(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . There's Something Wrong With That Boy On The Overpass [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-09 I’d just finished putting up this sign when I saw a little kid walk onto the far side of the overpass. It looked like a boy, maybe nine, with nobody else around. I thought “Something’s wrong...” the way one normally would seeing a little kid by himself out here. But also ‘Something’s wrong...’ in a way one normally wouldn’t: that this child was a threat somehow - someone to be more afraid of than afraid for. I didn’t see how that was possible, but there was something awfully odd about him — his hair, his clothes, the way he moved… Everything seemed slightly off but I couldn’t say exactly how — the way a TV movie can drive you insane until you realize it’s Canadian. With at least a hundred feet between us and the angle of the sun he was still firmly inside Rorshach territory, This weird fear was probably some glitch from my reptile brain: some ancient glandular sentinel in the brain stem following protocols established before our blood was even warm. When you’re retrofitting off something that old, you can expect a few bugs in the system. Especially when the prototype ate bugs. Usually these intuitive fears remain level or taper off, but this one kept growing and by the time the hundred feet between us had narrowed to sixty, my reptile brain was going apeshit. A shiver ran through me saying “All Hands On Deck!” letting me know that the Boys in the Brainstem had commandeered our central nervous system, which I found thrilling in a way that suggested they’d also broken into the adrenaline reserves. 2004 I have no intention of interfering with these reptilian renegades. Before we could start inventing things like piano concertos, hedge funds and celebrity gossip, we had to survive 200,000 years of fighting in the Protein Wars against creatures designed to hunt and kill, while we were designed more as appetizers. Without the paranoia and hair-trigger psychosis cultivated in our primordial days, the current Homo Sapien population would plummet from 8 billion down to a bucketful of bone fragments in some post-hominid Smithsonian. At thirty feet Memory is certain we know the boy from our childhood, prompting Logic and Reason to step in with a few words, and a guest speaker from Mental Health Services to remind us that history is rarely kind to those who witness the impossible. Sage advice, and in a few seconds, just before losing consciousness, I’m going to wish I’d heeded it. The kid stopped at about twelve feet away, looking me over with his hands on his hips before slowly shaking his head like a nine-year-old film director who’d specifically asked for someone entirely different. The details of his face were now perfectly clear and my mind divided into two camps: one seeing a long lost friend they couldn’t quite place and one that had placed him and was immediately regretting it. 2021 Ever wonder what you might say to your childhood self if you were to run into them? Yeah, me neither. I was going to say something like “Wait, I can explain!” but all that came out was a sort of a bleating sound and then I fainted. “Sadly, treason wouldn’t even be the ugliest thing about him” — 2018 “Corporations are not people.” — 2011 “Never Ever Vote Republican Again.” — 2017 “Reflect on a planet that doesn’t reflect.” — 2012 I don’t think I was out for very long. When I came to I was sitting on the curb hugging myself and rocking back and forth saying “No No No No No” over and over again. My childhood self was just a few feet away, slumped against the railing with his face buried in his arms, also saying “No No No No No No...” Not the most auspicious of beginnings I’ll admit, but at least on my end it wasn’t nearly as bad as it looked. Most of the fear and existential dread were played out after about fifteen or 2023 twenty “No”s. After that I was just freelancing. Turns out I really enjoy rocking back and forth and saying “No No No No No No…” And if I’d lost my mind, which circumstances seemed to suggest, there ‘d be plenty of time ahead for rocking and echolalia... now I needed to pull myself together and try to set a decent example for Junior. “I’m afraid that ship’s already sailed.” “Oh My God, he can hear my thoughts!” “That’s because you’re saying them out loud.” “Oh. So I am. Mind telling me what’s going on? And don’t pretend you don’t know.