Dateline: last Thursday, 12:35 pm,; walking to the Manzanita Post Office to mail a couple of letters. A jogger runs past me and gasps what sounds like, “Like the purple.”[1] I reflexively thank him, although I’m not really sure what he is referring…. Then I get a load of what moiself is wearing: a black t shirt under a purple long-sleeved shirt; purple pants, purple jacket, purple shoulder bag; purple hat….
* * *
Department Of Perhaps I Should’ve Rephrase That
Dateline #2: Sunday evening ;7 pm-ish; driving back from Rock Creek Tavern, where MH and I had enjoyed our usual date night (for their Sunday Irish Music night)…which turned out to be somewhat less enjoyable than usual because, for the first time either of us can recall, the scheduled musical act did not show up.
MH is driving; moiself is making a mental inventory of the unused items from our weekly CSA produce share, thinking of how I might use them for the next day’s dinner. I have a few ideas, and ask MH if he has any preferences:
“So, what would you like to see me do with the broccoli tomorrow? And don’t be rude….”
* * *
Department Of I Don’t Do This Intentionally…
…but moiself’s mind just goes there.
Dateline #3: Monday;10 am; the beginning of yoga class. The yoga teacher asks us yogis to set an intention [2] for the class. She offers these words for us to silently repeat to ourselves several times during the class, synchronizing it with our inhalations and exhalations:
(Inhale) I am here. (Exhale) l Here I am
Here is what moiself’s mind silently repeated instead:
(Inhale) I am Sam. (Exhale) Sam I am.
* * *
Department Of Autumnal References Sub-Department Of Time for The Clear Fingernail Polish
Harbingers of the Fall: cooler, crisp morning temps; geese flying south in V-formations; hot apple cider; crunchy maple leaves underfoot; pumpkin-spiced everything; the fingernail on my right pinkie splitting…
Yeah, about the latter omen:
My sister N, who was three years old, was playing chase with her 18-month-old sister [3] (moiself). When it was moiself’sturn to chase my sister, N fled into the bathroom. N slammed the bathroom door and locked it, failing to realize, despite my ensuing, bone-chilling shrieks, that I had reached out to N at the last minute, and that my right little finger from the top joint up was crushed between the door and the door jamb.
Our parents convinced N to unlock the door. They rushed me to the doctor, who examined my pulverized pinkie and pronounced, “It’ll probably need to be amputated.” He took a second and third look, then mused, “Well, maybe….”
In a Nobel-Prize-worthy moment of medical inspiration, the doctor reached for his miracle salve (Vaseline), dabbed it on the top of my smooshed finger, and wrapped the damaged digit with gauze. Doc advised my parents to keep the bandaged finger dry – no peeking! – and return in two weeks, or sooner if the finger started to smell like last year’s ham sandwich. [4]
Two weeks later, at the unveiling, the tip of my finger had partially re-formed itself, and was thus spared its date with the guillotine.
So: I grew up with a funny finger. While admittedly un-decorative in appearance, it is largely functional.
Besides my pinky’s misshapen profile, its Fun Finger Facts include the following, most of which are true:
teeny sub-dermal bone fragments are palpable on the underside of the finger.
the fingernail grows cleft from the nail bed to the edge, with the split running bottom to top in the left side of the nail, and curving down at the edge. The fingernail’s growth is self-limiting; it tends to disintegrate (for lack of a better term) at a certain length, and split on the left side.
( See that little bit of split fingernail, on the left, jutting upward?
the tip of the finger, from the second joint up, has reduced sensation (as compared to that of other fingers) and is prone to bouts of numbness.
during one such numbness bout I discovered that Icould stick a pin in the top of that finger, sans pain. Besides giving me that certain, je ne sais quoi cachet among eighth graders, this ability proved to be a helpful form of pest control. Waving my impaled pinkie was an effective gross-out/shoo-away to a certain cheerleader-type who’d attempted to make me feel self-conscious several times by loudly broadcasting, “Ew, what’s wrong with your finger?! That is SO DISGUSTING!” in the classroom and at the lunch tables.
