historical interest

things back in the day

A Cynic’s Contrition (Sort of,) Taco Tuesdays, and Dysfunction can be Fun!

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Perhaps I should forgive Jerry his utter lack of appreciation, consideration and/or common human decency.  He was raised by wolves after all. Ten minutes with the in-laws is all it takes to see just how true this is.  This is how Jerry’s mother typically greets him:

“Where you been, asshole? You got my money?”

‘Nuff said.

His mother is actually the most compassionate one of the entire horde.  His dad is a tightwad to a fault and is 100% devoid of warmth or compassion (never trust anyone who hates dogs!)  I do find it funny that he will only go to Taco Bell on Tuesdays because that’s Senior Discount day.  Apparently 89 cents for a taco is just too much without getting that extra 10% discount.  I would rather fix my own tacos at home so I know what’s in them.  Then again I don’t eat out much.

I don’t trust any of his sisters any further than I could throw the largest of the three, who is probably 4’8″ and 220#- since she lost all that weight. (Seriously!)   In some ways I do feel sorry for him and his rather frightening upbringing, even though as the “precious only male child” he was the recipient of many special perks, such as his own room, special meals (his mom thought he was “too skinny”) and new clothes.

I know too many couples who have kept on trying to have kids until they end up with that “precious only male child.”  I work with one guy who pretty much ignores his daughters and dotes incessantly on the bratty son because he thinks the kid is going to be some kind of amazing sports prodigy.  I am far more realistic with my own son. I simply hope that someday he is gainfully employed and self supporting and that he stays out of jail.

My parents gave up on that “precious only male child dream” once I was born.  I don’t blame them.  Three kids are way too many.  One is more than enough, trust me.  I’m sorry for them that they ended up with all daughters.  Hell, if I knew better- even though I got the “precious only male child” on the first try, I’d forgone childbearing altogether and stuck with dogs.  They cost a lot less than kids and don’t get smart mouthed with you.


Any time is a good time to insert gratuitous pics of the illustrious, and beautiful, Clara. Belgian Malinois rule. Clara is likely a crossbreed between a Malinois and a German Shepherd, (she is a rescued dog after all) but she has the primary characteristics of a Malinois.  Excellent, intelligent, wonderful dogs.

As far as dysfunctional upbringings go, my parents (as well as my sisters and the kids at school) beat me too.  That was normal in the 60’s and 70’s.  Get over it and move on already.  Try to find the humor in it.  It’s the only way I stay relatively functional and sane.  I don’t expect anyone to feel sorry for me because I was raised in a rather screwed up way.  I do admit Jerry’s family was probably worse than mine (his parents have about a fourth grade education between them, and a good deal of their sorry parenting was due to ignorance) but not that much worse.

How many kids today can say they’ve survived being tossed head first into garbage cans, being chased around a classroom by a crazed pervert as he’s chanting, “titty, titty, titty,” and living through the divers and sadistic tortures of one’s evil siblings?

Apparently there are people out there with far worse upbringings than either mine or Jerry’s!

Experience is a Most Effective Teacher, “Go Find Yourself” and Think About a Road Trip

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I think today’s kids (i.e. Steve-o’s age and younger) are mollycoddled way too much.  For Steve-o it’s a major crisis if his phone battery goes dead.  I never had a cell phone until the late 1990’s and even today I consider it sort of a mixed blessing.  No one needs to be able to contact me 24/7 except for God, and He has infinite ways at His discretion to get my attention should He wish to.   There are times I have to just turn the damned thing on “silence all” and let the voice mail get it.  Most of the time I’d rather not talk to anyone because I have to do enough of that at work.

Back in the dark ages of the 70’s and 80’s there were certain things that were inevitable if you were a kid- at least a poor kid growing up in a Midwestern backwater, that is.  I have to qualify that.  I’m sure that there were rich kids who never had to endure hand-me-down clothes or eating leftover tuna casserole over burnt mashed potatoes and/or Cream of Wheat for dinner three or four days a week, but I wasn’t one of the lucky ones.  I wasn’t even lucky enough to be an only child or to have my own room.

Nobody wore helmets to roller skate or ride bikes.  The only kids who had helmets were boys who played football.   No one thought twice about climbing trees.  My sisters climbed the TV antenna (Dad left it up even after he got cable, for some unknown reason) to go on the roof and sunbathe. Nobody used seatbelts, let alone car seats for kids.  If Mom rear-ended someone and you went through the windshield that was tough titty.  Mom did roll one of her cars when she had the dog with her- Mom was unhurt, the car had a few scratches, but the poor dog ended up with three broken ribs where Mom landed on her.   The dog lived for another 12 years after that, but she never liked being with Mom in the car again.  To put it in perspective, I put my dogs in harnesses and belt them in the back seat.   I blame the Toyota automotive safety training I took years ago where you had to watch crash test videos as part of said training.  It’s amazing to see just how far a seventy pound child in the back seat can be thrown out the windshield.  That visual changed my perspective, (I’ve seen a lot of real live body shop carnage in my time too,) but back then nobody gave it a second thought.  Kids would routinely ride around in pickup beds.

Back in the day you had to learn by experience, i.e. by screwing up.  I must have learned a lot because I screwed up a lot.  The pity is not so much in screwing up but in one’s reaction to it.  Ignorance is screwing up because one doesn’t know any better.  Stupidity is screwing up in the same manner over and over again without learning something from all the repetitive failures. 

Kids today are not given the permission to fail.  I know that sounds sort of twisted, but in our desperation to protect them from the evils we had to live through, we end up shielding them from the experiences they need to learn. 

Steve-o has absolutely no idea what it is to go a day without cellular service, cable, high speed internet, and an endless river of Mountain Dew.  He’s never had to wear anyone else’s old clothes with the exception of his early teen years when he grew from 5’5″ to 6’1″ within a year and a half and I had to buy his clothes at the Goodwill because he outgrew them so fast.  I am not going to buy a kid a new pair of pants (at $40-$70 a pop) that he will outgrow in a month or two.  He screamed and cried about it until I threatened to send him to school in my clothes.  I don’t think capris have ever been in style for men, and there is a lot of pink in my wardrobe.

They don’t get the experience that we had at an early age, save in the areas of premarital sex and experimenting with drugs.  I am sad to report that Steve-o has probably seen more carnal action in his 19 years than I have seen in almost 42.  He doesn’t care much for drink and drugs (thank God for small favors.)  I liked the booze and the homegrown back in the day, but for the past 15+ years my track record of overall clean living would make any temperance crusader proud.  As far as having to learn the hard way the value of a dollar by having to work shitty jobs with evil managers and impossible working conditions, they have no experience at all.  I don’t think Steve-o has ever had to scrub a toilet or scrape down a filthy floor.  I know damned well he never did either of those things at home. (Shame on Jerry’s poor example of  “you’re a man, and housework is for women” attitude- I couldn’t get Steve-o to lift a finger on household chores even when he was a little kid and should have been doing them!)   Society doesn’t help the situation, as it expects us old codgers to indulge their extended adolescence (no I am NOT supporting him until he is 26- supporting him at 19 is bad enough) which I say is complete and utter bullshit.  Then again, he has not been in any rush to go down and sign up at the plasma center to earn a few bucks, even though he should know Dad is just trying to scare him by telling him you can get the AIDS from selling plasma.

