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  • Childhood
    The other day I needed a book. The used bookstore did not have a copy. A brilliant idea occurred to me. The public library. I have a card so I must have been there a couple of times. Some people are regulars at the library. Not I. Public libraries make me uncomfortable. They're quiet and they remind me of school, which were unpleasant years for me. Maybe it's because I wasn't smart enough to get along well in an academic environment. One reason I didn't like school was because I didn't read well. Certainly not to my level, which was assigned to me according to my age and grade. I didn't read as well as the other children in my class. No, not even as well as the children in the class behind me. My comprehension was good but it took me forever to read something. For one reason or another this made me a reading outcast by third grade. I had a reading tutor that summer. After that bumpy start libraries and I never really hit it off. That was where people who read well went. They liked reading. I felt that even if I liked it I still didn't do it well so I avoided it.

    What book did I get at the library you ask? Oh see? Not only am I a slow reader, but one who digresses as well. Tsk, tsk and tut, tut. Peter Pan! It was in the juvenile section at the library. As a juvenile I never read it, but you've probably surmised that already. The things I remember reading as a child were not children's books. Somehow I got into reading the books my mother read and she read some strange ones. Titles like, Truth Stranger Than Fiction and Edgar Cayce, The Sleeping Prophet. Seems there are a number of Truth, Stranger Than Fiction books today. None of them are the strange true stories of super human feats and paranormal activities of mind over matter and the like I read as a child. Those books made Dick, Jane and Spot seem dull by comparison. I might have enjoyed Peter Pan as a child but Mary Martin flying around in tights on television each year made me think I knew the story. Why bother? If you saw the special on TV or watched the Disney movie you already knew all about it. Reading was always work in school so the idea of doing it for pleasure never occurred to me. Why Peter Pan? You might wonder. I needed some of the text to use as an example for a talk I'll give in the morning. A strange thing happened while searching for the text. I had to read some of the book. It was so much fun to read and see the story I thought I knew unfold in rich detail that I read the whole book.

    Never having read Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan, The Little Prince and other children's books when I was a child left me to find them and read them later in life. It's fine with me. J.M. Barrie copyrighted Peter Pan in 1911. The children then must have been better readers than today's youth because some of the words he used I had to look up in the dictionary. Perhaps it's not a children's book at all. Maybe it was written for adults who never had a childhood, like I. Never having had children I never read children's books to them so I had to find them on my own, rummaging around in used bookstores or hearing about them from someone who did have a childhood. So here I am, soon to be sixty-two, finding that I have the time and heart to have a childhood. It takes an uncomplicated heart to see the truth of life. Unfortunately it doesn't take long to complicate a heart and drive the childhood right out of it. If our childhood was driven out of us rather than allowed to slip away, we must work much of our adult life to unravel the mysteries of the heart, discarding the things that are of no use. Sadly that amounts to almost everything acquired during our lives. The cheery bit in all this is that earning childhood is much more rewarding than the one given us. The later childhood is prized while the first isn't usually appreciated until it's gone. There's a difference between being childish and childlike. I prefer the latter and am glad to have it.

  • Learnt
    It's from the other English language. The one we don't read, write or speak if we can help it. Now that I think about it there's some question about whether we speak English at all in this country. I'm not complaining. Simply observing. I'm an observer here. After passing over sixty years as a participant I've finally learnt (learned for the people who are not bilingual) that people don't want participants, they want cheerleaders, spectators and observers. That may be in order of preference. Though we all dearly love critics we don't want any of our own. We don't mind being one for someone else and even for ourselves in a pinch. We'd much rather watch a critic at work on someone else. Someone we secretly, or not so secretly, criticize. Critics don't even make the list. Observers aren't that popular either but there's still not much anyone can do about it under the rule of law. The most desirable are the cheerleaders. No, I don't mean those miniskirt wearing, letter sporting, bouncy, jiggly sometimes-gymnasts-but-who-really-cares-if-they-show-enough-young-tender-smooth-skin. Cleavage is probably nice too from what I've observed of the wannabe participants who trip over their salivating tongues at football games. Do you mind? I'm writing here.

