Time once again for a heart-warming episode of The Thursday Thumb-Twiddler!
1. Someone you deeply love is horribly murdered. The person you know did it gets off. Do you take justice/revenge into your own hands?
Probably not — and I’ll feel like it was a chicken-shit failure of mine for the rest of my life.
2. If you learned you were going to die in two days, would you have any regrets? If you suddenly got a five year respite, could you avoid those same regrets?
Aside from not being able to provide for my loved ones, nothing major. Lots of minor ones, though. A lot of writing that never got finished, places I wanted to go that I didn’t visit, genealogical stuff and eleventy-dozen different projects that never got completed.
If I knew that there was a five year time limit, yeah, I’d probably do those things. At least some of them.
Maybe. After all, I know I’ve got a forty-odd-year probable time limit for these things, and I don’t seem to be getting them accomplished. But, then, I don’t really know what the final deadline is, do I?
3. What’s the greatest fashion faux pas — wearing clothes too big, clothes too small, clothes ten years out of date, or clothes for someone ten years older than you?
This question was supposed to say, in the last clause, “younger,” not “older,” and that’s the pretty high up on my list. Though usually there’s a big overlap (or, ahem, lack of overlap) with the “clothes too small” category in that case, too.
>1. Someone you deeply love is horribly murdered. The person you >know did it gets off. Do you take justice/revenge into your own hands?
>Probably not — and I’ll feel like it was a chicken-shit failure of mine for >the rest of my life.
I don’t think you would. When my mother was murdered, the county sheriffs had only one suspect. We all knew that only he could have done it, “homicidal tramp” theories notwithstanding, but there was no hard evidence. His actions only heightened our assurances of his guilt, but there was never even sufficient cause to arrest him. Attempts at a civil suit failed as well, because nothing could be proven, even with the lower standards.
While I am sickened whenever I think that he not only got off, but received a handsome insurance payment and bequest (my mom had been planning to change her will, but hadn’t done so), I have never regretted the fact that I didn’t hunt him down to make him pay for her brutal murder.
Interestingly, while I was in grief counseling, the therapist had us close our eyes, relax, and let an image form in our minds. Thinking that I wanted vengeance, I was expecting to see Batman’s chest emblem. I was surprised that the image was of Captain America’s shield! Guess I have loftier motives than I thought.
Hmmm. Interesting. You may be right.