Grandpa (Mom’s -technically- stepdad, although I always thought of him as my Grandpa) always used to joke about people going off to “find themselves.”  He would always say, “Why do you have to go find yourself?  Can’t you see that you’re right here?” Grandpa was from Norfolk, Virginia (complete with the Foghorn Leghorn accent) and was the perfect example of the ultra conservative, cultured Southern gentleman.  He had a rather pithy sense of humor, which made conversation with him most entertaining. 

In the literal sense Grandpa was right- you should be able to see what is right in front of your face.  It always used to confound me that seemingly logical individuals would go off on some grand quest only to realize that they had already found what they were looking for before they left.  The irony in this is that sometimes people (me included) keep on looking when they have already found what they’ve been looking for.  You don’t always find the object of a search in the last place you looked.  Sometimes you find it, don’t realize it, and keep on looking anyway.   Irony turns to tragedy when you finally realize that you did find what you were looking for, but when you try to go back to where it was it’s gone again.  Sounds like the story of my life.  Then again, hindsight is 20/20.

I would so enjoy a road trip right now, but the closest I’m going to get today is making it home and possibly to Kroger’s because there is no food in the house.  I don’t need Jerry’s “no food” rant again tonight.

Man I would love to have another 72 Super Beetle, even though air cooled VW’s are not the vehicle of choice in Central Ohio in the winter.

Proven: The Total Depravity of Man, Earthly Purgatory Remembered, and Middle Age Rules

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I was one of those wise-assed kids who most teachers really didn’t want to deal with.  Not only was I a whipping post as well as a social pariah amongst my peers, the teachers didn’t like me either, especially in elementary school.  Hindsight being 20/20, I fully understand why a young first grade teacher would be intimidated by a  freaky looking five year old whose current reading list included Dante’s Inferno, the KJV Bible, the Encyclopedia Brittanica, and whatever happened to be lying about the house or in the daily newspaper.  I highly doubt that too many teachers have had the dubious distinction of dealing with a hyperlexic  (or Asperger’s/hyperlexic, because parts of both of those descriptions fit) child, especially in the backwater town where I grew up.  I have all the sympathy in the world for any educator attempting to deal with a child like me.  You can take all the conventional child development theories and throw them out the window because I didn’t come close to following the patterns or the formal stages.  Erickson and Piaget did not encounter kids like me, I can assure you.  I could have had a lot of fun with them though.

I could read when I was two years old, and I can’t remember a time in my life when I couldn’t read.  I read voraciously as a child and still do.  The school system had absolutely no idea what to do with me, so in their wisdom they decided I should go directly to first grade at age five.  The only problem with this was at age five I was reading on the same level as a college freshman. I can just imagine how embarrassed my second grade teacher was when I used the word “sarcastic,” which apparently was not a word in her vocabulary.  She thought I was making up words- until I spelled it, defined it, and looked up the definition for her in the dictionary.  I was transferred to the other second grade class the next day.  That teacher didn’t like me much either.  As a child I made the simple mistaken assumption that if I knew something it was common knowledge.  Today I know better.   It’s safer for me to assume that if I know something, most other people don’t know, which is not a testament to my intelligence, but a sad commentary on the progressive dumbing down of society.  Intelligence is a constant and the population is growing.  I certainly don’t know everything- the more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know- but I do know that humanity has continued to head downhill since the Fall.  No matter what society wants to believe regarding technology and the human ability to build utopia, utopia is not happening.  Utopia is not going to happen at the hands of humanity, believe that.   Dystopia is alive and well though. If anything, human beings just screw things up in ever more creative ways.  Even though I would not consider myself a Calvinist in regard to theology (I lean more along the lines of being a confessional Lutheran as far as theology goes) John Calvin had it 100% correct in his teaching on the total depravity of man.  We are all born with the brown touch.  Everything human beings touch eventually turns to, well, you know, poo.

I’m not implying that I was some kind of prodigy or anything like that.  To this day I can’t explain why I could read at such an early age.  I still struggle with math (anything beyond basic business math is out of my realm) and I have the physical coordination of a drunken mule.  I’m scatterbrained and disorganized.  I remember things I don’t need to, and forget things I need to remember.  I am not particularly social unless I have to be for business reasons, and no one would accuse me of being Miss Manners or Emily Post.  What you see is what you get.

I’ve been trolling some blogs written by middle school teachers lately (oh, my condolences on that career choice) and thinking of that dark portion of my life almost makes me believe in purgatory again.  Middle school had to be the absolute worst three years of my life.  There were some funny parts, most memorably the day Ellen stuck a roach clip on Howie’s belt loop and then locked him in the science room closet, but for the most part it was a living hell.

“Howie” was my eighth grade science teacher.  I have all the sympathy in the world for this poor guy.  First of all, even considering this was 1981-2, he could have used a few couture lessons.  The polyester high water pants and white socks with black shoes weren’t winning him any fashion accolades.  He also combed his hair into an Elvis-style pompadour waxed up with that greasy Brylcreem stuff.  To top it off he had thick (and also greasy looking) coke bottle glasses- the style of glasses referred to in the military as “birth control glasses.” 

I have to wonder if Howie was one of those guys who went to college to avoid going to Vietnam.  I had several teachers in middle school and high school who readily admitted to doing exactly that.  I bet some of them wished they would have gone to ‘Nam instead of dealing with the hellions I went to school with.  Education was one of the easiest majors to complete back in the 1960’s and 1970’s, so a lot of guys who normally would have ended up as factory workers or truck drivers or roofers ended up going to college to avoid the draft.  This probably explains why I was volunteered to correct spelling for my freshman English teacher, and why my sophomore history teacher spent every class period reading the day’s chapter to the class in a dull, dry monotone.

Anyway, poor Howie had his work cut out for him.  My eighth grade science class was filled with every misfit and jackoff in the school.  Howie, being rather soft spoken and somewhat of a wimp, didn’t have any kind of control over that class.  It was cacophony and chaos every day. Most days I left that class with my hair full of spitballs and/or nasty notes taped to my back.  

One of the girls- Ellen- who was 13 going on 35, had a thing for Marlboro reds, enjoyed sleeping with anything remotely male, and rolling up a joint of Marion County Homegrown whenever she could get it, usually sported a pink feathered roach clip attached to her hair like a barrette.  I can only assume that she kept the roach clip handy should the opportunity to smoke some homegrown come along. 

One day Howie was trying in vain to get people to shut up and stop throwing spitballs, eraser tips and other divers projectiles.  At the same time one of the boys decided it would be fun to grab my notebook and draw swastikas and SS lightning bolts on it.   At least he didn’t spit on it or smear boogers on it, which would have been more typical of this particular dude.  There were so many things flying through the air and so much noise going on that it was difficult to discern how many rules were being broken and to what degree.  It was in the midst of this tempest that Ellen sneaked up behind Howie and pinned her pink feathered roach clip on his belt loop.  Howie had absolutely no clue and went back into the back closet to get something, wagging his roach clip tail behind him.  Normally I didn’t take any kind of joy in others being tormented, being no stranger to torment myself, but this visual was so outrageously funny that the entire class was laughing themselves to tears and I was laughing right along with them. 

