I feel wrung out, and not because California Chrome didn't win the Triple Crown. Horse races come and go, I rarely get emotionally invested. I'm sure my live tweet looked like it was a huge deal, but I usually get a snowball of followers during or right after live tweets, and I genuinely like finding other people with interesting pictures or funny tweets or neat links.
I do love to watch the horses run, though, for reasons of my own. I used to watch harness racing and steeplechases, jump competitions, arena and show horses, and I watch the horses in film as much as I watch the chickens, and I can usually tell you if they are using true historically local breeds or not when they film specific time periods and locations. Horses are as much athletes and entertainers as people are, but I stop there. We live on a planet of slavery, abuse, and usery, so it's wise to note that people who do actually treat their animals well don't always treat other people well. Sometimes people remind me of higher primates (who we feel are still beneath us), mocking or ill treating others to gain power or attention. We are all in the same boat, all on about the same stupidity level in my eyes, and all wrong about stuff, so I decline to make too big a point of these things.
There are very few people in this world I genuinely trust. I can count them on 2 fingers. It's not because I don't think I can trust anyone, but because trust was destroyed for me at a very young age, and continues to be destroyed as the years go by. Friends come and go, family problems wax and wane, but only two people in my entire life- let me repeat that- my entire life- not only ever truly accepted me as I am, but applauded my deviances, although it wasn't unconditional at first for one of them, not by a long shot, and the road has been as spiky and vertical as roads get.
I like having friends. I also like having chickens. I've noticed that friends and chickens resemble each other sometimes. Sometimes there are pecking orders, and different personalities fit into that order in different ways. Usually when a chicken who isn't the boss gets pecky it's because something is stressing it out. I think people do that, too. I've noticed sometimes chickens use light tiny pecking to be friendly, mostly because they don't have arms and can't hug each other, so they let a crying sickie know everything is ok when they all crowd around in a circle and lightly pull on its hackle (neck) feathers. If you've never seen this, at first it looks like a group attack, but when you know chickens, you quickly see they are being very calm and gentle and it's actually pretty organized. Chickens care a great deal for each other when it really counts. So do people. Chickens also step very unkindly all over each other. So do people.
I see a lot of both group hugging and stepping unkindly all over each other on twitter. I see people sorting themselves out on twitter a lot like chickens sorting themselves out on a roost. Each one of us wants our place, each one of us wants others to want to hang out with us and not push us away or try to get away from us. The chickens with the most 'friends' on the roost are the ones who don't fight for a place and don't make a big deal out of being bumped out of their place. Getting bumped over just happens, it's nothing personal, it's just another tiny brained chicken who is having a rough day trying to find a comfortable spot. If that chicken settles in and then gets pecky, that chicken usually winds up not having the comfort of friends in the dark because everyone has edged away. It's scary to feel alone when you can't see in the dark.
Sometimes something happens that is all a big misunderstanding, or is about to be, and eyebrows raise up all around (you can't see chickens' eyebrows any more than you can really see eyebrows raise on twitter) and next thing you know, feelings get hurt and someone gets upset (they get their feathers ruffled, lol). The problem with misunderstandings is that they are like accidents, they can be prevented, but we all know how hard it is to train employees how to avoid accidents, right?
I was once directly under a heavy clay manikin when a fellow employee on a ladder accidentally knocked it off the shelf they were redecorating, and of course I was hit on the head so hard I was nearly knocked out. My glasses went flying and one of the manikin hands broke off and stabbed me in the face with a clay finger. But guess what. It was the day after Christmas and we were jam packed with customers doing returns, so the boss, who was an athletic sort, wrapped my bleeding face up in an awkward bandage and sent me back to the front lines, still dazed. Everybody loved it- customers got nice, coworkers were in awe, I had a really good day. I could have been killed or horribly maimed, the manikin's finger just missed my eyeball, but I still recall fond memories of being the hit of the store that day.
That is how I usually handle misunderstandings, too. We all suck because we're all human, and we're all stupid because, let's be honest, we really are like a bunch of chimps half the time, acting and reacting without a lot of deeper thought. I could have stepped way back. I could have made the decision to pretend I didn't see something and let it just roll out naturally while I kept my feelings inside. But I was part of a group tag, I had visions of my future getting messy real fast, there were only minutes left counting down to the big race, and I, an aspie, did a juggling act worthy, I think, of Cirque du Soleil. The evil villain in me would have said what I'm really thinking in far fewer words and pissed a few people off without even thinking.
#sadpanda
