Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Mamby Pamby Land

Mamby Pamby Land

There is a GEICO commercial that starts out with this arrogant all knowing narrator with slicked back oily hair, who has a variety of lead-ins one of which is “….did the little pig go wee, wee wee all the way home?“ My favorite though is the one with the opening line… “And does a Drill Sergeant make a good therapist?“ In the main body that follows there is this pitiful looking man laying on a couch discussing a trauma in his life and a ex drill sergeant therapist, who throws the box of Kleenex at him and says words to the effect that “… maybe you could become something if you quit living in “Mamby Pamby” land.”

My Mamby-Pamby land is a bed where I sit with my laptop in the morning and write…All writers have one and they sometimes spend too much time there…(You can tell when you read dialog and would swear the writer never listened to a real conversation.).Even where they are up and about on jobs, or doing the necessary chores in life their bodies frequently run on auto and in spirit they are back in Mamby-Pamby land in the shelter of a palm tree, warm blowing winds and in the company of gentle spirits who are forever young and tell them how wonderful they are. My wife hates it when I 'm visiting there and not paying attention to her. She makes me pull over and let her drive when she sees me drifting off.

The reason this commercial makes us chuckle is because those who never got a chance to meet a drill sergeant probably think the real world and Mamby-Pamby land are the same place. Many are economically sheltered from the cold, cruel and heartless place the world really is.

My Wife is brilliant, works hard and makes plenty of money…..My daughters are extremely smart, good looking and breezed through the education system without breaking sweat….They have husbands with good paying jobs are industrious and live in Mamby-Pamby land.

They take my grandsons to soccer practice where they don’t keep score, everybody gets to play and at the end everybody gets a trophy. They go to camps in the summer where everybody holds hands and sings cum-by-yah….What was once “Know thyself” got down graded a couple thousand years later to “To thy own self be true,” then further watered down into “Be thyself and finally at the bottom of the bucket into “Do your own thing.”

Then one day we wake up on a therapists couch to realize that “Mamby-Pamby Land” is a dream world, an escape from the Real World called life. A world where we have to be whatever it takes to get by. If that means working at McDonalds, being the greeter at Wall Mart, driving a delivery truck or dancing the pole dance then "Tough Grits."

Everybody can’t live in Mamby-Pamby land….somebody has to do the work and swim in that undercurrent of pain and suffering that runs beneath the world we call our daily lives. Somebody has to stoke the dark furnace numbed to the hopes and dreams of what might have been. To the disenfranchised, the bark of a drill sergeant is gently and amusing , compared to the snarl of a wolf clawing at the door….A sound that many are all too familiar with. And you know what…the answer isn’t throwing money at the problem….”Let them eat cake!” isn’t the answer.“ That comment helped spark the French Revolution and is about to bring Mamby-Pamby Land crashing down about our shoulders.