Tabatha Deans

SAFETY IN THE CITY
I made a friend. Sort of. His name is Travis, or Trevor, I don’t remember exactly. He’s a security guard at the public library, and we chatted for quite a while. I see him every time I go to the library, and he’s always been polite. When I stopped at his security desk to inquire about upcoming art shows at the library he answered my questions, then kind of looked me up and down. I was wearing my backpack, with my pink dispenser of pepper spray hooked on the front strap.
“I want to compliment you on your pepper spray,” he said.
That wasn’t exactly the line I was expecting to come out of his mouth, and I was a little taken aback but recovered quickly.
“Thank you. I think it makes the outfit.” I replied. “You don’t think its too much?”
“No. In fact, I want to compliment you on your overall look,” he said. “You don’t look like an easy target.”
Okay, again, not the pickup line I was expecting.
“Well, I’m new to the area and I’m still trying to get a feel for the good and bad areas,” I said.
He went on to explain that if a mugger were walking down the street, he would think twice about mugging me because I carried myself confidently, was alert and had my pepper spray prominently displayed. I did puff up a little bit at his compliment, but didn’t tell him that it was the backpack and heels that forced me to stand so tall and pay attention to where I was walking.
We enjoyed a nice conversation with him telling me all about crime in the area, but assuring me that most of the drug users in town were addicted to heroin, which is a downer, and there aren’t a lot of tweakers in town. Which makes me feel better. Heroin addicts slumped in the corner seem a lot less scary than someone who’s been up for three days and out of their mind.
I walked up Colfax on my way home, and practiced drawing my pepper spray as if it were a gun, feeling pretty proud of myself for being such a safety conscious pedestrian.

CONSPIRACY OVERLOAD
It started with the people’s fair. I ran across a booth of Americans for Change. I knew immediately that they were what society considers “radicals” or “conspiracy theorists.” But they had a DVD about issues with the FDA, which I’ve personally had issues with ever since I became a diabetic. My number one issue is that even though it has been established that I will, in fact, die if I don’t take insulin, the FDA still forces me to pay a doctor twice a year, (about $350 each visit,) just to get a written prescription. This means that if I happen to be traveling, which has happened before, when my prescription runs out, the pharmacy must legally decline to sell me my life-saving medication. Their reasoning being that I’m not informed enough to make decisions regarding my own health, and without the advice of a doctor twice a year I may harm myself with insulin. Which makes no sense, considering we all know I WILL die without it. So my intention for stopping at the booth was to get more dirt on the FDA.
I walked away with nearly a dozen DVD’s regarding injustices in America, and the reasons behind them. (Every one of them is, of course, financial.) I must admit that some of the videos are questionable, but some of them are frighteningly accurate. So I spent the next two days glued to my couch watching conspiracy videos.
Too much information. After the first one, I ran next door and bought water. (Fluoridation.) After the second one, I went to clean out my fridge, and then my cupboards, and then realized that I had to have something to eat, and there was really no way to avoid preservatives, or genetically altered foods. The third one sent me rushing to my computer to look up the number for the local ACLU chapter, to fight for my right for my drugs. The next one made me glad I don’t actually have any money in the bank, and the following made me think about throwing my Walmart DVD player out the window into the dumpster. By the time I got to the last one, I was just too damn tired to even begin looking for the planes that didn’t really crash into the Pentagon on 9/11.
I realize that everybody has some kind of conspiracy theory, and it’s funny to me that some people can hold tight to one, and mock others. What’s frightening, however, is knowing that so much of our world is based on money, and how many lives are lost to line the pockets of people. It’s even more frightening to think that lives might deliberately be sacrificed to make money. In the end I realized that I am, and always have been, truly lucky in life. I’ve never really had enough material possession that my life would end if I lost them, but I’ve always had more than enough of what I need. So after considering reasonable actions to my new found information, I decided to stop drinking the public water, (which I haven’t done for years anyway), stop shopping at Walmart, and just try to be the best person I can be. But I’m still dreaming about suing the FDA.

June 12, 2011 - Posted by Tabatha Stewart | Uncategorized