Idiot of the Decade

Today was a good father/son day. The wife was out shopping, and daddy stayed home taking care of his prince. It was raining, and the wind whipped around the house like a banshee - but we watched it all from the comfort of our living room - wrapped up in blankets as I sang to him.

So there I was looking at this precious little baby in my arms, and I thought "If I tried to hug him as much as I really wanted to - I'd crush him!" From there, I started to ponder how anyone could intentionally harm such an innocent and beautiful creature... and that's when it happened. A name popped into my head.

Scott Peterson. That's right ladies and gentlemen - Scott Lee Peterson, currently awaiting execution for the murder of his wife Laci and their unborn son, Conner.

Now, today, I would like to talk about Scott the Idiot. I would like to first acknowledge that yes, in the grand scheme of things, Scott the Heartless Murderer is an infinitely more important issue. But see, there really isn't anything to blog about there... what else is there to say besides it's horrifyingly unconscionable to kill your wife and unborn child? No, Scott the Murderer we all agree on.

But Scott the Idiot?... the man who was willing to take a human life because he wanted to maintain a bachelor lifestyle? Dude, we have to talk.

Scott - you're not the only guy in the world who freaked out a little when approaching middle age. Far from it. And to be fair - your brand of idiocy isn't that uncommon. Guys dump their wives for younger, 'prettier' models all the time. They take the nest egg and spend it on hair transplants and sports cars. They see themselves sitting in a recliner - bouncing a coupla kids on their knees - and imagine the phone ringing endlessly with friends who want him to join them on their wild orgiastic drinking binges... but no, they'll have to decline that - they're a family man now.

And while I was never that kind of a bachelor, I will tell you that I held off the family-house-kid thing for a while, because I didn't know if I was ready for it. Well, guess what - I found myself approaching 40, still living in a 1-bedroom apartment, no kid... and despite having a great wife, I started asking myself if my free-to-spend-my-disposable-income-on-toys lifestyle was really doing it for me. When my wife finally announced that she was pregnant, it was a relief - because I knew I was spared the fate of becoming a 50-ish (and up) guy who looks at his dusty belongings - knowing that the only valuable thing I really have in this world is my wife, and there's no telling how much time either of us have left. Had I not even had that, it would have been so much worse. And Dude - there are a lot of lonely older men out there who could have had something better, but turned it down or gave it up.

In your case, you destroyed it.

I mean, I certainly didn't know Laci personally or anything, but from all accounts it looks as if she were the kind of gal you'd want to spend the rest of your life with. You would have been an idiot, had you just divorced her. You probably wouldn't have realized it until... say your 60s or so. But by then it would have been too late.

You had it all you friggin idiot! You had a wife who would have been there for you, and a son... a son... If you knew what it felt like to be looking at a little creature made from you... and watch him smile at you for the first time... that one simple thing would have erased any notion that your life was meaningless. It would have filled up that hole in your soul... you know... the one you've been trying to patch with trips to Vegas and porn cable channels? Yeah. It would have fixed that. But now you're sitting in a jail cell, waiting for a lethal injection. YOU FRIGGIN IDIOT!

I'm wondering if a better punishment would have been to let you out of prison, and force you to live the life you were willing to kill for.