the Water, The water
By: Pope Greyling IV
**
“Goddamn, conspiracy theorist! Me? Unbelievable.” My mother grabbed my brother and I by the wrists and slid her hands into ours before pulling us from the makeshift clinic in the Village Hall. She was making every attempt to suppress a stream of swear words and curses. The receptionist leveled a judgmental look at my mother who replied by digging her middle finger into my palm.
“Ouch…” I whispered. My mother let out a wet sigh and let go of my hand. She tugged my brother by the wrist as I double stepped into a skip to keep up. Knowing that reckless abandonment for property accompanies mother’s wrath; my brother hurried ahead and pushed open the double door that lead to the parking lot.
Light filled my head and I shielded my eyes against it. My momentary pause was enough for mom to notice and she chided me to catch up. The saturation of white light faded as my mother and brother were already piling into our red AMC Pacer. I loved that car because it looked like a ladybug and mom would let me sit in the hatchback. This gave my twin and I more than enough space for peaceful car rides. I hustled to the car and ducked into the backseat before hurling my body over the seat and into the hatch back. My feet almost clipped my brother as I tumbled into my space.
“Mom, Dean almost hit me in the head.” My mom turned in the driver’s seat before deciding to communicate via rear view mirror.
“Did you hit him?”
“You can’t hit someone with your feet.”
“Did you hit him?” Mom asked again, this time letting her annoyance from the clinic well up inside her again. I answered quickly and without any humor.
“No. My foot almost touched him, but I didn’t and it wasn’t on purpose.” She sighed and rubbed her forehead. She had been in a car accident years before my brother and I were born and the accident left a deep scar from her left forehead that disappeared into her hairline of thick black hair. She sighed again and her voice quivered. “Let's just go get some ice cream.” This made my brother cheer, although I did not join him.
“Can we please try the new drive thru?”I asked. The drive thru had just been completed at McDonalds this past Saturday. The Mayor held a ceremony with the Hamburglar and Mayor McCheese to cut a red ribbon together and let the first drive thru customer use the drive thru as a crowd watched. Mom had leaned over to us and whispered that it wasn’t fair that the first customer was the police Captain. Our mother had taught us to always suspect authority.
“Those things are just going to make people fat and lazy.” I groaned and rolled my eyes. Mom was always conjuring nefarious plots that stemmed from the marriage of technology and culture. She was a steady reader of the Enquirer and some of the other suspect magazines that would purport that aliens had contacted Presidents since Truman and that the government was supplying our enemies in South America with guns in exchange for drugs that would then flood inner city streets.
Having kept my opinions to myself, we drove to McDonalds, which didn’t take long in such a small town. I could see the line of cars that wrapped around the brightly colored building. Before I could offer any salve, my mother groaned loudly and pulled into a parking spot.
“We’re not going to use the drive thru? It won’t take too long,” I looked to my brother for support, unsurprisingly, didn’t find any. He always chose the path of least resistance with mom. She was angry still, but composed herself before speaking.
“We don’t have time today. We have to get back to the clinic and get you those school shots or they won’t let you start kindergarten this fall.”
I suggested that we not get the shots and not bother with kindergarten since I already knew how to read. Her tone softened, “I know this isn’t your fault, that damn nurse talked to me like I’m crazy. I’m not goddamn crazy. I heard that those shots were making kids reta…” She swallowed her last word.
The nurse had threatened mom’s public aid eligibility during her screening session. She had seen in the parking lot and commented that she loved the red color of the car. During the screening, and while they were disagreeing about the volume and delivery of the innoculations, the nurse asked if mom’s public aid caseworker knew that my mom owned a car. Owning a car significantly reduces or may altogether eliminate your eligibility for government assistance. Lying about having a car, as mom had, would disqualify her for assistance. Since she had never received support from my dad, government assistance was her only income.
Mom had explained to the nurse that she had read about all the vaccines that were now required before a student could attend school. The article explained that the metallic preservatives in the vaccines interact with the accrued environmental and dietary metals and toxins in a child’s body and when combined, they might severely and permanently injure a person (1).
