the Judgement of Cruelty

As a child and a young man I didn't really participate in the "normal" aspects of cruelty that my peers were partaking in. Magno-burning ants (the practice of hitting ants with the concentrated sun ray of a magnifying glass until they spontaneously burst into flames) pouring salt on pill bugs, de-winging a beetle and pulling the legs off of the daddy-long legs. It was creepy but I accepted it, wasn't my cup of tea, even the lightning bug smear was a bit tough to handle and made me squeamish. If you don't know it, it goes like this... catch a light

ning bug, clasp it in your hand until you find an unsuspecting victim, quickly open you hand and smash it against your target. Preferably a cute girl a couple of years older than you, mash and smear the bug and glow bulb up and down her arm. Run and howl like a wolf into the darkness. Wooing girls old school, like nineteen seventy twoish. Then every neighborhood had that idiot whose mom only fed him popsicles and thawed out TV dinners. In our neighborhood that kid was called the turtle killer. He was even too cruel for the most seasoned insect inquisitor. Sweet and smiley when the grown-ups where around but the first to throw a cat into a bucket of water or tie m-80's to the tail of a dog. I used to tell the kid to treat the animals the way he'd want to be treated... so did Fritzie, Steve and Foley, he'd never listen. The golden rule. I only think of this now because isn't that the way we all want to be treated? Treat me the same as you'd like me to treat you. In hind sight I suspect the turtle killer was only acting out on abuse that he'd been exposed to or witnessed. Possibly it was from neglect or abandonment. Or maybe it was just all those cold, partially frozen TV dinners.