When did I become a line-jumper and what is a line?

A line in this sense is a border that we shouldn’t cross.

Shouldn’t, – as defined by society, ethics, manners, conscience…mom and dad…
But nobody said “mustn’t” cross, except Grandma, because she knew stuff nobody else did.
That borderline is not an Iron Curtain or a DMC Zone with armed police patrols and watchtowers and minefields physically preventing me.
Although, when I think about it, it actually is, because if you cross such a line in public, boy you know about it.

In the privacy and seclusion of my thought world, however, I don’t jump the line, I use it as a venerable starting point for my imaginary excursions into ‘forbidden’ territory.
The world that opens up there is beyond description in intensity, pleasure, horror, reward, naughtiness, audacity…
If mind police would exist they would have squad cars lined up on my line: in gear, engines revving, foot on clutch, ready to pounce, because he is a serial offender.
And, if judgment day considers any line-jumping, I am in for a terrible surprise, like a ton of bricks as a ball and chain, forever suspended over a bunsen burner up my tenderness.
Not one soul will want to help me in that situation.

I became an lj as soon as I recognized that there was this “shouldn’t” side to a line. Initially cautiously, circumspectly, even fearfully, but driven to explore and quick in learning to return to the line as if nothing happened, lest you wanted a lecture.

Of course, because I am a line-jumper I think everyone else is too. We just don’t flaunt our line-jumping prowess like a gold chain. Despite the intention not to wear the line-jumper brand, and remain incognito, I have the feeling line-jumpers somehow know about others. I am also careful and skeptical of those who are line-jumping judges. They must have exemplary mind control or are just liars.

There is one side of line-jumping where you want to light an atom bomb in someone’s face or be stupidly daring.
There is another side too.
It’s not bad, but it is nevertheless also beyond the line. If ‘they’ make a strong enough case against you, you might end up in a place that really exists, but is so far from the line for most of us, it might as well be called Bedlam’s Cuckoo’s nest.
This other side of line-jumping I want to refer to carries the unenviable baggage of being branded delusional. The mere mention of the adjective has the sirens of the cuckoo’s nest proclaim an emergency upon me. So I have to tone down the delusion and call it an illusion born from a vivid imagination and now I’ll just skirt the gates of admission. Close call though. Where was the line now? That rigid line had flexible inserts. Much like having a bulldog-shrewd lawyer on your side that finds those inserts and turns delusional into inventive, ingenious and now suddenly judge and jury jubilate and acquit me.

I don’t walk the line.
On a good day, meaning when I have that acceptable (pre)disposition to the world, I might slalom over that line, hitherto and fro, like an inebriated driver attempting to follow the white line, but that is only because the world is watching me with a magnifying glass. As soon as I feel unobserved I flatten the pedal and pull back on the stick and dodge even my own surprises.

Somehow it always happens that I return to the line though, as if without it there wouldn’t be a reason to do anything. There is comfort, safety and sobriety around the line because it can get pretty rough out there. The line is like my bed, it is not where I spend my life, but only about a third of it.

Are you a line-jumper?
I’d love to know, – for my own sanity.