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I tripped over a rock most people would have noticed. He first saw me then. Later he said that was the moment he fell in love.
My features were unformed; most people confused them with perfect. At eighteen I knew they were childlike. Most girls longed for beauty; I longed for character.
I did and didn’t want to blend into the curtains; to be camouflaged until I understood what I was doing.
That year, 1968-69. I felt as if I were a girl in a candy store. My candy store gave out real life boys. I was in hippie princess heaven, complete with sound track by Janis, The Airplane, Moody Blues, Donavon and Melanie among others.
For the first time since early elementary school it was better than OK to be me. I could dance to my own rhythm; sing out of key, be sloppy, do whatever people with the unnamed disorder did or didn’t do. It didn’t matter what I did. People either hated me or were entranced.
Life would have been perfect had I any idea about what I was doing. I accepted my life as a gift from the gods but was never actually sure why.
That year, and the one after that, and the decade that was to come gave me much warped confidence.
I knew I was desirable but wasn’t sure why. I thought I was smart but was convinced most people thought otherwise. Even when all the evidence pointed to the contrary.
I love writing in fiction. It’s something I discovered I was good in after I began my blog. But I feel pulled toward writing a memoir about living with non verbal learning disorder. People either feel pity or don’t believe it’s a real disorder.
I’m not a person to be pitied though I often hurt from what I can’t learn. That I can’t learn too many things no matter how much I try doesn’t point to stupidity but a bona fide disorder
Crossposted at Red Room Please comment there. I realize this is territory charted too many times. It’s language I’m playing with
I just realize you have to give your life story practically to comment at Red Room–which includes such authors as Maya Angelou. It’s a very interesting site. So comment if you want
The cab drove from Laguardia through Queens where I wanted to soak in the Tudor style apartments, Bronx style apartments, garden apartments, single family houses that cried out “Archie Bunker slept here” when the cab driver kept interrupting my reverie. “Where are you from?” Uh here, I thought but didn’t say. “Do you work?” I nodded something. “Are you married?” He kept repeating that question. I looked at the cab. Yes it was a licensed yellow that I had gotten at the cab line at the ugliest airport anywhere. Finally I spoke. “Could you be quiet?” “But I’m asking are you married?” “Actually I don’t answer questions like that. I am a New Yorker and I’m paying you so I don’t have to entertain you.”
He kept asking questions anyway. When we arrived in Manhattan I wanted to memorize the buildings that were so familiar and most so old. My father grew up in East Harlem and though his building was thrown down for Schoenberg Plaza there ae many buildings that look like his. And many buildings that look as if they could have been in The East Village before gentrification. And many other buildings with real memories or memories of similar ones.
I wondered if there’s an expiration date on men trying to be too friendly. it’s not as if i’m in or near my glory days. I found men who act like that obnoxious then and just as obnoxious now. More because the men you wish would look at you don’t.
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I’m back from NY where it rained for seven out of eight days but I had a great time anyway. Though I hate rain I braved it and walked because to take transportation in Manhattan, public or private, most of the time is to lose the essence of NY.
I was offline most of the week and loved it. I began to remember the lost art of conversation without googling for a quick answer.
Of course I’m all bronchial today and really happy I don’t live in NY. Though I love it, everybody’s faces and bodies seemed gray. Not hair, just the rest. That was a bit disconcerting.
I had old metrocards and did use the subway a few times. The first time I had five cents left. This was disconcerting until I found out the subway fare had gone up and you’re left with very strange increments.
I saw almost all NY friends including one very special one who I hadn’t seen in many a decade. We picked up where we left off. That was very cool. I wish I could have told my parents. My friend and I met at camp when we were nine or so and my parents always loved her and her family. They’re very special. It was great seeing a friend who knew my parents when they were young and ruled the world or so I thought. She thought her parents did also and I don’t have too many friends with that particular memory or mind set. We learn that nobody including our parents are perfect or close to it and I think we really always knew but as long as our parents are on this earth we feel the pull of unconditional love toward us. You pull the unconditional love toward the next generations. I hope I’m explaining this somewhat coherently.
