From my earliest kids days enjoying Rod Serling's "The Twilight Zone" and the stories of O. Henry to the exploits of Perry Mason, the sudden "ah-HA!" moments in film and television and literature have always been a source of enjoyment.
I even liked "The Sixth Sense" although I was, hand to God, the only person I have ever met who, once again, hand to God, figured out the much ballyhooed "surprise ending" about six minutes into the movie.
Years of Serling and O. Henry and Erle Stanley Gardner fine tuned my imagination, I imagine.
Meanwhile, what you will find shortly, in the spirit of my lifelong affection for the genre', is a twist ending.
Which, by its nature, means that you won't be expecting the outcome.
(CNN) -- Mark David Chapman, the man convicted of killing former Beatle John Lennon, has been denied parole for a seventh time, according to the New York Department of Corrections.
He was last up for parole in 2010, when he was told his "discretionary release remains inappropriate at this time and incompatible with the welfare of the community," according to the state's Division of Parole.
He was also denied parole in 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008.
Chapman, 57, is serving a sentence of 20 years to life in prison and is being held at the Wende Correctional Facility in Alden.
He is in protective custody in a single-person cell, corrections spokeswoman Carole Claren-Weaver said, and is allowed out three hours per day.
Since his transfer from Attica this year, Chapman has reapplied to participate in a state program called "family reunion," which allows inmates to spend more time with family members.
Chapman has not had an infraction since 1994. It is not clear whether he currently has legal representation.
The British singer-songwriter Lennon was gunned down outside his Manhattan apartment on December 8, 1980.
Anyone and everyone in my life who has known me more than six months knows the special place in that life held by The Beatles.
It was the arrival of the Fabs on Ed Sullivan in February 1964 that had this thirteen year old coaxing, pleading, demanding that parents hit the street in search of the Holy Grail of its time, a copy of their first American LP, "Meet The Beatles".
It was the sound of their songs and the resulting impact on that newly minted teen psyche that resulted in an avalanche of hints, requests, demands that a guitar be somewhere in the vicinity of a well worn plastic pine tree come morning December 25th. An avalanche, by the way, that made Ralphie's time treasured campaign to score the Red Ryder BB gun look like a tiny whimper in the wind.
It was the impact of their songs on the culture, not to mention their effect on every female on my teen age radar, that inspired me to form, join and/or be a part of every garage band that I could find a way to form, join and/or be a part of.
And it was the senseless killing of John Lennon in 1980, he at the age of 40, me at the age of 29 that yanked me irrevocably out of whatever youthful innocence I still possessed and planted me firmly, squarely and harshly into the reality of the way life really works.
Mark David Chapman killed more than just one man that December night. He killed an icon. And more than one childhood.
Mine, for sure.
Today, reading that Chapman has, once again, been denied parole for the murder he not only committed but, from moment one, freely acknowledged, I found myself treating the story as so much "so what else is new", having long ago become accustomed to the every couple of year cycle of "application/review/Yoko requests denial/fans demand denial/application rejected" that Chapman's pardon process has become. At the end of the particular article I was reading, though, a fellow reader's comment caught my eye and, for the first time in over thirty years, I was sparked to think about it from a slightly different skew.
A skew that inspired me to write what you're reading right now.
The commenter, clearly not a fugitive from any Mensa meeting nor likely to steal any thunder away from this year's crop of Rhodes Scholars, made, in his own rhetorically redneckian fashion, a point that, despite my best efforts to combat with logic, calculation, even rock and roll sentimentality, I couldn't in good conscience either refute...or deny.
It went something like "....if Chapman had killed John Nobody in 1980, he would have been out years ago....there's a different set of rules for the rich...."
Truth be told, my instinctive reaction to that observation surprised me.
I agreed.
John Lennon was an important part of my life and the lives of many of my generational peers at a very impressionable time in our lives and, as a result, remains an obvious and unforgettable thread in the fabric of the lives that we have woven since.
But he was, at the hard rock core of it, no more, or less, than simply a human being like myself...or you...or Mark David Chapman.
And if Chapman has been as exemplary an inmate as reported, if he has been, in the eyes of those who are qualified, rehabilitated to the extent that he is deserving of a chance to re-enter society and make some substantive contribution, then, as contradictory as it is to every primal emotion that I possess, not to mention every attitude I have had about the guy since December 8, 1980, I can't be true to my own sense of justice and fair play and not say he should be given the chance that any other convicted killer would be given in our system of justice.
Simply put, if he is to be kept in prison any longer, it should be because of what he still does in the light of what he once did.
Not because of who he did it to.
And if he has become deserving of another chance, he should have it.
I don't have to be reminded, or told, that advocating the release of John Lennon's assassin is a no brainer method of stirring a shit pot the size of the Dakota.
But justice is justice.
Whether it satisfies our personal needs for revenge and retribution or not.
Or it simply isn't justice.
And the bitch of all of this......
...is that, in my heart, the same heart that once beat wildly while I played along, sang along and pretty much lived along with the culture and life changing backbeat put down by four young guys from Liverpool, I think there is, at the very least, one guy who would understand what I'm saying here and agree with me, suggesting it might be time to start talking about freedom and forgiveness.
John Lennon.
How's that for a twist ending?
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