Don’t Get Me Wrong

Tags

life in the foothills, lifestyle

I’m a bit of a student of humans. Being one, I find it helps me find my place in the herd.

I’m astoundingly and endlessly fascinated on why and how we grow up together, face the same national and international crises, yet see it all quite differently. Any parent will tell you that even identical twins are quite different in personality.

While I am perfectly unique, as you are, we share some attributes, therefore, given that there are over seven BILLION of us, nobody probably has any attribute or notion that is singular to only them.  Meaning we can all relate to somebody else about something.

Facebook is an perfect vehicle for looking at this phenomenon. Some people use it only to keep in touch with family and close friends. Some use it for business. Some use it as a voice for their beliefs. Some share everything including the kitchen sink with everyone, some with only some, some share very little that is personal. All have the absolute right to do as it suits them, and nobody has any business being critical of their choices.

Keep that last point firmly in mind. I am NOT criticizing anyone. I am not judging anyone. If anything I point to my own perceived flawed personality which makes me react differently that others do under similar circumstances. I do that because if I feel that way, undoubtedly others do too, and I wish to let them know that it is not wrong, just different. For there are no wrongs or rights here, just idiosyncrasies which we all have and in some cases share with others.

I refer to the issue of sharing life’s downsides with others, people perhaps that you have never had a face-to-face conversation. Now first I don’t want to make much of the face-to-face thing, since there are relationships that have been forged which are deep and abiding although the respective parties had not met. I use the phrase to mean more specifically, people whom you know on Facebook, but don’t really know, if you get my drift. You share something in common but that’s about it. You talk about THAT thing, but not about much else.

As far as I know, no one in my family is ill with any “serious” disease. Serious these days is relative since people are learning to live quite long and productive lives with a lot of things we thought of as fatal thirty years ago. But on Facebook, I know quite a number of folks who are battling serious debilitating illness and they talk openly and frankly about their struggles.

I’m always taken aback when I first read these accounts of “I just got diagnosed,” or “I got bad news with my test results,” because I would NEVER disclose such to hardly anyone. Seriously I wouldn’t likely have told my parents when they were still alive. Other than my husband, I doubt I would tell anyone at all.

Here’s why.

First of all I don’t believe in a God that “answers prayers” in the sense of changing an otherwise outcome. If God operates that way then God is cruel to some very deserving people I have known. I believe that prayer is my way of communicating with God, but I don’t believe God changes outcomes because a prayer ‘touches” Him where another doesn’t. I believe that knowing that people care enough to do that for you is helpful because good emotional response to disease is helpful to treatment, but that’s the line  I draw in the matter.

So proffers of prayers just comes to me as “gosh I’m sorry” and “boy I’m counting my blessings again”. In other words, I hear pity, because I  am  now separated from the herd of okay people and plunked in the “sick” group. Clearly I’m wrong in this, but it’s how I react.

Second, unlike a lot of really good people I know, I have people who detest me. I often say things knowing that I will anger, offend and piss people off. I do it because it seems right to point out bigotry, ignorance and willful lack of concern to people who need to know that they are not escaping notice. I admire people who are beloved by everyone, they are essential to the world, but I am not one of them. I have “enemies”, and nothing would please them more than to  tsk-tsk my misfortune as “finally getting what I deserved”. I am reminded often by fundamentalists that the price of my stubborn resistance to their “right way to live” will be eternal damnation, a prospect they enjoy thinking about, since they always smile when they say it.

I will not announce my illness simple because I will not give them the satisfaction.

I will share with you that I suffer from the “what might happen” syndrome to a far greater degree than is healthy or normal in my opinion. I am well aware that it’s silly and stupid and a waste of time, yet I struggle none the less, and I am blessed with a husband who helps prod me off dead center to get moving to address my fears and get the verdict. So far, it’s always been thumbs up, which makes me feel like a horse’s ass in the end, but doesn’t do much to cause me let it go the next time. I can dream up more bad outcomes than Carter had liver pills as they say.

Which all means exactly nothing much I guess. I am not ill. In fact, (a post I’ll be doing in the next week or so) my travels through the health system has turned out quite well indeed, if annoying at times.