I went to a Harlem with a group of friends, only one Black and she wanted to know where all the Black people had moved.
Spirit was three hours late last night. By the time I arrived at the airport here I was a space cadet.
I have to get back to bed or watch my flat screen TV or lie in my newly decked irregular plot of land. It’s 650 square feet which is the same or a bit larger than my Manhattan apartment which brought me a nice sum of money. For once I don’t feel guilty but am still in shock I pulled that off and was able to buy a wonderful house and renovate it to my standards.
I will do 3WW next week. I’m too tired to comment or think of using a prompt.
This picture brought up all sorts of emotions. it was half a lifetime ago, but I’m not sure I ever truly got over–not him–but the relationship. It wasn’t picture-perfect
My sister asked if he was the love of my life. I had to think which means he probably wasn’t but I don’t know who was.
In dreams I’m 30 again but live alone or with somebody not him. Somebody who thinks the best is yet to come. Somebody who wants to grab life and shout “I’m here! I’m young and willing to do whatever it takes to make it.”
In dreams I’m not worshiped but loved for who I am. Imperfections and all. In dreams the boy is more stable than I am, and understands that my work is important to me. That my tantrums are truly meaningless–and hell, if he wasn’t so miserable would I have been?
In dreams the boy is as funny or funnier than he was and definitely as funny or funnier than I could be. In dreams he could check my sarcasm at the door. I’m so embarrassed when I remember how sarcastic I was an how much people loved that trait.
In dreams I do my 20’s and 30’s over. I loved them so much but see all the mistakes I made now. I wish we had second chances but we only have the present and hopefully the future.
In dreams I wasn’t perfect; I was me but whoever the guy was he loved me anyway.
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Jeffrey is the person I called Zachary. We met at that bar–Folk City’s–not that day–I know from my clothes. Jeff Ampolsk–that was his name, only I called him Jeffrey–will go down in “history” for telling his friend Lucinda Williams to submit a demo to Moses Asch of Folkways. I found a tape of traditional songs Lucinda made in 1978. I don’t have a tape player and have never been sure what to do with it. Jeffrey lives on in the Smithsonian Folkways collection. It makes me laugh to think I had a boyfriend who ended up somewhat akin to Archie Bunker’s chair–it too is in the Smithsonian–always my favorite museum(s).
He had two albums out, on Folkways before he was 25. At 27 he thought he was a failure. I was always trying to pull him up. To make him understand that we had a long life ahead of us. In many ways I’m the eternal optomist who believes so, or too, hard in tomorrow. I couldn’t make him see joy in life, and stopped trying.
I wish we had known what our problems were. I suspected what his were. He refused to believe he had any. I’m sure he knew under the bravado. Once he made me apply for a MacArthur Award for him. I was totally embarrassed but…He thought the world owed him much so I worked to support us. Then I woke up….
There’s much more but I sound like such a damn shrew. And there was so much wonderful about him but it’s so hard to remember the good because forever after I couldn’t love with the same innocence or joy. And there was a time I loved him very much and our life was filled with happiness.
I guess I should tell you I bought an apartment in New York in 97 for about the amount I would have spent when we looked in 88. The difference was the building was classier, the apartment more beautiful and more renovated than any we saw but oh so small. Though in my imagination now…
I sold it this past October. I know you thought people lost IQ points for every mile they moved out of the NY/suburb area and had an elaborate formula for the IQ loss, but I could sell my apartment for more money than you would have believed and I saw last year that this past spring summer and fall would probably be the last of the good times.
Though maybe they’re going to come back in a slightly different format. Like a bad TV show remade for a bigger audience.
So much has happened. I wouldn’t know where to start. That’s probably my book.
So let me just say I bought a house. Yes a free standing house–but not being a fool I hired people to do everything. It’s much cheaper here. I moved to South Carolina.
