By: Ronald P. Digiorno
Life is full of ups and downs, twists and turns, bumps and potholes. Actually, that sounds a lot like a road in Indiana. Life is a road in Indiana.
Roads in Indiana have lots of pros and cons. On one hand, the roads can help you get places faster. All you have to do is hop in your car and skrrt and then you pull up to the curb. But sometimes it’s not as easy as it seems. Because potholes and traffic can slow you down. If you’re running late to work and need to zoom, chances are you’re hoping the roads ahead are clear and smooth. But since we live in Indiana, the roads are busy, icy, and have holes.
And what if you fall in that hole? What if you fall in whole in the hole? Are we sure ALL potholes eventually have bottoms? Who goes out and checks? What if a pothole is actually a hole to the afterlife? A galacticporthole? Nobody knows. Nobody knows because no one stops to check. We just keep driving by, maybe even swerving to avoid the “pothole.” And potholes are never big enough to swallow an entire car, so we know entire cars cannot fit into a galacticporthole, as galacticportholes are the same size as potholes.
But we read this in a biased manner. We want to avoid potholes, because we know they are bad. But why do we assume galacticportholes are bad? Why do we avoid them as well, when they have not been thoroughly documented and researched? What if galacticportholes bring peace and hope? What if they deliver us to a better, happier place? We’ll never know because bias forces people to ignore them. I myself am a firm believer in galacticportholes.
What good does bias do anyway? We see the word “bias” everywhere today, specifically in the media. Most people assume bias is bad, but are hypocritical when they only watch or read news sources that are biased. You hear Republicans talking about the “fake media” every day, when they themselves only watch and read Fox News, which has been proven to be the least-accurate news source. And Democrats do the same, but with NBC. (But let’s remember that Fox News is faker than NBC). We assume that bias is a con, but obviously there are some pros for falling for biased information. I think it’s because people feel secure and smart if they only hear the things they want to hear. Pros and cons!
Pros and cons. What is a pro? What is a con? Are we actually talking about professional athletes and con-(wo)men criminals? That’s not what I was talking about. But what if there was a pro-con. Would it be a professional (really good) criminal or a professional athlete turned criminal? Let’s look at examples of both. But remind me, I want to talk about athletes and criminals separately!
A professional con-(wo)man. Who pops up in your head? I think of Al Capone and mercenaries. I think of organized crime. Theft. Thieves. Billy the Kid. Bonnie and Clyde. (Justin Bieber?) Maybe some serial killers. Ted Bundy. Jeffrey Dahmer. There are a lot of pro cons out there.
A professional athlete turned criminal. Michael Vick. Jerry Sandusky. OJ Simpson. That’s all I can think of right now. But I’m sure there are more. There are lots of pro cons out there.
Now what? What happens when you think of a pro-con? Do you think of Jerry Sandusky? Do you think of Jeffrey Dahmer? Do you think of a comparison of good things and bad things? I think of all three. And I think of galacticportholes.
Granola Club 