Which might lead you to conclude that you can’t trust my professed happiness much of the time. Actually you can. When I’m not happy I tend to just not mention happiness. And it’s doesn’t mean I’ll never tell you about it. But it will be after the fact, when I have a perspective from which to offer hopefully something that might help somebody in similar circumstances. I wish I could be like you, and accept the tender embraces of friends near and far, but I cannot, and in I guess I’m pretty okay with that. Whether I am or not, it is what it is.

Which means that when you talk about your illness or loss, I do commiserate and I do empathize and most of all I appreciate your strength of character. You become my role model I guess. I have been in awe of the grace that so many of you show in battling these detours in life.

Aren’t we all just amazingly weird when you get right down to it?

Links, Blades, and Scooters

Tags

Humor, life in New Mexico, life in the foothills, short stories, the Contrariran

I’ve tried to explain that living with the Contrarian is an experience hard to describe.

It’s not for the feint of heart.

It’s not for the seriously humorless.

It’s not for your average joe-ess.

Plainly, you must be slightly off your rocker.

Since I am, it all works fine.

When I say I am off my rocker, I mean in that way that to the outside world doesn’t show, but  is only known to myself and my inner workings which are one hellofva weird chaotic mishmash of circuitry with a whole lotta cables hooked up to nothing and just there “in case”. If you get my drift that is. If not, I suggest you skip reading further and return to old issues of Cosmopolitan which are probably more your speed. (Make that Sports Illustrated if male) I was going to say Popular Mechanics, but I have no idea whether that is still published or what made some mechanics popular while others were apparently not. Could be the chest hair.

In any event, which means nothing but takes up ten letters and about an inch of space, I am married to The Contrarian, which is the prototype for all contrarians, though I don’t think anyone has ever asked for the plans.

I just thought I’d catch you up on some of his escapades, or adventures in our fair state of New Mexico, which is as they say, neither “New” nor “Mexico”, which makes it a great place to hide out as both Billy the Kid and Walter White would tell you if they were (a) still alive or (b) real.

As pointed out on previous occasions, my dearly beloved has some sort of “balance” issue, which causes him to walk while weaving like a drunken sailor, which is half right since once upon a time he was most assuredly drunk but not a sailor, wearing the insignia of the army instead of a rubber ducky. Now, he has been probed, examined, MRI’d, ear-peered at, and all the rest numerous times, only to discover that by golly-g, he has a brain and there is some sort of lesion there, which is as they say “organic” which basically means that “we have no clue and try the auto lube joint down the road”.

So to avoid having to go around the block, always leaning to the left, to get across the street, he sometimes uses a walker, which doesn’t walk at all, but rather rolls (comes with hand-brakes!). He doesn’t use it all the time, but only when the “wobblies” (as we call them) are bad. On his steady days, he runs marathons. (just kidding).

So one of his true delights has been discovering the motorized shopping cart. He loves those buggers. Not all said ve-hick-als are made the same. The K-Mart one’s are too speedy and have you racing down narrow aisles at Indy speeds, without a small enough turning circumference to make the intersection turn (think riding lawn mowers). The one’s at Lowe’s tend to run out of juice too soon, which is a real pain since that store holds about 14 football fields within it’s confines. The Walmart (we make our customers comfy so they spend more) is of course, “just right”, having  speed, dexterity, and staying power to make your shopping experience a deep pleasure.

What the Contrarian has discovered is that with the cart, and the proper expression of sadness, mixed with frustration, and a sip of melancholia, presents the perfect picture for lots of ladies to offer their assistance in getting things off the shelves. No matter than he can stand and walk almost normal, why do that when a bevy of women are there to fetch for ya. (It helps to extend the arm to it’s natural length and wiggle the fingers just a bit, and sigh of course while doing so).

Shopping has become a joy and one that he relishes each week now.

To that can be added of course the “accident” which makes him all the more helpless and pathetic.

The accident was the culmination of a lifetime spent using power tools with blades all without incident. Years of chains saws and tree toppling, slicing and dicing, and splitting all without injury. Until the “sled”. Now, I don’t know exactly what a sled is, except that it “slides”, somehow managing your piece of wood to it’s destination with the “blade”. He somehow designed it in such a way that a blind spot occurred wherein his finger resided (thumb actually), and before you know it blood was flying and he realized it was best to shut that sucker down.

