Get Well Keytar Bear

This is Keytar Bear.  He's a musician who plays around Boston (mostly at South Station, Downtown Crossing and Harvard Square) in a bear suit on a keytar.  Kind of goofy but he's a good musician and I always smile whenever I see him around town.

Unfortunately some people are jerks and some jerk punched him in the face and broke his nose and broke his keytar which leaves me wondering, why would someone do that?  Seriously?  Why would anyone think it's OK to do something like that?

Seriously.

Here's the thing about musicians, most of them don't make a whole lot of money.  So to have to take time off because some moron broke your nose is also painful financially.  Enter the Boston community.  A bunch of folks who know and see Keytar Bear on a regular basis got pissed off and put the word out via social media.  As word leaked out today about what happened, two fund raisers immediately started up.  The first fundraiser is on line via Indie Go Go and the second is night at  The Workbar in Cambridge.  The idea is to not only show support for a local musician but to also make sure he's supported because... well, this is Boston and we don't take nicely to punks trying to ruin things around here.

Which brings me to my thought of the day: why are people mean?  This wasn't funny, it was a physical assault on someone making a living.  It may not be conventional but it makes people smile and in a world where we all need to smile just a little more, this act is doubly mean.  Maybe I've been working with kids a bit too long (or just long enough) to realize that we need to smile more, we need to find more joy and when someone is a jerk, you need to tell someone.

If you know the idiot who punched Keytar Bear, turn them in.  If for no other reason than assault and battery is a crime and the perpetrator needs to face his responsibility for that action.  But also turn them in because they tried to rob us all of some joy and that's not OK.