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.
