Work with me here. Santa keeps a list of who is naughty and nice, right? Well, he’s busy so I suppose he has little elf helpers to do things like keep the Naughty and Nice list. The Nice list is full of boring people who never push the boundaries or have any “real” fun. I’m not interested in that list. I want the Naughty list.

The Naughty list would naturally be kept by a bad elf. The one who doesn’t make good toys or clean his room. He probably gets in trouble for joy-riding the reindeer and eating Santa’s cookies, too. Now, think about that list, full of troublemakers, the ones who color outside the lines and don’t want to follow the crown. Bad girls and boys. They are going to be interesting at the very least. I want to know who to keep an eye on in the future.

And, if Santa keeps a Naughty and Nice list for adults, I wouldn’t mind having a look at that while I was at it. It would make for an interesting dating app.

I’m not sure if this is an epiphany.  I was thinking about how proud people are of where they attended school, West Point, Annapolis, Ivey League, or what service they were in, leading the pack are the Marines, Army, Navy Air Force, even Coasties chime in.  I started to wonder why.

I have a thought.  At a formative period in our lives, we join something greater than ourselves, with history and heritage.  They tell us who we are.  You are part of a great tradition, something that extends back to the days of yore and steeped into the very fabric of our nation.  They point to alums and say, you can achieve greatness, be remembered.  “You are forever part of the long gray line”, it stretches behind you and ahead into the future.  I know, we had a Navy before any other service.  It may have started in Tun’s Tavern, but if you ask any Marine, he was borne on Paris Island and he is immortal because the Corps lives on.  It’s the thing that defines us somehow.  Like being Christian or Buddhist.

The civilian equivalent today are fringe groups, protesting what they think are evils of society.  BLM, protesting perceived racism and a “Genocidal attack on Young Black men” (I tried to find the original quote, it’s a catch phrase now).  White Supremacists are almost a caricature, so few take them seriously.  If it weren’t for media hype, they would probably fade away.  Then there is ANTIFA, dressed in black, covering their faces with bandanas, walking the edge of criminality and threatening the weak, as long as there are no police around.  They claim to be protesting fascism, yet attempt to use force and violence to compel other to obey their directives.

Today is the 118th Army-Navy game.  As much a tradition of the two academies as anything else.  These young men all of them, 18 – 22, preparing to enter their service to our nation, in exchange for pittance, a formal education, heaped with stress and competition so they can serve in hard and dangerous careers.  Maybe, this would be a better target for ANTIFA than Macy’s or Starbucks.  They could all converge on the Linc and intimidate the old, decrepit war mongers who have gathered to cheer their drone replacements in their violent traditional mock combat.

Or maybe, they would find out that some people aren’t interested in their nonsense and get the crap kicked out of them.  I’ve fought with and against Marines, always fun and entertaining.  Some of those Navy guys are pretty rough around the edges.  There aren’t enough cops in Philly to even slow down a brawl that big.

Someone should get on Twitter or somethin and get the ball rolling.  We may just have a new tradition.  Let’s use the Army-Navy game to tell these ANTIFA guys who they are.

via Daily Prompt: Patina

Patina; the effect of aging and discoloration on metal, stone, leather or wood, that creates a pattern, often found pleasing to the eye, often acts as a protective covering to the materiel beneath.

On people, we would call the same thing freckles.  Often found on the cute button nose of children, who spend time running and laughing in the sun.  Laugh lines, maybe, around the eyes and a mouth accustomed to bright, upturned expressions.  Wrinkles, gracing the aged, revealing the years in folds of skin that isn’t taunt with youth and resilience anymore.  Calluses, from tools and labor, protecting the soft skin beneath.  Scars, showing the effort and strain of living rough, enduring and recovering.  The patina of our lives.

After fifty years, I added quite a bit of color to my skin.  The tattoos are as much mine as the scars.  I don’t want to be restored to the original, I had a lot  of fun earning my patina, that unique patina that is mine alone.

via Daily Prompt: Carousel

“Don’t pay to be the clown.”  That’s it.  My great advise to the world.  It’s not even mine, just a hand me down from wiser than I.

Picture the midway.  The smell of cotton candy and those damn funnel cakes tempting you.  Flashing lights of games and carnies hawking the chance to win the one in a million prize, they are cheaper if  you order in bulk.  Farther on the rides, more lights, high tech gears and hydraulics spinning and clacking, screams and laughs.  But in the middle, majestic, bright colors with white lights, painted horses, dragons, dolphins and seahorses, old timey cars or trains.  Brilliant and boring.  I always ride the carousel, wish it could run faster or be more exciting.  I ride it anyway.

Maybe it reminds me of when I was a child and the simple things could make me happy.  Make me laugh like clowns tumbling out of a tiny car, getting pies thrown in their face.

There is a secret about clowns.  It’s just makeup and wigs.  After we all leave, they are the ones that have to clean up.  haul the trash and shovel the elephant yard.  Hence the advise, never pay to be the clown.  Eat the cotton candy.  Play a rigged game for a Kewpie doll.  Ride the carousel

The phrase trained observer gets thrown around, cops, reporters, scientists.  It all comes down to the same thing, watching, taking note and remembering whatever you see and hear or sense.  Feel.

I’m watching again.  It sucks.  A friend is fighting.  I can’t send back up or ride in to kick someones ass who desperately deserves it.  I want to give in to my rage and destroy the threat, swallow the sun and use the power to crush my enemies and protect the ones I love.  Instead I watch.

I remember.  Laughing at stupid jokes.  Picking on each other because letting the true feelings show aren’t manly or tough.  Sharing the joy of hearing engines rumble and the communion of the road.  Good beer and bad food.  All of it.  I remember.  I’ll remember the fight, too.  The courage to try for one more day, because life and love are precious.

I’ll remember the feeling, the law of emotion.  For every feeling, there is the potential for an equal and opposite reaction.  The more we love, the more the loss hurts.

A politician.