A Smattering of WD…

I don’t typically engage in much Doctrine-flavored discourse on this side of the pond, but today I make an exception: I need to go a little further than I think is fair to do in a blog comment’s length. So, in my yard I can stretch out a bit.

A few days back, I was watching my neighbor Louie while he mowed his lawn. Nothing very notable about that. In Doctrine terminology, Louie is a scott, and I won’t bother with any qualification of that term. You can visit the WD for all that.

So… Louie is a scott, and over the years has been through a collection of experiences that might have completely derailed a…quieter constitution. But no… watching Louie is akin to perusing the antics of  Charlie Sheen. Two divorces, kids moved out, chopper bikes, chopper bike shop in his living room….wanted me to compose a theme song for the bike shop; bought a guitar and amp because he knew I would show him how, gave it all away ( not a big loss- he arrived for his first lesson with his Dean Camouflage Dimebag Darrell…Mother of God…) when he saw that there was work involved, and he truly doesn’t have time for  all that…

Bought a huge set of lion statues for the front walkway…and had then chromed. Bought three dogs, because his two were lonely. Let them all run free, because he can’t be part of chaining their spirit, man…two were lost, and one got hit by a car, barely surviving.

Let his new-found biker-dude friends live in the house; after all, their rides were already in the living room. Then there was the arrest for stealing someone’s chain-link dog enclosure. And the cars…he started buying cars to resell, to support the bike shop. There were dozens of cars all up and down the street, on lawns, in driveways…with “for sale” signs everywhere. Old GTO’s Corvettes, a Mini-Cooper, a Datsun 360Z….a banana-yellow Humvee.

He only ate at the pizza place on the corner, but that went out of business…so he kind of stopped eating. Lost about a hundred pounds. Stayed awake for days and days at a time…Really started looking like Eddie from the Iron Maiden covers…but with issues.

And then… it all went away. Cars, bikes, bikers, lions…all of it…gone. The four stops a day from UPS with new stuff…guitars, TVs, furniture, appliances, more dogs, bike parts…all over. The descension of absolute cemeterial quiet. ( That alone served to re-affirm my belief in a benevolent God.) The bad pizza place re-opened as a barbecue place ( yes, in Cranston…) and he started to eat again. Two dogs, on leashes. No lions. Got a job running a pizza delivery crew. Started being civil to the neighbors again.

Louie was back on his meds. Thank God, because that was some scary #@*&  he had going on over there. The old Italians ( pretty much everybody in these parts ) were all convinced he was possessed. (But  he was such a nice boy…I went to school with his mother…I’m so glad she can’t see any of this…oh, my Anthony wanted to ask…what’s he want for the GTO? He sold it already? Cabbadoste…)

So all was well, finally.

Until Sunday.

On Sunday, in an infernal heat wave,  Louie started mowing the lawn.

He was wearing a huge Charlie Daniels-style hat; sunglasses; black Western riding boots. No pants…but the silver-sequined lame’ wrestling robe, complete with a giant WWF belt buckle seemed to say…” we don’t need no stinking pants”… Sometimes in life, there just aren’t any words at all… although the phrase ZZ Top‘s transvestite landscaping service came to mind. I realized with dawning horror that… maybe the bikers weren’t so bad after all…

Buckle up, kids. Give your ticket to the nice man, and hold on. For God’s sake, hold on.

And while I observed the newest Louie emerging from his inner whatever that is, I thought to myself…what would that ol’ WD say about this? A normal scott…  who slowly turned into a 178-mph scott?  Who took a few months off, and then doubled back again to start anew with a vengeance? What are his chances of survival? And I thought to myself…

Does the WD have anything to offer to people who have real, debilitating, terrifying mental  issues to contend with?  Would an awareness of the Doctrine be helping or hurting someone like Louie right now?