Both are sad options.

Paul Reubens died a few days ago.

My stepfather died back in May.

David *Moo-ma died a few years ago.

*(not his real last name)

I don’t know why, age, boredom, morbidity, who knows, I googled a one-time friend from first grade. He was something of a hot heat. Being a hothead, he decided he wanted to fight me, so after I got my first bloody nose, he became an enemy.

I changed schools the next year, so I didn’t have to deal with him again. That is until I was about 20 years old. I was waiting in line outside the El Dorado Saloon in the Carmichael area of Sacramento. He was in line ahead of me and I recognized him. I was about a foot taller than him but that didn’t matter, as he didn’t recognize me. I watched him however and noted the same hotheaded attitude was still there.

2023 has been something of a strange year for me.

In googling David, I found out he was married and had at least one child. It is for them that I’m not using his real name.

So am I glad he’s gone? No.

He left a wife and child behind.

I hope he cooled down some and wasn’t an ass to them.

Have I ever been an ass to people, yeah sure, but not in the same ways. I’ve never started a fight. You come at me however and I’ll pound your ass. Granted, the 1st-grade version of me was too scared.

This brings to me another tangent. The fight I had when I was in the seventh grade. A neighborhood kid name Scott Chapstick* (again not his real name) went to the same grade school together and were on good terms. Well upon my leaving my k-6 school, I moved on to a different middle school from him. It was spring break, so almost a full year later, Scott rings my doorbell and calls me out into my front yard to fight. I had no beef with him but he did with me. Why, I’ll never know. Anyway, my dad had stayed home from work that day and so peeked out from the master bedroom as I walked out onto our front lawn where Scott tried taking some swings at me. I was a good four inches taller than Scott at the time and so ducked and leaned so Scott never landed a solid hit on me. I would reach out and slap the side of his head now and again and tell him to stop as I wasn’t looking to fight him. This went on and the angrier he soon became. In hindsight I guess I shouldn’t have been slapping him, what can I say, I was 13.

He then bum-rushed me and started punching and kicking my chest and face. I reached out and wrapped my arms around him and began squeezing. I squeezed the shit out of him. I heard things popping as whatever air he had in his lungs wheezed out. I then squeezed some more. I then lifted him up off his feet, raising him a good foot up, and then spun him onto his side before throwing him down. He landed against his rips in a crumbled mass upon my lawn. Even then I wasn’t going to throw him on his head, that’s just mean and things could go wrong real quick in the worst sort of way.

It took him about ten seconds to collect himself and pop back up and take another swing at me. I ducked and this time lunged towards him with another bear hug. I applied another squeeze and after another thirty seconds threw him back down onto his side again.

He got up once more. He got more of the same. It was after the fifth or sixth crumpling that he finally got the hint. The last of him I ever saw was him scurrying home while crying.

I’m not going to go into the fight I had while I was in the Army. Let’s just say he got the first hit and it took three guys to pull me off from him. That was the fight where he sucker punched me and I wasn’t too pleased about it.

I don’t wish harm upon any of them. We all make mistakes. Did they learn from their mistakes? Did they do the Dwight thing and own their mistakes?

I can only hope they found friends, lived good lives, and tried to make right with other people. Being a pig and chewing the bones of your enemies is not a way to live.

I’m rambling, I know it.

I just… don’t like death.

I don’t like narcissists.

I don’t like bullies.

I also don’t like Dwight-holes.

Is it wrong to have the darker part of me smile knowing I’ve outlasted them? Is it any darker than them being a Dwight-hole? Hard to say.

Was David Moo-ma a hero to his wife? Did Scott learn a lesson that day? Did he become a person for someone else to look up to? Paul Reubens was one of my heroes in that he shined through the darkness in a way that made so many of us smile. Thank you Paul. I’m trying to make people smile too, even the Dwight-holes.

What is the fun of having those you want to smile leave early?

That’s it for now.

Mootles all