To Hell and Back!!! (Part One)

Most people probably envision Hell as a deep and vast underground cavern full of thick smoke and scorching flames... and, of course, an infinite number of nightmarish demons and tortured souls. I’m guessing there’s a lot of screaming in this scenario, too.

I don’t buy that. Heaven is not a bunch of clouds and harps and winged seraphs. Hell is not a bunch of fire and brimstone and screaming monstrosities. Those are just mythological constructs... simple and even unimaginative images that have been frequently used throughout history by the feckless predominant collective cultures of this infernal, red-headed stepchild of a world.

Yes, I’m feeling quite optimistic today.

Perhaps it is because I experienced a glimpse of the one true Hell recently and I am still struggling to recover.

You see, Heaven does not really have one face, so to speak. Nor does Hell, in my opinion. Such abstract ideas are influenced by the perception of the individual who experiences them. For you, Heaven may be full of chocolate chip cookies and blatant public nudity. For me, it might be a world where all food is served "Thai hot" and all movies are made in IMAX 3-D.

Then, there is Hell. I admit, burning perpetually while being whipped by deranged demons is a decent Underworld to imagine. It sounds quite painful and hopeless, which is precisely the point. But, for me, Hell is much worse than that. After all, I recently journeyed there (or a watered-down version of it) for about 30 minutes and escaped back to reality with my life and sanity intact, but only barely.

What is Hell for me? Quite simply, Hell is playing Pictionary.

The sad thing about that previous sentence is that I genuinely meant it. Drawing ability is something that I have always admired, but am utterly perplexed how it all works. I consistently failed handwriting in school (which is not really drawing talent, and yet, I’m so bad with pencil and paper that I cannot even write words legibly).

Years later, I took Art and my self-confidence pulled out a gun and shot itself 13 times.

I cannot draw a circle. I cannot draw a square. My stick figures look evil... and fuzzy... and disturbingly out of proportion. I truly suck at drawing in a way that nobody has managed to equal throughout the entire course of recorded time. (I even envy those rudimentary stick drawings on caves etched with ashen sticks.)

So, naturally, everybody I know seems to want to play Pictionary whenever I am around. I usually get pressured into playing, and then, by the end of the night, everybody usually regrets that persuasive effort.

You might think I’m being silly, but let me use an appropriate metaphor.

Picture, if you will, sticking your hand into a running blender (perhaps on the setting of maximum blend). Don’t take it out. Keep it there for 30 minutes (or however long it takes to play Pictionary). While this is going on, imagine that someone has lit your crotch on fire. You can’t put it out, of course. Then, cover your entire body with Super Glue. Immediately after that, pour a bucket of cranky tarantulas all over your body so they can get caught in the glue and try to bite their way out of it.

Does that sound like fun to you? For me, that sounds a little bit hellish. If I were given the choice of playing Pictionary or participating in the tortures of the previous paragraph, I would probably flip a coin.

In this instance, I lost the coin toss and almost lost my mind completely.

To Be Continued Tomorrow...