Beer for My Horses

I am not a beer drinker. In my youth I was. I could drink beer until I became beer. We would frequent a local pub where you got a free pitcher for every four you bought. Lots of nights we would end up with 20 pitchers on the table, empty. Hard to imagine now. And I actually thought I could drive home - whoa. Time does change one's perspective. Of course in those days I don't know if anyone was ever completely sober so there were a lot of accidents out there waiting to happen. And some did. Few of us grew to be 50 something without knowing someone in our social circle or neighborhood or high school who was a victim of their own bad choices. One friend of mine died in a bathtub with a needle in his arm - whoa. Another died in an accident with a blood alcohol of 3.8, legal limit now is .8 - whoa. Another decided to fly out a 4th story window and forgot to flap - whoa. None of this is funny but 3 decades later it's not nearly as tragic as it was then either. None of these people deserved to die and certainly none of them was doing anything much different than their friends were. And yet they suffered the most serious consequences imaginable for bad behavior - death. I wonder sometimes about what they would have done, or who they would have been, or what their children would have looked like if they had lived. No answer.

So today I'm reading a Time article about a Jihadist. This is a 19 year old in training to die for his religious beliefs and take out a few infidels as he goes. He describes his training, his prayers, his focus, his isolation. He has a family, friends, a life. He doesn't give it a second thought though. He is totally resolute in his desire to die killing others. He believes he will earn a place in heaven through this action. He is eager to be called. He has friends who have already taken their turn at the wheel of a car with explosives strapped on their bodies. He plans to reunite with them in heaven. He isn't sure he wants to kill innocent bystanders and hopes his target will be military or police related but he will kill bystanders if he must, innocent or not. He is ashamed of the one vice he has, smoking, and assures the reporter that before his time he will stop and complete his purification to insure when he takes his last drive, or walk, he will be completely ready for Allah. Whoa.

The irony of feeling bad about smoking as you contemplate murder - whoa. The irony of a new generation of almost adults who don't drink or use drugs and are totally clearheaded in their desire to murder and die themselves - whoa. What world do we live in now? I sometimes feel like the worst acid trip imaginable could not compare to a world like this one. We mourn the deaths of friends, family, acquaintances who die not because of their bad choices but because today they chose to get up in the morning and board a bus or train or plane. We mourn the deaths of friends, family, acquaintances who think their duty is to try to fight back, to wage war on these misguided youth, the soldiers of Allah. We mourn that the world we live in is a world of hatred, where power is sought through any means possible by people who send these youngsters to die. And what if they win? Will the world of our children's children be dominated by fanatics, zealots? And if they lose? Will the world of our children's children be dominated by fanatics, zealots? Will we wonder about all the lives cut short by this war - what would have become of these young people if they had lived and grown old? Would they have made the world better by living? No answer. They believe they are making it better by dying.

I think I grew up in the wrong world. In the world of my youth we didn't want to die, we wanted to live. We didn't want to wage war, we wanted peace. We didn't want to take up arms, we handed out flowers. Where did we go? Was it too much beer, or pot, or cocaine that flung us into this nightmare? We watched our bravest young men go to war and die and we stood up and said NO, this isn't right. Now we watch people blown up on an almost daily basis and we are numb, and sober. Sober?

What can we offer these young men so intent on dying that compares with a promise of heaven? They see a world that is without hope or promise or security. They don't believe in pacifism, in capitalism, in our madison avenue promise that "we try harder." They think we are bloodsucking, ransacking, muckraking plunderers. They believe that we would sell our own souls to possess theirs. They compare us to the devil.

It will take minds greater, hearts stronger, and souls braver than the ones we are showing to come to grips with this brave new world. It will take more than we've got to find the path through this nightmarish maze. We will need not only to be sober, but strong, and clear, and certain. We will need to be like them. With one important difference. The path to heaven is not littered with the bodies of the innocent.

High Test

Before the days of unleaded premium gasoline if you wanted the most expensive stuff at the pump you asked for high test (that was also in the days when someone pumped the gas for you, washed your windshields, and checked the oil while you sat behind the wheel). High test was the gas with the highest octane and many cars used it because back then most of them had V-8 engines and lots of get up and go. High test was the gasoline of champions.

Today I was thinking about high test but it came to me in another train of thought. I met a friend in a coffee shop and she was talking about an ex-husband who had been mean, manipulative, and philandering when they were married, back in her 20's. She ditched him after 2 years which certainly sounded like the right choice. I drifted into a reverie about our 20's and the hormonal excesses we were subject to in those days. We females were constantly complaining about the mood swings, irritability, bloating, and just plain uncomfortable days before, during, and sometimes even after we menstruated. This lament continued as we aged, changing from PMS due to youth, to PMS due to post partum readjustment, and then the worst PMS of all, PMS associated with peri-menopause. If you are a woman you can relate to this. You remember all the conversations that have taken place over the years between you and your female friends, sisters, daughters, and mothers concerning the woes of hormonal fluctuations.

I was wondering if men have these conversations and I realized that was a really stupid thing to wonder about. Of course they don't. Men don't sit around and relate their irritability, competiveness, anger, weight gain, and philandering to hormonal fluctuations. I am inclined to think that men don't even know they have hormones. They know they have penises, which of course, they think about a lot but I don't think they talk to other men about that. Do you know any men intimately who tell you tales about their penises, the names they have for them, their pride in them? yYoung sons will regale you with tales about this stuff but my guess is they don't quit thinking about it they just don't talk about it after a certain point, at least not to other guys. So, the point here is that even though they are very familiar with their equipment they don't tend to understand that underlying not only it's functioning, but also in many case their moods are those ubiquitous hormones. As my friend was discussing her ex-husband of years ago it struck me that that guy had too much high test(osterone). He was afflicted with too much hormone and too little sense.

Would we live in a gentler world if men could acknowledge their hormonal afflictions? Would we be better off if they sat around bending each other's ears with their tales of woe? Could we relate more compassionately to male hormone madness if they could confess their complete lack of control over the surges of high test(osterone)? Any woman will admit to moments of utter insanity brought on by hormonal changes. We know what it's like to feel out of control and irrational and we know what causes it. And knowing what it is makes it easier to talk to other women, and men, about it, to seek rest, solitude, or drugs, or massage to ease it. We know we aren't always mistresses of our own fate. But perhaps the key is that linked to raging male hormone is the desire to dominate, control, and copulate without thought. Face it, when men are in the throes of hormonal excess the last thing they want to do is seek solitude or chat. They want to take on the world.

Fortunately, hormones, both male and female, eventually level out or peter out (no pun intended). That's why those 50 and 60 year old guys seem so much gentler and kinder. And I hope that it's also true of us. The real irony here is that as our estrogen abates we get more high test(osterone). The most obvious manifestation being those chin hairs that appear at the most inopportune times. But of course, being women, we won't be going through this change without relating this new hormonal woe to every friend. As my husband becomes the man I always knew he could be (sweet, gentle, kind) I am looking for new worlds to dominate. I'm looking forward to having a little bit of Tony the Tiger in my tank. So look out world, here I come - and oh by the way fella's - talking really does help to tame the savage beast.