The science closet had a locking door on it.  A key was required to open the door from either side.  The key was on Howie’s desk as he usually left the closet door open.  Just when the visual of the roach clip tail couldn’t get any funnier, Ellen shut the door, locking poor Howie in the closet with no key.   The entire class (I hate to admit it but me included) was absolutely howling in uncontrollable laughter.

About  fifteen minutes later the principal showed up.  I can’t believe it took him that long to hear all the racket.  He immediately starts looking for Howie and then he hears the frantic pounding from inside the science closet.  Howie was eventually set free, but it took the principal awhile to find the key on the desk.  Rumor had it that Howie resigned from the school system following that school year from hell and got a job driving a bread truck.  I don’t blame him one bit.

Middle school thoroughly sucked.  Also in eighth grade I had the misfortune of being placed with a classmate who had been in all kinds of trouble with the law and technically should have been in Juvenile Hall- he was sixteen, still in eighth grade, and he was a pervert.  Granted, all sixteen year old boys are perverts to a degree, but this lecherous freak was way too close to me- the only thirteen year old in eighth grade with a 36C chest.  Every morning before home room this nasty dude would chase me around trying to grab said chest to the chant of “titty, titty, titty.”   This dude scared me half to death- but there was no way in hell I was going to let him grab me.  One morning he was particularly randy and had gotten very close to getting his wish.  It didn’t help that the other boys were egging him on.  Then my best friend decided she’d had enough of his behavior, so she tripped him.  He grabbed back at her, knocked her down and broke her leg.  The part of this that really torqued me was that she got in trouble for fighting as well as the pervo which in my mind was completely unfair.  I don’t agree with the common school rule that both parties in a fight get punished.  In my opinion there is an instigator and a victim and no one should face a penalty for defending themselves or for defending someone else who is being victimized.  So she got to finish out the school year in a cast.  The pervo ended up being expelled because he had caused so much additional trouble in the school, so that at least was a good thing.

I had a few small victories in middle school, but the best thing about it is that it is long since over. There were too many mornings of being thrown head first into garbage cans, stuffed into lockers, and being chased by a pervert.

There are those who say that they would like to be young again.   I would only want to be young again with one caveat- that I could be young again knowing what I know now.  I think I’d have a lot more fun with it.  Middle age has its disadvantages, but for the most part cougardom is a lot more comfortable.  I don’t worry about impressing anyone, and I don’t think I have to worry about being tossed into garbage cans, stuffed into lockers or being chased by perverts.   I don’t have to wear my sisters’ old clothes nor do I have to put up with guys asking for my phone number to call them for dates. 

Survival of the Mentally Fittest (or at least the craftiest) and Understanding Man Logic (or is that an oxymoron?)

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I learned to be covert at a very young age as a necessary survival mechanism.  I am hideously ill-coordinated, and I was a weak and sickly child to boot, so physical fighting was almost always a losing proposition for me.  Avoidance was always the best strategy to prevent as many beatings as possible.  I found lots of interesting places to hide- closets, high up in trees, behind furniture, etc.  There were many places I could go to see but remain unseen.  Keeping under the radar- or above the situation- kept me from beatings more than once, and as I got older, guaranteed me much juicy fodder for blackmail opportunities.  I caught my sisters engaging in all sorts of illicit activities that would have gotten them in loads of trouble had I chose to nark on them.  Usually I didn’t nark if they spared me a beating -or at least stayed out of my stuff.  Knowledge is power in more ways than one. 

Even though I am not living under the threat of continual physical beatings, I still enjoy making detached ivory tower observations.    In some ways this is a bittersweet pursuit because I am haunted by a number of old ghosts who live in my dreams, ghosts who I can’t help but to come face to face with when I am confronted with places from my past.  When I’ve been out of a particular sphere for a long time viewing the residuals as they appear today can be disquieting. 

Last night I had a rather noteworthy dream in that it was a new scene- nothing remotely connected with past places or events which alone was refreshing.  I enjoyed the old metal bridges (late 19th/early 20th century) that one seldom sees anymore even out in the hinterlands.  Better than that there was a lovely waterfall that had been created that flowed over an embankment paved with red bricks into a free flowing river where people were swimming (nobody in their right mind would actually do that in most Ohio rivers these days.)  I don’t know why the bridges and the river stuck in my mind.  The scenery itself was new but it’s an old theme.  One of my favorite places to hide out and smoke when I was in high school was by the Scioto River just outside of Green Camp.  Back then there was an abandoned railroad trestle (since demolished for the scrap metal) one could walk out and sit on, comfortably out of view.  In summer no one would find you if you parked behind the trees.  It was a lovely hideout.

Both of these bridges are long gone which is sad in a way but even I must admit they were dangerous to go wandering out on.  I remember driving over the first one, and it scared the hell out of me even in my little Subaru DL, the way it would creak and moan under its slight weight. That old iron bridge once spanned the Olentangy River.  Though I found its design and its dedication plaque intriguing, I generally tried to avoid actually driving over it.  The second is the railroad trestle where we used to sit and watch the river flow by.  One would not dare swim or wade in the Scioto River up in Marion County even today as it is polluted with creosote and Lord only knows what else, but it was peaceful to simply sit and observe the world going by- as long as there was enough of a breeze to keep the bugs off.  I wonder how many others wandered on those bridges- were they secluded places for lovers’ trysts or set aside for drunken toasts and late night rages against the dark?  How many trains passed over that majestic iron trestle carrying their loads of coal or grain or armaments- or bodies of the fallen dead?  If only the bridges could speak their secrets what stories they might have, yet they stood in somber silence until need or greed came to take their obsolescence away.

I can really get into a bit of a dark mood when my mind goes wandering in such directions.  I believe that we humans very seldom choose the best course we should take. It does disturb me that the past holds echoes of a future that could have been much brighter than today- a future that never was- either as a result of our insolence or ignorance or a combination of both. 

On a lighter note, I have been contemplating the great oxymoron that is man logic.  Last night I watched a show obviously geared toward twenty-something men called “Manswers,” in which puerile young men try to explain the secrets of the universe.  Yes, enlighten me on all the things I really need to know- such as the logistics of having sex while sky-diving.  Then it occurred to me that the probability of me enjoying either of those activities, together or separately is approximately the same as the probability of snow storms in hell.  Sky-diving is an activity that I highly doubt I could muster the courage to engage in.  Sex is an activity I would like to engage in but that nobody else (who qualifies and meets my standards) wants to muster up the courage to engage in with me.  I don’t think I’ll watch that show again.  It was too depressing the more I started thinking about it.

When Jerry loses something he expects me to find it.  If I lose something it is my own tough luck and my business to find it as it should be.  I just hate the double standard.  It also seems that Jerry needs to find whatever object he lost when I am sleeping, eating, “taking the Obamas to the pool,” or bathing, and he expects me to drop the activity at hand to find the item he lost.  Few things can bring me to a seething head of anger faster than having my activities interrupted so that I may go fix someone else’s negligence and/or stupidity, but this seems to be the story of my life. 

That’s depressing too.   I have enough problems without anyone else contributing to them.

