Wednesday, April 8, 2009

middled aged women are wilding

I noticed some odd decade or so ago that women in their, say, mid to upper 40s were quietly talking about suicide. It was sort of around the time in Manhattan when middle aged white women were getting randomly assaulted in the street - punched in the stomache, hit with objects, one day a stranger socked me in the mouth at the corner of Astor Place. When I mentioned it the other women had their brief shocked stories.
Now, if a bunch of teens went on a group assault spree, they media called it Wilding. Which sounds fun, except it plainly wasn't for at least one of the parties involved, the private citizen trying to get from point A to B in a peacetime society before getting whomped with a concrete block, raped by a chuckling posse, taunted and jostled. What a waste of a term, Wilding should be a dance and pop tune, like The Tantrum or the Hustle. 
Today on the news, as I lay in bed with my eyes a tiny bit shut, I heard three news items that sounded like women were reinventing the wilding. In the first story, a woman successfully combined the two trends of suicide and random violence when she jumped off the third tier of a mall and landed on a 17 year old boy. Whoa, what a way to go. I guess it was time to check out, but she was tired of just telling everybody she was fine. She was 52.
Another woman today committed a complex form of suicide by cop, i believe in Bayside. Nothing too good happens in Bayside, Queens, its like the movie the young couple rents out at the beginning of a horror film, except its our entire life. This 48 year old woman was banging on her landlord's door, and pumping up the gas in her flat. when the police came to her door, two of them, she charged out with a kitchen knife and stabbed one of the cops three times. They shot her to death. He'll be ok, more or less. 
Then a lady called 911 because she didn't get enough shrimp with her special order. It was supposed to be the humor relief part of the news, but they did play the phone call and she sounded really pissed, a lifetime of rage, a strategy to cope. It is possible to hop from moment to moment of a day using indignation rage and complaint. Her voice sounded, oh, i'd say from 46 - 57. Maybe I'm wrong here.