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About the author:
Descended from old English money, Vidicon was raised by spiny echidnas in the mountainous rainforests of the North American Southeast. Lured back to society by time-traveling gray/reptiloid alien hybrids posing as renegade Jesuits, he has managed to maintain his outsider's perspective and an appetite for crunchy insects. Today, Vidicon is a world-class synchronicity surfer and an unlicensed quantum mechanic. He has a fourth-degree black belt in weird.
About his bi-weekly column:
Tales from the Third Lobe are the unfocused meanderings of the World's Smartest Moron. Topics range widely over the sciences, religion, philosophy, technology, modern culture, mysticism, Vidicon's personal history and viewpoints, and whatever pissed him off in the media last week.
View all articles by Laszlo Q. V. St-J. "Vidicon" Xalieri, 2HC Columnist...
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Mr. Toad's Wild Ride When I think about the things I miss the most about childhood, I have to say the drugs are at the top of the list.
I'm not talking about those chalky orange-flavored chewable aspirins either. I'm talking much harder stuff.
My stash was hidden in plain view in the living room, although it goes without saying that I had some in my bedroom, too. And there was some in the hallway, as I recall. I may have stowed the stuff all over the house at some point. And there it sat, on any available shelf, beneath the notice of any of the older people in the house.
I remember the visitations from giant talking frogs. Private movies and lightshows cast on the backs of my retinas even with my eyes closed. The scarce-heard snickers of trees. I remember the feeling of flying and falling, of being on fire without burning, of traveling to places where water was still and earth flowed and the stars spun wildly in the sky. I remember bliss and hints of what it must feel like to be in love and shadowy terrors that haunted me for weeks. I remember the feeling of being eaten alive, of being taken apart and put back together again. Oh, the things and creatures I saw.
No, not NyQuil® either. Or Robitussin®. Although those were kinda close every now and then.
Where I lived the stuff was really easy to come by. Basically every kid I hung out with had tried it, even in elementary school. For most of us that had access, it was originally the parents that brought it into the house. Our parents warped our little minds into thinking this shit was normal and acceptable. They'd bring it home and leave it lying around, or sometimes even give it to us directly. Some of our parents would even sit around with us and show us how to make it go down. Others would just hand it over with a look that said that such things were not personally to their tastes, but since so many other kids were doing it, why should their kids be any different?...
I remember my mom watching me zip around the house chattering to things that weren't there, and she'd just smile. I also remember her talking me down off the roof, trying to convince me that I really wasn't likely to be able to fly unassisted and perhaps I should stick to the swingset. Sometimes my dad would see me obviously zoned out under the influence and comment that this stuff didn't actually constitute a healthy part of my diet and perhaps I should spend more time outside getting exercise. But I would sneak into his room sometimes and find him nibbling from his own private stash. Sometimes my parents would watch me running around half flipped-out and laugh like they were watching a kitten on catnip.
Eventually I built up a tolerance. Bunches of us kids would trade batches to see if the other was holding stronger stuff, but I could see we all were starting to suffer. We all gradually stopped running around flapping our arms and trying to jump off of houses. Our bicycles degenerated into means of getting from place to place instead of machines to keep the high going by blowing a huge wind into our faces and strobing the sun on and off while we swooshed past trees.
Periodically I have flashbacks. I count myself lucky for that. Any brain cells I lost to this form of entertainment were obviously cells I could afford to lose. I didn't pay too high a price, even though I was a heavy user. Any residue of this drug still in my cranial tissues is completely welcome to be there.
Fiction. The stuff written for children.
I preferred mine in book-form. It was more compact and traveled well. The strength of the story was often difficult to gauge in advance, but that was okay. I took the good with the bad until I learned how to better pick and choose.
I still find it odd that the fiction written for children is often quite a bit more bizarre than the kind mixed for and handed out to adults. The colors are brighter. Or darker. Animals talk and interact with people as equals. Superlatives would jump off the page and hit you like a hammer. Fastest best strongest brightest tallest smallest loudest greenest sweetest deadliest.... In Latin est means is, and in the fiction written for children, things weren't—things didn't exist—unless they existed all the way up at one end of the scale or the other. Identification with a character rich in superlatives—the feeling of being the best, the be-est—that releases a drug in your brain that is an exhilaration that isn't readily available to adults except shortly after the administration of some seriously illegal drug or other. Unless you literally are the best at something. And you know that you are the best, unwaveringly and unblinkingly.
For most of us, that drug is gone gone gone. We'll never be the best at anything. (Cocaine will certainly never help you be the best at anything regardless of how it makes you feel. For example.) Growing up, it seems, includes a healthy dose of depression that steals over us as that illusion wears off, and we suffer for the rest of our lives. We are no longer allowed to get drunk on unearned superlatives, and we've learned to take that as normal.
You can't tell me that's right.
But then you can't tell me it's right that some people destroy themselves physically or mentally or emotionally because they are so addicted to that chemical surge they get from being the best. People kill themselves trying to be the best at something. People convince themselves they are the best at something when it's obviously not true just so they can hold onto that high. Is that why our society chooses to wean children off that drug when they get older? If so, then why do we give it to our kids in the first place. Is it like catnip? Is it only, exactly like catnip?
Or is our childhood addiction to that drug necessary to propel some of us to stardom, even at the expense of the total collapse of many others?
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Vidicon is the best there is at what he does. We wish we knew what that was. |
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