The Ever-Tilting Planet

Anger is an interesting thing. We instantly want someone or something to blame when the volcano inside us erupts. Most of us have grown up hearing all the various words and expressions people use when upset. For my older brother, Todd, this wasn't the case. Being born deaf, he had to rely on lipreading for learning the cruder expressions in the English language.

Todd, however, is not just deaf; he has a myriad of issues that have made him the one-of-a-kind person he is. Over the years he has developed his own thought process on whom or what to blame when angry. Just as we have many different sayings, so does he. He has created his own brand of cursing.

Sloppy carpentry work is one thing that makes Todd riled up. His autistic leanings and perfectionism make him intolerant to construction that isn't perfect. In these instances, he raises his voice, uses animated hand gestures and begins to shout that the carpenters were "Three Stooges." To him, this is a clear way of describing something as shoddy, stupid, or to say, "What were ya thinkin?" We in the family understand this comparison. It's his anger towards winter that we find a bit funnier.

Todd despises winter for one reason: snow and ice make it difficult to get to work. Consequently, he now curses these elements. Part of this is autism at play. To Todd, life, happiness, and fulfillment equals work. To not work is misery. The rest of us in the family enjoy our non-work days; we relish our holidays, social gatherings and vacations. Todd, however, rolls his eyes and yells when he has to attend a family member's wedding, or celebrate Christmas, because this means he will not be working. This explains why inclement weather makes him holler a blue streak. In the heated moment however, Todd does not resort to the sharp, four-letter word list, but instead, he loudly mutters about things that are a jumbled combination of his religious upbringing with a touch of science thrown in.

One snowy day, Todd was in the driveway upset at having to clear off the piled-up snow on his car. He got angrier when he realized he would have to shovel the entire driveway in order to back out. All this work was a mere time-sucking project keeping him from his obsession to work. Soon he was fuming and yelling at our "ever-tilting planet", as he put it. Todd, unable to hear his own rantings, filled the air with his frustrations, as he shouted continuously about our stupid, tilting planet, which produces seasons, one containing snow and ice.

In another snow storm, Todd cursed the devil. For several minutes he stood yelling at Satan, as if he was the one who sent this white fluffy stuff. Todd linked the devil to cold freezing weather, while the rest of us associate him with oppressive heat.

Todd lives in Maine, which makes the opportunity to rant and rave about weather last a significant part of the year. One year, a particularly bad ice storm left Todd beside himself. Instead of blaming the devil this time, he decided to blame Adam, the guy in Genesis. He knew that Adam was the one who got the sin ball rolling, so naturally, he should be blamed for anything that goes wrong. Todd stood and blasted him for several minutes.

Now his curse list has included the Three Stooges, the Devil, Adam, and the ever-tilting planet, so it shouldn't be surprising that the next one to make the list would be God. But this time it is not to blame God, but rather to petition Him. He wants God to make the snowfall stop, warm up the temperatures, melt the ice and enable vehicles to operate easily. For this he summons Dad. Dad is a pastor, therefore his connection to God must be the most direct, like a telephone connection without the static. Todd yells at Dad to start talking to God to get him to straighten this weather out, to cross winter off His list of seasons, and warm things back up to respectable temperatures; to tell God to think green, not white.

In the end, I've looked at Todd's list of those deserving blame and I think I've made some sense of it, found a way to make it cohesive. It goes something like this. A long time ago the devil rebelled against God. Later he tempted Adam's wife to join him in his rebellion. It worked, and as a result Adam flunked the most important test in human history, leaving us with original sin and Satan as our lousy pack leader. Our only hope lies in petitioning God to return and set it all aright, once and for all. Till then, we will most likely continue to play the blame game, acting like the Three Stooges, as we live on this ever-tilting planet that we call home.