Keeping death at your shoulder, also cheese

This morning, I was listening to a podcast because that’s a thing I do to remind me that I’m alive. The guest suggested that the Samurai rule of keeping death in mind is a great idea. It provides an intention to each bit of your life if you imagine that you are wrapping things up. I certainly have kept my house cleaner whenever I paused to imagine the emergency response team traipsing in.

Keeping death at your shoulder may not be a great idea for everyone, but it could be useful.

Yersis burst into the room a little later to declare that a serial killer was at large in Pennsylvania. She seemed excited, so I asked, “Do you want to go there?” She did not, as it happened, want to join in the manhunt.

I hesitated to tell her, but then I did anyway. Serial killers are like spiders, there is always one nearby. It’s just math. There are at least 2,000 serial killers in the U.S. at any given time. She was not pleased to have this information, but you know it’s not my job to make anyone too comfortable, least of all my children.

Because I am still alive, I even listen to podcasts that are about serial killers with the knowledge that some serial killers are likely nearby listening to the same thing. I worry at times that all the true crime information is merely making criminals better at continuing to offend undetected. This is terrible news, but it does make learning about crime feel more crucial. Victims have to be ever more clever. It makes me so happy to hear people casually quote rules like, “Don’t ever go to the second crime scene.”

Maybe the best defense is to avoid raising serial killers in the first place. Sure, some killers are cooked up in a laboratory of genetics that may be nearly impossible to interrupt, but most are made. A dose of kindness and care at the right time might be all that’s required to keep a baby killer from becoming a teen killer and so on.

Then again, if we never had any teen killers who would grow up to be efficient professional killers? What kind of killing machine could we construct out of a bunch of well-adjusted, morally robust, love junkies? It’s a pickle.

I’m fairly confident that none of my kids are killers, but if they were, I’m sure they’d be really good at it. They are such achievers! All things considered I would prefer that they just kill yeast and brew things or make cheese. You can have too many killers, but you can never have enough cheese.

Local note: Nacho Mama’s keeps getting featured on the news when they talk about places re-opening and it is apparently true, unless all the folks I saw on the sidewalk were squatters. I mean, nacho squatters.

Let’s cheese!!

Love,
yermom

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