The Thankfulness of Lists, I Buy Premium Cable for This? Timing is Everything

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I know, I’m writing about lists of things to be thankful for and I begin by waxing cynical.  I’m thankful that God has a sense of humor and I sincerely hope that He understands where I get mine.  Comedy is the flipside of tragedy, and there is certainly no shortage of tragedy in this world.  So why not laugh at what you can?  One need only try a little bit to find something worthy of a giggle, and if you have a particularly fertile imagination, the whole world is chock full of comedic fodder.

I’m thankful for stupidity.

It sounds weird to give thanks for the stupid, but we lose sight of the humor in stupidity simply because stupidity is so abundant.  I’ve said it often- the two most common elements in the universe are shit and stupidity. This being said, if you could harness these two ignoble elements and transform them into energy, there would never be a need for petroleum fuels or coal or anything else used to generate power or fuel combustion.

1. Stupid People.

I’m thankful for stupid people for one reason.  They make me look smarter.  It’s sort of the same logic that is behind choosing fat, ugly friends.  If all of my friends are fat and ugly, by comparison I look thin and pretty even though at my very best I am plain and frumpy.  I’m not the brightest light bulb in the hallway, but compared to 95% of the population I might as well be a rocket scientist.  It’s scary, but it makes me glad my parents were two of the very few who didn’t do drugs back in the ’60’s.  Another thing to be thankful for!

2. Stupid procedures, processes, ideologies, etc.

I hate redundancy.  Fewer things piss me off more than having to repeat myself.  I am reasonably skilled at the use of the English language, and the last time I checked, I don’t stutter.  So if I’m taking the time to explain something, pay freaking attention.  Take notes if you must.

I really hate it when I have to fabricate detailed and completely inane explanations for others who aren’t going to be doing what I have to do anyway.  I have a philosophy about that.  If you want me to do something, tell me what you want.  Give me the authority to do the task at hand and the necessary tools to carry it out, then leave me alone and let me get it done. Explaining it to a non-participant is a waste of time since the one requesting me to do the task isn’t the one doing it anyway, and frankly, incessant micromanagement gets on my nerves.  I care about results.  The process of getting results is negotiable as long as it is efficient, legal, ethical, moral and cost-effective.

I like being the only person with certain abilities. It makes me feel important, wanted, loved, valuable, etc.  It makes me all the more thankful for being blessed with the ability to suck up oxygen, and convinces me that I might just have been created for some purpose above and beyond respiration, mastication and defecation.   Having cryptic wisdom or unique abilities can be a double edged sword, however, especially when I seem to be the only one who can reset the cable box at 12 midnight or when I am the only one capable of coherent speech and rational thought.  Sometimes it would be pleasant to hold intelligent conversation with members of my own species.  It happens, but hasn’t for a very long time.

Which brings me to the crowning glory of stupid, which is Drunk and Stupid.

I am not a tee-totaler by nature and don’t really have a problem with social drinking.  I have a problem with shitfaced drinking, but I am thankful that shitfaced drunks have the potential to be funny, at least when I’m not cleaning up after them.  Again, comedy is the flipside of tragedy, as the following true story will illustrate.

A few years ago, Jerry got a fifth of Wild Turkey as a gift from the aluminum scrap guy.  We had brought him plenty of nice loads of clean aluminum scrap from the body shop, and in his gracious spate of Christmas giving the scrap guy was passing out fifths of Wild Turkey.  Jerry is a stupid enough drunk when he gets drunk on beer, but when liquor is involved the stupidity factor increases exponentially with each sip.

Jerry had taken the fifth of Wild Turkey as a challenge, as in “how fast can I down this fifth?”  By the time he had polished it off he was “Weekend at Bernie’s” drunk- flopping all over the house and pissing all over the bathroom floor, toilet seat, sink, etc. and by rights should have passed out, but he just wouldn’t shut up and pass out.  This really sucked.

When Jerry’s drunk he doesn’t just get happy and sleepy like a normal drunk.  He gets hyper and usually along with the hyperness comes an inexplicable urge to embark on pointless home improvement projects which he will completely screw up and that I will have to clean up later. (which reminds me I still have to clean up the bathroom from his attempt to re-glue the tiles last night…arrgh!)  This unfortunate Wild Turkey bender had awakened in him an inexplicable urge to light a fire in the fireplace- with a log, a square of toilet paper (???) and a Bic.  Usually Jerry is scared shitless of all things fire-related and won’t let me use the fireplace (which pisses me off, because I like a nice roaring fire in the winter) so this really boggled my mind that he would even be near the fireplace.

Anyone who knows anything about lighting a fire in a fireplace (and I do, because my parents have had a working fireplace in their house for years, and I’ve built many fires in it) knows that you aren’t going to do jack without some tinder (i.e. pine needles, small sticks and newspaper, etc.) under the grate and some kindling (a little bit larger sticks) strategically placed under the big logs.

So Jerry’s efforts at fire starting were not terribly effective.  In a flash of whiskey-powered enlightenment he decides that the log will ignite should he pour a little gasoline on it.  Then, somehow, through the Wild Turkey fog, he remembers there is still gasoline for the lawnmower out in the garage!  He starts bellowing for me to go and get the gas can.  I was sober at the time and had rather horrific visions of the entire house going up in a blaze of glory, should I honor that request, so I replied that if he wanted to get the gas can he would have to do it himself.   I went back to bed and prayed he would pass out soon.

Usually telling Jerry to do anything himself means it won’t get done, but  I should have known- drunk and stupid trumps “lazy” every time.  About five minutes later I hear what sounds to be a sonic boom followed by mooing noises coming from the living room.  Jerry apparently has never played with VW carbureators and has never experienced the lovely phenomenon known as “flashback.”  Flashback occurs when accumulated fuel vapors in a small space ignite, such as when one is spraying ether down a carbureator and the engine backfires, causing the little bit of vapor present in the carb barrel to go “poof.”   Back in 1980-whatever I once lost a few inches of big hair and (alas, temporarily) both eyebrows, trying to help adjust the carb on my sister’s ’68 Bug.  (Another reason why I love fuel injection.)   It is a very brief but hot fire that generally will not burn skin but is really efficient at removing body hair.

Jerry lost about two inches of hair off the top of his head, most of both eyebrows and pretty much all of his nose hair.  He also smelled like upholstery that’s been in a car fire which is a most distinct, and quite unpleasant smell.  The only other collateral damage was one of the Wise Men from my Nativity that was on the mantle- he fell and shattered.  Of course I always wondered about the three wise men thing to begin with.  Finding three wise men to begin with is hard enough without trying to get them together all in the same place.  So my Nativity only has two Wise Men now which probably makes it more realistic.

The moral of the story?  If someone gives Jerry a fifth of whiskey or any other hard liquor for Christmas it’s getting regifted with the quickness.  He’s enough of an asshole with a 12 pack of Natties.

I’m thankful for Late Night TV. Sometimes.

One of the reasons I spring for premium cable is that I am an occasional insomniac.  The logic goes like this.  If I wake up at 2:30 AM and can’t go back to sleep, then I want to watch something interesting.  Sometimes it happens that there’s something good on, like underwater exploration, a historical documentary, anything featuring Mike Rowe, or the investigative forensic shows I like to watch.  Other times it seems like there’s nothing on but those damned infomercials- but even those can have some comic value depending on the pathetic product being hawked.

