TOM SENIOR

 Tom Senior has no issues with life doing life its way since Tom didn’t do life.  Tom tends to make fun of adults who haven’t grown up and have issues with life, but he tries to keep it to a inaudible roar.  On the other hand kids and their issues (“I want that candy”) are a hoot. Tom has empathy for people who take life seriously.  He has just enough empathy to only laugh when they can’t hear him.  He tries to be kind to troubled people, but has learned that the kindest thing he can do for them is not be around them since their troubles indicate they’re not ready to hear how to enjoy their troubles.  He knows if they don’t ask, don’t tell, so instead he listens, nods his head, screws his face into an empathetic stare, and goes to events late, and makes up for it by leaving early, because he knows if he stays to long he’s gonna get caustic, logical, rational, reasonable, and all those other words most people hate when it comes to dealing with the reality that is life (“but I don’t want to die, and I didn’t want Aunt Martha to die, and why does life suck so much, and what about all those wars, and bla bla bla”).   Tom can’t help being and asshole, because he is one. 

A guy walks up to Tom and says he has a problem, and Tom asks, are you enjoying it, and the guy goes, “What!?  Hell no!”  And tom walks away and goes “Good luck.”  Pretty assholy, right.  If the guy had said, “I need a battery, Tom would give him one.  But instead the guy goes on and on how his life sucks, and so giving him a battery wouldn’t help him unsuck himself.

Tom tried not to enjoy all that is life but it didn’t work for him.  He tried to be pissed-off when things didn’t go his way, when he lost family members, houses, businesses, but no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t do it.  When he failed at things he laughed.  When is body was in pain he yelled at it, “Get over it, you crybaby!”    A few times when he figured he might die, he said, “Well if this is how I’m gonna go, get on with it.  Maybe I’ve never died this way before.  Tom don’t know shit about reincarnation, but he figures, if it is, it is, if it ain’t it ain’t!  Not his problem.”

Tom was kidnaped when he was a kid.  It ended OK, but Tom figures his parents got back the wrong kid.

Tom married a teenager, but she escaped by dying when she was seventy.  She was a warrior all fifty years of marriage, a saint in the flesh, and he always wondered what she did before she was born to have to put up with Tom.  Tom don’t know shit about prelife stuff.  If it is, it is, if it ain’t, it ain’t.   Not his problem.  Tom always said to her, “I thought you were further along than that.”  She hated it.  He still said it.  Talk about an asshole.

Tom was gonna open up an ashram.  He wrote that only people without issues need apply.  No one answered the ad.  An Ashram’s purpose is to help people, not torture them. Tom can be a real idiot.

After his wife died he advertised for a new female companion.  Tom sent two books to the one that was serious about it (The Power In Thank You, and Humans Are Nuts (which includes a chapter on Crybabies).  She never got back to him.  The few others who called, listened a bit, but when he asked if they were logical, rational, reasonable and would still be OK if while sitting on the  toilet seat in the outhouse it breaks and they get covered in shit.  They hung up on him.  Tom figured they hung up because they were Mormons.

So now he lives alone in a semi-undisclosed location on a very busy and noisy highway appreciating his family for also having no way life MUST go to be happy.