    Have I genuinely learnt this lesson completely? No, but I'm getting closer. Honest. I'm learning that when I visit my (ahem) xanga friends, if I want to stay friends, I need to wear my cheerleader outfit. Since I don't have one that I can don in a xanga phone booth I just mill around xangadu in these grungy observer coveralls. They're clean even if not very stylish. The problem, in my line of work, is that you see much stuff. Sometimes it's stuff people don't want you to see because they're embarrassed by it. Other times they don't want you to see it because they don't know it's there and it would embarrass them if they did. Once upon a time, when I was about to go onstage with some folks, I told one of the girls she had lipstick on her teeth. Her reaction was so bizarrely over the top I didn't know if she was serious or not for a few moments. She read me the riot act and told me to never, ever, under any circumstances point something like that out to her again. Silly me, I thought she'd want to know she looked like a clown had slipped her the tongue before she went out on stage and announced to the whole world she'd been intimate with a clown. Who knows what lurks in the hearts of people? Not I. Well, I'm saying not I because that's what I'm supposed to say to stay friends. If I really do know and you haven't figured it out yet you'll have to go out there with the lipstick on your teeth now because I'm not saying anything. I'm an observer here.

    The thing about understanding is that not everyone shares it. Some people understand better than others. Most people don't understand very well at all. They've never learnt it. *smile* Why should they? What would you rather have, a wheel barrow full of five thousand dollar bills or understanding? Go ahead, lie to yourself and the rest of us. I won't tell. I'm an observer here. See? I am learning. People don't know they're defensive. How could they? They simply think they're explaining that you're mistaken if you see something they don't see. It's not self-justification if you know you're right. And we're always right about anything that really matters because if we weren't we'd find out what was right and then be that. How? We'd just change. Yeah, change is really easy. You just say, presto chango and snap your fingers and it's done. You never have to concern yourself with that again. If other people don't see how much you've changed they obviously have an axe to grind. Inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi was this horrible bit of advice: Know yourself. Of course we all do (in imagination if nowhere else) so there's no need to look. The awful thing is that when you begin to know yourself you also begin to know other selves. They don't agree, unless they too have really made the excruciating effort to know themselves as well. To know yourself is to understand yourself to a greater degree. It leads to all kinds of unsavory facts about our kind. Facts that a cheerleader would never notice, or mention if they did notice. You can be a good observer and not mention them too. I'm working on it. Have a nice day you wonderful, beautiful, hunk of perfection.

  • Outgrown
    There's something strange going on here. By here I mean in my Being Presence, for lack of a better descriptor. We have many ways to describe a color or shape but so few to describe the things that really matter. It may be because we spend so much of our lifetime running after the things that don't really matter. Oh, it's not that we know they don't matter. We think they are the things that really matter, are of the utmost importance. The things we know we'll die if we don't get. The very young behave that way about toys and then boys and girls, then cars and bigger toys. It expands to careers and houses, partners and love, prestige and reputation, etc. Toward the end of our stay here, when the hormones begin to wane giving us the ability to see what was there all along, behind the façade, our world begins to shrink. We accumulate so many of the things we worked so hard to get. Even if we didn't work hard to get them we used a great deal of time and energy to acquire. To outgrow something, in the world of the five senses, is to grow too big for something. This is different. This is like shrinking. You can see it with the elderly if you know any. The older they get the less visable they are until finally, poof! They're gone. They seem to shrink in about every way. Now that I am elderly my world is smaller than once it was. The leash is shorter and like someone trapped inside a paraplegic's body a new world begins to open on the inside where the able bodied have no time to explore. Imagine the world in which Stephen Hawking lives. Oh, I'm not saying I'm smart like that or that I ask big questions. Quite the opposite. I'm getting smaller and smaller every day.

