Glass Houses

File this one under 'Figure the Odds.'
It has occurred to me that I should probably have multiple blogs, and blog on a different theme on each blog, but I really don't have the time to keep up with one blog as it is... I admit that I think it would be nice, from the reader's perspective, if you could just check 'Religious Ramblings' for my latest thoughts on Religion, or 'Crime Ramblings' for crime stories, or 'Immigration Ramblings,' etc. Maybe when I retire (in about fifty years).

In the meantime, let me take an entirely different tack: In the movie 'Blazing Saddles' (which some of you have probably never heard of), Gene Wilder plays the town drunk, who also happens to be (or have been) the Waco Kid. The Waco Kid, in his heyday, was so well known for being a fast draw and an accurate shot, that people came from miles away just to see if they could outdraw the Waco Kid. Eventually, the enormity of that caused him to 'crawl into a bottle.'

It occurs to me that we, as human beings, have a certain amount of competitiveness built into us. Sometimes it's healthy, sometimes it's not. When you hear about a gunslinger, and just have to know if you're faster than he is (and that sort of thing really did happen), that's not healthy. If you run across someone who is much better at something that you thought you were good at, and it encourages you to practice, practice, practice, until you are really good at it, too (even if you eventually have to accept the fact that you will never be as good), then that's healthy.

Sometimes people will go out of their way to knock someone down a peg. That's not necessarily healthy--although, sometimes, a person does need to be knocked down a peg. Occasionally, someone will get bad press about something that is totally unrelated to their specialty. You've heard statements like, "Einstein was a genius, but he never learned to tie his shoes." I don't know if that's actually true, but what if it is? Granted, it kind of makes the rest of us feel less inferior, but let's face it, everybody has problems; everybody has lapses in judgment.

I asked the question the other day, "Know any perfect people walking around today?" I didn't then, and I haven't met any since.