On Lettered Words:

A Story

I who have had in my well-seasoned passage in life as house pets cockroaches so formidable as to have been able to stare down a shoe-armed housewife at twenty paces have found little to fear in life.  Live and let live has been my motto.  But I have met my nemesis now.  But to back up a bit, to the beginning.

My name - my first name; my ‘Christian’ name, I guess it’s called (I suppose that’s why there are so many Matthews, Marks, Lukes, Johns, and Pauls, even to this day.  ‘Favored in the sight of God,’ or some such nonsense, most probably is the idea) - is Conrad.  Connie for ‘short’ (although it’s the same number of letters; but you know what I mean).  As in Connie Mack, of my childhood; legendary manager for the Philadelphia Athletics in the American League.  (Not my favorite such team; but to get on with this narrative.)  But that wasn’t enough of a ’totem’ to keep ‘the other kids’  from making fun of me because of that millstone round my neck, hung there at my birth.  (For whatever reason; I never thought to ask my parents why they had named me that. A friend of the family, I suppose.  Or a bit of social climbing.  Or intended good luck in life; as in ’favored in the sight of Man,’ LOL.)  ‘Ooh, Conrad, have the servants brought you your breakfast on a silver tray yet?’ was one of the choice barbs thrown at me through my childhood.  

Words are funny.  Yes, as in funny funny, too.  ‘Fart’ can always get a laugh.  But they are also - can also be - eviscerating.  If we let them be.  And I suppose that that’s the way the word ‘kike’ is to many a Jew.

I never used that word myself.  Not necessarily because I knew personally the detrimental effect of ‘words’ on a young child’s psyche.  The ‘potential’ detrimental effect thereof, that is.  Water off a duck’s back, as far as I could be bothered to feel.  But most probably because I had as a close friend a Jewish kid for many of my childhood years, and I would never have thought to call him any other name but that of ‘friend’.  Not ‘buddy,’ necessarily; as I had no real ’buddies’ when I was a kid - well; still don’t.  I have pretty much gone my own way in my life, from the beginning; not really fitting in with this crowd of daffodils I see before me, on this hill of a planet called Earth, which has never really resonated with me, felt truly like home.  I ’belong’ somewhere else.  Have always felt that way.  But, to continue, with this particular narrative.

Words.  Names.  ’Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me,’  we used to say, when I was a kid.  And certainly, that was the way that I felt about my given name.  If kids wanted - as they did; for awhile, at least, before they usually gave up - to call me ‘Conrad’ with a snide bite to it, that was their business, not mine.  Perhaps because I always had Connie Mack as a release valve, I accept.  But even with the nickname of Connie, some of ‘them’ still made fun of me.  Because it sounded ‘girlie’ - to them.  Well; tough.  I just got on with my life.  Thinking, ‘Let’s get on with it, folks; whatever this business of ‘life’ is really supposed to be all about.’  (And how’s that for a four-letter word???…)  

And so I grew up, out of the jibes of the early childhood bear pit; the rite of passage into one’s teenage years, and beyond.  And so did those around me; funnily enough… Most of them, anyway.  Enough, to make life seem more, well, inhabitable.  

It still made little sense to me.  What the heck was it all about; really???…

The bottom line, that I am getting to, and at, here:

When you have been told all your life, by your parents and your Tribe, that you are superior to others - to ‘the goyim’ - the cattle - and yet they keep calling you put-down names like ‘kike,’  I guess that you get to the point where you’ve had enough.  And they are about to get their revenge.  Big time.  As in, nukes.  As in, plague.  To be visited on their enemies.

Their inferiors.

Who will certainly recognize who they are, now.  And who you are.  As The Chosen wipe them out.  Must go the thinking.  Among those of The Tribe, who are mad as hell, and not going to take it any longer.

All, because - when it comes right down to it - of being called a four-letter word all their lives.

Curious, that.

Especially to someone who has an edge on them, by two letters.

Funny, this sort of thing.  On this crowded hill of daffodils; and assorted other such flowering plants.  

And cockroaches.

Some as big as your leg.

Which they try to pull, sometimes.

And sometimes, actually

mean it.

In service to the Dark forces.

Which won’t win, in the end.

The Light being stronger than the Dark.

But, in the meantime,

they can certainly make a hell of a mess of things.

Stunted adolescents that they are.

Who never grew out of the stuck-record stage of resentment.

For not being recognized for who they were, really.

Which - really - was -

and is -

a loved child of God.

However you spell it.