    Rather than race around on a motorcycle looking fast, young and sporty I pass many hours a day in meditation sometimes so deep it's an effort to rejoin the animals with whom I share the house. Rather than thinking big thoughts I often feel as if I'm standing behind the thoughts, the mind, the emotions and him, It, James. From that vantage point the meaning of everything is altered. Perhaps altered isn't the right word. It's not that the meaning is altered as much as the meaning takes on a new dimension. It becomes fuller and deeper with an entirely different center of gravity. It's like a painting. Sometimes an artist will frame a part or section of a larger painting because the composition works better. The rest is discarded. It's not that it ceases to exist but that it has less meaning than once it did. Another example could be an iceberg in the quickly diminishing, once frozen north. When we see the part that's above the waterline it has a certain mass and center of gravity, a certain meaning. If we can then view what is beneath the waterline, the meaning of the chunk of ice takes on a new dimension with a vastly different center of gravity and mass.

    At some point one may be able to see that all of life is a preparation for death. Some pass the portal better prepared than others but everyone passes. What seems important at the end of the ride is, more often than not, very different from what appeared important at the beginning or in the middle of the ride. A few weeks ago I was conversing with a young woman I've never met. She is a Woo Woo. A Woo Woo is what I call a person who wants to give peace a chance, teaches Yoga, meditates, eats more consciously and in general tries to live a conscious life. She said something that stuck to some part of me. It's taken me weeks to assimilate it because it wasn't just verbal. She said, I married a redneck. It wasn't a complaint. It was a happy fact. Happy because she accepted him as he is, for what he is and had no desire to change him in any way. They couldn't have much in common in an outer way. She's a Woo Woo and he's a Redneck. Polar opposites. She loves him. I could feel it, hear it and taste it. It struck me because I married a redneck too. For a long time I wasn't happy about it. I kept thinking I'd made a mistake. That somehow she had changed and reverted back to her redneck ways. Sometimes she would say things that were so NOT what I thought it looked like we were in two different worlds. Then, I realized that we are in two different worlds. What I also realized is that my world, the reality of which I have consciously become an integral part, dictates that I love everyone in every world without conditions or requirements, expectations or demands. I can do that and be happy or revert to what once was and figure it all out so I have a good reason for not loving the rednecks.

  • Vengeance
    There's little question American taxpayers are being injured by the billions of dollars used to bailout the financial institutions. Billionaire, Warren Buffett told his shareholders the economy will be in a shambles this year and perhaps longer, before recovering from the reckless lending that caused the worst freefall he ever saw in the financial system. People are angry when they hear of millions paid as golden parachutes to the executives of failing companies just before they bail out of the company with a fistful of dollars. A fistful? More like a train load of dollars. Goldman Sachs enraged taxpayers by spending millions on a celebration party for employees when they got the good news the U.S. Government would be giving them billions to cover their shoddy business practices. Bilked investors whinge under the apparent injustice of Bernie Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme that has left them reeling at their losses while the seventy year old Madoff and his family live in decadent opulence and splendor while they enjoy the plunder of perhaps the biggest scam in Wall Street history. The FBI is trying to find where he hid the money stolen while Madoff remains under house arrest in his upper East Side luxury apartment. He refuses to cooperate with investigators while he denies that his sons, who are part of the business, knew anything about his larceny. Angry investors crowded a Manhattan federal courtroom hoping to find out if the SEC would come to their rescue. The hearing was canceled, leaving investors bewildered.

    When the Treasury took on the $5.3 trillion mortgage exposure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac taxpayers were generally clueless. A week later, when the Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and the Federal Reserve agreed to make good for at least $85 billion the financial gamblers bet on computer-driven trades in junk mortgages, taxpayers were still wondering what it all meant to them. A few days later the White House committed at least half a trillion dollars more to re-inflate real estate prices in an attempt to support the market value junk mortgages and we still don't know what the hell they're talking about. Slowly people began to understand their tax dollars were going to be spent, for a long time to come, to cover the losses the millionaires had incurred in their greed driven feeding frenzy. When AIG, Bank of America, Citicorp, Goldman Sachs and others began to hold their hands out for some of the billions the government was squirting at the financial sector people started to get angry.