I’m thankful that I know no matter how many skin care systems, exercise machines and other self improvement type products there are, none of them will make me look like Cindy Crawford.  Of course I have no way of knowing how many other plain and frumpy aging cougars out there will fall for the line and buy that crap, but at least I know that “three easy payments of $79.95” will only serve to thin out my wallet.   Mom has bought an entire gym’s worth of that crap on QVC and I can attest she hasn’t lost an ounce.  I don’t think Dad has the heart to tell her that in order for exercise equipment to work you have to a.) assemble it and b.) use it.

The absolute worst infomercial out there is for a device that for lack of a better term appears to be a pecker pump.  Worse yet, it’s being marketed toward impotent old geezers, and apparently they can be reimbursed by Medicare.  Our tax dollars at work.  No wonder the government is going broke.

There is a certain angst that I get from all the infomercials on TV, even late at night.  I pay big money for premium cable.  I should be able to watch the good stuff 24/7.  But then again, I have to admit I did really laugh it up on the pump commercial.  It used to be the only place one would see such devices advertised were in porno mags.  You gotta love the power of creative marketing.

I guess timing is everything.

Well, spelling counts too.

Just When You Think You Called It Right, Not-So-Innocuous Kids’ Ditties, and “Normal” is a Relative Term

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I dare to show my ever advancing age here.  I graduated from high school (1986) and college (1989) long, long before Columbine.  When I was in elementary school- back in the dark ages when the apex of technology was the Atari Pong game, and people thought we were “rich” because Dad was one of the first in town to insist upon having the wonderful thirteen channels of Cable instead of endeavoring like everyone else to get the three Columbus channels that were almost impossible to get even with an antenna- we used to sing a nice little ditty in honor of teachers we disliked:

(To the tune of Battle Hymn of the Republic):

Glory, glory, hallelujah, teacher hit me with a ruler  / Came in the door with a loaded .44, now teacher ain’t teachin’ no more

I really can’t imagine any kid belting out this little song today unless they really want to be sent to the school psychologist,  suspended , expelled or all three.  Kids get sent home for having plastic Army men with guns on them.  What are the Army men supposed to have?  Earrings and tinklebells?  I shudder to think of the ongoing wussification of the young, but then again, kids today take statements such as “came in the door with a loaded .44” a lot more literally these days.  Back then no one would have actually thought about shooting a teacher- it was merely a humorous visual like the stuff we would see on Tom and Jerry cartoons. 

Now I am all about identifying truly psychotic and homicidal rug rats early on, but singing a funny little song is not quite the same thing as displaying elements of the homicidal triad, which are: 1. Bedwetting, 2. Fire starting, and 3. Torturing animals.   Usually the schools aren’t in the position to observe those signs, unless the kid sets a fire in the school.  We did have a couple of fire bugs when I was in school who set fires in the trash cans so they could get out of school on a fire drill.  I think the principal beat one of them within an inch of his life, and the kid’s Dad whaled on him again when he got home.  I don’t think he set any more fires.   From what I’ve seen of the school system mentality they are so paranoid about a replay of Columbine that the kid who forgets he has his pocket knife in his pants,  or a kid who brings an Army man with his harmless tiny miniature plastic M16 to school is subject to extreme prejudice, but from what I see the little psychos go undetected.  

Another lovely little song we enjoyed singing that would raise eyebrows today went as followed:

Comet, it makes your mouth turn green / Comet, it tastes like gasoline / Comet, it makes you vomit/ So try some Comet and vomit today!

I can just imagine some little dumb ass trying this one.  The lawsuits…

Of course we were not politically correct, either.  Few kids got more teasing than the fat kids.   Granted back in the day everyone was poor so there were a lot fewer Really Fat Kids.  Today there’s a lot more kids in the “fatty fatty two by four” category, so there probably isn’t a lot of fat harassment.  The skinny kids, being in the minority, likely get the shit now.

Who doesn’t remember taunting the Fat Kid with:

Fatty, fatty two by four/ Couldn’t get through the bathroom door / So he did it on the floor / Licked it up and did some more/ Fatty, fatty two by four

I usually left the Fat Kids alone though, because being the Biggest Nerd in School who got beaten up everyday and whose wardrobe looked like there had been an explosion at the thrift store, was even worse than being a Fat Kid.  Besides, I was very tiny for my age in elementary school, and I was very frail for a long time after I had rheumatic fever.   I didn’t want any of the Fat Kids to pin me down and sit on me. 

Normal is definitely a relative term.  What is normal for me is most certainly abnormal for the rest of humanity, which is fine- I am used to my own parameters and I learned at an early age that the only opinion that really matters to me is my own. 

Our household has returned to some semblance of normal since last night.  I didn’t think Jerry could bear to let Sheena go, but we were really surprised when someone contacted us from the Craig’s List ad (and yes I am extremely cynical of using Craig’s List for anything) wanting to take a look at Sheena.  Come to find out the guy is former military and had experience with military dogs, which is why he wanted a GSD.  To make a long story much shorter, we interviewed him pretty heavily.  He brought his dog to come and visit and see if he (the dog) and Sheena would get along.  I think it will be a perfect fit for her as they have a good sized home and lot up in Delaware County and he has promised to keep in contact with us.  He is taking Sheena to the Vet today to get the ball rolling on her vacs, determing health status and hopefully to schedule her spay surgery.  He and his kid and their other dog seemed delighted with her and I feel good about the placement.  I don’t mind just having two dogs.  Clara and Lilo are used to each other and we’ve already gotten past the high-maintenance phase with them.  Of course if this guy changes his mind about Sheena we will gladly take her back, but at this place and time I think this is the best thing both for her and for us.   We can care for her well enough but this guy is equipped to do even better for her than we can.  Fluffy-Butt and Fanny have finally come back up from being in hiding in the basement.  It was nice to actually see and interact with all three cats this morning.  Isabel isn’t phased by dogs one way or the other, but the other two cats really only tolerate Clara and Lilo.  In a way I will miss Sheena- and she is a lovely dog- but I don’t miss playing food referee or going through the attention and territory wars that are inevitable when you add a dog.  Heidi was easy because she was old and only really concerned about meals, comfortable napping spots and an occasional roll in the warm grass.   I missed the judgment call on that one- I didn’t think Jerry had it in him to let her go- but I really believe Sheena will do as well if not even a bit better in her new home.  It will certainly be a damn sight better than scavenging around the campground all winter or being confined in a small pen and left to gnaw on cage bars, which is what would have happened to her had we left her there, or even worse.  We may not be the Ritz-Carlton but our home is very dog-friendly.  Clara and Lilo are not lacking anything, and I think they prefer their close knit little sorority of two.  They complement each other, and they got their fighting and competition out long ago.

 

So Now What, Creative Ideas for Avoiding Confronting My Past, and Other Inevitabilities

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I had one of these. An 83 GTI just like the one pictured, with the cool wheels and the funky red trim. Too bad my dumb ass sold it because the A/C didn’t work and I damn near gave myself a concussion every time I tried to get Steve-o in and out of his car seat.  People with kids prefer four door cars for a reason.  It’s been awhile, but trying to manage those damned car seats is hard enough without having to do calesthenics just to get in the back seat to screw with them.  Now that the powers that be are requiring kids to be in car seats until they are old enough to vote, I say screw that.  Give me four doors because it makes it easier to get the dogs in and out, and if I had to deal with carting rug rats around these days the rear seat DVD player sounds like a plan too.

