| Fred: Did you hear about the great new law they want pass? It's sure to make us all safer... John: No, which one? Fred: Well, it seems that over the last few decades, there have been several murders committed by guys named "Jake"! Obviously, there's a connection...so they are writing a bill to make it illegal to name your child "Jake", and to have all people already named "Jake" put in quarantine, so the rest of us will be protected from them. John: That's absurd! The vast majority of people named Jake are good people who would never hurt anyone...how do you justify tearing them away from their families and locking them up? Just based upon the actions of a FEW?? Fred: Anything that may increase the safety of the general public has got to be the best possible solution! What if one of these Jake guys wasn't locked up, then he came around and slaughtered YOUR family?? Haven't you seen the news photos of the crime scene, from the last Jake that went on a killing spree? It was gruesome...how could anyone see those photos, and still feel secure with similar potential criminals on the loose? John: That guy was found to be mentally ill, from years of abuse and neglect when he was young. Wouldn't it make more sense to concern ourselves with mental illness and proper child rearing, than with the guy's NAME? Fred: Well, what about last year, that other Jake-something, the one who shot two men dead? John: The one where the two men had broken into his house, and threatened his family? Who wouldn't have shot them? Fred: Ahhh. That's beside the point...the point being, people named Jake are around, and other people end up dead. Why worry about the messy details. John: But it's ALL in the details! Those two guys would have never come to any harm, if they hadn't.... Fred: Wait! I just remembered another one. Remember that case in...ohhh, somewhere up north, Wisconsin, Michigan, somewhere. It was just on CNN the other day, something about "new evidence". The one where that Jake guy killed that little girl with the axe. No one saw that coming... John: Awww, any sensible person could have seen that behavior coming, a mile away! The guy should have been penned up long before he got to that little girl. It was a disaster just waiting to happen. <pause> Anyhow, his name wasn't Jake. It was Joe. Fred: No, the news said it was "Jake"... John: No. The news said it was "Jake", just RECENTLY, when they were rehashing the story. Back when it HAPPENED, the guy's name was Joe. Fred: Well...it doesn't matter, anyhow. His name could just as easily have been Jake. John: But it WASN'T Jake! How can you use that to prove "Jakes" are potential killers, when in the case you refer to, the killer wasn't even a guy named Jake? Fred: Awww, c'mon, he even had black hair and a tattoo. Don't they all? Anyhow, he sure looked like a Jake to me. John: Arrrgh. <long silence> John: Fred...don't you think that these Jake guys' upbringing, experiences, environment, parents, and about a thousand other factors, have more bearing on what they do than their NAME, or what they look like?? Fred: I'm just pointing out a trend, is all. <pause> I'm not the ONLY one, you know...they had two experts on the TV last night who were explaining how it works. They were saying how rough these Jake guys are, and how they were so glad they never had the misfortune to run across anyone named Jake themselves! John: You mean these "experts" never even met anyone named Jake??? Fred: Well...not in person. I mean, they'd seen them on the TV, and read about them in the news... John: But they never had a friend or family member named Jake? They never worked with a Jake? Fred: The one woman visited one in prison once...she said you could just see it in his eyes, what he was like. <brief silence> John: Has anyone talked to the TRUE experts—the ones who LIVE with people named Jake? These guys' families and friends? What do they have to say? Fred: Well, they'll have lots of nice stuff to say, of course...but it doesn't count, they have ulterior motives. They don't want their Jakes hauled away... John: But if these guys named Jake were so awful, why WOULDN'T they want them taken away? You would think, that if Jakes were so violent and unpleasant and dangerous, the families would be glad to be rid of them. <slightly sarcastic grin> Fred: <shrugs> Who knows. Some people are just crazy, I guess. |
| "His Name is Jake..." |