ROCK ATTACK!

The rain had slowed down to a dribble so your untrepid Fiorella backed her baby car out of the garage, angled it so it was within a few feet of the pile of rocks that sweet neighbor Kathy had left on the side of the driveway as an Easter present, and loaded about a third of them into her trunk. Those rocks would put Fio several yards further up the north driveway. But more important, they felt good in her hands, especially the heavy ones.

You can say all you want about how hoisting heavy rocks makes Fio feel like she's she's doing something meaningful., or maybe that she's finally found a corner of this chaotic universe that she can control. But the truth is that Fiorella has become addicted. To rocks. That maybe everyone in the neighborhood has. Look around--we all have walls, steps. or patios made of local rock.

But are we using the rock, or is it using us? Could it be trying to control us from a primeval rock brain hidden deep in the bowels of the earth? If so, for what purpose? To rise from its earthly prison and take over Georgetown, then the world, just as it has taken over Fiorella?

Near Miss

Hey there you, the young stag who ambled across in front of my car as I was busting down the road--didn't your mother ever teach you to look left-right-left before crossing a street? And you came out of the twilight too.  These teenagers!

Story Source

Before Fiorella wrote stories, she told them--to herself while she lay in bed at night.

Fio was afraid of the dark, or, more correctly, of what might lurk in the dark.  Her family had just moved from Ohio to Texas and everything was new and strange--and scary.  Instead of having a cozy little room next to her parents' bedroom,  Fio had a large room at the front of the house, and the filmy curtains would blow in the evening breeze, reaching out toward her on the bed like ghostly hands.  And, unlike the house in Ohio, this one had just one story, which meant someone--or something--could leap in on Fio at any minute.

Fio couldn't sleep, but she needed to sleep, so she calmed herself by making up happy stories.  As she grew older, the stories were based on her mother's Book-of-the-Month selections, then on her own reading.  And every story had a happy ending.

As do her stories now.

Question

Why do we laugh at a pratfall?  Why do we laugh at TV shows that feature people falling off sleds, bicycles, horses, boats, and every other imaginable conveyance?  That feature men clutching their groins in agony after getting injured in in a variety of stupid situations?  That show women and children screaming in fright from practical jokes?

What is it in us that delights at another person's pain or embarrassment?