    Now it's old news repeatedly as the trillions add up on a daily basis. The Banksters have done it again and taxpayers want blood. Green blood. The problem is it's their green blood that is being shed. The sentiment is, Let the millionaires and billionaires go under. It serves them right for being such greedy bastards. What's so difficult for taxpayers to understand is that if the Banksters go down we all go with them. They are the clay pillars that support the system in which all of us have become entangled. Vengeance is never the answer but it's difficult to see that when we're so angry. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth will insure a country of the blind and toothless. If we want to knock it all down and start again we run the very real risk of waking up to a Mad Max society where anarchy is the order of the day and the survival of the fittest will mean we go back to might makes right. It may seem like a good idea, as most fantasies do, until the blood being spilled in the streets is no longer the green of finances. Most people have no idea how thin the thread is from which our world hangs. The fires of rage can burn that thread far more quickly than we know. Vengeance is not the answer. There are no quick, easy answers. Raging and hitting back, punishing and getting even will only leave us broken and angry instead of just bewildered and angry. If it did, our foray into Iraq would have solved our problems already. Take a chill pill, appreciate what you have, kiss your loved ones and be kind today. Tomorrow may bring something far worse than you see in the movies.

  • Entitlement
    There was probably a time I felt entitled, owed, just and justified. It was probably when I was much younger because I hear younger people say things like, I didn't ask to be born. From my current perspective the jury is still out on that one. Perhaps we all asked to be born and then promptly forgot about the request. That would explain a great deal. Interesting but not the point. To be accurate, when I do feel entitled I remind myself what a crock of crap that whole mental position is. Encounters with the entitled are never pleasant. When someone lives in such a lofty spot they have many requirements of others. You are an other. Today I found myself one of the others. It was time for me to go to the grocery to pick up a few things. Recently I've changed grocery stores because of fresher, and more varied organic produce. Unfortunately it is in a rather snooty town brimming with the rich and famous. Beautiful homes, expensive cars, all the best shops with prices to match. When you've got money, no matter how you got it, it's easy to feel entitled because the world is generally looking for a way to get some of it. It's positively hilarious and sad to realize the depths to which we will stoop to ingratiate ourselves with the rich and famous in the hope of having some of it rub off on us, giving our dun lives a temporary sparkle.

    A well coiffed and smartly dressed woman approached me in the produce section of the grocery. She had the hint of a smile as if she recognized me. I didn't know her so I smiled politely and briefly and went on my way. She came up behind me and said, I'm the lady you wouldn't let merge. I must have looked puzzled. On the road . . . you wouldn't let me merge. Then I remembered being stuck behind a car doing about twenty miles per hour under the speed limit. When I finally got a chance to pass her she sped up and began to merge into the side of the car. I figured she was happy enough to mosey along before there was no need to get stuck behind her again. The light must have dawned on my face because she said, in a rather indignant manner, What was that about? I could tell by her tone there was no way this could end well so I said, I didn't think you knew what you were doing. Oops. That was the trigger. She flared back, I knew what I was doing! You're something else. Stupidly I said, And you're special? That was dumb but it was already out of my mouth. She turned on her heel in a huff saying, Yes, I am special. Well, once you start being dumb it's hard to stop isn't it? I said, You think so.

    Now we're here and I'm thinking of how we feel entitled. I live in snootyville and drive a snooty German car and live in a big, snooty house and buy my clothes a the snooty designer store and have my snooty hair coiffed at Jacques Penné so I'm entitled to merge whenever I damned well please and you'd better remember that! Meh. Whatever. The way I figure it is our cars and money; clothes and hair; houses and social clubs don't really entitle us. If they did she should have been pleased to not have been allowed to merge. She was driving a snooty VW something or other that wasn't a bug and I was driving a Mercedes. As I recall a friend of mine, who was stationed in Germany, telling me of a Mercedes Benz commercial he saw there that announced: Mercedes Benz. The only car in the world with a built in right of way. If I had it to do again I still wouldn't want to be stuck behind her for a few more miles. She really didn't look like she knew what she was doing. I looked for her in the store and never did see her again. That's when it dawned on me that she had followed me into the store just to tell me how entitled she was. Yawn.