Now, no animals were hurt in the making of this tale, other than the cat gut used to sew up said digit (and I think all that stuff is synthetic these days). Cats are grateful. He cut no bone, and no tendon either, just the big fat part of his thumb wherein his identity lies. Doc says that part of his thumb shall be forever no more, once the healing has finished and the dead skin is flushed. So I figure a life of crime is a good second career, since he can’t leave a print with his left thumb any more. Which makes working in a super accelerator requiring thumbprint identification impractical, or in the heart of the mountain where the big button is located that will end the world. I figure it too requires a thumbprint to make sure you have the au-thor-ity to doom the world.

Which all leads to the exceedingly boring story of what a baby men are when they have a little boo-boo. I mean seriously, the moaning never stops.

He had it checked at the hospital on Monday, and there was no infection, but he was thoroughly upset because the doctor made him “look at it”, which is akin, in his mind to making him look at two-headed snakes and other such unnatural and “icky” things.

So, I took out the trash for him, and made his breakfast (once), and open his candy bars at night. I told him he need not cook on Friday, but he said as long as I made the batter, he could probably flip a pancake. He can’t break an egg, because he can’t without both thumbs, so he says.

He pouts a lot.

He’s says it itches.

He complains that the lady nurse rewrapped it much more stupidly that the guy who did it the first time.

Diego sniffs it every day and will alert us if he finds anything worth eating in there. So far, no, and given Diego eats EVERYTHING, that’s sayin’ something.

So, I asked him, do you want bacon or sausage with his pancakes on Friday? and he said patties, which I took to mean sausage, which he meant to mean sausage but not links but patties, which makes no freakin’ sense since they both TASTE THE SAME.

And he thinks he should have a body cam so that he can play back our conversations because he is sure I asked him links or patties instead of sausage or bacon. And I’m really sure I didn’t, because I never think of patties versus links and only decided to do the links because I like Johnsonville and they don’t make patties at least as far as I saw, so that’s why I got the links in the first place.

And he just purses his lips in that way that men do when they are thinking, “I’m right, but what’s the use?”.

And I’m thinking, “You’re right, there is no use, since I’m right.”

And he’s off to get my oil changed which came out all wrong, since I don’t get oil changes but my PT Cruiser does, and he has my girl in his custody.

He wants a new bandage put on his thumb, but decided to wait until he got back, because he’s going to the “filthiest place on the planet” after all, so there is no use getting his thumb all spiffed up before THAT. And, no he was not referring to the Jiffy Lube, but rather to WalMart.

My eyes, were examined by an expert the other day, and they came off with an A+.

No wonder, all the eye-rolling I get to do living with this man. Exercise is very good for your eyes they tell me.

If you can beat any of these stories (which are true I swear with just the slightest hyperbole to make it interesting), I’ll roll my eyes for you too!

 

 

 

 

Conversations from the Marriage Cave

Tags

life in the foothills, The Contrarian

Married conversation is a thing unto itself. It takes a translator to make it intelligible to anyone other than the two persons directly involved.

Except some things are universal I guess. Meaning that all married people recognize the special meaning of various words and phrases that, well, are unknown to the non-married population.

For instance.

This morning as I was relaxing from a grueling jaunt into the wind to the next state with dog in tow, (hiking in the foothills of the Organs), my other half, (better is certainly a matter of opinion and  I’ll argue that I am that, as would he argue that he is), poised in the doorway to my office/craft/retreat room and said,

“Where did we get my last pair of sandals, babe?”

Now this question is loaded. First there is the use of “we”, which as I recall did not include him at all, rather “I” got his last pair of sandals. 

Then there is the use of “babe” which is a generic term husbands use from long use as bachelors when getting the wrong name attached to the woman in your bed was likely to result in the end of your getting laid, thus all “girlfriends” become “babe” or “sweetie” or “honey” or some term that can safely be applied to all females. This carries over to the marriage, where it’s still better to be safe than sorry even if you are swearing under oath to be monogamous.

Third there is the implied problem that necessitates knowing where the old sandals were purchased, which suggests that another pair might be needed.

I replied,

“I got them at Penny’s. Is there a problem with your sandals?”

