Zestful Blog Post #113
As an author, I’ve long been a student of the human
condition. Actually, I commenced being a student of the human
condition in my earliest sandbox days, then turned to writing as a form of
self-defense.
Mainly, I’m fascinated with one question: What makes people
do what they do? A major sub-category of this question is: What makes criminals
do the crazy shit they do? Or, perhaps more accurately, what makes a person do
crazy shit for which they get caught and slapped with humiliating criminal
charges?
I remember reading Our
Lady of the Forest by David Guterson, in which there’s a mention of some
guy who broke into a dentist’s office for the nitrous oxide, which he inhaled
for the high while masturbating. He quickly died after getting too hypoxic. The
incident was just a mention and not part of the plot; I think Guterson put
it in mainly to help establish atmosphere. But it stuck in my mind. That novel
was set in and around Forks, Washington, a remote, poverty-mauled outpost in
the Olympic rainforest later made much more famous by Stephenie (yes, that’s
the right spelling) Meyer in her Twilight
series.
[A river runs through Forks, more or less. Photo by M. Burrows.]
At the time, I was living on the Olympic Peninsula in
Washington, not far from Forks. And I happened to know the mayor of Forks (we
were both Area Musicians), who also happened to be a counselor to a whole lot
of messed-up Forkians who had run afoul of the law in one dumbass way or
another. I asked him if he’d ever heard of a nitrous-oxide incident like the
one in Guterson’s story, and he said he didn’t know if it had really happened,
but he could easily believe it, given what he handled on a daily basis.
I asked him WHY people get into such messes, and he
answered, “Bad decisions.”
Well, yeah.
My friend is a compassionate man. But I mean, we’re talking
stupidity, right? Can we call a dolt a dolt here? I know substance abuse can
rob people of their common sense. But it seems there are lots of stone-sober
idiots out there as well. But, too, not every dumbass does stuff they can get
arrested for, drunk or not. Mostly they just wind up in emergency rooms.
The mystery of stupidity is something I wonder and wonder
about. What would authors do without characters who make bad decisions?
What do you think? To post, click below where it says, 'No
Comments,' or '2 Comments,' or whatever.
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