Saturday, October 19, 2024

"Why me, Lord?" Tulsa King

    


TULSA KING





Harry closed his eyes. He never wanted to open them again. His heart sent this message to his molecules: "For reasons obvious to all of us, this galaxy is dissolved."
— Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions


In 1965 I was a high-school senior in Tulsa. Will Rogers High School, a 3-year public school with 3,000 students. The Will Rogers Ropers. Well, as everyone knows, sometimes you're the roper, and sometimes you're the roped. One beautiful late-May day as we were filing into the auditorium for our last general assembly I was told that the principal would be calling me up to the stage to congratulate me on being a National Merit Scholar. Well can I just say that I could no more walk up onto that stage than I could fly to the moon: as the son of an outrageously alcoholic father, I had always tried to be invisible. So when the principal called out my name I didn't — I couldn't — move a muscle during the entire soul-crucifixion. Finally, blessed relief: "Lawrence seems not to be here today." Sometimes you seize the moment, and Sometimes the moment seizes you. This too shall pass — yes, but you'll never be the same.

 



When I told my parents what had happened, my father told me that the answer to the question "Why me, Lord?" is "Because you piss me off."







Related posts:

My dharma is penance 

How Drinking Works

Touché

"Why me, Lord?"

Christ the Lord of Karma

Life is the unfolding glory of the rose of expiation

Tulsa Queen

The Wall


"In the beholding of God we do not fall;
in the beholding of ourselves we may not stand."
                          — Julian of Norwich






















































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