Back when I was a stronger…more resolute weakling – about a year or so ago – I would ask muggers and molesters if they wanted fries with that. They would quite often take me up on the offer and ask me to chip in 39 cents to supersize my loss. This is simply to characterize the fact that while I’ve always thought myself philosophically stone, in practice I slanted a little more naive and suckerish…a real Mayberry trust in my fellow man.

A particular experience recently returned to my mind. I was wandering the streets early one day, set to complete a catch and release tagging at the DMV with nothing but golden droppings pouring from my heart and similar rays spiraling from the eyes, my arms held out to the side like a 50’s cartoon character, just bobbing and swinging as though that were their unconcious state. It was…indeed…a grand day.

But then…BANG….CRASH…EXPLETIVES! I spin around to come face to face with a fuming – and also very angry – dirty old man whose one crow’s eye, filled with hate, is staring at me and his remaining orb a cockeye not to the sky, but to a plastic bag on the sidewalk filled with vodka and glass.

Heh Ha! It seems one of my squiggly arms glanced this man’s hand as he walked by carrying his two gallon jug of vodka…perhaps also in cheerful crudley-drawn bouncing arms as well…but doubtful.

Unfortunate.

Indeed, much more unfortunate than a common collision or simple misunderstanding. I didn’t simply knock someone’s newspaper out of their hands. I instead completely fucked the dreams and finances of a man who NEEDED a two gallon jug of vodka at 9AM in the morning.

I am apologizing…honestly…truly…and then fatalistically as the man lays in to me about me and my kind not understanding or caring, demanding that I give him money to replace his liquid teddy bear…perhaps with interest towards the new brain cells developed during this conversation that he must now re-kill.

Being a strong…resolute weakling, I give him more than it likely cost, apologize again, and walk away as he continues to call me, and my uncharacterized kind, terrible names. Clearly, I had not done enough and should have instead bought the replacement bottle for him, cut open his head with shards of glass from the recently perished, and poured the vodka directly onto his brain, massaging away all his hopes, dreams, and civility in large sloshing sparks and fizzles.

But there was no time to argue this point as I certainly could not keep the DMV waiting…and so onward conceptually christian solider I went. Now, however, all grandness and things golden were gone from the day, and my arms no longer swayed, instead stuck to my sides like two impotent, shriveled and diseased dongs. The piss poor emotion that image might cause in your head now was certainly in mine then, as hateful conspiracy theories began to dominate my thoughts.

And there might be truth to the best of them. Perhaps it was all a fantastic scam, a man walking the street with a vodka bottle filled with water looking for some sucker to bump into and guilt into buying a brand new bottle…100% proof profit. Rinse and repeat.

Perhaps this is a commonly known scam that I simply did not have the luxury of knowing. Sunday school fails me again…

Although I can appreciate the semi-brilliance of the plan…I have been unable to understand the unrelenting hate that I was subjected to…until tonight.

I had made a properly ordained pilgrimage to Baskin Robbins to procure massive quantities of much needed Jamocha Oreo ice cream. The cashier offered me a bag, but I instead chose the high road, doing my part to surely save the environment… precariously schlepping the non-biodegradable tub of dairy refreshment by force of will alone.

During my block and a half travel home, I perceived every passerby and those spied on the threatening horizon as a fierce enemy who would willingly or accidentally cause damage to the loved one I carried by my side. I clutched the tub close and tight to my bosom, securely enveloped by both of my previously bouncing arms. Slanty-eyed and hateful, I flashed back to the previously described incident and formed a queer kinship with that particular fellow man.

So help me Giton! If anyone causes harm to my cherished prize, I would have no choice but to kill them – they and their kind…which would be…um…carbon-based…bipeds? Luckily, I took better care of my precious cargo and the world survived at least that night.

However, the kinship birthed by this incident mutated violently into virulent, insidious thoughts culminating in a dirty criminal scheme. Whether originally fictional or not, could I apply the same scam to that which I needed most, filling an empty ice cream vat with my own excrement and orchestrating a collision with some too-well-intentioned soul to guilt them into buying me a “replacement” bucket of Jamocha Oreo ice cream. The free time is unfortunately mine for this truly effective recycling effort.

I’m Thomas K…and I’m not.