Being a motorhead I have had many cars in my lifetime.  Some magic, some tragic, some forgettable.  A few of them, I wish I could have kept.  The 1972 Super Beetle was one of them.  The GTI of course, the 1994 Toyota truck, the 2000 Celica would have all remained in my possession if not for one thing: poverty.

Then again you can’t take it with you, and what’s the point of becoming a hoarder?  Need what you use and use what you need and move forward from there.

Of course getting rid of emotional baggage is a lot harder than getting rid of stuff.  I know sometimes Mom means well but I don’t need Grandma’s entire wardrobe or her entire collection of cooking utensils to remember her by.  A few keepsakes are fine but I really have no use for 50 year old stockings or all that cheap crap she bought from various mail order joints.  Some things I just threw away.  I shouldn’t guilt trip over that.  Part of living and moving on means getting rid of the things that hold us back.

Perhaps at my age I should be thinking more along the lines of the bucket list.  One of those things (and I need to stop putting it off) is to get back in contact with old friends, sooner rather than later if for no other reason than I am honor-bound and will regret my neglect if I continue to put it off.  I’m rather tired of being bereft of virtually all human contact.  I need to hold an intelligent conversation with someone for a change.  Dirty jokes and politics can only go so far.

I did get moderately good news at the Dr.’s Monday.  I don’t have hepatitis or any other Really Serious Illness- just a bit of bizarre liver chemistry that is caused by diabetes.  As long as I can keep my sugar down this condition should (in theory) right itself.  Famous last words.  Nothing about my health is routine, simple or uncomplicated.  I try to starve and eat healthy when I do eat, get the 30 minutes a day of mind numbingly boring exercise in and all that and still my health sucks and I’m still working on losing that 30 or so lbs.  Then you get people like Jerry who maintain just fine, all lean and mean, no diabetes, no sucking down blood pressure meds, on the Bacon-n-Natties diet, which puts me in mind of Gustavson’s Dad in Grumpier Old Men.  Jerry will be like those Russian dudes who live to be 115 on vodka and cigars.  I’ll probably drop dead before I’m 50 of something.  While I’m at it  with the bucket list I need to check into the urban legend that OSU will give one $250 if you donate your cadaver to them when you die.  Sounds like a sorry bargain to me, but hey, a lot of medical students have gotten some lessons in unusual anatomy off of my living carcass.  I bet my autopsy would be a real education in Murphy’s Law and what can go wrong with the human body.  Too bad I won’t be able to observe my autopsy, should one be done, or even to request that Dr. G gets to do it.  I’d love to hear her commentary on my abnormalities.  But if someone will give me $250 so med students can have a Mutter Museum type learning aid, where do I sign up?

I just answered my own question really quickly.  OSU does accept donated bodies but they don’t pay anything for them.  I should do the donation thing since I was planning on getting cremated anyway.  Might as well let someone learn something or at least see stuff they don’t see everyday.

I don’t know why I’ve been in such a morbid state of mind lately.  So now what?  Just keep on getting ready to take that “dirt nap?”

Creative artwork.  I need some whiteout and a red marker to make the fangs look more real.  I can’t die yet- right now this country needs as many conservative Republican voters as it can get!

The Trains, Lacquered Sentimentality, and The Way Things Never Were but Should Have Been

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My grandfather was never a man given to travel, at least not when I knew him.  Then again I never knew him before his hair had turned completely white, and his supposedly legendary volatile and capricious temper had cooled to a point where you would almost deem him incapable of expressing anger save for very infrequent (yet most memorable and ferocious when they did occur) outbursts.   When a lion is forced to roar, one better take heed, even if it’s a very old lion.  Mom always had to learn this the hard way, because she was often the one to light the match and fan the flames when Grandpa did have an angry tirade.    I can’t for the life of me understand why Mom wanted to harass Grandpa over his love of chicken necks or his passion for Nacho Cheese Doritos- but bugging him about what kind and how much food he ate was never a very good idea.  Once someone has made it to eighty years old, controlling their diet is pretty much pointless and almost sadistic by then.   It’s one thing for a forty-something to count carbs and fat grams and worry about caloric intake, but quite another to impose the High-Fiber, Low-Calorie, Low-Carb, Low Sodium Diet on someone who has already cheated the Reaper for 80 years.   I do have to wonder how he managed to eat chicken necks with dentures, but there were very few things that Grandpa wouldn’t eat- save for tapioca and sauerkraut.  He lived through both the Depression and WWII and had to deal with more than anyone’s fair share of food shortages, so the way I always saw it is why not let the man eat whatever he likes, even if it means he will snarf a large bag of Doritos and half a pound of Velveeta cheese just for starters.  He lived to be 91 so he must have done something right.  I think it did him a world of good that he spent the last thirty years or so of his life doing what he wanted- watching the world go around, enjoying TV Westerns probably hundreds of times with the volume cranked way up, cooking and eating, and pretty much sailing along without rocking the boat.  I do believe he could have recited all the old Eastwood and John Wayne Westerns by memory but he watched them all over and over just the same.

The quiet ones are the ones you have to watch.  They tend to have the most colorful stories.

I don’t know a whole lot about Grandpa’s tour in WWII other than he spent some time in France and he would gladly volunteer that he “didn’t leave anything in Europe and there is no way in hell I’d go back there.”  He had a general disdain both for the French and the British after serving over there but oddly enough not much hostility toward Germans.  I don’t know if that is because he didn’t encounter too many of them or if he was just not terribly impressed by our allies.   Most of his tour (after he’d had to have all his teeth pulled- sans anesthesia and by a British Dr.-due to pyorrhea) was spent in the States on the troop trains.  He belonged to the engineering corps in the Army- the guys who built roads and bridges and such- and as a machinist he could fabricate parts for and repair heavy equipment.  Typically the older guys and those with skilled trades did not see combat.  Being both older than the typical recruit and a skilled tradesman, he spent most of the war “in the rear with the gear” from what I can tell given the sparse records I could find.  He also served as a cook.   It was no wonder with the quality and scarcity of rations available in WWII that Grandpa had a talent for making even the most simple and crude food taste good.  I have to believe that his love of food came from spending many years of his life not knowing where his next meal would be coming from.   A chicken neck would be a feast indeed if that’s the only meat you’ve had in months.

Grandpa had an almost vehement dislike of travel in all of its forms, especially air travel.  He had been on one airplane when he was in the Army, and as far as he was concerned that was more than enough flying time for him.  He didn’t care for travel by sea either.  According to him it took two weeks for a ship to cross the Atlantic- two weeks of being crammed into close quarters presumably without access to shower facilities (yikes!) and being surrounded by people puking their guts out from sea sickness.    I’d never heard him say much against train travel except that he had been in all of the lower 48 states and had no desire to travel them again.

I would have to think the most disturbing aspect of riding the troop trains would be observing the constant influx of young men being sent to divers places, many of whom you know will not return alive.  Even worse, the coffins containing the dead were shipped back their hometowns on the same trains that had whisked them away.  While Grandpa never mentioned this, he had not only had to have known it but would likely have observed or even assisted in the loading and unloading of the dead.  He quite possibly could have observed or even actively loaded and unloaded the corpses of those he had seen in passing, alive, only days or weeks before.  

