The Trail

As Shawna and I walked down the Frisco Highline Trail one delightful autumn evening, my thoughts began to stray. She had been talking to me, but I became distracted by the scenery. In a field beside the trail a horned cow grazed lazily in the golden dusk. Looking at it made me think of King Minos and his ancient Kingdom of Crete. I mused upon mighty Theseus battling the Minotaur, and wondered how I would fare in such a conflict. The odds were not in my favor. I have enough trouble finding my way around without a mythological monster lusting after my blood. But just as I was about to give up on a hypothetical version of myself fighting an imaginary creature in a long forgotten empire, the sun broke through the trees! It was setting! I immediately realized that the sun was in the West. By that I deduced that the opposite direction was east. And using these two pieces of innovative scientific inquiry, I decided that we were either going north or South. Feeling rather pleased with myself, I thought that maybe I could find my way out of a labyrinth after all. Then I started thinking about the movie Labyrinth, and saw in my mind’s eye David Bowie dancing around flanked by Muppets. His blow-dried hair, feline makeup, and codpiece enhanced trousers filled my vision. The image is both comical and disturbing. It was at this time that I realized that I’d stopped listening to Shawna some time ago. I felt bad, and resolved myself to be more attentive.

She was talking about her job and the unbelievable stresses involved with being a teacher. It is an underestimated and unappreciated profession. The amount of raw data she is required to impart to her first graders is staggering. So much effort, training, and money is needed for even a modicum of success. This brought to my mind how much Shawna has put into her profession, and how I coast through life just ahead of Jeffery Lebowski. A revelation like that causes a person to feel guilty. And I don’t like feeling guilty. I’m not so good at penitence. This year I gave up church for Lent because the season is such a downer. So I needed to deflect my culpability away from myself and onto some scapegoat. The needed target coalesced out of what Shawna was talking about. My mental crosshairs fell upon the phenomenon of home schooling. Now before you gasp, and rush your calico-clad clusters of children back home to watch reruns of “19 Kids and Counting” hear me out. This rant is not against those intelligent well qualified, independent souls who are more than capable of teaching with the best of them. But I have come into contact with countless children who are victims of poor homeschooling. There are people who are barely qualified to tie their shoes who have suddenly become expert teachers without the benefit of experience or education. The ones that bother me the most are those who do it from a warped religious idea that sending your children to public school is as good as feeding them to Satan. Robbing children of the structure and socialization of the public school system because a voice in your head (that you think is Jesus) tells you so is morally reprehensible. Yes, there are bad things about public schools and dangers that threaten every child. But if you insulate your children from all the difficult realities of life, then when they fly free of the nest they will crash with Icarian speed. These people are doing their children a great disservice, and spitting in the face of teachers everywhere. If my wife needs an operation, I don’t operate on her myself because the doctor believes in evolution. Leave it to the professionals for God’s sake.

By the end of my mental rant I had managed to get angry, stop feeling guilty, and stop listening to Shawna all at the same time. I then refocused my attention back to her just in time to see her become ridiculous. She was raising her legs higher and higher with each step and pumping her arms like a savage. This unnerved me, as we were in a public place. Upon seeing my dismay, she informed me that it burns more calories if you walk in that strange manner. But I was out for a leisurely nature walk, not to film an exercise video. The consequences of my doing any strenuous activity in public are all about the perpetual motion of my midsection, followed by retching from innocent bystanders. I told her she might as well be goose-stepping. She then asked me what goose-stepping was, so I demonstrated. I began marching around Willard like a rural Eichmann. She laughed nervously, looking around, and the mutual embarrassment ended in a stalemate. But this again, caused me to think.

Why do they call it goose-stepping? I have never in my life seen a goose walk in that manner. And furthermore, why would the big bad Nazis choose a goose of all animals, to imitate in their marches? Surely bear-stepping or wolf-walking would be more appropriate. I tried various animal/step combinations and found no clear winner. Those damn Nazis, they truly were evil in producing this conundrum to haunt the world sixty years later. They looked rather stupid when they walked in this manner. I imagined columns of storm troopers goose-stepping at Nuremburg in all their finery. March it up boys, Ike and the boys are coming soon. This picture led me to delve down another trail of miscellaneous thought.

In my opinion, the Third Reich had some of the coolest costumes the world had ever seen. They made the Second Reich look like garbage by comparison. And don’t get me started on the First Reich. What immaculate uniforms and attention to detail. How smart were their side puffy pants and shiny boots? The blacks and grays, whites and browns, offset by the occasional red made for a formidable appearance. And what about the leather trench coats of the Gestapo? I could not understand how the vilest empire in modern history could have such fashion sense. These men were living manifestations of evil, but they looked good. I thought on this for a while, and then had an epiphany.

Look at the modern fashion industry. It tempts young women into believing that to succeed you must be willing to be a sexual slave, vomit on command, rip out all of their natural hair and replace it with extensions, and place oversize gelatinous bags atop their wiry frames. They kill baby animals for clothing embellishment. They hook their models on heroin to keep them thin, and discard them when they reach the ripe old age of twenty. They take tiny bits of material and sell them for money that could feed entire nations. It was then that I saw the connection: evil and fashion go hand in hand. I don’t know why the universe has formed this unusual rule, but it does. The ruthless cutthroat capitalism that feeds this industry is not unlike the fascism that powered the Nazi war machine. It is no wonder that the fashion industry’s ideas of the perfect body match the figures of those who endured the concentration camps.

Once again, I had drifted off topic with righteous anger. I thought of injustices throughout history, and the evil people who had caused them. The figures floated through my head like the sequence in a movie where the main character remembers various things that others had said to prove a point. I thought of Hitler, Nero, Skeletor, Cheney, the Noid, and whatever beast took over George Lucas’ mind after the Jedi’s Return and Indiana’s last crusade. I was so livid I could barely walk.

But then we were almost home, and I started thinking about what kind of snack I wanted when we got back.