Of Tigers & Rollercoasters

Of Tigers & Rollercoasters

They arrested a man locally for keeping a tiger in his basement.  Yes.  Seriously, in a major city in Central New York, someone thought that it was somehow do-able to keep a big cat in his basement.  And apparently there were other sizes of big game down there too that he got in trouble for – a bobcat or lynx, etc.  Aside from animal welfare concerns, sanitary concerns, human safety concerns and the thought of the extra-pungent smell of tiger pee … I am most concerned with the idea of a tiger in the basement.

Do you have a tiger in your basement?  I have one that visits.  Sometimes I feed him, sometimes I don’t.  When I feed him he stays and causes trouble upstairs.  He grows.  He affects my other relationships.  He makes a mess.  He is too much for me to handle and I worry about how to safely manage him.  When I neglect to feed him, he may be cranky at first, but he eventually shrinks to a smaller and smaller cat… and then he goes away.  Until he’s back again. 

I can’t kill him, because he has a role to play.  When he is little, he is a signal that something is wrong.  He points out injustice.  He can make me a better person and teach me to avoid things that make him roar.  If I train and harness him, he can serve me well to address wrong-doing and evil.  My tiger’s name is ANGER. 

I think we have a culture full of people that have tigers in their basements.  We have young men in our inner cities that have very unmanageable tigers – and they acquired them sometimes because they themselves have been deprived of love and fathers who teach the taming process.  We have people who absorb values from tv, the movies, the radio that alienate them from their families and they turn the tiger loose inside the house.  The media can be a terrible role model on how to tame tigers:  sex, lust, greed, violence, selfishness.  Those are all things that are gourmet tiger food.  Now that I said it, you are probably calling me “Captain Obvious.”  But let’s ask:  Once you stop feeding the tiger, do you know how to let him out? 

Other than childbirth, I can think of only one socially acceptable place in our society where we can scream at the top of our lungs:  the rollercoaster.  Even for people who are “afraid” of rollercoasters – and there are plenty of good reasons to be – I think it is therapeutic and I recommend it.  Overcome the fear, and let it out!  I looked at a website a few years ago called “ride accidents” and was amazed that there are fewer reported injuries on the rollercoaster than there are on the other more popular ride:  the ferris wheel.  Yeah, that baby goes at warp speed – NOT!  But due to mechanical failure, rider failure, or operator failure, the ferris wheel has a bad rap.  I think the rollercoaster has less reported injuries because people may pay more attention to the warning sign.  If you are a cardiac patient or are pregnant, you may have some vestige of common sense that says to you:  “this might not be the risk I want to take.”

One of the major New England amusement parks is set along the shores of the lovely Connecticut River.  Frankly, I’d rather be boating on that river than looking at it from afar, but that’s just my preference.  I stood in line with my dearest friend from childhood and my brother waiting for about 30 minutes to go on this new rollercoaster.  

We were adults beyond our 30’s at the time.  I know that standing in the line I read the warning sign about 20 times.  For some reason, I wasn’t grasping English.  It told me how fast the rollercoaster went and the depth of the first plunge.  I am not sure what did not “click” in – perhaps I had low blood sugar at the time?  But we got on that rollercoaster and as we were going up this humongous incline, Pam, with all the serenity of Mother Teresa, said to me :  “Look, how beautiful, the Connecticut River.”  All of a sudden I was asking myself why I was on this incline. I quipped back to her, “Shush. I’m getting my affairs straight with God.”  Luckily, to my awareness, it was a short list because the crest and plunge were horrific. 

As we went down, in slow-mo I heard her say, “…. my cell phone slipped out of my pocket ….”  My brother, sitting in front of us, reached up into the air and the cell phone brushed his fingertips … and we plummeted downward.  (no cell phone.)  We whipped into the curve, felt a spray of mist on our face from some machine, (who thought that was a good idea?!)  and then finished the ride.  The whole thing was less than three MINUTES.  And my brother asked me:  “So did you like it?”  My response, “It was great, IF YOU LIKE CAR ACCIDENTS.” 

But somewhere in there, I screamed out – ever so briefly – all the aggravation of the past year.  The basement was empty.  I had tranquilized the tiger with the therapeutic stun-gun of an amusement park.  Now I’m making it my business to not feed him anymore ever again.  So just don’t irritate me.  ;o)

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