“ “I wanted to see the future.” “And?” “So I made a wish.” “You made a wish? Like from a genie?” “Kind of…” ”Oh… Okay, I get it.. You probably thought it’d be just like that story where the guy gets three wishes and everything turns out great and nothing goes wrong at all.” “There’s a story like that?” “NO! There isn’t a story like that! There’s never a story like that! How could you make a wish? That’s like the worst thing you can do!” 2023 “I didn’t think it was gonna work! It’s just that Dad took me to see a movie about 2001 for my birthday and everything looked so cool! And I figured by 2021 I’d have some really cool job on a spaceship or on the moon or something... Instead I’m on earth putting up signs that say ‘Science is Real…’ That’s not the same thing at all! ” “Wait: Are you saying ‘Hippie Lunatic’ wasn’t way up at the top of your list of ‘Things-I-Wanna-Be-When-I-Grow-Up?” “Frankly I was hoping for more of a James-Bond-in-Outer-Space kind of thing...” “Well, now that you mention it, so was I.” “You’re not really a lunatic are you?” ”If I wasn’t, would I be talking to you?” “Good point.” We argued a bit over which one of us was hallucinating and which one was a hallucination. I thought I had it cinched by comparing our drug histories, but he countered effectively with: “Try being nine again...” We compromised by agreeing to pretend that we were simply having the same dream at the same time fifty years apart. Somehow. “22% of our children live in poverty” — 2009 “GOP: This party sucks” — 2022 “Lock Him Up.” — 2017 “Endless War” — 2006 “Impeach” — 2005 “A Republic if you can keep it... from the Republicans” — 2021 He gestured at the sea of traffic below us and asked, “Now those cars down there: they’re pretty much just cars right? Same as we have?” “Yeah, but they’re a lot safer now. They’re much less polluting and get way better gas mileage.” “Great. Do they fly?” “No. Not really.” “I didn’t think so. Kind of a shame, what with all that room up there. I figured by now the sky would be full of… y’know what? I’m not even going to ask about the jet-packs.” “Yeah… that’s probably best.” 2017 “Mind if I ask just what it is you’ve all been doing for the last fifty years?” “That’s a good question: Let me think… We were watching TV.” “You… you were watching TV?” “Well, you and I not so much, but Americans in general. See, around 1980 it started having like a hundred channels. And it made us, you know… generally kind of stupid.” “Is that why you have to tell people that science is real?” “No, that’s a more specific kind of stupid. It also comes from the TV, but just certain channels, and it’s on the radio too — right now we’re having a deadly pandemic and for some reason part of the stupid agenda is to make people afraid of getting vaccinated.” “Fox News — Lying to Americans about Americans for 25 years” — 2021 “We used to be afraid of getting vaccinated too, remember? But then we turned seven!” “Yes we did my friend, yes we did... Hey! What’s wrong?” “What’s wrong? Everything! This is the future!? I thought we were gonna be astronauts going on important missions, not some hippie surrounded by a bunch of stupid babies!” “Trust me, as someone who knows everything that’s going to happen to you, not being an astronaut is the very least of your worries. But the critical aspect of being an astronaut isn’t being in space, or being cool or famous or even making money — it’s knowing that you’re on an important mission. Not many people get to feel that anymore. But if it helps at all, two kinds of people who do are astronauts and lunatics… So, uh... That didn’t really help, did it...” “This party sucks.” 2022 “No, not really.” “Well at my age I can’t remember what it was like to be your age wondering what you’d be like when you got to be my age. But I do remember what I was afraid might happen, and seeing that I’m pretty much the embodiment of at least half of your worst nightmares, I must say you’re being an awfully good sport about it.” “Don’t mention it.” “But you’re judging things almost entirely by appearances, and from a very limited vantage point at that. For example, you haven’t seen where we live.” “Oh yeah? Nice place?” “Hell no. It’d break your heart.” “Great.” “United in a firm belief that half of us are idiots.” 2017 “But you also don’t realize how thoroughly unimportant that is. You’re upset because you think we’re all a bunch of lazy, stupid babies? Listen kiddo, we’re a hell of a lot worse than that. If you knew what we’ve been doing… and keep doing, or just sat on our hands and allowed to continue… to this country,.. and to our planet… Well, you won’t worry so much about our apartment.” “Is there anything positive you could tell me about?” “Oh yeah, tons. Remember you’re only going by appearances, so what fears you have for our sanity are based on things like wild eyes and ragged clothes and whatnot. But I can assure you there’s a whole smorgasbord of really good reasons to fear for our sanity.” “That’s positive? How is that positive?” “You’ll see. Fearing for your sanity actually gets to be reassuring in situations where you’d have to be crazy not to. And believe me, there’s going to be lots of those.” “Oh boy. I can’t wait.” “Evidently not. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Have a seat kid: lemme tell you what’s gonna happen...” To Be Continued Below: Signs posted in September in Los Angeles and Bay Area [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/9/2194914/-There-s-Something-Wrong-With-That-Boy-On-The-Overpass?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/