“Yes, one of them is broke,” he uttered softly. “When you get over that way next time will you pick me up a new pair?”

Now this one is similarly loaded. First he is saying he doesn’t want to go to the mall (he hates malls). Secondly he is setting me up on a number of levels. First I can’t say, “why don’t you go”, because he’s not telling me to go today, just “anytime I happen to be there for another reason” so it would be unfair for me to protest that he should go himself since they are his feet.

I wrinkle my brow for a moment and respond, “I’ll go today when I get done at the pool.”

“Oh, no, you don’t have to go today!” He retorts again, that “anytime I’m in the area” will do.

Now this of course doesn’t mean that at all. In that little protestation are two things. First, I’m aware that he has balance issues and man with balance problems needs a secure shoe, so anytime I’m in the area darn well better be today!

And of course if I do continue to insist that I will go today, well, I better not complain about it EVER since he made it clear that I could do it “anytime”.

Ya see how this goes? You have to have a manual to follow the true gist of what’s being said.

I go on. “Instead of making gazpacho for dinner, we’ll have leftovers.”

“Fine,” he grins.

As I get a cup a coffee, I see the dish with the leftover mashed taters conspicuously empty on the counter. Somehow mashed potatoes goes well with fried eggs (his breakfast).

I confront him.

“Well that was bad of you. You ate all the potatoes from the leftovers.”

“Are there enough leftovers for today?” he queries.

“Well, I’ll have to boil some more potatoes.”

“No, I mean the Salisbury steak, I ate some yesterday.”

“You ate it yesterday????”

“You told me to, and a man always eats what his wife tells him too.” (the grinning again)

“You never eat what I tell you to!”

“Well don’t worry about the sandals then, get them another day.”

“No, I’ll get them today. I’ll figure something else out for dinner.”

“Well, I’m off to the pool.” as I start for the door.

“Oh, what size shoes again?”

“10 1/2, the standard size for all married men.” he intones.

“Riiigggghhhtttttt.”

I can hear him as I open the car door, “game, set and match!”

I’m sure he said that.

I’m sure.

The echo of his chuckling haunts me during the drive into town.

 

 

Once Upon a Time on the Internet

Tags

Internet chat, life in the foothills, lifestyle

The Internet and I go back a long way.

Not to the beginning, but at a time when you could actually go to the bookstore and buy books containing “online sites”. Yes there was a time that online sites numbered in the tens of thousands and not tens of millions.

I soon discovered that there was a thing called “IRC” which stands for Internet Relay Chat. It’s actually still in existence and there are claims that worldwide millions still use it.

Basically you downloaded a MIRC program, attached to a server and entered the realm of make-believe. Virtual “rooms” were created and then peopled by anyone who happened to have an interest in the subject matter. While many were no doubt benign, “Quilter’s Corner”, many if not a whole lot were sexually oriented.

It gave birth to a whole new genre of talent called “virtual sex” where folks paired off in whatever couplings that suited them and publicly “wrote” out their sexual encounter. Meanwhile all sorts of conversations ensued in the room, having everything, nothing, or nearly nothing to do with the sexual “story” or “stories” that were unfolding. The text went by in a blur, and there were also ways to have private conversations while participating or watching the main room.

Some rooms were sexual by name, but never had any sex, people just talked back and forth, making jokes, and so forth. Channel operators controlled the room, having the ability to “kick out” people who were disturbing the peace and fun of the rest. Pictures were sent back and forth from individual to individual, music segments, and so forth.

I was a participant in one and for a couple of years, spent a lot of hours talking. I got to know a lot of people very well. I later met some of them.

But we all knew that lurking in any room was the possibility of a fake. A fake was person who pretended to be other than they really were. Oh  I don’t mean just fatter or balder, older or something like that, but gender benders were common. Men who pretended to be women, and I suppose the opposite.

Since we got to know people over a long period, it was fairly shocking to discover when you had been taken in. One guy talked to a woman for months, sent her mail. They were “in love” and planning to marry. He went to surprise her at her home, in another state for her birthday, only to be met by a husband at the door. She later explained, that it was only “pretend”, and she hadn’t meant any harm. Well as he told me some months later, it sure harmed him. He sat in a hotel room alone for several days waiting for his return flight, completely broken.

