Nurse the Hate: Las Vegas Shooting

When I was in school I took a class on anthropology.  I had no particular interest in anthropology but it was one of my only available dodges to avoid accounting or math.  The class hit all of my criterion in that it met at 1:10pm M/W/F, was within easy walking distance, and must have been pretty easy as two of the starting basketball players were in it.  Some guy named Larry, who was the shooting guard, used to park his 300Z diagonally in a “University Vehicles Only” spot that was essentially in the front hallway.  He and I used to sit next to each other and try to figure out what was going on with the odd instructor.

The guy that taught the class looked just like Darren Stevens from “Bewitched”.  He had done all sorts of field work in the Amazon and South Sea Islands which he would refer to at times.  He had this detached quality to him like he had done too much peyote or smoked crazy mind altering herbs with cannibals.  He would often stop in his lectures to furiously give thought to something and then suddenly release his look of intense concentration when he was ready to resume.  I remember once when he was talking about some bullshit when suddenly he raised up a gangly leg to rest his foot on the desk.  It was a very awkward stance, but he seemed right at home.  He was wearing one of those old snowmobile boots that were quite the rage a decade earlier and now decidedly out of style.  I was sort of open mouthed staring at the boot, then over at Larry to gauge his reaction, then back at the boot.  Larry whispered to me.  "What's with that boot man?"  Darren Stevens put his unlit pipe to his mouth, which seemed like a prop piece and stopped speaking.  He thought for a moment and uttered the only thing I remember from that class.

“You know, when I went to visit the Kung! tribe I remember they all would sleep under their huts.  The huts were constructed on stilts, so they liked to go underneath them for shade I suppose.  It is very hot there...  very hot."  He paused for a moment to think about the heat.  "Every so often one of the huts would collapse.”  He adjusted his pipe and stopped to consider this.  He looked up to the ceiling.  It seemed like he had forgotten he was in a classroom of disconnected students.  “When the huts would collapse it would kill them of course.”  He paused.  The silence hung in the air as we all leaned in to see where this was going.  “I don’t know why they kept doing that…  Why would you do something that would kill you?  They didn't have to nap there.  It was just what they had always done I guess.”  Then he sort of snapped out of it and got right back into whatever bullshit we were talking about before.

The reason I mention this at all is because A) it’s always good to see what guys that have done tons of peyote will say and B) it was a thought that pertains to our society’s situation on gun control.  For the next several days people will make an emotional show of the pointless tragedy in Vegas.  The video clips will be repeated over and over and over.  “Our prayers are with those in Las Vegas and blah blah blah”  A few days will pass and then we will forget about it just like we did with school shootings, nightclub shootings, and all the other weekly minor shooting events.  The gun lobby will trot out their line of defense.  The gutless legislature will throw up their hands and say “What can we do against such a powerful lobby?”.  Nothing will happen to change a situation that obviously is broken.  Then we will go back to sleep under our huts to wait for the next collapse.