Wow.
This past night, the memory went into overdrive, bringing up reminiscences of people who were (it's safe to assume they're dead now, given that these things happened years and years ago) very much like the brain-damaged primitive, but who later changed and became successful in life.
I wonder if there's a Salvation Army in urban northern New Jersey, and if so, walrus-face should attend their meetings.
I remembered an experience from when I was seven years old, and with my parents in Denver, Colorado. They were there for some sort of hospital convention, and I assume I was along because there was a physician who wanted to examine me (which happened often), who was going to be there at the same time.
Well, a hospital convention can be utterly boring for a kid, especially a deaf one, and the parents recruited two sons of another convention-attender, to babysit me while they were at the meetings. They were both boys, 15 and 16 years old, and from Wilmette, near Chicago, Illinois. That's all I remember of them.
I wanted to see trains, and so they took me to Union Station.
In case one's not aware, Union Station in Denver is located in what was once a red-light district, but now which is slums.
We watched the trains for a while, and then the older boys decided it was time to walk back to the hotel.
While we were walking, we came upon a troupe of Salvation Army musicians giving a concert on a street corner. The phenomenon was new to us, and so we stopped to watch.
I was most entranced by some bald wizened little guy who had an eye that didn't seem to move, as he sang along and rattled a round thing (later described to me as a tambourine). I kept staring at him, open-mouthed; his other eye moved all over the place, but this eye stayed dead center.
When the musicians took a break, I dashed over to him. The two older boys had to follow, not only because I was just seven years old, but also being deaf, there were communication problems in which other people had to stand in for me.
The guy explained that it was a glass eye, and took it out, offering it to me to inspect.
I pulled back; I didn't want to touch anything that'd been inside someone's body orifice (in this case, the hole where an eye'd be, if he had an eye).
There was however a certain joy about him, though; this was a man very happy to be in this world.
He explained to me (through the intermediary of the two babysitters with me) that he'd once been mean, grasping, evil, selfish, greedy. He'd had a wife, Katherine, who loved him to pieces, but whom he beat and abused anyway. He had a little daughter whom he'd neglected. He'd had a good job and made lots of money.
But as he didn't get along with other people, when times got tough, he was the first let go.
Because of his appearance and his negative personality, he couldn't get another job anything like what he'd had before. And he was doing drugs, lots and lots of drugs.
One night, he was beat up by a guy who was angry because he wasn't listening to him, paying attention to him, and ended up in the charity ward of the hospital.
People from the Salvation Army came around, and convinced him he had to change his life, becoming a better person. He got clean and sober, and into a job, but really preferred to be with the caring, loving, giving blue-suited soldierettes of the Salvation Army, and gave up that job to join them.
He said it was the best thing that ever happened to him, and that he thanked God every day for it.
One wonders what musical instrument the brain-damaged primitive plays.