In our room, there was one girl who was the “life” of the party every night. Always fun and friendly. After months, one night a man claiming to be her brother came in and informed us she had been killed in a car accident. He had discovered “the room” on her computer while packing up her things to remove from her apartment.

Some weeks later we learned that “she” was a he, and had been simply gaming everyone from the start.

There were probably not a lot of these folks. As I said, I met quite a few, and certainly talked to more on the phone. There were conversations of others getting together and obviously groups didn’t get together to engage in this display of pretense, so most people were legit. (People organized meet ups for weekends across the country were a “rooms” participants would get together.)

One always wonders why people do this.

I hadn’t thought about it for a long time. My husband and I first met through “newsgroups” on the Internet, moved to IRC and then met. But all that happened within about two months. That was nearly 15 years ago.

Today I ran into an article entitled “The Weird Reasons Why People Make Up False Identities on the Internet” and that got me curious again. Most of the stories in the article are about people not engaged in chat so much as using the Internet and the capability of false personas to improve their own bottom line. Others are more curious, involving much time to invent and continue. Why would someone create a young girl with cancer and then have her die? Why a lesbian reporter in Syria who gets arrested?

I remember the “girl” who turned out to be a guy from IRC. I remember the “memorial room” we set up and gathered at to remember her. I remember how angry we were when we found out.

I guess I’m missing the pay off to the liar. I still don’t get that.

But I will tell you one thing. A number of those people were mighty fine folks. I remember them to this day and the one’s I met were the same in person as online. I often wonder what has become of Sayten and Angus, of Jules, and Floppy. Maybe they are still there. But I doubt it.

Funny how an article triggers such memories of times so long ago. What weird memories. Now the fake Facebook personality is common I guess. I still don’t get the point.

 

Life Ain’t Fair. I’m the Proof

Tags

fundigelicals, having the last laugh, life, life in the foothills, lifestyle

This is not up for debate. It’s not. It’s a lesson to be learned by every single human being ever. It is beyond true. It’s so true, that it probably isn’t proven by the exception. I doubt there can be an exception because even if your life is perfect from start to finish, it has a finish.

Duh.

I knew a guy once who was obsessed with the idea that people who were undeserving often got rewarded. Actually, it wasn’t a tit-for-tat sort of thing so much as it was random reward unattached to random behavior, good or otherwise.

It fairly drives some folks crazy. It sure did him. People who “do everything right” get hugely annoyed when people who don’t “do everything right” seem to be happy. They want them to suffer. It’s like fundigelicals reminding us liberals that “if you don’t repent, you’ll go to hell”. They always smile when they say that, because they are very sure we won’t and so they can be happy knowing “we’ll get ours” come judgment day. They presume of course a judgment day.

It’s why the workers in the vineyard got so pissed when the boss paid the workers who only worked an hour the same as those that had worked a full day. “Unfair!!!” The boss said, “hey, what’s that got to do with you? You got what YOU bargained for didn’t ya?”

Some folks just can’t handle that. Which leads me to believe that they find “doing everything right” a major pain, and they don’t do it because it’s the right thing to do, but because they want the reward. So getting a reward for not doing everything right, might just mean that they won’t get a reward for doing everything right. Kind of puts a monkey wrench in the whole salvation thing don’t it?

It also makes God sort of insane.

Or?

Perhaps God sees things in a way that humans don’t. At least for all the literalists out there, the Bible suggests that God does see not as humans but as God. So perhaps, just perhaps, our assumptions of what is the “right thing to do” aren’t so clear. At least to the point that it might be better if we keep our damn mouths shut when we “disapprove” of what others are doing.

Not talking here folks about murder and abuse and other dictatorial behaviors, but more ambiguous things like gay marriage, and women’s health rights, and stuff like that. Unless you are a hard-nosed self-styled pope (meaning your interpretation of scripture is infallible until God tells you different), most of us concede that there’s a lot of grey in some social policy areas. If that is true, then we best not tell others how to behave regarding them I suspect.