The inside of the McDonalds was empty as most people elected to sit in line in the drive-thru. I could already see the evil machinations of mom’s technological tyranny turning its cogs. We ordered our ice cream cones and waited at the end of the counter. I watched through the inside of the drive-thru as cars full of smiling families were given bags of food. In one of the cars a kid a bit older than myself laughed to himself in what I’m sure was a self-congratulating notation of his technological superiority.
Mom had begun to complain about the nurse again. We received our cones and had walked back to the parked car. We sat on the concrete parking divider, “It wasn’t that she didn’t believe me,” mom said between ice cream licks. “It’s that she treated me like a jerk. She treated me like I was crazy and called me a conspiracy theorist.”
I tried to assure our mother that she wasn’t crazy, although I did not understand anything other that the fact that I didn’t want to get any amount of shots nor did I want to start kindergarten. I bit the base of my cone and sucked out the chocolate soft serve that had melted into the waffle of the cone.
“You know what? It doesn’t matter if I’m crazy or not. If you don’t get the shots they won’t allow you into school and if you’re not in school they’ll call DCFS and have us investigated.” she sighed and finished off her cone. My brother had already finished his and was asking to be let back into the car. I slowly stopped eating my cone as I realized the worst part of the entire situation; we were already eating our post-shots ice cream. I looked down to my mauled cone with the twinge of buyers remorse.
“It's the water, that’s the problem. That’s how I understand it. The water; it’s poison anymore, they call it acid rain. The water is polluted and we wash with water and drink it, but they won’t believe me and I’m the conspiracy theorist!” She stood and opened the car door for my brother. I wanted to save my ice cream, but knew it wouldn’t last until after we had the shots and I knew better than to ask for another after we were done. I didn’t bother jumping into the back hatch and instead chose to slump next to my brother on the seemingly shorter trip back to the village hall.
%&#z14
I sat up straight in the jump seat of my ambulance and gripped the bench for leverage. My partner had taken a turn too fast causing myself and the patient to slide in our seats. We held on through the torque of the right turn.
“Goddamn short green light…” my partner muttered his acknowledgement and apology in the same sentence fragment. Knowing his penchant for chasing down yellow lights on a right hand turn, I didn’t bother with a lecture on Illinois traffic law. I rechecked my run sheet for the patient's name* before checking to see if he was comfortable after the additional g-force.
“I’m fine,” he assured me. “So, like I was saying though, I’ll answer you, but you can’t think I’m just some crazy conspiracy theorist.” In the subsequent months since 9-11, conspiracies had become a hot topic. Anthrax was being mailed to senators and everyday people were still waiting for the next attack broadcast live on a 24/7 cable news cycle.
On these routine transportation calls, we ferry one poor soul or another between domicile homes to nursing homes, nursing homes to funeral homes. I enjoyed the interaction between myself and the patients who are usually starved for some genuine human interaction and a conversation that doesn’t involve some bowel of disease and despair. Anthony was a late call on an otherwise slow Friday evening. He was being transported back to his residential nursing home.
Despite being only a few years older than myself, he had lived at the nursing home for the past three years. His paperwork dictated a three year clinical detail explaining that he had been shot in the shin some years before and refused medical care and eventually compensated for the injury, although he walked with a limp. When he entered his thirties he developed diabetes and the old wound came back to haunt him.
Eventually, when he sought medical attention he didn’t have insurance and was turned away without intervention. By that time, the shin bone had developed gangrene. The only thing left to do was to abduct the limb and over-qualify him for State medical insurance. The surgeon botched the amputation and whittled away Anthony’s remaining limb over the following Summer until the left leg was completely removed. From there an infection in his intestine had almost cost him his life and debted his dignity.
“Okay then, man. You know all those guns you always hear about in the city? Like, everyone’s got a gun right? And people and little kids are always gettin’ killed? Well where do you think those guns come from? They got to come from somewhere, right? Well, I’m tellin’ you, I know cause I’ve had my hands on those guns. They come from the CIA” (2).
