Apologies if this runs long. The perilous beauty of one-way broadcast communication such as Twitter and Posterous. Please feel free to "TL; DR" this and just listen to the music (which is most excellent, in my haughty view).

Okay, I will admit to catching the tail end of the awards show tonight. Come on--I am white, middle class and suburban. It's what we do on Sundays. One trite observation and then one domino-effect rambling that stemmed from the show.

Is there any doubt that Ricky Gervais has achieved "Fuck You" financial status from the sale and syndication of "The Office"? If there were any such doubts, he eliminated those tonight with his closing comment.

I did enjoy Michael Douglas' line, "There has to be a better way to get a standing ovation." Loved it. But I may have an affinity for black humor. HUGE SHOCK. Anyway, seeing him onstage started a chain reaction.  As you may or may not know, Michael Douglas produced the film adaptation of Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest." In my mind, one of the broader themes in "Cuckoo's Nest" was how one's sanity was often as much a function of one's own perception as society's mores and folkways. (Brief aside: When in law school, I did a special project on civil commitment proceedings. If you think any of us are more than a few pen-strokes away from 72 hours of supervised confinement, you've got another thing coming.)

As often happens with my chaotic thought process, the "Cuckoo's Nest" association took me back to my junior year in high school. This was the first time in my life when I realized just how fucked up things could be, albeit this was more of a personal issue than a "feed the starving kids in Africa" issue or something of similar ilk.

As part of the "gifted program" curriculum (yes, I have always been an academic high achiever), we accompanied the kids from the special education division of our school system to a local amusement park. Now, some were high-ability Down's Syndrome kids, i.e., people you see leading independent lives (with some assistance) and working bagging groceries at the local supermarket. However, some were severely disabled. I mean the kind of disabled that most folks blatantly ignore or disregard when confronted with the same--even in public--because they would rather not be bothered with all realities of life.

So, I volunteered to take one of the severely disabled kids who was in a wheelchair. I cannot say why exactly I volunteered for this assignment. Perhaps it was the overcast day or my cloudy mind and mood making me want to be on the low end of the interaction scale. Whatever. So I am pushing this kid along the park, talking to him on occasion (I had no idea what his level of comprehension might have been, but I was raised in a good home and taught proper manners at an early age). On a couple of the longer straightaways we rolled down, I picked up the pace a bit to change things up.

Much to my surprise, he exhibited all of the outward signs of what could only be described as joy when we sped up. Naturally, the only thing to do was to up the pace and frequency of the bursts. I even went so far as to ride on the back of the chair for short periods of time (don't judge--I KNOW you still do this with shopping carts!). I think we did this for two hours before returning to the stage area for some sort of dance event. He did NOT seem to enjoy that as much.

The brief euphoria (vicarious, mostly) from the afternoon did not last through the night. Entré (touch-ayyy) the perspective paradox. As I thought more and more about the juxtapositions of the afternoon--gifted vs. special ed; athlete vs. wheelchair; sometimes-paradigm vs. sometimes-pariah--I could not answer this question. From the perspective of the kid in the wheelchair:

Does he view himself as "disabled" and me as "normal"? Or does he view himself as "normal" and me as something "superhuman"?

The inability to answer these questions really drove me down the rabbit hole. Though my grades did not suffer (come on--it was fucking high school), people began to make comments about my demeanor and attitude. Evidently, most suburban high school students and staff were not into addressing matters such as "Why are we here?" or "What is the point of all this bullshit?" or "Why should I give a fuck?"

I did learn one thing, though. If you are trying to have a discussion about such esoteric topics over the telephone with a friend late at night (as a reminder and for a little flavor as to how we had to process our teen angst, this was pre-cell phones, kiddos) and if you are sounding depressed and despondent make sure to show up at school the next day lest your friend call your mother in a panic saying that she is concerned that you might be suicidal. Well, at least the therapist I was dragged off to see was pretty laid back. And he had snacks. And administered a lot of tests. So it wasn't all bad.  No ECT, though. A tad disappointing. Oh, and he liked Juicy Fruit. See, it all comes back to "Cuckoo's Nest."

So what does all this mean (beyond the obvious "nothing")? Well, I did eventually find the answer to the questions posed above, albeit many years later and only after joining a profession and industry rife with posturing and shell games. The answer is that perception is reality. The corrollary to this is that reality, like time, is relative on a general and on a special basis. So, the answer to my questions above was as much how I WANTED to be perceived as it was how he "actually" perceived me. And thus began my facination with understanding perception and how it varies from subject to object and back again. And how and why perception can be molded on occasion.

So, if ever you feel that I am trying to rattle around in your head, I probably am. I promise not to do any permanent damage. Not intentionally, anyway.