George had raised bears his whole life, but this one was different. He never named the bears actual names – this one was called 15767, or “15” for short. The numbers were some arcane blend of the birthdate, breed, and sex of the bear, a special code that made sense only to George and the people who worked for him.

15 was trying to kill George, but to the photographer it looked like playing. At first George thought 15 was playing too, but he quickly realized things have gone south when 15 started bouncing up and down on his head. This wasn’t a game anymore, but he couldn’t let on to the photographer. Not only was his pride in jeopardy, his entire career was on the line.

The photographer was there for the ad campaign for his business – Bear Protection Services. He needed to get more people to buy his trained bears for their home protection. “Have a bear outside? No burglars inside!” was their motto. The idea was that you’d get a bear to prowl around your property and it would maul anybody who tried to get into your house without your permission. There was a month-long acclimatization period to get the bear to recognize the homeowner and his family. It wouldn’t do to have one of George’s bears kill a client.

But that was exactly what was happening right now. George was getting mauled. The bear was using every move he’d reinforced. It wasn’t like you could teach a bear to do anything that wasn’t in its nature. You just used the parts of its nature that benefited you and reinforce them with treats. But that was part of the trouble. You couldn’t get a bear to stop doing something you didn’t want him to do. Yelling at it or hitting it on the nose just made it angry, and an angry bear was an unpredictable bear.

15 was very angry right now; George could see it in his eyes. They were darker than normal, with no catchlight. It was as if the light had gone out of his soul. Not like there had been a lot of light in this bear to begin with. His temperament was what made him interesting to George. But that very temperament might mean his death.

Fortunately George had years of martial arts training and even more years of backalley brawls behind him. He knew how to kick out from under an attacker, even one who outweighed him by at least 300 pounds. Of course, the first rule was never to let your opponent put you in such a position in the first place, but sometimes that couldn’t be helped. He had planned to let the bear pretend to maul him as an example of what the company’s trained bears could do for their clients. It all started off well. But then everything shifted and got real, very fast.

Now, 15 wasn’t exactly the friendliest bear George had ever worked with. It was a hard balance to work out. Too friendly and the bear wouldn’t attack the assailant. Too mean and he attacked the family. The sweet spot was somewhere in the middle, but that was difficult to gauge with bears. It wasn’t like you could put them through the Myers-Briggs or the Enneagram. George had found some small success in going by the bear’s horoscope, but he never told that to clients. He had a reputation to uphold.

He finally managed to get out from under the bear thanks to a streetfighting move he’d learned in Pittsburgh. If that hadn’t worked he would have resorted to putting his fist in the bear’s mouth to make it gag. He didn’t want to do that in sight of the photographer for fear of seeming to abuse it, but he was desperate. It wouldn’t do to let the bear win this fight, or else it would have been the end of his business, and of George.

(Written 11/5/19)

The ladies of the 32nd St. Temperance League knew it was time to do something. No longer could they trust in just leading by example, it was time to take their show on the road. People weren’t taking charge of their lives, weren’t connecting the dots. They knew better, but they didn’t act better.

Simply calling people out on unhealthy actions didn’t work and they knew it. They’d not participated in such activities themselves, but they’d watched and learned. It was helpful that others had made their mistakes for them.

But this was their flaw, or even their Catch-22. They didn’t know what it was like to feel the temptation and not yield to it, or more – to yield and then learn how to recover. It was easy to tell folks to stay on the straight and narrow if you’ve never strayed. But it meant more if you’d wandered off the path, got lost, and then found your way back. Who wanted a tour guide who had never visited the country they were touting?

But there was the rub – people didn’t trust people who had taken a trip through crazy-land. Whether it was just garden-variety mental illness or that with a side of substance abuse, they didn’t feel easy around those folks, even if they’d recovered. There was always an unspoken fear they’d relapse. It was the same old problem that had plagued Mary Magdalene – the woman who had seven demons cast out of her. Everybody focused on the past – that she used to have seven demons tormenting her – and not the present – they are gone. Her present wholeness was discounted while her past troubles were highlighted.

It wasn’t fair, but it was human nature, and these ladies needed every advantage they could, no matter how unreasonable. Because it was serious now, no time for talk. Lives were on the line. The only trouble was nobody knew. It was just like with Noah, building an ark in dry weather, on dry land. People mocked him the same way they mocked these ladies. It didn’t deter them. They had to share their message but the people didn’t have to listen.

That was the deal. In fact, nobody had to be rescued at all. Nobody had to be saved. The ladies had to tell the story, but the people didn’t have to listen. It was hard, of course, knowing so many folks would perish in the upcoming tribulation, but that couldn’t be helped. In fact, that was part of the test. If they were mature enough to heed the instructions and follow them, they were ready for the evolution. Otherwise? Who needed them? Layabouts and slackers who refused to be responsible for their lives didn’t need to be rescued. Everybody as a whole was better off without them. The tribulation (nobody was sure whether it was going to be with a bang or a whisper) would weed out the blamers, the entitled, the arrogant. All those who expected others to take care of them – or blamed others for their situation – would be wiped off the map.

For the ladies, that day needed to come soon. They were exhausted with the laziness that surrounded them.

(Written early October 2019)