I smirked. I didn't mean to and I could see that I offended Anthony. I apologised and asked him to continue. Anthony crossed his arms over his chest and stared out the back window of the ambulance.
We had had a good conversation up to this point about which of the rash of recent zombie movies we were most excited about seeing. Anthony wanted to see a British movie called 28 Days Later. I said that I was pretty sure that was the name of a Sandra Bullock movie that I had no intention of seeing. Anthony explained that similarities between the movie titles and convinced me that I needed to see the British movie that June.
“Why’d you laugh?” he asked. I guess I really didn’t have a reason. I stumbled through some reasons before collecting my menagerie of reasons into one idea.
“It's just whenever someone mentions the CIA they sound like a conspiracy theor..” I felt the burn of shame on my cheeks and lowered my eyes to my paperwork.
I hopped over to the bench that sat parallel to the stretcher. I asked Anthony to please continue. He toyed with the single Marlboro he had talked the lab technician out of before we arrived.
“Do you think we could stop for this square before we get back?” They wouldn’t let the patients smoke at the nursing home. As a smoker I always felt for the patients of these types of facilities. I understood the administrative decision though. Cigarettes often end up as currency in nursing homes. I agreed and notified my partner to head for one of the parks in the neighborhood. The ambulance backed into a parking spot that would be obscured by a dense cluster of evergreen trees. The pitched beeping of the reverse warning abruptly stopped as my partner slammed the drive into park. He cut the engine and slipped from his seat to open the back double doors.
I lit Anthony’s cigarette and watched the pine trees sway in the soft breeze. Winter was breaking and there was the slightest warmth in the current chilly air.
“You know that the CIA planted newspaper and tv news editors in the 60’s to cover for their activity,” (3) I said and asked him to continue his story. He went on to tell us between thoughtful drags about how one Sunday morning he was sleeping at his cousins’ when his uncle woke him and told him to follow him outside. It was six in the morning and already warm, it had been a hot Summer.
Following his uncle to the alley behind the house, Anthony saw a large wooden crate. His uncle’s brother -in-law, Robert, was standing next to the crate after running to his garage to retrieve a crowbar and claw hammer. Robert thrust the hammer into Anthony’s hand and directed him to get to work. Anthony worked at prying off the wooden lid opposite of Robert.
As the purple and pink light of early Summer mornings began to grow Anthony could see the black and olive spray paint stenciled onto the side of the crate, “Property US Army”. The lid cracked and the nails groaned as Robert lifted the lid and revealed a black metallic mass inside. Dipping his hand into the crate Robert removed a full auto handgun and handed it to Anthony.
“Christmas in June,” his uncle sang.
Anthony spent the rest of the day with his Uncle and Robert driving Robert’s sisters’ white cargo van around the South Side diffusing the weapons to people that Anthony knew from here and there and some people that Anthony had never before met and never wanted to meet again.
My partner finished his cigarette and flicked the butt into the grass. He mentioned that we should get moving before a cop stops and starts asking what we’re up to. Cops never really cared for private ambulance companies because we didn’t operate under the auspice of their municipality. I didn’t feel like ruining my night talking with a cop either and prompted Anthony to finish up his smoke so I could toss the butt out back.
“You know that I grew up thinking that those fully auto handguns were common,” he took a last drag on his cigarette before handing it to me. “It wasn’t until I bought my first legal gun did I find out that something like that would never be available to civilians. They almost laughed me out of the gun store.”
I tossed the butt and scanned the street for any patrol cars before pulling the double doors shut. My partner turned over the ignition; the loud rattle of the diesel engine rumbled to life. Ten minutes later, we stopped at the nursing home. My partner parked and opened the back doors to the cloud of lysol I had created. A residential nurse watched us unload the cot from her designated smoke break enclosure. Anthony called over to her for a cigarette as we rolled the cot past and towards the automatic doors. With a laugh she refused and stated that he had better not been smoking while he was out or that there would be hell to pay.
“I’ll know if you’ve been smoking Mr. Anthony!” she sung after us. Anthony and I shared a laugh as my partner walked away to deliver the paperwork to the head nurse. I asked if he thought she would catch him and offered him some hand sanitizer. Rubbing his hands together the faint smell of lavender and alcohol between us he shook his head and laughed, “She’s just a goddamn conspiracy theorist.”
