THE PERFECT MURDER WEAPON

Hey, fellow New Yorkers, we just endured two days of bitter, bitter cold. It always helps me to appreciate our northern neighbors, the Canadians! But, two days! Ha! Kid Stuff. Do you remember last winter…how long it went on and how much of the white stuff fell? i pulled many an icicle off of my gutters before they went down, icicles bigger than me.

Such a phenomenon always makes me think of Alfred Hitchcock, that funny but very very scary man who had us shivering in our boots when we were kids. “GOOD EVENING,” he would say so sweetly, only to follow it with another story, irresistibly so, that would give us nightmares for many nights after…There’s actually a wonderfully entertaining video on You Tube about his famous greeting (Good Evening, Mr. Hitchcock).

But old Alfred used to talk about “the perfect murder weapon,” the icicle, if it was big and strong enough. You could jab it in – do the dastardly need – and then it would disappear…melt away.

Hey, Molly,

ONLY KIDDING, FOLKS! Don’t be poking around my house for a puddle now.

THE THING IS: i have always believed this whole thing to be true…but more so on another, a spiritual plain, the killing of a human spirit, another’s soul. Such icicles can only begin to form when the “air becomes brutal.”  And these monsters grow SLOWly…drip by drip by drip by drip, ice upon ice upon ice upon ice. i have never actually heard of a single instance where someone tested Mr. Hitchcock’s theory. BUT i HAVE SEEN FIRSTHAND SO MANY TIMES when an atmosphere of “cruel bitter cold” was around and spiritual icicles were created slowly but surely by mean words, ugly names, foul remarks, a missed opportunity to JUST BE NICE, etc. etc. etc. etc. and some beautiful human soul was destroyed. How many times right in department stores or in my grocery store parking lot i have overheard a man or woman speaking to their little child with such vulgarity or unkindness, and i have looked into those children’s faces – and seen DEATH, just imagining, if this is what happens in public, what they must go through in their dear homes. i fear that far more frequent than physical beatings, little souls (and MANY BIG ONES, too) are being slain by powerful words.

To paraphrase Pete Seeger’s classic, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” Where have all “the Inner Children” gone!? Why, to IceLand, of course!!!!

It’s the little things that matter, the tiniest! They can either create the deadly icicle or MELT IT, those warmer, kinder, loving caring breaths of ours. We can make or break the Child.

Author: friardad

what's it like having a wife and six kids after having been a friar for many years and being still married to St. Francis' Lady Poverty? View all posts by friardad