I know you don’t think they let Jews in South Carolina but it was actually the first state to guarantee Jews religious freedom. Yes I know that was a long time ago.
It’s a nice place. I truly like it. My house is perfect for one person who likes both solitude and company. It will be perfect later if I need a roommate or help (and have the money for that–the times they are different than any you imagined in my lifetime.)
I’m one person and while I want schools and things to be great, be real, daddy. Schools in Manhattan were only becoming good in the past fifteen years because of helicopter parents–a mode of parenting you invented. Libraries–we might have the best research libraries anywhere but lending ones…not so good.
I actually like the lending library here. Not that I have joined yet. It’s near my house and I will join after I move two weeks from last Friday. And I want the schools to be good. But I love the low taxes–yes I’m a Dem but…
Our new President talks about redistributing wealth. When I personalize I hate the thought. Everybody we know is educated and to some extent a have. Shouldn’t more people be? I don’t buy the notion that many or most people are meant just to be clerks at Wal Mart. This subject is too complex for me right now daddy and I hear you arguing with me in the background…But I know that you believed people should have opportunities and I do believe President Obama means the same.
I’m burnt daddy. Being audited. I know you taught me never to fear the IRS and I don’t but the paperwork’s a bitch. And my frigging lawyer from the apartment sale in New York still hasn’t sent me the paperwork and I need it if I’m going to do my taxes on time, and you betcha I’m going to have them into the accountant before I move. Though getting my taxes to him a year ago plus a week might have caused this problem.They were very complicated and that week was the first leg of my move. The Bear went under that weekend; I didn’t know if I could sell my apartment.
I honestly didn’t think that if a brokerage house folded into another brokerage house the first brokerage house still has to send you a 1099. And four fifths of the things they asked for they have–under the names listed on my 1099’s. So I’m freaked but not overly. It’s just I wanted this time to be stress free. Or just a bit because life without stress isn’t supposed to be good.
Uh brokerage houses. I hate to tell you what happened to most of your favorite ones. You wouldn’t believe it. As I said Bear Stearns well didn’t really fold but is a shell of itself. When my apartment was in contract Lehman Brothers did fold. There’s so much you wouldn’t believe. Frank Rich who used to be the theater critic explains how much we have all changed. It’s an incredible article and sort of sums a lot up. From theater to OpEd. Life is one big stage, and Frank Rich’s the one man I would hunt down and marry if he weren’t already.
You had your stroke on 3/26 which happened to be your 52nd wedding anniversary. Poor mommy had to live with the best of days and the almost worst of days being one and the same for a decade. You died on 3/31–eighteen years ago. You and mommy were bookends as she died a decade later.
My 90’s the decade of my discontent for many reasons–including many that had nothing to do with you or mommy began on 3/31/91 and ended on 10/14/01.
Maybe next time I will explain blogging to you and how in various ways it remade my life.
It took me a year of Sundays and weekdays to find this apartment. I never e_pected it to go up 300% in value in eleven years. I was lucky, and I saw many many toads on the road to the prince. Buying a house is scarier as I know the Upper West Side well and feel comfortable everywhere in Manhattan though I can live without the crowds and the prices so I will.
I’m looking for a patio house on the East side of 17 in North Myrtle Beach in specific hoods that I won’t say here. I know I will want to do the floors, bathrooms and kitchen over so I don’t want to pay much. I do have some specific houses in mind but new ones come o the market often. I did let the house of my dreams get away….but there’s always a new dream or house
I wrote a post last night when it was pouring that was pretty good but I deleted it. This isn’t a reconstruction but a reaction to what seem to be general feelings.