In any case, I personally believe that everyone is “saved”, which makes it all unnecessary to bewail whether anyone is getting their just desserts or not, or being failed by their supreme deity in any way. Unlike the fundigelicals, I do not have to resort to “God’s ways are mysterious” and “God had some reason for inflicting me with this misery that I’ll understand some day.” If I do a good thing it’s because I want to, not because I NEED to.

It’s enough that “shit happens”.

For me at least.

I’m a decent enough person. Far from the best kind of person I can conceive of. I have plenty of people I know who are much better than I am. They are kinder for sure.

Case in point. I was getting blood work done a few weeks ago as part of a general updating of my health records. After slapping my inner arms and squeezing my upper arms to death trying to “pop up a vein”, the blood sucker said this: “Do they usually taking blood from your hand instead of your arm?”

I replied, “yeah, the one’s who can’t do the arm, do the hand”.

Now the Contrarian said that my mistake was in being snarky/sarcastic BEFORE I had properly secured the end of relationship with said person. After all, she still wielded the mighty needle when I dissed her. There is some truth to that observation.

So you see, I am a sarcastic, snarky, bitch type person when I’m (a) in a hurry (b) tired or (c) just damn well feel like it.

This served me quite well when I was a defense attorney. I could utter questions at cop or citizen with such jaw-dropping “and your mama too” sarcasm that I would often see a judge turn away suddenly to hide his snicker before the jury, while a prosecutor jumped out of his/her shorts to bellow “OBJECTION, ARGUMENTATIVE”. I of course would smile softly and whisper, “withdrawn”, as the witness shot daggers of ineffectual rage which of course all missed their target, for their mouths were forever silenced by the loudly following “NO FURTHER QUESTIONS!”

It probably serves me less well now. But it is who I am in the last analysis, and I always feel fairly fake and pretentious when I put on that “oh, no take all the time in the world packing my groceries. I can surely see that changing items in and out until one achieves the perfect fit, is the way it should be done” look on my face.

But back to the topic at hand. Reward.

Yes, I’m not a deserving person, I have a trail of bleeding bodies who all feel “abused” by my acidic tongue, to prove it, one that trails back at least to junior high.

But guess what? My life has turned out fairly wonderfully from my point of view. And nobody else’s point of view matters. And that really galls the hell out of a few people I know. And ya know, that sort of makes me feel even happier.

As they say, a life lived well is the best revenge.

You Really Can’t Go Home Again

Tags

aging, Autobiography, life in the foothills

I’m in one of those head scratching modes. I’m thinking that perhaps I’m the “duh” one, not the others.

The others?

Oh, all those folks I expected more of and got so much less from.

Truth be told, they probably think the same of me.

But I conclude that it was really all my fault from the beginning. And they were generous in their open-armed acceptance. And I was a fraud.

Once upon a time I lived in a place called Flint. It was a factory town, where most everyone got their paycheck one way or another because of cars. We lived in a subdivision called “Mayfair” and my childhood was, as others no doubt saw it, “idyllic”.

People love that term.They mean, you grew up thinking you were fairly normal and you had enough to eat, and TV to watch, and a yard to play in, and got new clothes for the new school year, and a decent load of presents at Christmas. You got to swim in lakes in the summer, and skate on ice ponds in the winter. You ate blueberry pie from wild blueberries picked by your aunts and uncles and cousins. That sort of idyllic.

For no good reason that I ever figured out, kids like to join cliques. Being a “only” child, I was always looking for friends. My best friend as a small child was one of the kids across the street. She was a year older, but when you are young enough, that was okay. Still she was different than me. She came from a big family, me the “only”. She slept in until 9 or 10 in the morning, while I knocked on her door at 8, having waited an excruciating hour at that, to be told by her mom, that she hadn’t gotten up yet.

I sat some more.

Then when I got to older pre-teens I was with another group. I was, for a while, second to the leader, a dark haired girl name Patty something or other, who told us about the $400 dollar couch her parents had, which seemed to make her rich.

You were either on Patty’s good side or bad, and when on the bad, nobody else would play with you, meaning you couldn’t play jump rope with the gang. I tried hard to be on the good side of Patty. It was painful to fail. I was, as you can tell, not principled. I shunned who she shunned and did my best to lick her shoes.

