Holaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! I’m just about to wrap up season five
of “Dexter” on Netflix. It’s a great show and I’m enjoying it a lot. I’m really
amazed and maybe slightly worried by how much I identify with Dexter. Oh, not
the serial killer part (much) but with his social awkwardness and how he can
barely function in society in general and his “dark passenger.”
We all have secrets. We all have parts of our lives we don’t
let people in on. Some people just lay it all out there for everyone, but most
of us don’t. We all also have a “dark passenger” (who should not be confused
with an imaginary friend). This passenger is basically our conscience or alter
ego or just that little voice inside our heads that says things like “have you
thought about the consequences of hitting ‘publish’ on this status
update/comment/reply?” Okay, again some
people don’t have that voice in their heads. Most of do though.
Dexter’s dark passenger helps him in his role as a serial
killer. The passenger takes on the physical look of his adoptive father Harry
Morgan, but he’s imaginary cause Harry is dead. Unfortunately, not all dark
passengers act as someone’s conscience. Sometimes they say things like “Dude!
You should totally have sex with your girlfriend’s mother, aunt and sister.
When are you going to get a chance like this again in life?” Mostly though your
dark passenger helps you work through life’s problems by allowing you to
imagine how you might take people out or solve situations if it didn’t result
in going to prison.
Like say the guy down at the bread shop is a total jerk and
says something really rude to a little girl. You can’t just kick his ass, but
wouldn’t it be awesome if he tripped and fell while rolling a big rack of bread
into a walk-in oven? And when he tripped it would just enough to make the door
shut and auto-lock behind him? Dude would be crispy bits in 17 minutes.
Maybe you have a coworker who one of those busy-bodies who
is always up in everyone’s business. Don’t you hate those people? Wouldn’t it
be satisfying if one day when they sat down at their desk after making the
rounds gossiping and snooping they realized their computer was off? So, they
pushed the power button and BOOM!
How ‘bout if you had another coworker who was just an
absolute dog? Wouldn’t it be awesome if he was putting together a crate to ship
something out in and was using the old nail gun that jammed all the time? And,
when it jammed he would try to unjam it and the thing went off like 47 times
right into his face and chest? Something like that would be a little messy, but
very satisfying.
Honestly, how hard would it be to kill someone? What percentages
of murders are actually solved in America? If you’re really careful and take
time to prepare and always follow the rules (or “code” as Dexter calls it) how
likely would you be to get away with it? The examples above seem like the kinds
of things you would have trouble getting way with because the company would
have security cameras and all those busy-body employees monitoring you
movements.
The real problem is how much time and effort it would take
to be successful. You’d have to plan it all about and stalk them without being
noticed. You would have to time everything perfectly. You wouldn’t have time to
hang out on Twitter or Facebook or host a highly-acclaimed, award-winning
internet radio show. Yeah, it’s totally not worth it. Probably not.