In a quick look at non political blogs that talked about Sarah Palin people say not to judge her based on her values. One even said she has good family values implying most of the rest of us don’t. I don’t think that’s what the blogger meant to say judging by other parts of the blog
The New York Times (a paper I will read on weekends forever or until my dotage) public editor was slightly defensive in his defense of the paper’s coverage of her. He did say the FBI hadn’t vetted her before the announcement. Actually only one person asked questions about her before the announcement
By choosing a running mate unknown to most of the nation, and doing so just before the Republican National Convention, John McCain made it inevitable that there would be a frantic media vetting. It turns out that Palin was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it, that she sent e-mail complaining about a lack of disciplinary action against a state trooper who was going through a messy custody battle with her sister, and that she never made a decision as commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard, one of her qualifications cited by McCain
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There’s enough in that paragraph alone to wonder about her qualifications. I don’t care that Todd had a DUI over 20 years ago. I might care that he was a member of a separatist party. Yet if Norman Mailer and Jimmy Breslin’s plan for New York City to succeed from the state had taken off I might have joined it. That I was only eighteen wouldn’t have mattered in the long run and some people (well, me) remember Mailer not only for his brilliant writing but for his championing of a killer who killed again when Mailer got him out. That’s two things people could use against me before I even hit 20–there’s more but I’m not running for office and understand that we live in Google forever now.
The point is we live in an age when every little decision we make at every stage of our lives can both boomerang and come back to hit you in the face. Only the decision Sarah Palin made not to talk about her daughter Bristol’s pregnancy is neither in the past nor irrelevant to her future. It has everything to do with her “qualification” to be VP and probably President if McCain wins because just look at him.
I’m not Christian. This doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in “Christian values.” It does mean that Palin presented her daughter’s pregnancy in a way that was a slap in the face to everybody who has different beliefs than her. The public doesn’t have a right to know usually. This isn’t “usually.”
As an adoptee I might have liked to have heard her mention discussing adoption with Bristol. I would have liked to have known that her daughter knew about safe se_ because if Palin and McCain do win they will do everything in their power to stop that from being taught to teenagers and any study will show that abstinence only doesn’t work.
People keep telling us to “play nice.” Ask the Democrats who saw themselves portrayed on Recount how they felt as being portrayed as decent, honorable but inept people.
This coming week will be the seventh anniversary of 9/11. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened with Gore as president. For proof of that one only has to look at the 8/6 memo that Gore wouldn’t have slept on.
Bloggers were told during Katrina we couldn’t cast blame and help at the same time. We could and we did.
The USA is one giant mess. We all felt so good and became complacent as we believed that the radical right was a dead force. To have to live with the consequences of that belief is beyond my comprehension.
I and most”liberals” don’t care what kind of mother Sarah Palin is. That’s none of our business. It is our business to care that she’s trying to foist her values on us.
I’m not going to dredge out the original draft of The First Amendment again–the one that very distinctly spelled out that church and state shouldn’t meet. When people haughtily talk about how “under God” was good enough for the founding father’s they should remember that Madison and Jefferson cared more about separating God from government than anything else.
We can’t and won’t give Palin a free pass. We did that to Bush after 9/11 and suffered. If we say anything negative about Palin, we’re talking se_ism.
I have never defined myself as a feminist but I married young and kept my last name at a time when that entailed walking around with a marriage certificate for banks, apartments, even some hotels. The only male I have ever been dependent upon for money I called “daddy” and that kind of went with the job description.
I’m buying a free standing house and one of the reasons I think I’m so into this is because i am an economically empowered woman and owning a house represents the final challenge. One day, in the townhouse, I thought “what responsibility is missing here? Roofs,” and I realized that I could dial a roofer with the best of them. Though my nail tips (long story) keep me from doing anything nail related with the ease I once knew, I can be both the girliest woman and the most strident of feminists in one breath.
Don’t call me “se_ist” when my entire adult life has been about challenges.
Don’t think that the choice of Palin is going to go over well with moderates who were sitting on the fence or leaning toward McCain as too many of them have children. And they want their children to learn about responsible se_.
