Fire and Ice

 

(Like it or not, the world will come to an end one day.)

Yesterday, I woke up at 6 a.m. and drank a cup of freshly brewed coffee. Then I read the headlines on my smartphone while taking a nasty shit. There was a beautiful 37-year-old Korean lady named Kim Ji-hyae. She made her living as a model and a popular live steamer. Like most attractive people, Ji-hyae had a ton of fans. Anyway, she went out drinking with her buddies and got into a fistfight with another female internet personality. After that, Ms. Kim went back to her house and committed suicide. In fact, she streamed her death on YouTube for the whole world to see. I guess that fame meant a lot to her.

I ate hash browns for breakfast as I surfed the internet. Robert Kennedy had one of his videos taken down by YouTube due to policy violations. In the broadcast, Mr. Kennedy claimed that chemicals in the water supply are transforming American men into homosexuals and transvestites. He mentioned a drug called Atrazine. It can actually turn male frogs into females. Kennedy went on to say that his life might be in danger because of the Deep State. He believes that the CIA greased both his father and his uncle. What can I say? I believe him. But isn’t it strange that it’s perfectly OK to kill yourself on YouTube, yet you aren’t allowed to discuss medication or vaccines? Hats off to Big Pharma. This industry has quite the lobby, and those lawyers really deserve a raise.

My day at work went well. I’m currently reading the poem Fire and Ice by Robert Frost with my middle school students.

One girl raised her hand. “How can we compare hatred to ice? It sounds more like fire to me.”

I nodded. “Good point. But there are all kinds of hate in the world. It’s not a uniform emotion.”

“I don’t know what you’re saying. Could you simplify it?”

I scratched my chin and stared off into the distance for quite some time. Then a good example finally came to me.

I pointed my finger in her direction. “Let’s look at the murder of Jesus Christ.”

“What about it?”

“Pontius Pilate wasn’t all hot and bothered over the entire scene. He simply wished to find an expedient way to keep everybody happy. So he washed his hands, and had Christ brutally flogged and nailed to a tree. He didn’t lose a minute of sleep over the fate of one lowly Jew.”

“Then you’re saying that hate can be cold?”

“That’s right. Ice cold.” I paused for dramatic effect. “Let’s suppose that your mother rarely spoke to you. She never said good morning or good night. She never wished you luck. She never expressed her love. Instead, she just stared at you with contempt. How would you describe that kind of behavior?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Torture?”

“That’s right! Torture. You hit the nail on the head. She would be destroying you with icy-cold hate. Get it?”

“I guess.”

I’m not the greatest teacher in the world, but I do the best I can. The secret to my success is rapport. Relationships and feelings are very important to me. I look at it this way. I’m a geezer, and soon I’ll be dead. So I’m hoping that a few people will show up to my funeral and shed a tear or two. That’s more important to me than literature or philosophy.

I got home at 6 p.m. and watched a doubleheader between the Yankees and Red Sox. Boston took both games and swept the entire series. New York looks sad and lost. But in the team’s defense, lots of the stars are currently injured.

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