I wonder what had to be going through his mind- keeping the behemoth machines rolling- being a part of the higher machinations of war- feeding the machine that feeds the machine so to say.

I understand that WWII is probably the last instance that the US has seen of what could truly be called just war.  Nobody, at least publicly and out loud, challenged the necessity of bloodshed and martyrdom to defend our freedom and that of our allies.  Unlike subsequent hot and cold wars in the 20th and now 21st centuries, in WWII the enemy was clearly defined as were the goals to be accomplished.   Even though I am sure that Grandpa as well as those who he served with understood the necessity of what they were doing, I have to believe that there was an underlying grief at the carnage, the senselessness and the sheer monstrosity of war.  I have to believe that there was despair in the constant rhythm of the trains, a swan song in the mournful sound of the steam whistle.  

I also find it intriguing that even so close to the “Day That Will Live in Infamy” (Dec. 7, 1941) the utopian dream of better life through technology was alive and well.  To look at the exhibits featured in the 1938 World’s Fair there is little to suggest that in the coming decade the world will undergo such horrors and fundamental changes as have never been seen before or since.  It’s curious to imagine the little art-deco microcosms depicted in the exhibits as they would have evolved apart from the influence of war- if they would have evolved into anything at all.   To say the picture drawn by the World’s Fair was optimistic is an understatement. 

There is supposed to be a time capsule buried in NYC from the 1938 World’s Fair- here is the book listing what the capsule contains– and some of it makes me wonder what in the flip they were thinking.  I could really care less about such trite statistics as the school enrollment of the NYC public schools in 1938, but it must have seemed important to include that at the time.  Then again it would be interesting to experience a world untainted by the specter of Global Thermonuclear War, a world free of Islamic extremism terrorism, a world that in comparison seems innocent and naive when compared to today. 

One could speculate  ad infinitum how the world would have been dramatically different if somehow WWII would have been avoided- if Hitler had been assassinated early on, (plenty of folks tried!) or if the attack on Pearl Harbor had been thwarted or re-thought.   Would the technological advances brought on by wartime necessity have ever materialized- especially the advances in medicine and in the manufacturing sciences?  Would there still be life-saving antibiotics and surgical techniques that were developed and perfected during that war? 

Who would be alive (or who would have lived longer) and who would never have came to be if not for the circumstances of that war?

I don’t have the answers for those questions, except that maybe somewhere there is a parallel universe in which a decision or two was made differently, and as a consequence it is a different world where the long-dead walk alive and the never-born are as flesh and blood as I am today. 

Freaky things to be contemplating on a Friday afternoon for sure.

Nostalgia is Overrated, Objects in the Rear View, and Ghost of a Lover Past

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I am not one of those people who cultivates emotional involvement with people easily.   This is why I generally save my emotional angst for this blog rather than to live out the drama on the big screen.  I have no problem with casual conversation- I can talk cars or crack off color jokes all day long with just about anyone willing to listen to me ramble at the mouth, but as far as having true friends and confidants I have to wonder sometimes.  I believe I’ve only really had two true friends I could confide anything to, apart from God Himself, and I’ve not talked to either of them in years.  God, I try to talk with daily (and I can certainly attest to the power and the merit of prayer) but sometimes I miss the spontaneity and feedback one can only get when talking to another live body.  Ironically one of the above human friends claims to be an atheist and I’m still trying to wrap my mind around talking with God and then confiding to a person who claims God doesn’t exist.   Strange indeed.

This being said perhaps I am actually getting lonely- me, the quintessential loner introverted freakazoid- who generally craves solitude like a junkie craves a fix, might actually be craving a little meaningful human contact for a change.  I would so love an evening of intelligent conversation, perhaps a drink or two, and who knows, maybe even a roll in the hay.

The sad irony is that it has literally been years since I’ve experienced any of the above with the exception of the drink or two- I decided to throw caution to the wind for a change and drink the last of the Sutterhome that’s been in the fridge since New Year’s.

Intelligent conversation (face to face with a live human)- I think the last one I had was maybe 1998?   I don’t even want to try to figure out the last time I actually had conjugal relations although I do know I have “done the nasty” a few times after my son (aged 19) was born- late 1990’s or maybe early 2000’s?  I think Clinton was still President at the time.

Jerry can’t help the fact that he has ED as well as a whole trainload of psychological baggage that would negate any chance of us having any kind of sex life again  (as if we ever did, even when his johnson actually worked.)  I married him and in my mind that means I have to stay chaste no matter how much I don’t like it.  Sex once in awhile would make the dearth of meaningful conversation a bit easier to take, but as it stands, I have a 53 year old toddler to babysit and clean up after most of the time. I blame his dysfunctional family as well as his inability to overcome a lifetime of dependency and alcoholism for a lot of that.  I also blame my misplaced sense of pity and naive desire to be needed.   Hindsight is 20/20 although I believe there is a purpose in such a difficult placement.  I just wish that every once in awhile I could talk with someone on my own level and occasionally get some action.

I do obviously have a moral dilemma.  I want to remain chaste for a number of reasons.  I want to live as God would have me live, which means I shouldn’t be ruminating on how much I would like some paradise by the dashboard lights, especially with someone I’m not married to. I don’t want any communicable diseases. I don’t want to live with the guilt of cheating, and I really don’t want at my age to try to forge any kind of emotional connection with anyone new.  I don’t even maintain the very few I have very well.   I’m not one of those people who gets into the concept of  “friends with benefits” either.  I don’t just land in bed with any random dude.

The only one I would even seriously want a physical relationship with is not available to me for a number of reasons. If I were him I wouldn’t want to even speak to me because for years I’ve been ambivalent and elusive and downright defensive.  Even if he did want to talk to me a big part of me would want more than conversation but then the rational side of me (the side that usually wins) wouldn’t- all the old demons and guilt would be right back there to haunt me.  The very friend I wish more than anything I could talk to, I am scared to death to get in touch with.  I am terrified to meet up with him in person because I know full where it would lead.   Sin, disappointment and all sorts of chaos for a few stolen moments.  Lord, help me.

I can’t justify any of that.  I can’t make excuses.  God willing I have to take the high road and not use my loneliness as a springboard to jump into trouble.

I just wish that the objects in the rear view weren’t so vivid and that memory wasn’t so compelling.

Smells Like 1982, Innocence, Arrogance and Ignorance, and Fair Food

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I have to admit, in 1982 I was 13 and as most teens, didn’t really appreciate the situation and the place in time where I was until much later in life.  It seems those things which are irretrievable  become more precious and vivid in memory as time goes by.  What I wouldn’t give for just one day of the vitality and mental acuity I had at that age- now with all the scripts I have to take and from the ravages of time and disease I am doing well to stay awake and just function.

