Viral

The first time I knew anything about something or someone going viral was when these two young ladies asked me and a friend if we wanted to make some quick cash. My friend Crocodile Dumbdee didn’t hesitate to take them up on their unscrupulous offer. I say it all depends on what you’re asking. The female driver says get in and I’ll explain. I say I’m not getting in no stranger’s car and pat my jacket pocket as if I had a gun. She said that she would give us some money if we returned some items back to Wal-Mart. I say if you have the receipts. I already knew the game. They stole the items and knew that they couldn’t get money back but gift certificates. I play dumbdee for the sake of doing it.

I show my license to the clerk to return the stolen comforter and get a 98 dollar gift certificate. The driver only wants to give me 10 dollars for me risking a chance to possibly go to jail with a stolen item. I eventually get 15 dollars and she promised to pay me another 5 once we got back. My drinking buddy Crocodile Dumbdee got 6 dollars. I don’t remember what he took back, but he should have gotten more than 6 bucks. She wanted to take us to another Wal-Mart. I say you owe me another 5 dollars. Me and Croc start singing in the back seat that we want are money. I see a light coming from the passenger cell phone, but I don’t really pay it much attention. In all honesty we’re both somewhat drunk. When we get back to where they picked us up at. She quickly pulls off like a thief in the night. The next day a few friends of mind texted me and told me that me and that no teeth Crocodile Dumbdee video had gone viral and it was funny the way we were singing and the lyrics about paying me my money. It had 16,000 lookers. I really didn’t care about that gobbledygook. I wanted my 5 dollars.

By definition, viral comes from the word “virus,” which is a medical term used to describe a small infectious agent that can infect all types of organisms. It's also a computer term. On the internet, however, a piece of content can spread just like a virus if people become “infected” when they see it. The infection usually comes from evoked emotions that spur the viewer to share it, so they can relate with other people and discuss how they feel. Think about it. When you share something online, you do it because it moved you in some way, emotionally. Whether it made you sad, happy, angry, surprised, disgusted, or anything else, you share it because you want other people to share those feelings with you. What they did to me and Crocodile Dumbdee was an invasion of privacy.

A few months later I seen the two of them. They must have seen the hatred in my eyes as they quickly pulled off. I shouted that I have your license plate number now. I didn’t do anything with it but I never seen the two of them again.

The next thing that when viral in my life was when I keep asking this crazy dude why are you walking around butt naked. Everyone was laughing. I just didn’t want him to go to jail for indecent exposure. Now for the last time I scream at him where in the heck are your clothes. You could hear laughter and see people holding cell phones in the camera shot position all around me and this dude who was obviously on some kind of mind altering medication. I offer him my jacket in which he refused because he kept saying he was burning up. He didn’t burn up too much longer as the police put his naked posterior in the police cruiser. As fate or my fate that scene went viral. It did look and sound funny the way I was trying to convince that guy to tell me where he put his clothes and trying to cover him up. Over 33,000 people saw that video.

I just don’t get it. If you can’t make any money from that pathetic scene why send it off. All it takes is a few shares and the right audience to trigger an avalanche of sharing across the internet. It’s not easy to start a viral movement I thought, but when it does happen, it can take the most regular people and turn them into internet celebrities practically overnight if it's powerful enough. That dude didn’t like being a celebrity because although he got a hold of some bad drugs a blunt mixed with marijuana and PCP; methamphetamine; marijuana cigarettes soaked in PCP ("embalming fluid") and dried wet sticks. Marijuana combined with PCP and formaldehyde whacked dude out of his mind. He had children.

The last thing I personally seen go viral was one extremely hot August afternoon the day before the children had to go back to school. A ferocious riot developed out of nowhere. Now looking back in time to educe seeing little babies in pampers fighting was funny, but not then. The sad part about the end of the summer insurrection is that it was mostly teen age girls involved and I still don’t believe they knew what they were combatting about. I was standing on my porch wondering where in the world were the mothers. Unless those who were engaged in that ridiculous nonsense the babies who were boxing were their children. Babies having babies. The police never showed up. They just took the fighting out of my eyesight. The calamity fight scene went viral. The next day I get several calls saying we seen what happened by your house with you standing there with a look of disgust on your face. It even made the local news for a couple of days. What gets me most is how excited people get when something violent is happening right before there eyes.

