The Call of the Wild Duck

I've got this friend who's life seems to mirror a film noir plot. The twists and turns of his life would make Raymond Chandler and Dashielle Hammet jealous. Recently his half brother, we'll call him Pete, was victim of a scam hatched by the ex-wife and brother-n-law. They had Pete declared incompetent after a doctor diagnosed a brain disease which gave him no more than two months to live. The prognosis was this: soon he would lose touch with reality and die because his brain would forget how to control his body. There was no cure.

The bro-in-law got power of attorney and started funneling money from Pete's account to his own so he and the ex-wife could "care" for him. It was eventually exposed when my friend encouraged Pete to get a second opinion. There was no disease. The doctor was in on the scam to take Pete's money. It turns out now that Pete had a sort of nervous break down, probably from the stress that was coming from the ex-wife and her lover the brother in law.

Now that complicated scenario is only one of the hundreds like it that seems to follow my friend around. He said one time, "Why me.. Why do these things follow me around. I don't go looking for them. They just happen around me." Now that part is true, but my friend is also a very noir kind of guy. He devours all the old books and movies with those twisted plots. He would live in that world if he could.

Here is what I got to thinking. You get what your mind is set on. Comics have funny things happen to them. Depressed people tend to experience depressing situations. You could argue that comics are funny because funny things happen to them, or depressives are depressed because of the bad things around them. I'm not sure I buy into this "product of your enviornment" theory. I think that is cart before the horse.

If you blow a duck call in the wild you expect to attract ducks. Moose are rarely attracted by a duck calls. So if one hunter has a duck call and another a moose call... in the same wilderness they will attract only what they're calling.

You attract what you put out there. If you see life in certain ways then that is what you are attracting. If your life is full of ducks you shouldn't wonder why, stop with the duck call.
That's just a thought. No charge.

As you were,
Jay