David McElroy – Page 244

Patterns that made old mistakes keep us making same old errors

By David McElroy · February 13, 2019

I know a woman who married a man who turned out to be a monster. In public, he was responsible and loving. He had a respected position in their community. He said and did all the right things around others.

But in private, he was an abusive monster to his family. Their children were terrified of him. They learned early in life never to talk about what went on at home, because he was very concerned about his public image. His wife never knew what he was going to do. She couldn’t count on him when she was sick. Nothing she did was good enough. He screamed at her and belittled her at every chance.

The man cheated on his wife with someone at work. He was quietly fired, but he wouldn’t admit what happened. After he took another job and started cheating again, his wife finally divorced him. The guy never did admit to any error. He never confessed to anything. He just claimed to be misunderstood by everyone.

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Humans are most heroic in small moments of caring for each other

By David McElroy · February 11, 2019

There was nothing extraordinary about the story, but something about the image touched me.

The 54-year-old man in the hospital bed is in an intensive care unit. Just a few weeks ago, he had a liver transplant. The man giving him a shave is his son-in-law. The man’s daughter posted the photo along with her brief explanation.

“Tenderness between men,” she wrote on Reddit. “My husband with my dad in the ICU, giving him his first shave in weeks after a liver transplant. I was so grateful for this moment.”

We put up statues and monuments to the wrong people. We name buildings and roads after politicians. We love winners and those who have achieved some sort of big success. But we humans are at our best when we’re doing “little” things — every time one individual takes the time and makes the effort to do something kind and loving for another.

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Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

It hasn’t happened yet, but there’s a possibility that I might be taking in a fourth feline. A couple of months ago, a cat-loving neighbor asked whether I’d seen a “tuxedo cat” hanging out in the neighborhood. I hadn’t, but this guy eventually wandered past my house a few weeks later — and we haven’t been able to find evidence that he has a home. I’ve been giving him water and food for the last week and he finally let me pet him two nights ago. He’s purred for me two nights in a row and he let me take a low-quality selfie with him Thursday night. Tonight, though, he let me pick him up and bring him inside to look around. This went surprisingly well, as you can see from this photo. I don’t know whether he’ll be joining the family, but I’m certain that Alex, Oliver and Sam would vote no, at least until they get to know him. I’m trying to make certain he doesn’t have a home, but if he does join us, what do you suppose his name will be?

It turns out that the radical far left has been training “Antifa cats” to sabotage anything important to Donald Trump. Everything he did was perfect. Honest. It was all the cats’ fault. Arrest all the cats! This is the latest of my ridiculous satirical shorts. Please go watch it. Then “like” it and subscribe. Please. I’m begging you. (Too much?) Although a couple of the previous videos have had views in the hundreds, most have still been seen by fewer than 20 people. So I seem to be having trouble letting people know that page exists.

Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.