By David Filmore
Let me explain why I assaulted 437 people at the School for the Pregnant, Elderly, and Utterly Defenseless: I’m a victim.
I grew up with nothing-no swimming pool, no cable, only the most primitive of touch-tone phones. (The cord only reached six feet.) I suffered a lot of mental abuse from my parents, who were always telling me no. “Don’t bite your cousin.” “Stop burning things.” “Put down that pistol.”
When I was eight, they didn’t give me my own color television set, which I had specifically told them I wanted for Christmas. On my ninth birthday they didn’t buy me the Nintendo game system I had been dreaming of. My friends at the surprise party had to make do with party hats and streamers and Pin the Tail on the-I can barely choke out the word-Donkey.
Of course I was traumatized. My mother took me to the doctor, an HMO man named Butcher, whose first response to any complaint was leeches. When that didn’t work, he sent me to a Depression man who asked a series of questions. Did I get frustrated when things didn’t go my way? (Yes.) Did it irritate me when people didn’t cater to my every whim? (Yes.) Did I take secret joy in the suffering of others? (Of course.)
He diagnosed HM (Human Malaise). I can still hear his pen scratching on the pad, still see the Cyrillic-looking prescription we tendered to the pharmacist. This pill was called Kaleidozac, and though it would slow the disease, it could not halt it.
Thus began an addiction to an evolving assortment of pills as the years, and my disease, progressed. You name it, I took it: Muddleloft, Psychoscrew, Scramblemill, Brainyzap. To my parents’ credit, they grasped at any hope, not caring how many times we had to third-party the expense.
The pills granted some relief. But the basic problem-what I can only describe as “not being born into a ruling monarchy”-remained.
In school, the kids made fun of my J.C. Penney tennis shoes and alligatorless shirts. In gym I was always the last one picked. They ganged up on me in dodgeball. I remember clearly thinking, as everyone laughed and hurled balls at my head really hard, “I want to hurl a ball at somebody’s head, really hard.”
As the years passed, my disease took on the surreality of nightmare. I began fixating on girls, for example. Nonsense words came out of my mouth when I tried to talk to them. My sanity was clearly coming to an end, a heavy burden for any 22-year-old to bear.
The pharmaceutical industry tried to come to my rescue, but promising new pills delivered only disappointment. Work was out of the question: My mind was too clotted with my obsessions-Why can’t I win the lottery? Why don’t the Publishers Clearinghouse people visit me? Why is that Pamela Anderson swimsuit picture stuck in my head?-to permit anything like concentration.
The doctor said one of the side effects of the latest pill was ASP (Acute Self-Pity), and it was a humdinger. I found myself incapacitated, paralyzed on the couch in front of our pitiful little Magnavox television from, like, 1990.
My world shrank to the size of the four-bedroom McMansion I laughingly called “home.” Every week I suffered cable outages, misplaced cell phones, shortages on filet mignon at the grocer. The monthly check I received from the government was barely enough to cover the payments on my new Mitsubishi Eclipse.
This ticking time bomb had to explode, and one day it did. My parents ordered me to get off my butt and get a job. I had only one thought: to hit somebody in the head with a ball, really hard. However, no dodgeballs were handy, so I decided to drive to Wal-Mart to get some.
I climbed into my Eclipse. When I turned on the stereo, one of the speakers sputtered and cut out. How much more could I take? As I limped to the nearest Stereophonicworld for repairs, an ambulance came up behind me, beckoning me, with flashing lights and blaring sirens, to pull over to the side of the road so it could get to some emergency or something. “Why me?” I screamed to the inside of my car. “Why always me?”
After getting the speaker looked at-they couldn’t repair it then, they needed to order a part-I remember cackling hysterically-I went to Wal-Mart to purchase the balls. I understood that the world as I knew it was gone forever when, upon exiting the store, the greeter told me “good-bye.” Good-bye from a greeter. That was it. I could handle no more, and blacked out.
When I came to, they said I had smacked 437 people at the School for the Pregnant, Elderly, and Utterly Defenseless upside the head with an assortment of dodgeballs. However, my lawyer-the best lawyer my parents’ life savings can buy-says the real victim here is me, and I think he’s right.
I’m a victim of Mom and Dad. I’m a victim of HM and ASP. I’m a victim of Kaleidozac, Muddleloft, and a zillion other drugs they pumped into me and which have been shown to induce violent thoughts in nearly .00001 percent of users. I’m a victim of the Twinkies, Mountain Dew, and Red Bull in my system at the time of the dodgeballing. I’m a victim of society, which somehow or other allowed all of this to happen.
I’m a victim in so many ways I can’t even name them all, so I’ll just leave that to my lawyer. If he doesn’t victimize me too. I mean, I told him to get me out of here by Thursday. What’s the deal? It’s really ticking me off. Whatever happens, it’s on his head.
