Published: April 26, 2008 11:29 pm            

OLSON: Longing for historic measures

To the stocks with them! Pause and consider for a moment how fortunate it was to be the typical Massachusetts Bay Colony magistrate. Granted, he had to endure outdoor privies, regular attacks by irritated Indians and some really horrendous New England winters, but these inconveniences would have paled in comparison to the rapture certainly experienced every time our judge was able to utter those fateful words, " To the stocks with him." Put yourself in his place: cowering miscreants huddle before you, sorrowfully repentant now for their crimes of public drunkenness, gossip or swimming on the Sabbath. You are draped in your magisterial best, you stare balefully at the pitiful figures in front of you, quickly consider and reject mercy, then in your best stentorian voice, pronounce the inevitable sentence, "To the stocks with the lot of them." It can't get much better than this.

We of course live in the ultimate of nonjudgmental times. Today, it seems the only crime that is worthy of judgment is making a judgment on someone. Daily, we are pressured to accept the unacceptable and patiently to endure the coarse and degrading. Ah, but deep within us, sure of his righteousness, lurks the lordly puritan magistrate! Most of us secretly dream of having the authority, the absolute power, to wreak havoc upon certain cultural cretans. If I were blessed enough to be elevated to the post of weekend dictator, stocks would have to be imported from other states to accommodate all the victims of my righteous wrath.

The first to be rounded up, of course, would be the chronic buffet abusers, those mini-van sized people that basically camp out at local all-you-can-eats. Once I found myself behind a human behemoth at a KFC; he helped himself to 17 (yes, I counted them) pieces of chicken, in the process totally obliterating their stockpile. Obviously thinking ahead, he then went to the counter and rather testily informed them they were out of chicken. Now, even if the stocks would have to be redesigned to handle this supersizer, this guy and his ilk are going to do some time. Should we place a full plate of steaming food just out of reach during their two-day sentence? My mind salivates at the very thought!

Another group the constables would round up would be every kid, ear-ringed and hat on sideways, roaming public streets with their pants hanging halfway down their backside. It is sobering to realize that there are literally hundreds of hip-hop hero wannabes in this area so brain-dead they can’t even keep their pants up past their butts. It would be tempting to conclude that we have reached a new societal low with this sordid spectacle, but who knows, the fashion mavens that control these Einsteins may tell them to dispense with their pants entirely. Lord, take me home.

So let Puritan justice overtake them! In my imaginary dictatorship, they stand before me ashamed and chastened, desperately attempting to borrow a belt, hoisting their hopelessly oversized trousers up to bellybutton level. Do I show them mercy? Do I pass out suspenders and release the lot of them? Negatory. "To the stocks with them!" goes forth the clarion judgment call, and what a judgment it would be! The stocks would be in a straight line, one behind the other, so every pants-down-to-the -knees offender would have to look at the dirty underwear of the felon in front of him for two days. Problem faced, problem solved.

You’re thinking with me now, aren’t you? Admit it, there's a bit of the Bay Colony magistrate in all of us. When we see a dog staked out in a shadeless yard on a hundred degree summer day without a water bowl in sight, who among us doesn't entertain the thought of putting the dog’s owner in a public stock just out of reach of a continuous flowing drinking fountain for a few days? And what dark thoughts course through our heads when we see helpless little kids forced to breathe toxic secondhand smoke inside of a car with rolled-up windows? Join with me now, "to the stocks with them!"

Doug Olson is a Sellersburg resident.

        

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