Jan van Noordt: Juno confiding Io to Argus (circa 1660-1670
"The Grudgy seem dedicated to continually unflushing toilets, a service nobody really wants or needs."

Grudgy lies near the top of the heap of the more unseemly human responses. Sore losers seem most like losers to their core, boring drinking buddies, and terrible neighbors. They cannot seem to do anything but remember that sleight, that indignity, that otherwise minor loss more properly relegated to humbling forgetfulness. It becomes their oeuvre instead, their sole identifying trait. They're the ones who never forgate and forevermore shoved their sorriest episode before them to announce their presence. Most wisely slip aside to hide until they pass by. The few friends they end up with feed like carrion birds on this sorry story they've heard so many times, in all its many variations, that they could recite it backwards. They seem to need an opponent, someone eternally out to get them, to feel complete. They shamelessly bleat.

I'm not above the occasional dabble in pouting. I understand how deep down disappointing this life can sometimes seem, but I've never found my solace in the Grudgy. This omission does not render me in any way superior in either my behavior or in my coping, but perhaps just calculating instead, for I've observed where others' Grudgy reactions led. I've never seen one transport anyone into some better place. Grudgy seems instead to further amplify a loss, turning a setback into a permanent deficit. Grudgy seems to render recovery eternally just out of reach. In more advanced cases, the Grudgy response seems to dispatch each opportunity into a replication of the original result. No one needs such a damning retreat.

Grudgy seems largely a seduction, perhaps first appearing as an alluring opportunity to get even, a cut-off-my-nose-to-spite-your-face reaction, only seemingly reasonable in the moment of greatest distress. Later, rather quickly for most of us, we see the absurdity of the premise and opt for some other response, but for those perhaps most deeply wounded, no such intervention occurs. Once one cuts off their own nose, there's little turning back. Then the apparent necessity of defending that unwise reactive move supplants every other alternative, and one's just stuck with the result. Only something considerably more daunting than plastic surgery mends what might have started accidentally. A new lifestyle results.

One might become a troll then, for trolls don't seem to need a coterie of friends following them around. One might offend to their heart's content, though any sense of contentment might well find itself traded in for a stockpile of ready resentment. Few will appreciate the new presence shoving their way uninvited into otherwise friendly conversations, and their responses should properly feed fresh Grudgy engagements. Existence quickly becomes Grudgy all the way down and back up again. Shit happens in this life and one might most properly simply flush it away just as quickly as possible rather than rolling around in it, smearing it all over one's self. The Grudgy seem dedicated to continually unflushing toilets, a service nobody really needs or wants.

©2020 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #WhatNext, #PureSchmaltz