Category Archives: Psychology

Deanne, Death, Personal, Psychology, Safety, Security

35 Years

09/28/2026 X Teri Leave a comment

Thirty-five years have passed since September 28th, 1991.

One of us was a world-class pilot, and the other was a rudderless young man with no clear direction. The pilot’s incredible ability couldn’t overcome the habit he practiced. That’s how I ended up looking into the September sky and seeing his parachute floating down, a grey-silver jacket inside it.

I met him only in death.

That day rarely touches me deeply. Not beyond the cerebral and superficial. This September infected me with a desire simply to get past it.

When it does touch me, it is a chill on the back of my neck.

You can do everything right and still fail. You can also do the most minor thing, a thing you’ve done countless times, until the universe notices and adjusts your arc in life without any consolation or care. If you do two things wrong, the odds don’t double. They become infinite.

I can’t stress enough how gifted this pilot was. His family in Illinois was legendary for their flight simulators. Some reports indicate he ran out of fuel; I’m not certain whether that was true. Whether he jumped or fell out of his plane, he didn’t have part of his parachute attached. I’m certain he did it a million times. Those two things had the final say in his life. How the plane and pilot landed on the ground basically in the same spot still bewilders me. The capricious luck that kept either of them from killing me is never lost on me.

Some of you rightfully caution me about climbing trees, especially in the dark, or about meandering while the world sleeps. There’s no such thing as safety. It’s exactly like when I went skydiving; there is a slight risk, of course. It is the appearance of relative danger that makes it enjoyable. It’s surrender as you fall out or jump.

It is VERY rare for me now, but sometimes, I find myself hesitating at doors. Thirty-five years ago, I jumped up and ran out of my bedroom to investigate. I opened the door to mayhem. I get tenuous glimpses of it in dreams that immediately fade. Not too long ago, I heard a commotion and ran out of my apartment and into another one to see someone needing CPR. Pun aside, I went into autopilot.

I had two tremendous lessons like this.

Both deaths happened in September.

Both of them died unexpectedly in their early 30s.

Both of them were within feet of each other, separated by decades.

Most of the time, they are simple memories from a lifetime ago. Other times, I look up into the blue of the September sky and wonder about probabilities. If it can happen once, it can happen twice. And also, that no matter how big or small the world seems, it is happening to someone right now.

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Movie, Music, Politics, Psychology, Racism and Prejudice

45 Years Later, The Fringe Is Still Here

09/22/2026 X Teri Leave a comment

80s fans all know “Lunatic Fringe” by Red Rider.

Or they think they do.

If you’ve seen the 80s movie “Vision Quest,” you either get chills when the guitar intro riffs right before the drums kick in, or you roll your eyes.

Do you know what the song is about? It’s not love, personal triumph, or sports.

The song came out in 1981 and came back with a vengeance in 1985 with the movie.

The song is about extremism and anti-semitism. Tom Cochrane knew he had to finish the song that night in the studio after he got the news that John Lennon was dead.

It’s an appropriate song for current events.

If you listen closely at the beginning, you can barely hear someone say, “See you on the other side.”

It is an anthem that warns extremists that they are not invisible and won’t win.

We think that the nutjobs appeared from the ether. They’ve always been with us; the ebb and flow of time requires that we periodically remind them there’s a reason they can’t feel welcome in public discourse. I grew up right in the middle of some of the most pernicious racists imaginable. Like most extremists, they lived in a bubble of self-perpetuating hate.

Everyone who studies sociology knows the paradox of tolerance.

Red Rider hid a pointed societal warning right in our faces 45 years ago.

Humor, Politics, Psychology, Trump

Observation

04/09/2026 X Teri Leave a comment

I love the idea that a man with a beard and dressed as a woman while doing hula hoop routines has hundreds of thousands of followers. Meanwhile, a demented narcissist is actively ruining everything he touches.

It’s wild that this world is capable of intense whimsy and such hatred.

