We were at the mall the other day. We like to go to look at the wackos.
Of course, there are not a pile of wackos in Nebraska. Most of them move to more urban areas like Kansas City. Now there is a collection of wackos.
But anyway, I saw a girl leading a guy around by a leash. She and he were dressed in the best new-style punk look, tattoos and piercings by the bucketful.
He had a studded collar around his neck with a chain leash held by the girl.
He didn’t really looked like he minded it.
But I did.
It was degrading on a level that truly bothered me. Degrading to him, of course, being treated as something that needed a leash, an animal. Degrading to her because she, like he, looked like it was just as normal as dirt to be leading a guy around on a leash. And degrading to me because it put me in the position of looking at something like that and being forced to accept it as normal.
Now, Ella and I went to a costume party many years ago in a similar costume. She was dressed as a queen or something and I was a virtually inarticulate barbarian. She had a leash around my neck just to keep me from rampaging or the like.
But that was a costume for a costume party on Halloween. We would never have dreamed of going to the mall and walked around looking at candles in Yankee Candle Company or Dillard’s.
It also made me rethink the costume. It was funny and people saw it as funny because we all know that I am an independent person and Ella does not rule me or tell me what to do. I am boss in our house (I hope she isn’t reading this).
But it was degrading to see them and I wonder how people perceived us, as gospel ministers, doing the same thing. Probably didn't think anything of it except that it was a rather inventive costume.
I feel for our children that such a thing would be considered the norm.
Of course, there was the guy yesterday with the cigarette stuck in his ear piercing hole. But he didn’t have a shirt pocket, so I guess he figured any port in a storm.
These are the leaders of tomorrow. Of course, I suppose that that was what a lot of adults thought of us at the time we were young.
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