A Familiar Face

[saveliberty]

Rex Harrison's Hat, H/T Ace of Spades:

A Familiar Face

I was glued to Twitter for most of last Friday searching for the latest news and perhaps in a way for some answers to the horror of it all. But between the rush to poor reportage and the urgent need for many to rudely push their anti-gun ideology I decided to finally unplug for the weekend. It hit me hard on Sunday when the latest picture of the shooter appeared on my screen. The gaunt face, those sunken eye sockets, the hollow wide-eyed stare, that rigid posture... I'd never met the shooter but I definitely knew him. I refuse to include the photo in this post. But you know the one I'm talking about.

 

"Something big was going down" in the early 1990s and no matter how my brother, "Jack", tried to explain it I just didn't understand. He had it all figured out however and he seemed to know just what to do about it. One of his first acts was take the dog for a long walk only to fall asleep in a ditch, almost losing the poor pup. A motorist spotted him and called the authorities and within an hour Jack was sitting in the back of an ambulance in our driveway, completely catatonic. It was around this time he was initially diagnosed as just bipolar and our family would never be the same.

 

He eventually snapped out of his stupor and after a brief stay at the ER was prescribed a pretty wicked cocktail that was supposed to help out. That cocktail would change numerous times over the years with varying degrees of success. His second act against this world-wide conspiracy was to abscond with a neighbor's 13 year old kid. Commenter/cob-logger stuiec triggered this memory with his post here. I was certain at the time that Jack hadn't a violent bone in his body. I'd known him all of his 19 years and aside from the normal brotherly scuffles he never once showed violent tendencies. He simply took the kid to "save him" from the end of the world or the boogeyman or demons or whatever. They were quickly found, safe. This ushered in the era of the hospitalization & halfway house circuit.

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Read the whole thing.

 

H/T Andy, Ace of Spades