Then there was the middle school years. I tried hard to be in the “in” group. The one that played sports, and were cheerleaders, and that sort of stuff. I was successful for a bit, but the funny thing was, that I was always hanging on by my fingertips, and I knew that.  If we were going to meet at someone’s house to go out for pizza say, I had to be there early, because they would not wait for me. I was one they “put up with” until they didn’t.

Either they didn’t or I grew tired of trying to be “in” and being left “out” too much.

So I drifted to another group whose main attribute seemed to be a general dislike for almost everything that had to do with “that” school and “those” people. We hung out with some guys from another school. We were starting to drive now, and that broadened our horizons.

I felt accepted by them. But still, I probably never felt completely at ease. I was always having to “try”. We had fun for a few years, mostly going to dances, and walking to strip malls and drinking cokes and eating fries. We hung out every evening after school until it was time to go home.

Then we graduated, and I went off to college, and they went off to marriages and babies, and finally I left Flint, only visiting now and then to see family.

And I didn’t contact them, and they didn’t contact me, because I suppose we all knew it was never a proper fit. I was the one who got good grades in spite of trying to look very much that I didn’t care. I was the one who apparently had dreams they did not.

Not that they didn’t have dreams of course, they had them I’m sure, but they were very different from mine, and there was nothing to keep up “friends” after graduation.

I saw Flint as a place to escape from, they saw it as home. I saw education as the means to a life where I did important things, met important people, talked about important things. I met mayors and congressmen, and brilliant jurists  and traveled on “business”, and they did what they did.

I no doubt felt superior, based on my assumption that everybody should want what I wanted, which is surely stupid on my part. But as the years went by, we had less and less in common surely.

Now we are all on the cusp of being real senior citizens, and we’ve reconnected and had those chats about the “old days”. And it was fine for a while. I tried to interact with those from the old groups whom I abandoned in my middle school years, and that was kinda sad.

Some were polite, some were friendly, until we realized that we believed radically different things. Several cut me out of their Facebook life. Others just ignored me. Even though I would dutifully “like” their constant “if you love your daughter share this”, and fishing trips and other stuff, they never returned the favor. My links to my writing was left with stony silence. My birthday was left unremarked about.

What the hell did I do to you?

Some were  “friends” and we maintained the facade a bit longer. A few (those who share my general uber liberal beliefs) still share and “like” a lot, and chat on the side sometimes. But mostly even those who were my “best friends” for a good four years of the high school years, have silently slipped away, no longer interested.

Perhaps my beliefs offend them too. Who knows? As I said, they were open to me, while I always was trying to fit into that square hole with them. So I account it as no one’s fault, just water seeking it’s own level.

I cannot fathom the thought of living in that town still, and having always lived there. I’ve lived in four parts of the country, five really, and I don’t find that a lot frankly, from the friends I have now. We are all people who have traveled from location to location following jobs or dreams. It makes us different from people who haven’t I guess. Or at least it seems so.

I don’t bemoan any of it really. My life is too special to me here and now to lament that I don’t have friendships that are real with people I haven’t seen in 40 years. I just find it curious. And then I don’t. For if we had nothing much in common then, then it can only be worse now.

Mostly, I find that people who stayed in Flint became people I don’t like much. Not all, some seem to have escaped the provincialism and the tribal indrawn mentality. But most are hatin’ kind of people. I don’t know enough about their lives to judge. They say that each generation has it better than the last. My gut tells me that this was not true for most of them.

I guess its good mirror. My desire to learn served me well, bringing me out of a stultifying world and into a cosmopolitan environment where I met people from all over the world, enjoyed other cultures, and lost any sense of “them or us” in my thinking.

I’m a boomer, through and through, an Idealist. I scratch my head and wonder, “how can you think like that????” But dirty factory towns apparently do that to people. Flint became a mean place, in some ways worse that Detroit, because it was always “at least we aren’t Detroit”, and the fall was all the harder I suspect.

Or maybe this is all just me trying to defend me. Funny thing is, I don’t care. Aging does that. No more time for people who aren’t  on the same page. As the meme says, “not my monkeys, not my circus”.

May your life bring you peace–mine has to a degree I would never have thought imaginable. I imagine that pisses some of you off. And that tickles me frankly.