And if people weren’t around when abortion was illegal, it’s up to those of us who were around to tell them that many women chose to have illegal abortions in unsafe conditions. The daughter of close friends of my parents died of sepsis when I was fifteen. It’s something that stays with you for life. So needless. The parents were affluent, but the daughter felt she couldn’t confide in them. By that I mean the daughter could have gotten a safe abortion.
We can’t go back to those days. There is a very real possibility that if McCain and Palin win we will. I understand that many girls chose to be teenage mothers but in the world I come from that was not an option–just as abortion isn’t an option to Palin.
I believe that it’s up to the individual who is pregnant.
By saying talking about Bristol’s pregnancy is off limits we’re closing ourselves to a much needed debate. No not a debate–we have to keep abortion legal as girls and women will always have them.
We’re letting them win once again by being nice and we can’t be. The future of our country in every way is at stake.
Here’s the unrequited love of my life Frank Rich.
We still don’t know a lot about Palin except that she’s better at delivering a speech than McCain and that she defends her own pregnant daughter’s right to privacy even as she would have the government intrude to police the reproductive choices of all other women. Most of the rest of the biography supplied by her and the McCain camp is fiction
Fiction–in an era where everything can be vetted–fact checking is a life style, people look something up on the Internet and call it “research” Palin thinks she’s above the rest of us and can re-invent her life.
I went, not willingly but to support a friend, to the modern version of est the other night–actually the night Palin was giving her speech-and they said you can reinvent your life. I thought how wonderful to live in a world you make that has no basis in reality–reframe yes, see through different lenses, but reinvent? Apparently est and Palin have much in common.
Cooper this post is for you. I think Cooper the secret prognosticator should be the tagline of wonderlandornot, and once a week you should tell some aspect of somebody’s future. Or not.
It’s past time for all Americans who truly understand the Constitution to take a stand. We can’t give this country over to bigots who will do our deciding for us.
I was much moderate, but too much is at stake now, and I live in South Carolina most of the time where I don’t feel free to e_press my views. I will, I need time.
It’s not sex I’m against. It’s not acknowledging there are choices other than continuing a pregnancy–that’s very telling to me.
The Republicans haven’t played fair in eight years and America has suffered greatly for that. I remember reading that certain Democrats were upset at being portrayed as wimps in Recount. I thought they were honorable. Honorable doesn’t play anymore. I’m not condoning breaking laws, or violent protest. I am condoning fighting with words. I wish more than anything we could relive the past eight years. We can’t. Hurricane upon hurricane, nine whales found dead from Florida to North Carolina, China—this feels like a Stephen King novel.
Sarah Palin’s seventeen year old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant. It’s a good thing as Bristol will marry her boyfriend and have the love and support of her family.
My friends and family spend much time teaching their daughters that teenage sex isn’t good. It’s messy, kids usually aren’t really in love, and yes it can lead to consequences.
I’m not saying my friends are against sex but we have lost many friends to AIDS. We also know first hand what it’s like to have sex with boys we don’t love. We’re not expecting them to listen to us on the subject of sex completely. We are asking them to be responsible.
By doing what she’s doing Palin is undoing the teachings of many many American families. This is a perfect example of radical right teachings. Or not teaching, really.
I wouldn’t expect her to throw her daughter out but I might have expected her not to accept the nomination. She said she told McCain before the election.
What would have happened if Bristol contacted AIDS? Would Palin have gone public with that?
What does that make them? Hip? Renegades left from the summer of love? I can go on
Sex is always going to happen. But this isn’t a good message. And teenagers should, if they choose to have sex, always always use condoms.
I thought Sara Palin represented family values. Is this the kind of family value we want represented.
Read this! If you haven’t or haven’t read any of the numerous posts I wrote plugging it or explaining it–see post under this and post on the sidebar. If you can’t figure out the article I wrote, you either don’t know my name or….I’m very rarely proud of things I wrote and I am of that
I lived on East 63rd Street off Fifth when 10021 was the richest zip in the country. I used to say I could run into Woody Allen at a phone booth and not recognize him. Now I understand why. I had a great social life but not the one my father envisioned for me when he found the apartment I didn’t want but came to love. I so belonged on the Upper West Side or The Village.