  • Faces
    People are strange aren't we? Think for a moment about how many different people you've known over your lifetime. Depending on how many breaths you've breathed the number could be small or wildly huge. This year I'll be sixty-two and because I've passed forty of those years working with groups of people my number may be relatively large. Being a rather reclusive person the number is nowhere near what it might have been. From that imaginary number there will be a much smaller number representing the people we've called friends. Because we are what we are there will be an even smaller number that proved to be true friends. What is a true friend? Though interestings we don't have space for that here so let's leave that for another time. Instead let's talk about the difference between the number we called friends and the number who proved to be friends. Depending on how you've used the word the difference could be staggering. If we gain wisdom with our experience we learn that not everyone shows us their face. Not all of them are being deliberately two-faced but most are because our society trains us to have at least two faces and usually more. The face we may wear at home with loved ones may be different from the face we wear at work. The face we look at in the mirror will be different from the others as well. With all of these faces it's hard for us to really know what we look like.

     

    There are those of us who can't see because the mirror into which we look is terribly warped with pride and vanity. Other mirrors have collected a film of grime giving them varying degrees of opaqueness. Some folks get a glimpse of their face and quickly cover the mirror with some picture or other so they never have to see their blemishes again. We are complex in our simplicity. We collect faces as we travel through life. Some from movie stars or characters we read about in books. Others from people we've known and admired or known and hated until we took on their features. We start out with a soft, pliable face when we're born. It's elastic and nearly featureless until we put some miles on ourselves. Toward the end of life our face becomes well worn with care, worry, happiness or some combination. Many of the people we meet leave an imprint on our face. Some because we wish it and others because we resist it. When we're young we worship our youth and its supposed beauty. As we age we may learn true beauty lies in the lines and features of a character forged in the fires of life's trials.

    Today I call no one a friend and I call everyone a friend. This seeming contradiction is made possible by removing my expectations from people. Each person is my friend but I may never be their friend. Since I've learned to choose my friends rather than allow them to choose me I get to say who is a friend and I say everyone I meet is my friend. Because not everyone has that perspective not everyone can call me a friend. Not because I am not their friend but because they have no room in their heart for such a friend. That's another thing that can happen as we travel through life. We can learn to expand our hearts making more room for people. We remove the fences of expectation and find wide open spaces clear and fresh to the horizon. Today I trust people not because they are trustworth but because I am more trustworthy. Not so much because they are real yet but because I am becoming more real. It takes some expierence to learn to look through the face to the heart that made it. I still get it wrong but at least I'm beginning to learn to err on the side of love.

  • Khaki
    That is such a cool word. It looks cool, it sounds cool and it's cool when you're wearing it too. I like Khaki but it's not clothing I want to talk about, it's people. You, me and the other guy who we like to pretend is nothing like you and me. If you've ever opened your eyes enough to see what's in front of your face you already know we're seriously screwed up. Oh yeah, I know the rap about all the good people and the good, noble things they do, but I'm not talking about a person. I'm talking about people, in general, which is the only way you can talk about people. If you want specificity you have to talk about a person which is different from people. Enough with the grammar lesson! We didn't get so screwed up all by ourselves. We learned it from other people when we were too young to know better or resist their rot. So did they. It keeps getting passed on from one generation to the next like Original Sin. I leave the links for you to make it easier for you. Why? Heh, it's not because I'm a good, noble person. It's because I want you to understand what I'm saying. All the songs say we need love, and we do, but we'll never get it without understanding. You can understand more and better than you now do, but you have to work at it. Check out the links. *smile*

