People Suck

At least for the first 18 months of our lives we do, and we continue to, off and on, on this and that, at this and that, for the rest of our lives. An infant sucks at the nipple, toddlers suck their thumbs, kids suck on Popsicles, adults suck on things, too, sometimes on things they'd be best advised not to . . . no, I was thinking cigarettes and crack pipes, mainly. But some ultra-orthodox mohilim still practice metzitzah b'peh (oral suction) when they circumcise infant boys. Leave it to religion to come up with great ideas like that. In my Hindu spirituality phase, I knew a Ganapatya holy man  (devotee of the Elephant-headed deity Ganesh) acetic who excelled at oral liposuction.  He literally sucked the fat out of his followers. It wasn't pretty, but his followers were a skinny lot, at least on some spiritual level. But that was the '80s, when way too much sucking was going on in general. I know I sucked in the '80s.

The popular invective I despise the most, and hate to even write, is "Suck on this!" or "Suck it!" Ted Nugent infamously invited Barak Obama and Hilary Cinton to suck on something.  Members of the World Wrestling Federation virtually used it as their mantra. It's just plain ugly. It does dishonor to the speaker, who seems to believe he or she has the right or the authority to force someone else to suck something they might prefer not to, and it denigrates the hearer as someone so wrong, so servile, defeated and broken that he or she should just agree to suck on whatever object or idea the speaker has in mind to be sucked. Just my thoughts--maybe you'll ponder them, turn them over in your head, or disregard them entirely, but I would encourage you to neither suck nor ask anyone to suck on anything that will bring harm, physical, psychological, or spiritual, to the sucker, the suckee, or the thing to be sucked. Yes, people suck, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing.