Mogadishu Matt

Someone was always asking me how I felt, then everyone was always threatening me with “getting help”. The brutal truth was a lot simpler.

It was the 90s and everyone seemed to be writing a book about kids, their issues. I knew of a few of these “square” types and they didn’t know shit. (The same can be said about many adults now, including yours truly. I have a level of sympathy for young folks these days but I don’t act like I have solutions. I also don’t have a jive ass hustle disguised as a solution for the world’s ills). These square types would get with various parent groups and start a level of hysteria, akin to the 1980’s “Satanic Panic”. Their panic was called “low self esteem”.

According to these shucksters, low self esteem was responsible for drug use, low grades, and whatever other maladies you can think of. I personally blame low self esteem on my horrific skin and fungal infections during that time of my life. The truth was easier than a catchall.

Their books are like many conservative non fiction books today, useful for kindling. Most of the solutions were bullshit.

Low self esteem isn’t the problem, but bothering kids with pointless badgering is. If you badger a kid enough, they will hate dealing with you and might be depressed as it pertains to dealing with anything “self esteem” related.

It isn’t that I want parents to completely ignore their kids, but I do know that giving them space to figure stuff out is a good idea. (Not being a helicopter parent!)

Although I am loathed to reference folks I don’t know of “100%”, Abigail Schrier talked about the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) having a questionnaire for teens, specifically asking them about being depressed. I faintly remember being asked the same questions when I went to a doctor’s appointment before. (Never mind the fact that I was an adult).

I feel like “depression” might be today’s low self esteem. A convenient boogey man and a damn fine way for someone to make a dime off of parents. (Yes, I think depression is real but I also know that marketing shitbags take advantage of people with varying levels of depression, selling them meds and other shit to “fill the void”).

https://www.thefp.com/p/abigail-shrier-stop-asking-kids-if

(yes, the FP cut the story in half behind a wall of some sorts). Questionnaire example lifted from an email:

1. In the past few weeks, have you wished you were dead?

2. In the past few weeks, have you felt that you or your family would be better off if you were dead?

3. In the past week, have you been having thoughts about killing yourself?

4. Have you ever tried to kill yourself? If yes, how? When?

5. Are you thinking of killing yourself right now? If yes, please describe.

FreeMatt’s ideas? I believe in less badgering.

I think Schrier had mentioned elsewhere (?) that badgering kids enough might induce mental illness reports. (I call this the slot machine effect, much like a cop making a driver take three different Breathalyzer tests to get preferred results).

I apologize to my readers for the ham-fisted attempts at a post. My sentiments are genuine although my follow through was weak. Please let me know what you think in the comments.

I have fond memories of homemade fireworks and devices that drive “the common folk” of a neighborhood nuts. We were able to make smoke bombs out of stuff from a local pharmacy and stuff from a friend’s kitchen. It was very uneventful.

We would run around after setting them off, usually confusing people. It made cars look wild and it even filled an open air corridor with smoke, confusing people that worked in the building. It made for a wild summer, considering this was years before we got behind the wheel of a car.

We cause no real harm. It might have made a pre-historic Karen get concerned but no lasting damage.

Our love affair with that level of hijinks expired years before I left that place and years before 9-11, other terrorist activities.

But the laughs rose their head from the ashes…

(1) One Redneck and Too Much Time On His Hands

A former co-worker of mine got his hands on some acetylene from someone’s welder. If you don’t know what that is, “acetylene plus oxygen equals hot”. It also makes for hijinks in small amounts. Another one of our co-worker had put a small amount of acetylene in an upside down cup, then lit it. The cup jumped several feet in the air with a little bit of noise. My first mentioned co-worker filled up a enclosed trash bag full of acetylene, then tied a helium balloon to it. He also taped a homemade delay fuse to the bag, giving the balloon an opportunity to rise into the sky. When the lit fuse hit a leak in the bag, “it make loud boom”. The co-worker claimed that the ATF showed up looking for an explosives detonation site.

(2) The Flight of the Jagoff Condor

Apparently, another one of my former co-workers at a different work site repeated the same set up, launching a bigger helium balloon with a decent amount of acetylene tethered to it. I had reason to believe that there might have been glow sticks taped onto it for easy identification in the night sky. I am unsure of the efficacy of the “boom”, but it gave those guys something to do for a night shift. (I do know that someone had reported an UFO one time when they launched a glow stick laden helium filled trash bag skyward. Don’t know if it was repeated or not).

All of these made for great sh*ts and giggles, but terrorism scares coupled with the constantly paranoid ruin a great thing for us.

(Please note: Don’t make your own fireworks and pyrotechnic devices. Leave that to guys that work at fireworks outlets and professionals. Oxygen and acetylene both can be dangerous. They are used to cut through metal, which is hotter than your hand).