I am not that cynical. You can live with people. It’s all in how you chose to live your life and exist with them. I chose not to be a “nebinski,” as my grandma would say, and I let people live their life without any freewill impediments from me.
So goes a day in the life . . . where you are kind to a goose, to a lizard, and take a plastic bag . . . and grab your coat and your hat and make the bus in seconds flat.
END
[1]: “Roger Wilson: Sex, Balbrick, and Rock ’n’ Roll: The music career of ‘Mickey’ from ‘Porky’s’ with reviews of his films ‘Second Time Lucky’ and ‘Thunder Alley’” by R.D Francis, Medium.
