“There’s Always Going to Be a Dumbass”

In my little corner of the world it has been snowing for the last couple of days. Almost a foot. No big deal for us here in the midwest. We midwesterners love watching people down south absolutely lose their minds and shut down entire communities when they get even a whiff of snow. It snows very well here. It’s cold, it’s January, it happens. Christmas Day I was playing basketball with my 13 year old in a Las Vegas driveway at 9pm – but today is January 11 and, well, today I was sitting behind some dumbass trying to negotiate a snow-packed hill in Des Moines. The driver was laying on the gas which caused the damn thing to creep along at about 3 inches an hour going forward while swaying at about 35 mph from side to side like those big marlins you see getting pulled onto the yachts on those fishing shows. Once this driver finally crested the hill and started to enjoy the miracle of gravity, I was treated to the driver’s inability to downshift or even pretend to control a 3000 lbs missile responsibly. Brake lights all the way down the hill and probably going slower downhill than we were going uphill earlier. When we all made it to level ground after what seemed to be about three years later, the driver decided to punch it like a bat out of hell over the interstate and right through a red light narrowly missing and being missed by 3 other drivers trying to carefully negotiate the snow. I came to the stoplight, stopped and waited for the other petrified drivers to finally get enough traction to get out of the intersection. One lady gave me a look that simply said: “Did you see that dumbass that almost hit me?”. I returned a knowing nod and waited for the light. I passed the dumbass further down the road. As I went by I could see the driver yelling into a cellphone and gesturing as if the person on the other end could see that this person had spun out and was resting snugly in a nice glacier of snow on the side of the road.

“There’s always going to be a dumbass.”

I was relieved that person was not on the road any longer for the sake of everyone’s well-being, but I knew it didn’t matter. There is always another dumbass. Listening to the radio I heard someone trying to blame the terrible shooting in Tucson on “right wing rhetoric”. I knew it was only a matter of time before the right wing would come up with some asinine excuse to blame the left for the murders in Tucson. I’m not right wing or left wing. I’m libertarian. In fact, I’m so libertarian I can’t join the Libertarian Party because then I would be too partisan to be libertarian. Maybe we should blame Canada like they did in “South Park”, it would make as much sense. All that aside, the fact is a dumbass shot those unarmed, innocent people – allegedly.

What is a dumbass?

Years ago I worked with adolescents in a psychiatric facility. Every once in a while we would get a kid sent from some beleaguered juvenile court and it was usually very apparent the kid was mistakenly sent by the court. These issues were frequently clerical errors and ironed themselves out in a day or two. In the meantime, we would just encourage the youth to kick back for a couple of days until the paperwork gets corrected. Usually the misplaced adolescent would just try to fit in and not make waves for a couple of days. Sometimes they would exhibit the behavior that landed them in court system in the first place.

Almost without exception, the kids on the floor would approach and inform one of us about the “new guy”. Invariably we would ask just what they were saying and just as invariably these kids would respond with something to the effect of “He doesn’t belong here.”. When asked to elaborate, the kids would usually give examples and point out appropriate or inappropriate behavior that just did not fit in with the usual milieu or environment on the floor. In other words – the kids on the ward knew he was not placed properly sometimes before even he or we did. These kids were not dumbasses. Some of them were as “unbalanced” as one can possibly be, full-blown bonkers even – but they were not dumbasses. Dumbass in the psychiatric treatment setting parlance is more descriptive of a behavior rather than an adjective. It was very, very rarely uttered by staff members – it was stated daily if not hourly by the kids in the treatment setting.

When someone absolutely lost control verbally or physically and acted in a manner that was consistent with their diagnosis, the kids were remarkably tolerant and even gentle. They rarely taunted the offender. However, when the behavior displayed by a youth was inconsistent with what he or she “was in for” or if it was simply a display of typical adolescent angst or a tirade against the world by a teenager – then I would inevitably receive or hear the telltale phrase: “What a dumbass.” from the other kids over and over again.

I worked the evening shift at this particular center. I remember the night being particularly eventful. Lots of drama, lots of miscues by staff, buttons pushed, tempers flared, and seclusion rooms filled. Nothing says “therapy” better than an environment filled with screams, yelling, phones ringing, and profanities floating around the ward like a thick fog. People that work in these environments such as guards, hospital workers, police, and rescue workers often blame the phase of the moon. I remember checking the moon in the window as I stepped outside the locked doors to grab a few Cokes for myself and a couple of staff. I walked down a long hallway to the ward office and dropped off the sodas. I was a heavy smoker then. I set the cans down and reached for a cigarette. One of the kids was sitting in a chair by the desk. I patted my pockets for a lighter and remembered I didn’t bring one. This particular kid saw my predicament and handed me his lighter.

“What the hell – a lighter?”

“I gotta listen to this crap all day. Cut me some slack.”

I lit my cigarette. “How about you get it back when you leave then.” . We both knew it wasn’t a question and he wasn’t getting it back.

“Whatever.”

I dragged on the cigarette and asked, “You doing ok tonight?”.

One of the kids in the seclusion room next to the office banged on the door and made comments regarding my parentage.

The youth by the desk listened, smiled, and said quietly: “What a dumbass.”

I exhaled and started to correct his language before he corrected me more quickly: “Look, there’s always going to be a dumbass. No matter what you do here, there’s always going to be another dumbass. Nothing much you can do about it”.

I handed him a Coke. Such wisdom at 13. He’s probably 37 or 38 right now and if alive, he’s either in a prison or he’s the warden. Hard to tell which and it probably doesn’t matter.

Back to Tucson. The guy that shot those innocent people including the representative, the judge, the nine-year-old girl – clearly an alleged coward and a dumbass. There’s always going to be a dumbass just as my young patient told me in the middle of a state hospital in 1985. We’ve had them for as long as we’ve been recording history. Some are “troubled”, some are sophisticated, some are unable to do well in school, some are very well educated. “Dumbass” is not an adjective. It’s a behavior, a choice that the person makes. In the end we are all responsible for our own choices. Not the ideology, the religion, the politics, the radio, the “lack of civility”, not the peers, nor anything else that we could possibly blame our behavior on in the end. We cannot assume responsibility for the behavior a dumbass chooses to display.

They found a copy of “Catcher in the Rye” on the dumbass that shot Lennon. Can we blame Salinger? No. Everyone is responsible for their own behavior. The Tucson dumbass decided to shoot innocent people – allegedly. It was not the gun, nor his mental status, or the political parties, or the pundits, or the radio, or the blogs, or anything else. He alone made the final choice to shoot innocent people – it happens all over the country; we still live in a fairly free society – one of the consequences of a free society is there is always going to be a dumbass to make it difficult and heartbreaking, but it’s better than the alternative.

This particular dumbass has allegedly done enough damage and his choices should not be diluted or mitigated by people trying to wring some type of political benefit out of what he allegedly did in Tucson.

Dumbasses.

JohnStillmunks.com