*Names changed to protect the innocent and in observance of State and Federal OSHA guidelines.
(!1);subtext: metadata.
(http//:) Shortly after writing this essay I expressed these suspicions in an online forum on the popular social media website Reddit. In the forum, r/insanepeoplefacebook a user (u/) posted an article about their uncle disappointing them on facebook. While discussing the vaxx/anti-vaxx argument with another forum user I was banned for expressing the sediment that all science is relative if it is going to be good science.
The comment I was said to have banned over read; “Yeah I saw your stupid tuna comment. Why did they phase it out? Bc it was causing autism. Why else would a government agency compel a pharmaceutical giant(s) to change their vaccines. Very quietly too don't you know. Do you not know that lead and Mercury are metals and that the human body can only ingest so much before becoming ill?”
That bit about the tuna was replying to the U/ asking why people who eat a lot of tuna don’t overdose on it by way of mercury poisoning. I cited that terrible actor Jeremy Piven had once shrieked contractual agreement by claiming that very thing with a medical doctor’s note that was good enough to satisfy the contract dispute.
The moderators only attacked me when I challenged the ban by saying that my lies cause deaths, which I would again like evidence of. Because we like in a post-Obama/Faux News age of fake news it is important to understand the influence that moderators of these websites weild and to think that they do so without the compensation of interest willing to speak reality into existence one $ at a time. Moderator awkwardtheturtle who moderates many of Reddits most popular forums replied to my accusations of abusing power to suppress free speech with this comment;
re: You've been banned from participating in r/insanepeoplefacebook
And it feels so good
My point is that, I was on this forum because it was on the featured on the site in a group forum called r/all( Σ ) . Articles and posts intertwine with meme and narrative to create a very casual means of obtaining a lot of data across a wide variety of popular cultural interest.
The only conspiracy theory, as far as I’m concerned in this entire article is that moderators like u/awakardturtle and Merari01, who’s hyperbolic statement had my lies killing the filthy unVaxxed are directly or indirectly monetizing their influence and outright editing of narrative or they’re megalomaniacal zealots who are as crazy as the people they mock, but like most crusaders, are they themselves the very creature they prosecute.
Citation
(1)Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. “Vaccine Safety & Availability - Thimerosal and Vaccines.” U S Food and Drug Administration Home Page, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, www.fda.gov/biologicsbloodvaccines/safetyavailability/vaccinesafety/ucm096228.htm.
*”At the time of this review in 1999, the maximum cumulative exposure to mercury from vaccines in the recommended childhood immunization schedule was within acceptable limits for the methylmercury exposure .... However, depending on the vaccine formulations used and the weight of the infant, some infants could have been exposed to cumulative levels of mercury during the first six months of life that exceeded Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommended guidelines for safe intake of methylmercury... in 1999, the Public Health Service (including the FDA, National Institutes of Health (NIH), CDC, and Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)), along with the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) concluded that because of scientific uncertainty at the time, as a precautionary measure, that it was prudent to reduce childhood exposure to mercury from all sources, including vaccines, as feasible.”
(2)“Ex Chicago Gang Member Says They Are Dropping Guns In The Hood.” YouTube, YouTube, 1 June 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhPZ6Oel8uk.
(@2)Subtext: The individual in the video; “Ex Chicago Gang Member Says They Are Dropping Guns In The Hood.” is not the individual from the story, but told a story that was very similar to the one that had been told to me in the back of that ambulance.
(3)Hajduk28. “Operation Mockingbird, CIA Media Control Program.” YouTube, YouTube, 21 Jan. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDCfTIapds0.
** Photo copyright “I.H.M.” via Dr. Masaru Emoto and his love of water.
About the Author
Pope Greyling IV is a fictional character that moonlights as an author and occupier of parking spaces. Sometimes he posts at his blog but, mostly doesn't.
(#3)Subtext Per FDA and FCC guidelines. This content contains 33g Fake News.