I’ve seen some crazy things during my life and I’m thankful that the man who killed his wife and her lover in broad daylight as the two of them were running down the street totally nude. He was a truck driver and came home unexpectedly and caught the two of them in bed. I was totally shocked that that sad scene didn’t go viral or get sensationalized by the media. What a world we live in that cell phones have created human monsters. My new wife is somewhat said to be clairvoyant in nature. She said that she and I were destined to marry. It was strange indeed because I had no intention on ever getting married. I did or not did see her lovely green dress wearing lovely face in my nightly dreams, yet in the morning I purposely forgot all about it. Until every day an image of her started floating around my bed singing here comes your bride all dressed in green. I even did a little research of why I was having that recurring dream. Positively, dreaming of a lovely woman wearing a green dress may be a sign that you are getting over serious problems and learning to accept a difficult change. Yeah, I had just experienced a bad break up with a girlfriend that I was romantically involved with for over 8 years. It said that often it says a dream such as the one I was having nightly was a symbol for people recovering from serious injuries or major surgery that leaves scars. Well I did have to have my gall stones removed. A positive attitude about accepting a loss. A woman wearing a green dress may also symbolize selfish compliance. Wait a minute. Take an excusably break. You or someone else that is subordinate or helpful for selfish reasons. Jealousy that forces you to do whatever you are told. Feeling that you are being totally controlled by someone else's arrogance. Suddenly my computer shut off on its own. Then about 44 seconds later it turned itself back on. The entire window page posted that you will marry a woman wearing a green dress with a charming personality and a sweet, singing voice. The very next day she was sitting in my classroom where I taught ABE (Adult Basic Education) wearing the exact green dress I seen her in that nightly dream. The strange thing about her sitting in the front row of the classroom. She wasn’t on my roster to be a student. After class she asked me to take her to the movies to watch her favorite movie. The Teachers Wife a 1991 romantic comedy film, in which a clairvoyant woman thinks that she's met her future husband, who she has seen in her and his dreams and who teaches grown people how to prepare for their High School Equivalency exam. They marry and move to the city, where her powers tend to influence everyone she meets. We were married in 3 weeks after she introduced herself to me. When I came home from work she told me that she had purchased “us” a brand new house on Strange Lane. I’m thinking to myself am I still dreaming. When we got to the Gotham House a Grade II listed early 18th century Georgian merchant's townhouse on Strange Lane in the town of Tiverton in Devon, England. An ancient estate named "Gotham" also that existed in the parish of Cadeleigh, near the ghetto town of Tiverton, now represented by Gotham Farm. It was one of a number of buildings constructed in Tiverton following the disastrous Tiverton fire of 1731. The building was restored in 1966 and currently serves as the base for a firm of solicitors. The house and its forecourt walls and entrance gates became listed on 12 February 1952. There have been reports of the house being haunted. Again, I say to myself am I still dreaming as I tell my clairvoyant wife. Still wearing that now olive green dress. I aint into that supernatural program Thrones!, She whispers in my right ear. How she knows that I’m totally deaf in my left ear is beyond my mental conspection. Maybe just maybe she is clairvoyant or she was seriously reading Tarot cards. The place is really scary to me. Then she looks at me with now bright green eyes and tells me to push the ancient down to the perpendicular side. I say what does that mean honey. The green eyes changed to bright red. Now I say baby this isn’t funny. She laughs like one of those cartoon character from Sponge Bob square pants. I figure out how to pull the lever to a magic portal. Ants are the size of silver back gorillas and can speak Kaixana. This magical portal is beyond any world that no human being should experience. I no longer want to be there as I see 40 or more Ili pika (Ochotona iliensis)  a species of mammal in the family Ochotonidae. My new wife talking in akka idakka says. This is where “we” belongs. I say wake up dude! I continue to through the magical portal where everyone is in 3-D. The white-rumpled vulture is a typical, medium-sized vulture, with an unfettered head and neck, very broad wings, and short tail feathers. It is much smaller than the Eurasian Griffon. It has a white neck ruff. The adult's whitish back, rump, and underwing coverts contrast with the otherwise dark plumage. The body is black and the secondaries are silvery grey. The head is tinged in pink and bill is silvery with dark ceres. The nostril openings are slit-like. Welcome me. Where is the new wife I keep shouting to the Elephant shrews, also called jumping shrews or sengis, are small insectivorous mammals native to Africa, belonging to the family Macroscelididae, in the order Macroscelidea. Their traditional common English name "elephant shrew" comes from a perceived resemblance between their long noses and the trunk of an elephant, and their superficial similarity with shrews in the order Eulipotyphla. However, phylogenetic analysis revealed that elephant shrews are not classified with true shrews but are in fact more closely related to elephants than shrews. When in 1997 the biologist Jonathan Kingdom proposed that they instead be called "sengis", a term derived from the Bantu languages of Africa, and in 1998 they were classified into the new clade Afrotheria. I can’t tell what the heck is going on in this magical kingdom or realm or monarchy or demesne or unbelievable sovereignty. All I know is that this them Pangolins, or scaly anteaters, are mammals of the order Pholidota. The one extant family, Manidae, has three genera: Manis, Phataginus and Smutsia. Manis comprises the four species found in Asia, while Phataginus and Smutsia each include two species living in Sub-Saharan Africa. These species range in size from 30 to 100 cm. A number of extinct pangolin species are also known. Led me out of that magical portal. I finally wake up from that real life dream.