During that halcyon late summer of 1982 it seemed a particular cruelty was inflicted on the final year’s inhabitants of Marion Harding’s Freshman Building.  The idea- putting all the high school freshman students in one building- was actually a pretty good one except that the building itself was in a notorious state of disrepair.  The city had condemned it a number of times for various wiring, heating and plumbing failures, but the school system always managed to do just enough stop-gap repair work to keep the doors open.  While the building was built with good materials and put together with as fine of craftsmanship as was available in 1915 (far superior than the pre-fabbed nightmares of disposable architecture popular today) the science of indoor plumbing was in its infancy as were the technologies of central heating and electrical wiring.  Most of the wiring, heating and plumbing in that building in 1982 were still the original, and believe me, 70 year old toilets do not function well in any situation, let alone in a high school.   The steam heat system was not much better than the toilets- from room to room one could go from Arctic cold to stygian heat.   Windows were known to fall completely off and crash to the ground if one attempted to open them.  It was prudent not to sit close to the steam registers as it was not uncommon to get scalded should a register shoot up a fountain of boiling water.  To add to the fun the entire building- especially the kitchen and cafeteria- was infested with roaches.  This was not the fault of the builders- the structure of the building was so sound that in the process of demolition the wrecking ball broke- but to the near complete lack of necessary repairs, maintenance and upgrades being made over time.

Despite the disrepair, the quirks and the unauthorized insect life, the building itself had an odd warmth that was endearing.  I loved the high ceilings and the expansive windows.  It was a far more human-friendly building than most modern buildings.  The library was my favorite place, with its huge oak tables and chairs and expansive plate windows.   Even though I enjoyed being in this old building more than most other places on earth, (especially in the dead of winter) few things were more frustrating than being locked up in school on those perfect (and perfect days are very few and far between in Central Ohio) late summer/early fall days when it is neither hot nor cold, and the sun is shining through an almost painfully clear blue sky.  Even worse was being restrained during the Popcorn Festival- when all around us street vendors and rides and various attractions were being set up and started up. 

The library’s huge windows (some of the few that could be opened without falling out of their frames) looked out over Downtown Marion.  One could see and hear- and especially smell- the Festival from there almost as if one were walking down the midway and trolling for such delights as elephant ears, Italian sausage, cream puffs, etc. ad nauseam.  I don’t have much of a sense of smell left after years of sinus infections, exposure to various chemicals in automotive shops and so on- but the whole festival/fair food thing takes me right back to that long-demolished library. I travel back to innocence, back to the ivory tower exemplar, back to the very core of where my mind lingers.  I get that whole sense of wanting to be set free to wander the sights and smells for myself, that sense of the whole world being right outside for me to experience, the world before heartbreak and disappointment and disillusionment.  Hindsight is 20/20, this is true, and I am sure I am not the only one who would have approached life far differently had I known the course of events to come, but apparently screwing up is half the fun.  I know I have done my share of screwing up and I have my fair share of regrets.  Some of that I can change, some of it I wouldn’t change if I could, but over all I would have to assume I come complete with the whole mid-life crisis of “would haves, should haves, and why didn’t Is.”  At least I stayed out of the tanning salons.  I’ll die with a clear complexion if nothing else.

So much for the vicarious life- I am one of those who tend to live more internally than externally so I really don’t mind living vicariously, wandering in the garden of memory, and observing from the ivory tower most of the time.  Even though I am not among the risk-taking or adventurous by any stretch, experience is still a valuable currency in my world, because it recharges the batteries of memory.  I sort of enjoy the surreality of wandering a street fair at night even if I can’t (and most definitely shouldn’t) partake of the bounty of overpriced, overportioned, overly greasy and/or sugary fair food.  I did make a small exception at the state fair and got my Bahama Mama smothered in sauerkraut and brown mustard but at least I did stay away from the cream puffs and other sweet stuff.  The fair-food smell alone is divine- not so much because of any culinary excellence or nutritional value- but because of the memories that smell recharges.  It’s as close to a time machine as I will ever get.

Of course the street-fair experience would not be complete without the freak show.  As time goes by I think people get less and less aware of how much blubber can be packed into a pair of hipster jeans (woof) and that if your weight exceeds say 130# that halter tops or any shirt that shows midriff is not flattering.  It’s amazing how many very large women don’t understand that Daisy Dukes only look good on near-anorexics.  I don’t qualify to wear any clothing less revealing than a t-shirt and Bermuda shorts (as if I would want to) and I am well aware of that fact.  Even though I get very hot very quickly coverage is a beautiful thing.  It’s not so much about modesty as it is not wanting to subject people to things they would rather not see.  It’s simply being polite. 

The guys are not blameless either.  Nothing says “uneducated redneck” louder than sporting a wifebeater t-shirt with crusty, hairy beer gut hanging out of the bottom.  I need not express my disdain at guys (of any size or weight) who feel it necessary to display the plume of hair springing forth from their butt cleavage by wearing their pants at just barely above privates level.   The only thing worse than poorly fitting male garments is poorly fitting Dale Earnhardt memorial clothing.  “The Intimidator” has been gone for almost 10 years,  Bubba.   Get over it already, and while you’re at it, the XL shirt that fit you in 2001 needs to be a 4XL if you hope to conceal that massive beer gut you’ve grown since then.

It’s no crime to be large.  I am proportioned like a mutant troll and am well aware of that fact- which is why I dress accordingly.  I dress for coverage and comfort, as cheaply as I can.  I am no beauty queen by any stretch of the imagination so there is no reason for me to spend a ton of money on clothes.

The recent rise in popularity of tattoos amazes me too.  It used to be the only decent people who had tats were Navy and Marine Corps Veterans, and I have all the respect in the world for any American military Veteran. Otherwise if you had tats it was proof that you had either served time in prison or you were a prostitute.  Now everyone almost has a tat somewhere but I still think it’s tacky.  To each his or her own- I know a lot of nice people and even close friends who have tats and it’s their business, but those things are going to look God-awful when the person sporting them is 80 or 90 years old.  My grandfather (the one who served in the Navy) had hideous tats on his forearms.  I think at one time they were supposed to be women, but by the time I saw them they looked like some sort of deformed sea monsters or poorly drawn, distorted anime dragons.  When I was a little kid I wondered why Grandpa wore long sleeves regardless of the weather.  When he was dying in the nursing home I finally discovered why.   He was deeply embarrassed by those tats.  Maybe back in 1943 when he was 18 and got inked with the other sailors they didn’t look so bad, but from 1943 to 2003 let’s just say they didn’t improve over time.   I’m glad I never saw them when I was a little kid because I’d probably been terrified of Grandpa forever. I was spooked way too easily as a kid anyway.  I was terrified of the PBS station identification commercial, flying insects, and walking past windows at night,  just to name a few of my irrational and overwhelming fears.   I shudder to think of the terror I’d have experienced as a child from the sight of deformed anime sea monsters on my Grandpa’s arms.

It is interesting to see the kinds of stuff people will have permanently inked on their bodies.  I am especially amused by unfortunates who tattoo their lover’s/spouse’s names on their bodies and the ex-lover or ex-spouse’s name is forever ingrained in their epidermis.   No thanks.  I have enough unpleasant memories of past relationships without visible reminders emblazoned into my skin.  I wager that tattoo removal will become a huge industry in the next 20 years. 

Maybe it’s arrogant of me to make such observations, but I would say from where I am right now it would be better for me to avoid making any decisions that may expose me to hepatitis or AIDS, so no tats for me.  I couldn’t even decide what to get if I were to get a tat.  Jerry’s buddy Bob (a Marine Corps Vet) has FTW tattooed on his butt.  I don’t want anyone to see my butt long enough to draw anything on it, let alone inject it with permanent ink, so this isn’t an option for me.  Tats really aren’t an option for me anyway so it’s a moot point.