The world has gone mad. Systems already barely holding it together have taken a turn for the weirder or the worse. Is it too much to ask for the ferry system to know how to load cars, for presidential candidates to be coherently ideological, for credit cards to save us time and for local health care to … exist?
No, the times they are a changin’, and not in a groovy way. In reaction, otherwise normal people are increasingly losing it — even here, where people are eccentric, but placid.
Recently, Washington State Ferries blatantly tried to make us blow a collective gasket through a baffling change in ticketing. For those who don’t leave the island or know what the ferries are, believe us, it was really, really bad. They even brought in new, elite WSF forces, specially trained in herding irate vegan libertarians.
The effect was immediate. A normally nice friend of mine sent out a picture of a complaint form she scorched in red ink. I imagined her charging in a mouth-frothing, air-clawing rage at some helpless ferry worker.
Ferry leaders said they heard us loud and clear, and newer, friendlier booth workers then took 47 seconds per car to explain the Pastel Pieces of Paper Innovation, while the lives of ticket-holding drivers behind them were shortened by toxic rage as they watched the ferry leave. And now, just to prove that they’re messing with our heads, WSF has decided to just go back to the way things were before.
Then you have Donald Trump — known to many as the The Great Liberator, and to others as Lord Voldemort — whose candidacy is wreaking absolute havoc with the Law of Cosmic Balance (which, on Vashon, is a thing) and again, people are flipping out.
You’d think Vashon would simply act like a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bernie Sanders. But no, this year we have three candidates so, um, exciting, that it’s making fanatics of us all.
Yesterday I witnessed two dear friends engaging in “dialogue” that seemed fueled by a cocktail of Human Growth Hormone and horse tranquilizers. One was holding the other’s head by the ears, screaming, “Are you INSANE? I will come to your house and SIT on you until you change your mind!”
Witnessing that exchange was stressful, so I went shopping, which helps, even on Vashon. But when I got to the register, I saw they’d installed the “chip technology” from hell. Whose idea was this? And please help me understand why those 20 seconds so made me want to both die and kill at the same time.
Not to be left out of the fun of driving us all batty, the Franciscans announced they’re closing the clinic. (To be fair, it’s not the actual Franciscans — those guys would totally volunteer to take care of us, our animals and our farms.)
No, it was CHI-Franciscan Health, making a business decision based on Vashon just not “penciling out” — which feels like a system-gone-insane sucker punch of the highest order. Even if 28 percent of islanders are licensed “healers,” we still need doctors.
I ran around the house shaking fists and swearing at nuns in Tacoma who, really, deserve flowers for their efforts. It was misplaced fury: The decision was made by far-away executives, squashing us like a little green unvaccinated bug.
Cooler heads on Vashon are scheming to find a workable solution. Meanwhile, five octogenarians from the senior center were arrested for malicious mischief after “tagging” the clinic with vulgar graffiti and could be seen the following morning cleaning it under sheriff supervision.
OK, that part isn’t true. But with systemic failure everywhere producing widespread individual hysteria, how, I’m wondering, can islanders keep each other from wigging out in the face of these and other offenses?
How about an old-fashioned, small community public information campaign?
We could put up billboards; they’d read like our own 10 Commandments: “Seek not vengeance, inflicting harm or personal gain!”, “Mediate, meditate, and medicate!”, “Conciliation and healing rocks! Retribution, not so much!”
It seems that these days, we could all use help figuring out appropriate, effective responses to a messed up, abusive and sometimes violent world. Because even on fantasy island, it gets ugly.
In other news, someone almost got their clock cleaned at Sporty’s last week by asking for gluten-free pancakes. Now that, I totally understand.
— Kevin Joyce is a writer, humorist and father who lives on Vashon.
