Freddogg Off The Chain

“Not everyone can carry the weight of the world. Talk about the passion.” REM

Once I saw a New Yorker cartoon of an older man just staring out a picture window. He hadn’t moved through many chimes of the Westminster mantle clock. Two bun headed women are in the background and one says to the other,”What is wrong with your husband? Is he o.k.?
“Charlie is fine. He’s just the only person I know who is capable of comprehending the big picture.”

I had a squirrelly of personality student in the early nineties in my Problems of Democracy class whom I dubbed “Big Picture Man” as he could take the most inane and inconsequential event of the day and turn it into of series of consequences with doomsday results. And this kid was blond and athletic if you count soccer and everyday we all got him going until the class and I would say, ”And now a few words from our sponsors and then back to more observations from “Big Picture Man.”

One mid winter day I was standing in the school cafeteria when Big Picture Man began to tantrum because his chocolate coated wafers got stuck inside the twirling dispensing wheel of the Lance Cracker machine. I liked this kid Matt but “bite me you fucking Lance mother fucker” I found strident and over-reactive and set against the backdrop noise of teenage grunting and slurping noises and observing fat girls picking cheese off the pizza with the fingers Matt grew increasingly annoying inside my big picture world.

And then I saw him out of the corner of my eye coming at the cafeteria using the hallway as a run-up. Matt looked like an Olympic long jumper barreling down the runway. He flew into the cafeteria went horizontal air born right under my chin and exploded with a double legged drop kick into the side of the dented Lance machine which couched up his wafers.

A dorky principal also saw it and came over and instructed me to "write him up" as in disciplinary infraction.

“But that’s just what he’ll be expected us to do,”I said. “And that will feed into his Big Picture paranoia. I think I’ll just make him Athlete of the Week.

Let’s talk about the passion which for me is enjoying people, the crazier the better.

Freddogg