Free Will

God gives man free will. Free will to decapitate babies. It's man's free will. But, wait, thy will be done. it's man's free will, but thy will be done. All right, now I understand. 

Did You Poop Today?

That wasn't completely it, but kinda. Colleen was the quite hot, quite tatted, quite pregnant nurse during one of my stays. People go to places. I do. And other people. When society doesn't know what else to do. Generally it's jail, I think. But I hadn't risen to the criminality level of extended incarceration in a traditional facility. And I never intended to harm anyone else. That's one of the standards, more or less.

But it is good for hospitalization. So Colleen, who surely wanted to be there all pregnant dealing with psych-ward patients, asked each morning: "Did you poop today?" 

I was like, "Did you?" She rolled her eyes back a few seconds and said, "Yup."

"Well, then, yes." If Colleen, baby-swollen and tatted like all unreal and hot, then so could I acknowledge.

My mother used to say, "Go shit in your hat." I don't know if it was a Depression-era thing or what. That was Level 1.

Level 2: "Go shit in your hat, Harry." Again, Depression-era references aren't my specialty, but she raised the bar. She called me Harry. Not my name, but "Harry" takes it up a notch. I wouldn't choose to shit in my hat. I have a bunch of hats. Not for shitting. And why did "Harry" get a bad rap? Harry Houdini was popular then, I think. I'm not looking anything up on the Interwebs because I prefer to challenge my recollection. I think Harry Hamlin was unborn. Harry Connick Sr. must have been alive. Harry the Royal, I don't know. His wife was on that show. I watched. It sucked. I don't know nothin' about no Harry Styles.

Level 3: "You go shit in your hat, Harry, and put it on your head." The put-it-on-your-head, Harry, aspect sets it apart. Even if she wanted me to shit in all my hats and put them on my head, I wouldn't have. I didn't. "Ma, are you gonna wash those hats after I shit in them?"

So I was standing there as Nurse Colleen entered my info for that day. I theretofore had operated under the delusion that my life had a greater meaning. I had embarked on a quest for greater meaning. I landed myself on the psych ward. And she was like, "You poop?" The distillation had come full circle.

Jingle Bells

 A horse clopped along the street recently. He exhibited workmanlike qualities. He pulled people in a sleigh. A true one-horse open sleigh. Staggering. 

But horses changed the complexion of the American West. Apparently. Conventional wisdom suggests horses came, via the Spanish, to the West in the 14-1500s. Then the Comanches adopted the horse and became the baddest of the bad-ass Indians.