Stranger Things: Heading Into the Upside Down

The kids cannot understand why I was drawn so strongly into the Netflix series Stranger Things. Only a handful of people really understand how important "Criminal Minds" is to me. When not in the horse lot I live in a very different world. Over twenty years of  prosecuting crimes against children, molestation and sexual assault cases have caused me, (in the words of a priest who was a close friend of Rossie in a great Criminal Minds episode) "to invite evil into my world."

In "Stranger Things" a little girl is held prisoner all of her life, abused, and forced to enter another reality, called the "Upside Down."  She has special powers of concentration and, while she has no understanding of the normal world, she understands the hellish existence in the "Upside Down" but has to learn how to live in a normal world. She escapes and comes under the wing of an overweight, aging law enforcement officer whose existence is marked by the death of his own daughter years earlier.  

In short, it is a wonderful story about me, Ashley, and Lido. 

The show must be great for entertainment. It has been tremendously popular. I don't watch for entertainment. It is a "how to" book for me. I re-watch every episode to try to learn how to overcome the next trip back into the Upside Down.

I do not understand those professionals who are like air plane pilots who can fly over a bombed out city, observe and record the damage, and then fly home to land in their safe, secure airports. 

I have a crash landing into every bombed out city that I fly over. Every horrible case is another trip into the Upside Down. And just about every time I go into the Upside Down I am able to bring some one out with me. I cannot keep them from being drawn back into the Upside Down but I can (and have)  pulled a lot of them out. 

But it is the time of the year when instruments don't sound in tune regardless of what the digital tuner says. It is the time of year when all of the earth is mud. It is the time of year when Lido is the most dead. It is the time of year when one has the hardest time distinguishing between the real world and the Upside Down.

But, if past experience holds true, it will not always be that way.

(Picture is of Lido and Sand Creek in one of the first clinics that we ever did. The little girl who owned Sand Creek was having problems controlling him. Lido taught Sand Creek to stop on the cue of Lido exhaling deeply)