 

“It seems to me that in the orbit of our world you are the North Pole, I the South–so much in balance, in agreement–and yet… the whole world lies between.”
― Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again

Don’t Run! It’s Me!

Tags

Autobiography, Blog, life in the foothills, truth

Every so often I feel the need to change things up a bit. I don’t do this to my other blogs by and large, but this one seems to change with time.

Mostly my interests are so diverse that occasionally I discover that I’ve struck a new course in a meandering sort of way, and now find myself quite unlike where I expected to be.

I am as they say,  a woman for all seasons, a renaissance gal, an eclectic, a head in the stars sort of lady.  I’m a foul-mouthed sailor on occasion if that can any more be said to exist apart from the general population’s proclivities toward sewer mouth. I’m a sexual tease, a damned old lady, eccentric in my heart (although my husband says a true eccentric must be rich and I’m not sleeping in a bed of hundred-dollar bills, though I do account myself quite wealthy by some standard I set for myself anyway), and an intellectual maven in my own mind at least. I’m so housewifey it makes me sick at times with another recipe always tempting and another craft to be mastered. I watch too much television, don’t read enough books, think too much of things I cannot know, believe in stuff that would stun a logical person, question almost everything, argue because it’s Tuesday, (or any other day of the week), and love fiercely, passionately, compassionately, empathetically, and with a child-like innocence.

I love any animal with fur, and dislike most anything without it.

I have a good grasp on what I don’t know.

I have a passion to know, and when I realized long ago that I could not possibly keep up with all the books I wanted to read, I felt like I should have a funeral. There was once a time when the average person could do so, albeit she would require a certain wealth to obtain the books.

I took forever to find women roll models but I have them, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Saint Catherine of Siena,  and Hypatia of Alexandria, the latter being my most noteworthy mentor. She was at one time the librarian at the great library of Alexandria, and yes I mourn the loss of that institution still, along with Freddy Mercury from Queen. Go figure.

I think of libraries as sacred places.

As I enter the small city of Las Cruces many mornings and come over the last hill down into the town, the hillside to my left reminds me of the houses perched down the sides of the cliffs of the Aegean although there is no sea below. It’s the white/pink colors that remind me. I revere Athens and Plato and Socrates unlike hardly any other beings from the past, along with a string of Romans such as Livy and Cicero. Let us not forget Aristophanes, Ovid and Virgil either.

These people and places are my center.

I like old coke, potato chips and chocolate ice cream. I secretly play a few games of bingo every day. You wanna talk eclectic?

I am a good person, at times an awful one. I am selfish, and then extravagant in my giving. I love beautiful jewels and hate the diamond mines and the toll of human life they take. I hate that we are so rich and yet so poor in spirit and common decency that we are willing to allow cruel poverty to consume all too many in exchange for retaining a few hundred extra dollars a year in taxes.

I hate stupid. I hate ignorance, and I hate most of all people who are content to be both because it’s easier to believe the lie that brings comfort to their otherwise miserable lives. I hate people who cannot face themselves or their shortcomings. I hate people who blame others instead of themselves.

I love truth.

I love it because it is all that we have in the end. Without it, we live lives of delusion and cling to what cannot endure. Truth is enduring though it may well change as we learn more. Truth in reality never changes, but our understanding of it does. But seek it we must, for all solid ground is ultimately based upon it.

You can believe the earth is 6,000 years old and God will somehow never let earth fail, but it won’t stop the truth. Believe what you may, true will have its way. Better to accept truth and perhaps then the light can shine on how we have misidentified God. Is it not better to know God for what God is rather than as we desire God to be?

The logic seems irrefutable to me.

So here we concentrate on truth.

We always have, but it bears stating it out, and naming it as our goal.

We welcome discussion, we welcome dispute, but we will never sacrifice truth for what feels good here.

I expose my underbelly with no small reluctance, but still I do it because truth is the only thing that in the end will help another to cope with their own demons and despair. You are not alone, we are all in this together.

So nothing is changed much, except that we have prettied our self up in a new dress  and new name. And hopefully we will use truth as our walking stick, always aware in whatever we say and do, that we cannot hide it, deny it, or pretend it is not. It walks beside us, is firmly gripped by us, and seeks the firm ground as we walk forward into this and every day.