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Greetings and Salutations to All my Kith and Kin and All the Ships in Outer Space:
As I'm composing this e-mail, I've taken my prescribed medication, which is starting to take effect, so I'm a little bit dopey.
DOMINO'S just now delivered my large pepperoni and sliced Italian sausage pizza, with a side order of chocolate lava cakes for dessert, and two (02) large bottles of BARQ'S root beer.
Since I'm one of their regular customers, they gave me a secret code that will allow me to get a thirty percent (30%) discount on future orders from DOMINO'S.
Ain't that neat?
I started to watch the movie, "HEAT", on the ENCORE SUSPENSE channel of SENIOR TV, but the screen resolution is not as good as it would be if I were watching it in High Definition, so I placed an order at the AMAZON web site for the DVD, which is scheduled to arrive on Friday 31 May 2013.
I've never seen the three (03) hour long 1995 movie, "HEAT", but it looks like a real winner, so I'm looking forward to adding it to my DVD library, and enjoying it at my leisure.
While I enjoy my pizza and root beer, I reckon I'll switch over to the USA NETWORK High Definition channel and watch a marathon of back to back episodes of "LAW AND ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT".
Another of my favorite television shows is "CRIMINAL MINDS", and among my favorite movies, is "THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS", along with its associated sequels, which is why I'm writing this e-mail.
It was a scene from one of those movies or television programs, where a police officer or attorney is visiting a prison inmate, and you see them facing each other on opposite sides of the bars, which initially aroused my curiosity.
What is it that causes men to choose different paths in life?
Why does one man choose to do evil, while another man, both of them with the same environment, background, and influences, choose to do good?
I'm fascinated by this psychological enigma.
Why does a man choose to be a murderer?
Oh, I don't mean just by accidental circumstances causing unintended consequences.
No, I'm referring to cold blooded, carefully plotted, intentional, premeditated murder in the first degree.
Or, after having killed one person, the malefactor deliberately decides to kill again - - - ,
And again - - - , and again - - - , ad infinitum.
It can't be a mere question of having been influenced by an environment and/or history of being subjected to abuse, deprivation, and/or degradation, for other men with that same set of circumstances are able to overcome and/or ignore the satanic enticings, and manage to live worthwhile, positive lives, contributing good to society, rather than evil.
So, why does someone become a murderer and/or a sexual predator?
I've worked in a state prison, and I've been a police officer, firefighter, medic, and went to war when I was a soldier in the United States Army.
Yet, my own personal life was filled with traumatic experiences almost from the day I was born, for as an eighteen (18) month old baby, when my siblings and I were abandoned by our biological parents, I was discovered by child welfare investigators to be eating from the toilet.
I'm very grateful to my parents for adopting me, giving me their name and heritage, and attempting to raise me in a normal Christian family.
In that previous sentence, I used the word, "attempted", because my teenage years, due to the extremities of my conduct during repetitious displays of ungovernable adolescent rebellion, ultimately resulted in my lengthy confinement in a maximum security facility for the criminally insane.
In that awful horror, I endured repeated electric shock treatments (the old fashioned way - - - , not the way it's done now), was given experimental psychotropic drugs, and was frequently victimized by my fellow inmates, who, being my only associates, companions, and/or "friends", influenced me with their deviance and perversion.
One of my most vivid memories of those hellish years of terror was, when I was seventeen (17) years old, I was housed in one of the wards specifically designated for patients doomed to NEVER be released, and being punished for some minor disciplinary infraction, locked up in a cold, bare isolation room, completely naked, and injected with a powerful psychotropic drug.
Forlornly, I realized I was at the end of the line, completely without hope, knowing that I would never finish high school, never go to college, never serve in the Armed Forces, never drive a car, never fire a gun, never have a girlfriend, never get married, and never experience sexual intercourse with a female (which, after all, IS the greatest ambition for typical adolescent males, and foremost in every second of our conscious thinking).
So, just imagine what I looked and acted like when, years later, I was released back into society as a fully grown adult male, with no education or vocational preparation?
I was truly blessed.
I did not become a serial murderer and/or a sexual predator.
Penniless, I hitch-hiked all over the continental United States of America, subsisting as a common manual laborer, often hungry and/or homeless.
However, VERY significant personal events developed.
At the age of twenty-one (21), I was baptized as a convert in The Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-day Saints (i.e., the so-called "Mormon" church).
Some of the young men in the Church literally took me physically by the hand and taught me to walk like a normal human being, and speak in a normal tone of voice.
AND - - - ,
Miracle of miraculous miracles, I even had - - - ,
That seemingly unattainable dream of EACH and EVERY healthy, red-blooded, all-American, physically mature male - - - ,
A genuine feminine, female GIRLFRIEND who was a bonafide member of the opposite sex!
Gosh, gee whillikers, ain't that SOMETHING?
WOW!
After a few months, I took, and passed, the General Educational Development (i.e., "G.E.D.") High School Equivalency test.
At that same time, America's war in the old Republic of Viet Nam was very unpopular and controversial, with multitudes of young American males refusing to serve, burning their draft cards, going to prison, seeking sanctuary in Canada, or as military deserters, avoiding military justice by hiding out in Sweden.
On the other hand, painfully aware of the handicap of my own record of being institutionalized as a mental patient, I knew I had but one very slim chance at turning my life around and having a worthwhile future.
Thus, I wrote a letter to the President of the United States of America, who at that time was Lyndon Baines Johnson, explaining my situation, while simultaneously reminding him of the aversion and/or resistance to military service that my peers were engaged in, and requesting that my Draft Board classification be changed, so that I would be eligible for military service.
That's how I was able to enter the United States Army, enabling me to take college courses in my spare time, experience a variety of assignments, and travel to several foreign countries, including an inspiring tour of the land of Israel, seeing where Jesus, the Christ, and His apostles, walked during His mortal ministry.
But, back to the subject of this message - - - ,
WHY???
Can anyone explain this mystery?
Why are there good guys and bad guys?
What makes us different from each other?
Why do we choose different paths in our lives?
It really is a puzzlement, ain't it?
I remember when I was a boy, of being told of a time that John Wesley, upon observing a derelict drunken man, lying in his filth, ragged, and sick, said, "There, but for the Grace of God, go I."
(Actually, it was John Bradford who said that, not John Wesley, and it wasn't about a drunken man, but in reference to seeing a criminal condemned to death.)
Actually, that invites another question, of what are the final thoughts of a condemned felon, as he is about to be executed?
How overwhelmingly depressing it must feel, to have lived such a useless life, and to be so ignobly vacating mortality, and indeed, with such SHAME!
Oh, how divided we are, in acceptance or rejection, by the motivation of our morality!
So, what are your own thoughts on this subject?
I reckon I really am blessed, don't you?
And, oh, how blessed we ALL are, each and everyone of us, for no matter how wicked, deviant, or perverted we or our fellow man may be, never the less, as long as we still have the breath of life within us, there will always be opportunities for repentance, reclamation, redemption, restitution, atonement, and forgiveness.
With even a miniscule glimmer of hope, we CAN climb out of the gutter.
I sure hope that, in whatever time I might have left to me in this frail mortality, I don't cause any of my kin undue embarrassment and shame by choosing the path of wickedness and dishonor.
Finally, to quote the Charles Dickens character, Tiny Tim - - - ,
"God bless us, every one!"
Thank you.
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