About Thin Skin and Thick Walls

Post 410:

            Mea culpa, mea culpa. Time to unburden myself. But not too much. That’s just gross.

            I don’t react well to bad reviews or criticism. Can’t handle being ill-received on any level. Slights are not something I thrive on, though I imagine this makes me pretty average as far as the general populace goes.

            Adding to my wickedness is the fact that the whole thing about people getting easily offended bothers me to no end. It’s one of my least favorite things on Earth.

            To me, this feels like a new phenomenon. (But it ain’t)

            It’s the Internet. Eh.

            It’s the way people are raised.....

            It’s the education system. Mmmm.

            And on and on. Bull.

            Though it may seem otherwise, people have always taken themselves way too seriously. Whenever I need reminding, I go back to my Edgar Allan Poe. The Cask of Amontillado does a great job of coercing my brain to some semblance of rational thought.

            Odd that such a jacked-up story would help, but there you go.

            The tale is about a guy that is so pissed at another guy, he entombs the dude alive. That’s pretty much it. The victim is ironically named Fortunato, which is just Poe being awesome and dark as dump. Obviously the narrator, who is also the murderer, is not happy with old Fortunato, but we never really get a sense of why.

            This is the ultimate over-reaction story, and it illustrates illogical hurt and anger as well as anything out there. This dude says that Fortunato has given him “A thousand injures…but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.”

            Homeboy has some seriously thin skin. The point, I suppose, is to wonder what could’ve been done to the narrator to make him lash out. But—I’m thinking that the author (Poe himself) is showing that lashing out is stupid, and this is just an extreme example.

            The murderer is a heightened version of all humankind. So is the victim. We’re all hoping to talk as much crap as possible without getting walled up by some crazy dude.

            I’m never going to be the morality police—sure, I’ve got opinions, but do what you got to do I say... though there’s one thing I glean from this story every time: Take your lumps, take the criticism, but don’t take it too seriously.

            You know. Take it easy. See you after.