Call me trimtab. @theycallmetrimtab - Tumblr Blog

this may be totally incomprehensible to post-9/11 country music listeners but there was a time country music was only about smoking weed and going to jail

byjove

country music 40 years ago: I have warrants out in 7 counties. I’m on the run after killing my boss. I’m crossfaded on pot and whiskey. My wife is leaving me. Government is failing us. The cops suck.

country music now: Nothing bad ever happens in small towns. I love drinking ice cold beer and driving around in my $50k truck. Friday night football!

d31taf0rc3

Same vibe

byjove

raise hell, praise the ghost of Dale!

goon

cantina-band

Watching twilight on a poorly hung projector. (x)

sigilmint

i couldn’t fucking resist

storybookprincess

so a very long time ago, my dad worked with an arson investigator

this guy was often one of the first people on the scene following a suspected arson, once emergency services had done what they needed to do. at times, there were also civilians on the periphery. often, they were freaking out, and understandably so; their home or workplace had just, quite literally, gone up in smoke

this investigator wouldn’t try to calm them down. he wouldn’t comfort them or be a shoulder to cry on.

instead, he’d walk up to the person most visibly losing their shit, hand them a fire extinguisher, and say “hey, can you keep an eye out for any other fires, and if you see one, can you put it out with this?”

of course, there was no actual risk of another fire. he wouldn’t be on the scene investigating if there was even a chance that the fire wasn’t completely put out. but the bystander didn’t need to know that

because that person, without fail, would immediately pull it together, take the fire extinguisher, and stand guard. they were, at least temporarily, calm enough for this investigator to do this job

my dad has told me the parable of the fire extinguisher a hundred times, and i think about it a lot. i think about what it says about people and crises. i think about what it says about the grounding power of having a purpose. and i think about the importance of letting someone help me through something, even if that help is just going to be another casserole to throw into the freezer, because useless or not, that fire extinguisher might be the only thing holding them together