I would elect Daniel Middel as president at the drop of a hat. Press conferences at the White House would definitely be more entertaining. It’s also highly doubtful that he would waste our time spewing nonsense and hate.

Anyone capable of self-deprecation and humor earns an extra notch in my book of admiration.

New Word, Opinion, Personal, Politics, Psychology

Dumbass-Keurig Effect

03/15/2026 X Teri Leave a comment

Maximum confidence. Minimum information.

People who know the least tend to be the most certain. I see it day in and day out. I modified the original name of this and call it the Dumbass-Keurig effect, because it’s likely you’ll hear the dumbest nonsense when someone’s holding a cup of coffee and giving an opinion, completely oblivious to the fact that you want to put in an MRI order for them just to determine whether there’s a brain in there or not.

As an example, someone close to me recently had to deal with someone calling one of the most knowledgeable, educated people she knew “dumber than a box of rocks.”

It’s a tactic employed by ignorance to dismiss the presence of knowledge and intelligence. It’s corollary is the boring and clichè “no common sense” accusation.

Ignorance is a fixable condition. We’re all ignorant about a variety of things, often including things that deeply affect us. That’s okay, provided that we accept our lack of knowledge and understanding.

Which leads me back to my original point: Don’t leave your fingers inside the door frame when you close the car door.

Opinion, Personal, Psychology

Observation

03/11/2026 X Teri Leave a comment

“It’s not that evil wouldn’t recognize itself in the mirror. It never pauses for self-reflection. Evil is compromised by certainty. It’s not that all certain people are evil, but it’s demonstrably true that all evil people are certain.”

-Quote from an obscure American

Güino is incredibly close to being 18 now. I put him on a freshly-washed towel so that he could enjoy the warmth.

New Word, Opinion, Psychology

True

12/02/2025 X Teri Leave a comment

A closed door holds our focus much more than an open one ever could. Looking backward brings comfort because at least it is knowable.

Behavior, Personal, Psychology

Sometimes

11/27/2025 X Teri Leave a comment

It ain’t always peaches and cream.

Yesterday morning, I got angry and couldn’t shake it. Rationalizing it, my attempts to set it aside failed. It was disrespect, coiled inside repetition.

When I finished work, I walked out into the cold breeze and stood in the middle of the trees, watching the crows berate each other.

Paradoxically, what gave me peace is that someone sent me a funny video. At its heart, it was a nihilistic reminder of the stupidity of how important everything seems. The cause of my anger hadn’t dissipated but I did succeed in punting it into the future.

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Behavior, Personal, Psychology, Relationships

Perspective

08/29/2025 X Teri Leave a comment

Controversial Yet Logical Counterpoint:

“You never know what someone’s going through.” That’s what people tell us in a cautionary way. To give people the benefit of the doubt. There’s a lot of truth to that. But there is also a caveat, exception, and disclaimer. Assuming that someone is going through something difficult as a way to overlook bad behavior ASSUMES that you’re not going through something as bad or worse. So if you’re a witness to somebody being mistreated followed by them repaying the mistreatment equally, you also have to look the other way and give the benefit of the doubt to the second person. This is the kind of pop psychology and circular logic that leads us down unsustainable mindsets. Our energy would be better spent convincing people to self-regulate maturely instead of doing what amounts to victim blaming. In short, if you’re going to tell us to look the other way because we don’t know what someone’s going through, you also have to look the other way if we’re going through a bad time and give the first asshole what they’ve got coming. In this day of chaotic workplaces and even worse political and social frazzlement, shouldn’t we assume that everybody is having a bad day? Ergo, we can’t blame anyone.

“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” is true. But equally true is this: “If we are all going through it, the safest course of action is to walk through the forest as if every leaf conceals a snake.” And while it might be the safest way, it leads to a life of guarded disconnectedness.

As for the picture, I took a long exposure to see if the colors would emerge in the dark early hours this morning. It’s an open space hidden in plain sight, one which I sometimes use when I want to watch the sky unbroken in a panorama above me.