G. K. Wuori

Complaints

The other day I walked over to Mother Goose Park to escape the withering heat we’ve been enduring lately. It’s a nice shady place with, often, a breeze wafting in over the river from the cornfields.

Sometimes I’ll run into someone I know over there and this day was no exception. Pete the Pissed* (as he’s fondly known in town) was sitting on the La-Z-Boy the parks people put in the bandshell for some of the old-timers to sit on. I like running into Pete. I’m an optimist by nature and Pete’s pretty good at puncturing that bubble and filling me in on things that are wrong with the world. Our conversation follows.

“Mind if I join you?” I said, sitting down on the hard concrete floor.

“No one’s going to rip your spleen from your guts if you do,” he said.

“What’s the good word, my friend?” I said.

“The pedophile** died,” he said.

“I know,” I said, “though I think he was a good bit more than that. I heard him characterized on the BBC this morning that he was the greatest entertainer who ever lived. Dancer, singer, songwriter – he did it all.”

“He did it to kids,” Pete said.

“We don’t know that,” I said. “He was never convicted.”

“It’s a year ago, say, and your kid comes home from a tour of the man’s mansion and says he’s been invited to spend the weekend there. Would you let him go?”

“I’m not sure I’d want my kid exposed to any of that Hollywood fluff and nonsense,” I said.

“Speaking of which,” Pete began, “we got nearly a hundred people dying from a bomb blast in Baghdad but all day long the internet news is showing pictures of Farah Fawcett.”

“Another legend gone,” I said.

“A legend?” Pete said. “She had a total lack of talent she compensated for with a beautiful head of hair. We’re mourning Hollywood hair now? Has it come to that?”

You can see by now, perhaps, why Pete can be fun, if irritating, to talk to. After I’d failed at trying to defend Farah Fawcett with a paean to Charlie’s Angels, Pete took off on the passing this week of talk show icon, Ed McMahon.

“…babbling sidekick to a C-grade comedian whose job was to provide D-grade late night entertainment to people who hadn’t worked hard enough during the day to go to sleep. Do we ever give any real thought to the people we say we admire?”

“Maybe we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,” I said. “I think that’s an old lesson.”

“There’s no such thing as a free pass, buddy boy,” Pete said. “Just because you’ve checked out doesn’t mean that the mess you made doesn’t have to be cleaned up, or that we’re not supposed to remember who made the mess.”

“Okay,” I finally said.

“Anyway, none of that’s why I’m pissed today,” he said.

“You might have fooled me on that one,” I said.

“It’s Ken Pagano,” he said.

“Go on,” I said. “I have no idea who Ken Pagano is.”

“A preacher,” said Pete. “Assembly of God down in Louisville. In order to celebrate the Fourth of July he wants all of his parishioners to come to church with guns. He says not every Christian congregation is pacifist and that this country was founded on guns. He’s going to preach on guns and he’s going to have gun safety demonstrations.”

“Sounds to me like he’s just standing tall and proud on a number of constitutional issues,” I said. “Or better yet – rights. Freedoms.”

“Jesus,” Pete said. “Do you have Crunch ‘n Munch for brains? Constitutional freedom is usually the last haven of the ignorant as they pursue the idiotic.”

“I’m not saying I approve of what he’s doing,” I said.

“I’m sure he’s breathlessly awaiting your opinion,” said Pete. “Listen. They raise the chalice up as an offering of Jesus’ blood to his Father. Right?”

“I believe that’s right,” I said.

“And the bread?” he said.

“Same thing,” I said.

“And the gun?” he said.

“What?”

“It’s like you’re pointing Jesus’ gun toward his Father, right?”

“If you say so, Pete,” I said.

“Which a boy shouldn’t do, should he?” Pete said. “Point a gun at his Father.”

“He should not,” I said. “We can certainly agree on that.”

“Do you suppose Jesus had a gun?” Pete said.

“Unlikely,” I said. “They weren’t invented in his time.”

“You’re smarter than you look, my friend,” Pete said. “Any guns in the Bible?”

“Nope,” I said. “Same reason.”

“So these people,” he began, “this isn’t actually a church thing. They’re just getting together to honor their guns.”

“Sounds about like that’s it,” I said.

“Like maybe they could have gotten together to honor their cars or their TV’s or their cellphones,” he said.

“Sure,” I said.

“I believe our churches need some help,” he said.

Pete started then on a long riff about the South Carolina governor and his Argentinean cutie. Just once, he said, he’d like to see one of those tearful televised confessions only this time with the sudden appearance of a group of Assembly of God folks, all carrying guns and being led by the governor’s wife.

I told Pete I was sorry to leave but I had to go home and honor my lawn mower.


G. K. Wuori © 2009
Photoillustration by the author


* ** Pete the Pissed is fictional. That doesn’t seem to be true of Michael Jackson, though we don’t know that conclusively.