Beware of the man with deep red eyes May 27, 1985

 Dear Nasty:

For years, May has been a rough month for me to plow through. Partly because my birthday is in the middle of it. Partly because fate has someone managed to arrange most of my financial disasters to come about this particular time of year.

The May before you left for South Carolina, for instance, unemployment unexpectedly stopped – only for three weeks as it turned out – raising fear of eviction and starvation.

But this isn’t a recent development. Month of May disasters go as far back as I can remember.

When I was seven, I was scheduled to get my first holy communion with the rest of my class. I caught the measles, and then had to walk up the long aisle in church the next week with a kid named Thomas Tannis, who had also missed out on getting his communion with the others. That happened to be mother’s day and the church was particularly crowed and so added to my embarrassment.

A good Freudian head shrink would say that I brought these disasters on myself, and perhaps was seeking to reverse my birth. These quacks are big on back to the womb theories. How I brought about catching measles deliberately still escapes me.

Or how I managed to catch pink eye this year.

That’s right, pink eye. If you haven’t been lucky enough to catch it, my advice to you is: don’t.

It’s not really serious. Just a cold in the eye brought on by some kind of fungus. It turned my eyes dark red with my neighbor and best friend, Pauly (George on the tape I sent you) calling me a vampire.

Nobody wanted to come near me fearing they might catch it, too. Apparently, it is more contagious than the plague.  You can catch it standing on bus stop if the wind blows the wrong way.

I missed three days work at one job, and four days at another. The night guard at the third job saw me the first day and said he’d had it, and it wasn’t serious.

“Just get some eye wash,” he told me.

Which shows just how much he knows. The doctor said the worst cases last as long as ten days and with proper treatment, half as long. The night guard’s case took three weeks. I told him to get another doctor.

The head doctors are probably right about my May dilemma. I’ve been weak from too much work and too much worry. The very day my eyes turned red I had just settled a court case involving my ex-wife.

I decided to cut back a little on work, even though it will hurt my financially. Health is more important.

As far as the childhood dream you mentioned in your letter, some people do live happily ever after. But don’t count on Freud to give you any comfort there. He blames birth for every major trauma people feel through the rest of their lives.

Frankly, I’d rather have a month like May where I can expect disasters rather than have them spring on me out of the blue. Besides, by June, everything seems to get back to normal.

As far as people being greedy, as you say, I think that’s just a way people cope with pain, trying to heal some deep psychological wound by owning things, although I suspect it’s about as effective as people trying to cure cancer with aspirin.

I think we live at a time when people who haven’t earned anything in their lives envy those who have and try in some ways to take away from the haves so they can have some of that for themselves.

The Republican platform in Dallas talked about “Opportunities for all,” while the liberal left isn’t satisfied with opportunities, they want everybody to get the same thing whether or not their earned it themselves.

Sure, there are inequalities. But if you listen to the Democrats, nobody will earn anything and have it given to them. Instead of building opportunities for everybody, the Democrats will rob the rich to pay the poor – without anyone earning anything. It’s no wonder the rich get greedy. They see everybody’s hand out asking for what the rich earned.

If you want to create an equitable society, then everybody should have their education paid all the way through college and grad school, then send people out into the work force with the skills they need. As it is, only the rich and the very poor (usually people of color) get school paid for, while working poor and middle class pay not only for themselves, but for the poor people, too.

But I’m getting carried away only because I will likely be headed back to college shortly and haven’t yet figured out how I’m going to pay for it.

I suspect I’m preaching to choir. Stay healthy, Cuz, and be warry of people with deep red eyes.


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