Near but not too close to the street I live on is a bowling alley nobody seems to ever go into. In back of that is a two story apartment complex, in faded sky blue and sun bleached white, that makes a pulp lover’s heart flip flop. I said flip flop, not that I would want to live in it. I can picture Veronica Lake, Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, and numerous other 40’s, 50’s stars standing at the rail in front of the common walkway that’s in front of the apartments calling out to some man. Maybe she’s crying; maybe she’s just screaming.
Funny but all the male actors I can think of are too debonair to be in this scene. Never William Powell, Cary Grant, even Humphrey Bogart as Lauren Bacall could never be the woman.
I think my knowledge of pulp is more from books, post card and calenders one of my father’s clients had, than movies. But I so vividly see a woman standing over the railing in a bathing suit with a white terry robe half off. Next she’s standing on the railing, hair falling into one half of her face and wearing a torn silk negligee.
Whatever. It could be a European movie but the two story building with the common hallway in front of the apartments and the stair railings with weird swans pressed into the metal make it distinctly American.
If you have never read Jim Thompson, he’s wonderful, inspirational and so American. For a quick example he wrote The Grifters He is “hard boiled” but I think more pulp–and have many of his books. When I gave books away, his stayed.
Last night at the beach people were unabashedly singing “America the Beautiful” though way off-key. As a New Yorker my cynicism reigned. As an American and hopefully a resident of South Carolina by election time, I let myself just feel it as I did when I was a kid and Yankee Doodle Dandy was the best movie ever made, I thought. We had Million Dollar Movie where a movie was repeated 24/7 and I faked a flu so I could stay home and watch it. I’m sure my parents figured that out but it was cute and not something I did on a regular basis.
watching it now I can’t believe how much I loved it.
I want to be as proud of my country as other people seem to be of theirs. We can be amazing when we want to be. We can be…..
I took this from The Wombat. It’s music I’m much more comfortable with
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8dOgm7C54E&hl=en&fs=1]
Steven Colbert wrote Maureen Dowd’s column and he claims Frank Rich’s too.
This is the anniversary of my mom’s death and I turn back into a person tomorrow. A person who has to focus on selling an apartment and other realities of life. Will be at blogs during the week.
Can America begin to right a grievous wrong and elect a great president? Draft Gore,
Blogfriday
I have romanticized very few celebrities in my life. That’s not to say I haven’t been caught up in celebritymania, or taken men in my life and made them into celebrities in my own mind. But true celebrities: Alan Bates, Eric Clapton and James Spader. § Read the rest of this entry…
I was missing my mommy when I wrote that one. She was one beautiful lady, in every sense. I’m not taking the post down as it is well written with good sentiments, she says modestly.
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I tracked part of my parent’s family. Both my grandfather’s came on the same boat. Couldn’t find my paternal grandfather. Knowing that side of my family, he probably used another name, just because. But I will never be able to find half my birth family, and there are questions I would like answered. As long as all adoptees are considered children in the eyes of the law adoption will always be a mystifying experience–if your adoptive parents weren’t told the truth either. My parents told me everything they knew, and didn’t try to make it into a “your birth parents died in a car crash the week after you were born” thing. I adore and love them for so many reasons. They were so unselfish in their quest to help me find my birth family. They were honest with me. I was honest with them–except the rebel years which my father considered necessary for emotional growth. § Read the rest of this entry…
The epicenter of this Upper West Side apartment search was Zabar. Mine was Fairway. Not really, but I had a very specific geographical area in mind: as far west of Broadway as possible, though not in the river, and between but not including West 70something and another West 70something. We pay too much for too little space. It might as well be exactly where want it to be.
