Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge - eARC Read Free Page B

my “peace-loving” mommy.
    “What about Hitler? Was using violence against Hitler okay? What about the Viet Cong fighting the evil right-wing tyranny of the South Vietnamese government? They used all sorts of violence. Was that okay?” Later, as my reading expanded, it was “Violence seemed to settle the question of Rome versus Carthage well enough. Cartago delenda est , right?” Which would start a lecture on “How can you discuss Rome and Carthage in depth and get a C in Ancient History?”
    Pro-tip: If you’ve got that teacher who hates smart kids, use all the correct names of pharaohs on the paper. ’Cause those kinds of teachers never know how stuff should be spelled. Khufu instead of Cheops. Things like that. Which are all “wrong” from their perspective. I wrote a paper in seventh grade Social Studies that I got an F on. I later turned in the same paper, word for word, with more annotations and citations, in a senior level college Egyptian History course. Got an A.
    I never ever used any form of violence against my mother. I just cannot raise my hand to a lady. Not that my mother was ever much of a lady. But the reverse was not the case. Apparently violence is all good when it’s getting your mad out at your “inappropriate” son. Or if you’re a good commie killing evil fascists. Or if you’re the Weather Underground. Etcetera.
    Anything to fit the world view.
    Don’t get me wrong. I’ve found God since those days and I still have an issue with Christians and Catholics (including some priests of my experience) who think that Jesus is going to keep fags, prostitutes and people who sleep around out of Heaven. God would have before Jesus. Sure. Definitely. And the Old Testament isn’t entirely to fill page count. But basing all your so-called Christianity on Prophets, Isaiah and St. Paul is cherry picking like mad. It’s adjusting reality to fit your world view.
    Jesus is when God started to realize he’d created something weirder than even He realized and stopped having such a mad-on at us.
    I think in the old days He gave a lot of orders He didn’t realize weren’t ever going to be perfectly obeyed by ninety percent of humanity. Since He made us in His image, I suspect after Jesus died for our sins, the Savior reported in how seriously messed up we all were and why. I mean, puberty! Puberty for God’s sake! You gave us puberty ! And you think masturbation is our fault? We don’t even know what it is the first few times! “Don’t commit the sin of Onan.” “What is the sin of Onan?” “To spill your seed upon the ground.” “What if I’m laying down grass seed?” “Not that kind of seed.” “What kind of seed then?” “Never mind.”
    After Jesus died for our sins and carried up the full download of just how messed up it was to be stuck in a human body, God must have gone “Well, Me, I guess We’ve gotta forgive the poor saps.” These days I think you’ve gotta seriously mess up to get Hell. I’ve even got some supporting evidence.
    My brother is probably in Hell and I’m sort of comfortable with that even if I’m still wrestling with how he got there. Maybe I should change my name to Cain.
    Back to JROTC. I’d gotten the papers from the assistant JROTC instructor, Mr. Herman J. Brentwood. He also taught shop and, of all things, chemistry. I had his shop class (another thing to poke a sharp stick in my mother’s eye, just like as a kid I used to go around jumping up and down on every crack I could find in the sidewalk) and had picked them up there.
    The next day he asked me about them.
    “Did you get the papers signed?” he asked as I was trying not to cut my fingers off with a jigsaw.
    “No, sir,” I said. I was polite just to piss off my mom. She hated it when I said “sir” and “ma’am” since they were “antiquated social constructs of the dominant patriarchy.” Besides, Mr. Brentwood was one of those people you just automatically tended to say “sir”