TO BE OR NOT TO BE...THAT IS THE QUESTION

The older I get, the more problematic life becomes. I've been spending a lot of my time reading. I’m reading more than I ever have in my life and always felt this was a good thing. But, after today I’m beginning to wonder.

I have come to subscribe to my own theory that the more one reads, the more one reads. There are two prongs to this theory of mine. The first is explained partially above in that as one learns more, one is introduced to more and more information which stimulates ones curiosity to find out even more about what is out there. I would refer to this as “macro curiosity”.

Within “macro curiosity”, there is another element I would refer to as “micro curiosity”.   With this element, one does not seek to expand knowledge by looking beyond the parameters of what one has been reading, but looks within the confines of the item which is currently being read. So, if I’m reading about a certain type of Dinosaur, I may be stimulated to read more and more about paleontology  in general to learn about the environment in which that one Dinosaur lived and how it related to other Dinosaurs. But, if I am mostly bewildered about that one specific Dinosaur, I may recognize that my reading and/or cognizant abilities are limited and read the same material over and over again to better understand it, thus “micro curiosity”.

Some time back, I developed “micro curiosity” about a front page article I had seen in the newspaper:

http://z10.invisionfree.com/usedtobedoe/index.php?showtopic=70891

I had just returned from the Ozarks and if I read this news article correctly one man named Albert was lamenting the alleged murder and disappearance of his brother Gary, who was alleged to have been shot and fed to the pigs by his ex-wife Sandra, who was also the ex-wife of that complaining brother Albert, who was originally married to Sandra and warned the now missing Gary that she was bad news and not to marry her. In other words, both brothers married the same woman albeit at different times, and both marriages ended in a rocky manner with Gary’s being the rockiest as he appears missing and/or dead, or both, not to mention the possibility of  having become pig food which I have already mentioned. 

In wandering from my main point here I would assume that the second wedding, Gary’s, would have been a major Jerry Springer event, assuming that the first husband and brother Albert was in attendance. It would seem weirder yet if Albert had been the best man or a groomsman in the wedding of his ex-wife to his now missing brother. I’ve never experienced anything this weird in my own family or the families of anyone I know but I’m not dead yet and I guess there was still time. As fate would have it, I have received an e-mail from a relative with whom I am not particularly close in that I’ve barely heard from him in the past forty years or so. I won’t go into the details of his e-mail but will only say that had he lived near Shell Knob, Missouri where this event occurred there are good odds he too would have wound up married to this woman.

This is the article I've become micro curious about.  I’m trying to apply my own life experiences here to understand why I've escaped such incidents.

I've been to the doctor a lot lately and every time I go, I have to fill out a questionnaire about my lifestyle practices ie: do I drink often, do I smoke, and how often do I exercise?

One of the questions asks if I practice unsafe sex. I always answer “no”. In the back of my mind I feel most patients answer the same whether it’s true or not. I’d bet Bill Clinton answers “no” and we all know the truth there.  I honestly feel the question is answered for me each morning when I wake up and look into the mirror and briefly ask myself how the loser looking back at me ever got into my house. I’m no Bill Clinton and I’m never going to be president.  

Back to my point. It seems to me that a deep, deep reading this article indicates that some people in the Missouri Ozarks such as the family mentioned have determined one method of practicing safe sex.  With the advent of AIDS and various troubling forms of STDs, Ebola, etc., there has developed an adage that when one has sex with someone they've also have sex with everyone else that the partner has had sex with too. Thus, this family had determined that if they keep marrying the same woman over and over again, at least they know who she’s been with as does she for that matter.  This is the only logical reason for why I can imagine the second brother would marry the bad news ex-wife of the fist brother.

Finally, the micro curiosity element leads me to my final and most personal application of this theory. When I was very young, and going through puberty, I had an incredible crush on Marilyn Monroe. Even as a child, I was a realist. I would never come to know Marilyn Monroe and would not even come to meet her, regardless of her untimely death. In adopting the practical theory of the Ozark family above which suggests in a round about way that if you have sex with someone, you have had sex with everyone they have had sex with too, then I ponder, if I had had sex with JFK then would I also have had sex with Marilyn Monroe, and would it really be the same? In my own mind, the answer to this question would always be an emphatic “NO”! Undoubtedly, there are others out there who would answer the same but in reality I’m sure that some of them would really mean “yes”.

So, in my mind some of life’s choices simply cut a couple of ways. You may be able to spare yourself the prospect of catching some hideous disease if you can wrap your brain around the though of getting hitched to one of your former in-laws. But, in doing so you may be setting yourself up for becoming a big ol’ dose of pig food.

That’s something to think about, right there!