High school confidential is before my time. Check out the cast–a few famous daddy’s and famous TV daddy, now dead, a very young–well see
My time was tie dye and neon and I had 24 carat gold glasses that I never wore because I wouldn’t be seen without contact lenses–it was the era of groovy and other expressions I won’t use because I hated them then.
I come from a very unusual town. It’s not really a town. More a collection of developments, a strip mall that has been jazzed up, a firehouse, and some schools. Actually I grew up in a school district.
It wasn’t the richest community on Long Island by far. It was probably the only one without any poor people. Diversity came in shades of white.
There were people who peaked in high school, and people who have hated it as a lifetime activity. I don’t fit in either category. I did spend years telling stories about how I didn’t fit in my community. The thing is most people didn’t feel they fit. Even the people who who seemed to meld seamlessly.
High school was over many years ago. Why did I see people tonight I knew but wasn’t really friendly with? For many reasons. some that I can’t quite articulate.
Our lives went in different directions. Yet they all led back to an exit off the Expressway.
There’s something comforting in connecting with people who knew me when I felt awkward, weird and out of sync with the world, yet they wanted to see me anyway. We all had our high school horror stories yet it was the stories of small kindnesses we wanted to share.
I didn’t know that cheerleaders felt out of place. Yet when I think about it, I have known many high school cheerleaders, after the fact, who felt that they hadn’t quite belonged. I never thought about that before.
I’m not going to tell people they should edit the bad memories out. For they do serve a purpose. If only to bond in college and later with other people who felt like a dork. Though today that’s a good thing.
It was strange that I came to terms with my past just when I’m writing about high school angst.
As a society we point to some years, and say “and this is when the world changed. Martin Luther King Jr and Robert Kennedy were killed when I was graduating high school. Cities burnt. None of this directly affected us. We were sheltered.
But what did our parents know? My mother couldn’t tell marijuana from oregano. I should have said I had that last thing once. I won’t tell that story here. Nor will I talk more specifically about tonight right now. Maybe I’m not ready to. Maybe I do have an aversion to telling stories about my present day life.
It was a fun night. I feel validated or vindicated or whatever you feel when you come to a new understanding about yourself.
And we could speak in a kind of a short hand only known to people who were in all your classes or around you from Seventh through Twelfth Grades. I always felt cheated that I didn’t go to a larger school where I could meet new people in High School and maybe that would have been better.
But you’re dealt the hand your parents give you during those years, and I guess it’s up to you to make it work. Maybe it did work better than I believed.
I have long expected people to like me and to want to get to know me. Maybe I did expect that, just a bit, because I grew up in a place where everybody knew my name.
Usually I believe that if you can make it out of this community with your head attached to your body you can make it anywhere.
I am learning that at this stage of life, I have to reach for fun. It’s not going to come calling. Maybe most people learn that much earlier.
I like making things happen. I always have but never really understood that even when I wasn’t consciously reaching out, I was. People really don’t reach out to somebody who isn’t receptive. People really don’t want to hang with somebody who doesn’t give of themselves. That isn’t to say I gave anything of myself in high school. I loved high school angst. But I did know that I was known.
I think of the 90’s as my dark decade. I was constantly striving to make my life better. I felt bitter because so many things that weren’t great happened. My parents died. My youth ended. Is that such a horrible thing? I thought it was but several years ago realized that I could make the next chapter as much fun, but differently, as my late teens, 20’s, and 30’s. Tonight helped seal the deal.
I do find it a bit sad that I always expected “great things” to happen. I defined “great” a bit more loosely than most people. I wouldn’t go to law school as my father wanted me to because I honestly loved working, much of the time, didn’t want to be a lawyer though I knew I could use the degree for other things, and didn’t want anything to interfere with my social life.
I loved staying out until very late and going to work on three to five hours sleep. It was a kind of high onto itself.
I wrote this when I was one drink over the line. One drink too many for me is one more than two with food. Lots of food.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqRCKRO41P4]
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