Before my parents left yesterday they gave me a care package from my grandmother. Actually, they left it with Cat Poop, and he gave it to me today. They probably had to run it by the drug-sniffing dogs or something to make sure there was nothing in it I’m not supposed to have. Like my grandma would have stuck packets of heroin in there. Or porn.
Anyway, she sent me chocolate chip cookies, some peanut butter fudge, and a dollar. She always puts a dollar in when she sends me or my sister something—cards, letters, whatever. It must be an old lady thing to do. My dad says she always gave him and his brother a dollar when she wrote to them, too, until they had kids of their own. Now she sends us the dollars. I guess she figures my dad doesn’t need them.
I shared the cookies and fudge with everyone else, but only because I knew that otherwise I’d just eat it all and then feel sick. Besides, we had movie night tonight. They let us watch a DVD of a movie about this guy who spent every summer living with grizzly bears in Alaska. It’s a true story. Every year he hiked into the wilderness and followed the bears around until fall came and they went into hibernation. Until one year when a bear ate him.
You’d think it would be all sad, someone being eaten by a bear. The thing is, though, this guy really loved those bears. He loved everything about them, even when they did stuff that looked totally mean, like fight over food or kill a rival bear’s cubs. It was like they were his family, and he forgave them for their bear behavior because he knew they couldn’t help it. I think he probably even would have forgiven the bear that ate him.
They interviewed a lot of people in the movie, and most of them said they just couldn’t understand why this guy would want to spend so much time with bears. Some of them thought he believed he was a bear because he couldn’t handle who he really was. I think they’re wrong. I think he just loved being with the bears because they didn’t make him feel bad.
I mean, sure, this guy was a little nuts. You’d have to be to spend your whole life following bears around. But I get it, too. When he was with the bears, they didn’t care that he was kind of weird, or that he’d gotten into trouble for drinking too much and using drugs (which apparently he did a lot of). They didn’t ask him a bunch of stupid questions about how he felt, or why he did what he did. They just let him be who he was.
I guess if you think about it, it was kind of a strange movie for them to let us watch. But I think that a lot of us in here could relate to it. Juliet started to cry when they talked about how rangers shot the bear that ate the guy and then cut it open to make sure he was really inside. Personally, I think they killed the bear because they were afraid of it. That’s what people do, kill the things they’re afraid of.
Here’s what I think. One, people should figure out that if they go around bothering bears, chances are they’re going to end up bear snacks. Second, people suck.
There I go again, jumping from fudge to bears. I swear, sometimes it feels like there’s this monkey in my head who runs around turning the dials and changing channels on me. One minute I’m sitting around eating chocolate chip cookies and then all of a sudden I’m thinking about bears.
Like I said, though, I think a lot of us relate to those bears. We’re in here because someone—our parents, our doctors, the people who supposedly love us—are afraid of us. We’re in the Whack-job Zoo so that everyone can look at us without getting close enough to get hurt. Man, that’s messed up.
I wonder what Cat Poop would do if next time he starts nosing around in my brain, I just bite him?