Mind boggled

There are many things I do not understand in this world. Some of my misunderstandings stem from a lack of experience (I think I'd have to be a woman to honestly "get" makeup). Others from a surfeit of empathy: why do so many people find pain funny?
But some things are actually beyond my ability to even conceive. The biggest one of these: so-called "angry passion".
It's a feature of many a TV show, from Everybody Loves Raymond (why the hell are Frank and Marie still together, since they hate each other's guts) to Married...With Children (ditto for Al and Peg Bundy). And I've often heard of life imitating art: the married couple that fights like cats and dogs, yet still claim to love each other.
Aside: this is one reason I watch very little television. I've learned to (mostly) keep quiet over the years, but I can't shut up the little niggling voice in my mind. Watching the aforementioned Everybody Loves Raymond, it says things like Hey, Ray! Debra! Here's a thought: LOCK YOUR F$(%ING DOOR! Or I'll be watching a couple in a movie screaming at each other, on the verge of physical assault--and sometimes past it--when all of a sudden they grab each other and start making out. Clothes get ripped off and that rrrrrrrip sound is very like the voice in my mind calling bullshit. What male screenwriter is responsible for this drivel? Hey, buddy, next time you're having a knock-em-down fight with the wifey, why not try to feel her up? Sure! After all, it's been a while since you've had a good kick in the nuts!


The other reason I watch next to no television is because of something I alluded to above: I do not find pain funny, and yet nearly every so-called comedy on TV is replete with it. Humiliation is the sine qua non of comedy, and it causes me no end of acute embarrassment, whether it's self-inflicted or not. I don't go out of my way trying to mortify people and I sure don't enjoy the feeling of being mortified; why should it be any different at a remove?

But no, I'm wrong: pain is funny, anger just naturally morphs into intercourse, and people who love each other, apparently, hate each other too. The weirdness slops over into the headlines: "Man shoots girlfriend" Uh, hello? One general characteristic of the set of people called "girlfriends" is that you explicitly don't try to murder them. Then again, I think anyone who even CONTEMPLATES killing someone is ipso facto mentally ill.

Perhaps if my brother had lived, I might understand this stuff a little better. After all, it seems like everybody and his brother must, at times, behave like a couple of psychos towards each other. I've only met two sets of siblings in my life who were each other's best friends. Both were, interestingly, identical twins. I've long believed twins share some kind of low-grade telepathic bond. From there, it isn't too much of a stretch to imagine that what hurts one, hurts the other.

Twinship aside, it's been explained to me over and over again that yes, I love my brother: it's why I can beat the almighty piss out of him, but nobody else better lay a hand on him! This goes in one ear and out the other...it makes no sense to me at all. What it reminds me of more than anything else is a territorial dog, a vicious one that loves its chew-toys. But a human being is not a dog, and his brother is not a chew-toy.

I'm no closer to understanding this phenomenon at 39 than I was at 9 or 19....