    Some folks are saying we made history by electing a black (or some other politically correct word) President. This is the kind of crazy lame thinking that gets us into trouble. As if it mattered, Obama isn't black or African. He's khaki. Our sad, sick and twisted history of racism had many different words for people who were not pure. I know, lame, but there it is. Ever heard the term high yellow? Even if you have it's still a good read. Mulatto is a word that, even today, makes some persons' heads spin like Regan's in The Exorcist. It's not just Americans who have a sad, sick and twisted history of racism and slavery. It goes back to prehistory with people because we're broken but don't know it in any meaningful way. A meaningful way would be a way that woke us up long enough to see the truth, the terror of the situation and inspired us to do something about it. Not in other people but in each individual. We wake up but then somehow get hypnotized by life again and forget what it was we thought was so important before the hypnosis dazed us. It's like heading from the kitchen to the pantry to get something you need. It's not far, it doesn't take long but we get into the pantry, look around and say to ourselves, What did I come in here for? That kind of hypnosis that we excuse in ourselves by saying it wasn't that important or we got distracted by someone or something. Blah, blah, blah. We're so full of excuses for why we are the way we are we have little or no chance of ever becoming some other way. Some better way. Some way that helps us to look at one another with more understanding. We'll never learn to love one another if we can't understand one another.

    If we had more understanding we could see that people are doing the only thing they can do with the limited understanding they have. We could see that we too are doing all we can do with our limited understanding. The truth of the matter is we understand almost nothing correctly, as it actually is. Why? Because we don't know how it is. We only know how we think it is and by and large we're too proud to admit it. Do you actually believe that because the man in the oval office is Khaki that all of our problems are going to go away in a few years? Then why are people so jacked up about it? Why did so many people from all over the world travel to Washington, D.C. for the inauguration ceremony? The Great Khaki Hope? Sorry, but this is racism. It goes both ways. The only ones who don't know it are the racists. We're people. Screwed up, hypnotized people who need to pull our heads out of the past and get busy working on our own individual selves if anything is every going to change in a positive way. Apologies in advance to the racists of any shade who got their knickers in a knot over any of this. If you don't understand what I'm saying the lack is in you not in me.

  • Jealousy
    It's ugly isn't it? I've known people who measured how much they were loved by how jealous their partner was. To me, that's a little scary. I can't find any good justification for jealousy. It's a negative emotion and negative emotions lead to violence if they're not neutralized. A long time ago I remember being jealous. It wasn't any fun. I hated being jealous. It was like being tormented by my mind. It's not like you get to turn it off and on at will. They (whoever they are) call it the Green Eyed Monster. It is a monster. It makes people say and do mean things to other people. Personally, I think Viola is jealous of Peggy. Peggy doesn't look like she cares much though does she?

    Photobucket

    Oh, happy Valentine's Day, you Hoes.

  • Confessions
    This is a true confessions blog so stop reading right this instant if you don't want to hear my true confession. I mean it. Stop! Click the back button in your browser or turn off your computer or go visit someone who will say the kinds of things you like to hear. No one wants to hear anyone else's sordid confessions. Well, except maybe priests. I wonder if they get off on that sort of thing? I mean no disrespect. I don't mean get off in a sexual way. There have been way too many stories in recent years about how Catholic priests get off. Who wants to hear about that, other than ambulance chasing lawyers and people down on their luck looking to make a fast buck with a good story about how they were molested by their parish priest when they were children? I'm not saying no one was ever molested by their parish priest when they were children. More on that in the next paragraph. It's part of my true confession. I wonder if it's fair to call them ambulance chasers anymore? They've really expanded into other areas with all the ambulance chasing competition out there. Now they advertise on TV about anything you can't pronounce that you might have gotten when you walked by a building or went to work somewhere or shined your shoes with the wrong kind of cancer causing shoe polish. If you've got messolothileoma or backstacaticosis or some other alphabet soup named disease you may be entitled to a financial settlement. Call now! But wait, call now and we'll double your cash settlement. Just pay shipping and handling for the second stack of greenbacks. Hurry. This offer won't last. Call in the next ten minutes.

