Food for Thought

So Valentine's has come and gone again. Another hallmark holiday where you can purchase and send a little bit of paper to your loved ones to prove to them that you're thinking of them and love them enough to fight you're way through thousands of shoppers to read hundreds of cards to find that special one that has the words to express what it is that you probably express everyday. Yet despite the contrived nature of the holiday, I still love the cards my wife gets me and the words that she puts in them herself. They come from her heart, and that touches me. Unfortunately, and despite the fact that I like to write, I've never been really good at putting down what is supposed to go in a card. Most of my scribbles amount to things like "Read the card. Love Mark." Or "What he said." Hardly words that can be relied upon to inflame a woman's passion.

So this year, I decided to think outside the box and baked my wife a batch of Gingerbread men and women and little gingerbread hearts. And then I sat back and watched myself and my wife exhibit an interesting phenomenom that I'm sure spells doom for Humanity. Gingerbread men (and women - we'll call them GPs - Gingerbread People - to be perfectly politically correct) provide a vehicle to reflect the darkness that exists in every single human psyche.

I presented my wife with the gift on Sunday, and after the traditional newly-wed "I love you! No, I love You! I love you More! No I love you more!" that I've been told returns to the pink, fuzzy ether from which it came somewhere around the 3rd year of marraige, we each picked our "victim" and sat down to the serious business of eating GPs. And I'm using the term "victim" in its literal sense - which is where the whole reflection-of-the-psyche-doom-of-humanity comes in.

Each of us had a cup of hot coffee. We sat, hands gripping the handles of our coffee mugs, and calmly discussed which body part of the GP should be subjected to the scalding liquid first. Cindy chose the feet so her cookie couldn't run away, whereas I went for the arms so mine couldn't fight back. Then, giggling evily, and emitting tiny, high-pitched squeels of agony on behalf of our mute victims, we dunked the chosen part, bit it off and ate it.

Well, that's not so bad, really. After all, that's what GPs are for - to dunk and eat. But here is where it gets really macabre. We walked the little GPs around the table (Obviously Cindy's couldn't walk well because of a lack of feet) and said things like, "Ow, my feet" or "My arms! You bastard!" Then, laughing like school children, we picked another body part, dunked it in the scalding liquid, and ate it. Mercy and quarter were not given. Our consumptive torture of the GPs was relentless. Only when we were finished, leaning back, and sipping at our coffee did it occur to me what we had just done.

Now I like to think I'm a pretty caring, giving kind of guy. I don't kick puppies. I don't chase squirrels with a lawnmower. I'm (nearly) vegetarian. I don't support fox hunting, bull fighting, cock fighting, bear baiting, snake badgering, or hare coursing or any other blood sport involving the killing or maiming of living things. I take spiders who have strayed to close to my personal space and gently place them on the leaf of the nearest indoor plant. I'll admit, I have been known to swat a misquito in my day. And Cindy, well, she's an animal Saint - a regular Mother Theresa of the non-human. Sometimes when I step out of the house on my way to school, I find a small congregation of chanting rabbits just outside our door, each with a little Cindy picture clutched in their paws and their little red eyes alight with ferverous worship. It's because of her that we share living space with two stray cats, two florida turtles, a quadruple amputee Anole lizard we've affectionately named "Fingers", and in the spring (prior to their re-introduction back into the wilds) several cages of ravenous, biting, clawing, twitching, orphaned baby squirrels. And we'd have more roomies if we didn't have the requirement of so much living space for ourselves. So, I don't think we're bad folks.

Yet, the calm and detached manner that we played at torturing and consuming the GPs begs to differ. How many other compassionate people do this? My curiosity peeked, I decided to do a little field work. I trundled down to my local baker, where GPs are generated for public consumption on a daily basis. There, ensconced at an inconspicuous table I watched in mounting horror as people purchased and consumed the hapless morsels. Old men gummed off limbs, then smiled faintly as they regarded the carnage they had wrought. Children chomped and squeeled, showing each other the various hideous amputations with their own teethmarks on them. Women invariably went for the feet, saving the head for last. New born babes, nurturing mothers, police officers, pillars of the community, bankers, airline pilots, nuns, all seemed to take delight in maiming the GPs. Such acts are even reflected as humour in our mainstream media. The original Shrek had a GP that had been tortured into revealing the location of his fellow magical creatures by having his legs broken off, and (this is especially disturbing) played with right in front of him.

But really, who cares. In the grand scheme of things they are, after all, simply cookies - inanimate objects with no feelings or pain receptors. What's a little harmless fun?

The point is this - there is something in the human psyche that gets perverse pleasure out of the symbolic torturing of GPs. Some dark nook or cranny that appears to be in every one of us. Give anyone a GP and a cup of hot liquid and you can watch them contemplate, dip, chomp, and smile quietly as they gaze at the spot where the missing limb was. The fact that we can externalize such a violent act, even imagine such a violent act, let alone take pleasure from it should be a warning to us all to beware the dark parts of our psyche. It's a small step onto a very slippery slope...

So the next time you're handed a GP, display your compassion and say, "No thank you. I refuse to allow the bestial nature of the human psyche destroy the flickering light of hope that is compassion", then smile benevolently and tolerantly at your violent, guilt-ridden and likely absolutely baffled, former companions.

Mark