Victims Rule the World

Until the day I became a grown-up, I never realized how the pitiful, sad and victimy people always got their way. We live in a world of cliches started no doubt in some monastery where the brothers not only brewed beer from hops in the monastery's vegetable garden, but after a few brewskis wrote books and treatises on civilization as it was back then in the 5th century.

Okay, so I made up the date. It could have been the 15th century, but long ago enough to realize it may be time to change this paradigm. Victims, mostly of themselves and their disordered minds, have it made. The world revolves around their angst and anger, their whine and their whims.

If you have never met a victim, let me be the first to introduce you to one. Her name is Jessie and her current address is the other side. Her role was stepmother and she whined about everything and everybody and how unfair it is that she didn't get all of her mother's estate and everybody else did and after all look what I did for my mother and this is the thanks I get.

But inside that whine is a grizzly bear protecting her young and wanting to let you know exactly how she felt her entire life. And of course your only recourse to avoid witnessing the whining, shouting and pouting is to give up and let her have her way. Sadly, getting her way is never enough. Life is difficult and she wants to be sure and let others know how hard she had it.

If this poison doesn't do the trick, then his/her anger comes out sideways at those innocent people who couldn't possibly understand they had just been taken hostage, like the sweet mail lady at the post office, or the city clerk who takes the water bill and has to listen to the endless griping about the cost of the bill.

Do you know what whining is? It's anger coming through a very small hole. These victimy bullies are everywhere...you're married to them, born to them, work with them, live next door to them and sign them on as friends. If you date them and you're smart, the relationship ends quickly. But know that victims don't like to hang out with smart people because they see through them and can blow that thinly veiled burka.

If you want to know the reason victims can do the I-hurt-my-back-so-I-can't-do-the-job act, it's because they can. They've surrounded themselves with people who will enable them until they die. You know who these folks are. They're police officers, judges, supervisors, children in large bodies everywhere. Victims do this because the weather is bad, the Mets lost, the bridge was closed or the melon wasn't ripe. Logic has nothing to do with this sport. Once, a police officer asked my husband who was driving and drinking to pull over and sleep it off. That's the sort of person a well-trained victim draws close.

You will recognize the victim by the requisite props around them. A few good ones are the cane, the back support, the arm in a sling, the latest vibrating chair from Brookstone. All these special effects are poised to be within an excellent viewing area in order to draw attention. The cute actor I met in New York city used the cane. It worked.

So hear this: If you want to know what to do if you get stuck, run the fifty yard dash as fast as you can away from this individual. She or he can suck you into their funnel shaped cloud faster than you can say, "hel....p." But by then, it's usually too late. I say, buy a ticket to your favorite vacation spot and make it your new home. There is no other recourse. Just beware, they are everywhere. And unless and until you can get strong enough to beat the living daylights out of them, you may as well join them.

I know. I never could win. In fact, Jessie visited me one night five years after she died. I woke up the next morning to find I had a black eye. I was not married then and not dating. When I looked at the dark and swollen eye, I realized I could never have done that to myself in the middle of a deep sleep. I knew exactly who it was. It was the mark of a five star professional ruling from her throne on the other side, a sign of excellence if you ask me.