    It's about being molested by the parish priest. When I was a child, a long, long time ago in a land far, far away I went to parochial school. For those of you who contracted some ailment from breathing the air at
    (enter the name of some organization with a lot of money) and are
    currently involved in a law suit to get your cash settlement from said
    company, I'm not naming any names here, because your lawyer told you
    not to discuss your case with anyone,     that hinders you from using your dictionary, a parochial school is a private school supported by a particular church or parish. The short version is I went to Catholic school from the first to the sixth grades. I sang in the choir and I was an alternate altar boy a few times. I could never get the bell ringing right. The genuflecting puzzled me too. I could sing though so I did well in the all boys choir for years. These are all true confessions if you were waiting for me to get to that part. But wait! There's more. I was never molested by a priest or a nun, much to my chagrin. I had a huge crush on my first grade teacher, Sister Patricia. OMG! She was so pretty and sweet and gentle and kind. I was seven so all I wanted to do was look at her and listen to her and watch her float all that black cloth around the room.

    So here's the thing. How come I was never molested? What? Wasn't I good enough? Wasn't I cute enough? What was wrong with me? All these other kids all over the country were getting molested by their parish priests and I got nothing? It's just not fair. I'm fairly sure that if some ambulance chaser reads this he or she will be contacting me to discuss the possibility of litigation for me against the parish in which I grew up. Think of the psychological scars I've carried with me for years because everyone else got molested and I was passed over. I was a cute kid. It's just not fair. I'd ask for a refund but I'm not sure we ever paid anything. My parents just used the envelops now and again. Probably just enough to keep my brother and I in school if I know them. Hey, maybe that's why I was never molested. My parents didn't give enough money to the church. They gave enough for me to attend classes, sing in the choir and be a lame, alternate altar boy a couple of times but not enough to get me molested. There's got to be a law suit in there somewhere. Well, it's okay though. Don't feel sorry for me. My Dad was a child and wife beater so I guess it all evens out in the big scheme of things.

  • Hurt
    Should I be hurt that some of my favorite people never come around or should I get some new favorite people? Oh sure, for you it's probably not a problem but for me it has been my whole life. I like people. Not all of them, of course, but most of them. It's like Will Rogers said, I never met a man I didn't like. Or was that Mae West who said that? Meh. Maybe both of them said it at different times. Neither of them ever met me though or they might have changed their tune. I'm annoying. Yeah, I know a couple of people who I've known for nearly twenty-five years. They have a son who is now about thirteen. When he was younger, whatever age they are when they can still tell the truth, he told me I was annoying. I had to laugh because I could see his point. I say things that make people uncomfortable. Whenever we'd talk and he'd start getting uncomfortable and he'd say, Annoying Alert, Annoying Alert! Being a PITA has been a lifelong thing with me. I've learned to laugh at myself--finally!

    Recently the daughter of another person I know, she's seventeen, told me I was a bad person because I said shitty things--right to people's faces! That one stung. What made it worse was I had just finished telling her she was my favorite kid and that every
    time I saw her my heart went pitter-patter. Naturally I had a quick, sharp retort. Oh yeah, I said in my best House imitation, it's much better to talk about them behind their backs like everyone else does. So, yeah, I like people and they don't like me. I've tried to change and be the kind of person that people like but it makes me physically ill and emotionally repressed and then I don't like myself. The way I figure it is I've got to live with me 24/7 and they can get away whenever they want. This is a no brainer. Duh. Who is it more important to please? Them or me? Survival demanded that I choose me so I did and people get to not like me if they don't want to like me. As if they really had a choice, which I don't think they do because we learn early how not to like and never really make the effort to learn how to overcome that kink in our personalities. The weird thing is I still like them. True, the seventeen year old was no longer number one on my favorite kid list but I still like her and feel happy everytime I see her.

    If you're one of my favorite people and you don't come around that's okay because I still like you and come around to your place. I just don't comment because I don't want to annoy you further. As for the rest of you, well, you just wait. You'll see. I'm annoying.

James

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