“Winners always want the ball. . . when the game is on the line.” – The Replacements
Floors take on a lot of responsibility. It’s like everything falls to them.
There’s bad news:
No one is coming to save you.
But there’s good news:
No one is coming to save you.
Who will save us?
You will.
I think many people have this weird idea that other people are the answer. The last first aid course that I took before moving to Alaska ended up every scenario with, “and then you call 911.” To be fair, that’s a great idea in most places. I mean, unless you’re in a school.
The reason the murder rate has gone down over the last few decades isn’t because the idiots in Chicago have developed some sort of restraint in shooting each other. Nope. The medical folks are faster at getting those that were shot, and the docs are better at saving them.
The woman who helped The Mrs. deliver Pugsley quit. I guess she was having a midwife crisis.
But then I took a first aid class in Alaska.
Wow. Night and day. The content was much, much richer. The trainers went into much greater detail, and told us, “You’re not trained to do this. But if help isn’t coming, it might save a life.” The translation was simple. Phone coverage in Alaska sucks.
How bad was it? When we moved there, you couldn’t get a phone line, even if there was copper to your house. And cell service? The infrastructure consisted of what two bright schizophrenics that left the mainland United States could cobble together with the parts of a downed DC-3.
Everyone else was in the same boat. The message was clear.
“You’d better pay attention.”
The quiet part they didn’t say in class was: “because no one is coming to save you.”
When I woke up in the hospital, I told the doctor I couldn’t feel my legs. “That’s because we amputated your arms, maybe?”
When I ended up having to have my entire fingernail removed and the part under the nail stitched up because there was were two 55 gallon drums of salmon oil (I’m not making ANY of this up) on my property that I tried to open and the wedge slipped and pulled most of the nail off anyway, the doctor said, “Okay, this is going to hurt like hell for a few days. I’m going to prescribe you some (powerful painkiller). You probably won’t use them. Toss them in your backpack, so if you’re out moose hunting and break your leg, you might be able to limp out.”
Think that a doctor would say that in Nebraska?
He didn’t say the quiet part: “because no one is coming to save you.”
I prefer it that way. Really. Sure, I like Internet and electricity and cold beer and watching Trailer Park Boys. But I know the true answer.
When it goes bad?
No one is coming to save me.
Three friends were in the forest – the first said, “These are moose tracks.” The second said, “No, those are bear tracks.” The third was run over by a train.
That might sound depressing to some people, but not to me. I like me. And, I like my chances. To be fair, the person in this world I trust most in the world . . . is me. The next one is The Mrs. Third in line?
Maybe Sturm, Ruger, and Company? Yeah, they’ve always been straight shooters to me.
One of the lessons that I’ve walked away with in the last 20 years of my life is that:
- the police,
- the Constitution,
- the courts,
- the military,
- congress,
- and anyone sitting in the office of president
is not going to save me.
And they’re not coming to save you, either.
In one sense, it’s scary. I think that many people take the idea that someone, somewhere, is responsible for them. That’s simply not true for anyone over the age of, say, 14.
We are not passive actors in our lives. That idea is corrosive. We are in control.
That’s from an Edgar Allen Poem.
I think a lot of the idea that other people are responsible for us comes from the anonymity of large city life. To me, it’s odd – the more of us around, the less responsibility we feel, and the more we want to blame other people. Why? With so many people around, it brings anonymity. Anonymity makes it easy to avoid responsibility.
In Modern Mayberry? We know each other. We talk to each other. We are, in the end, responsible. I go to dinner, and the owner of the restaurant greets me, and (from time to time) brings a bottle by the table and pours each of us a shot.
Why?
Our lives are not anonymous. It’s a community. Are we responsible for ourselves? Certainly. But in a small town, we understand that we help each other. And he can go home and tell his wife he wasn’t really drinking on the job.
“Tequila or vodka?” That’s how I’d start a marriage counseling session.
Our nation is fundamentally broken. I’d say that someone in New York City doesn’t care about Modern Mayberry, sitting here in flyover country. But they do. Most of them can’t even understand it, but what they do understand they despise.
That’s okay. I’m not responsible for them. And I certainly don’t want them to be responsible for me.
Only you can save you. Only you can save your family. And that’s still the good news: “Winners always want the ball . . . when the game is on the line.”
The people in Washington D.C.? They won’t save us.
You will.
And that’s the good news. Your life. Your future. Your family. Your country. They’re in your hands.
Would you change that for anything?
I wouldn’t. I like it when the ball is in my hands.
I wouldn’t change a thing.
“Remember, all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.” – The Matrix