There is no fifth Fun Finger Fact.
The tip of the finger is an effective dowser implement, and twitches when in the proximity of an underground water supply. [5]
The Fun Finger Fact #2 is the subject of the omen of fall. During the decreasing humidity of autumn, the fingernail gets more dry/brittle and split. The first time moiself notices it doing so I start applying several (at least three) coast of clear fingernail polish to the nail a couple of times per week, which helps hold the cracked nail together.
* * *
Department of Employee Of The Month
It’s that time, to bestow that prestigious award upon moiself. Again. The need for which I wrote about here. [6]
10. No one will kill you for not drinking Beer.
9. Beer doesn’t tell you how to have sex.
8. “In the name of Beer…” has never caused a major war.
7. Adults don’t force Beer on minors who can’t think for themselves
6. When you have a Beer, you don’t knock on people’s doors trying to give it away.
5. Nobody’s ever been burned at the stake, hanged or tortured over his brand of Beer
4. You don’t have to wait 2000+ years for a second Beer.
3. There are laws saying Beer labels can’t lie to you.
2. You can prove you have a Beer.
1. If you’ve devoted your life to Beer, there are groups to help you stop. [8]
* * *
May you discoveryour own Dr. Seuss-inspired exercise mantra; May you have a stranger compliment your color choices; May you know what you’d like to see done with the broccoli; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Not many other words that rhyme with urple, which was the last word he said.
[2] In yoga practice, to “set an intention” is to choose a focus or attitude for your practice to ground you in the present (instead of, say, like working out at a gym with a future goal in mind – e.g., “I’m gonna lose five pounds/tone those abdominals”). Variations of “I am here, now,” are commonly used intentions to help your mind focus when you are feeling busy or distracted.
[3] I’ve no memory of this incident – for which I’m grateful – only the finger to remind me
[5] This is such a lie. Please don’t tell me if you fell for it.
[6] Several years ago, MH received a particularly glowing performance review from his workplace. As happy as I was for him when he shared the news, it left me with a certain melancholy I couldn’t quite peg. Until I did.
One of the many “things” about being a writer (or any occupation working freelance at/from home) is that although you avoid the petty bureaucratic policies, bungling bosses, mean girls’ and boys’ cliques, office politics, and other irritations inherent in going to a workplace, you also lack the camaraderie and other social perks that come with being surrounded by your fellow homo sapiens. No one praises me for fixing the paper jam in the copy machine, or thanks me for staying late and helping the new guy with a special project, or otherwise says, Good on you, sister. Once I realized the source of the left-out feelings, I came up with a small way to lighten them.
[7] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
[8]Moiself’scompilation, adapted from many, many sources, including the FFRF Freethought Today’s “The Top Ten Reasons Why Beer is Better Than Jesus”
Those seven words are from a Clear + Vivid podcast moiself heard several weeks back. The subject was…many subjects. It’s an episode I can’t find now – which Ifindironic in that one of the episode’s topics was discerning regular/age-related forgetting v. dementia-type forgetting. The podcast’s guest explained why, for example, I can tell you what I had for dinner eight *years* ago on a warm summer evening with my daughter in Paris bistro, but I likely can’t remember what I had for dinner eight weeks (or even days) ago.
There is a science (as in, cognitive strategies) to make meaningful memories at any age. However, as C+V host Alan Alda and his guess discussed, people would rather have the science behind such discoveries lead to a Magic Pill® to boost memory (or anything else). This is because – surprise! – we evolved to be…well…effing lazy. [3]
* * *
Department Of Mark Your Calendars:
“You keep accusing me of blasphemy all of the time,
but I cannot be convicted of a victimless crime.”
First things first: get the silly Old Testament proscriptions out of the way:
Eli, Saul – y ‘all heard? Life is great; nothing’s unclean! Shrimp rolls, anyone?
In the spirit of ecumenicism, a gentle dig at those gentle Zen Buddhists:
Get real, Grasshopper The sound of one hand clapping Sounds just like one clap
I’ll kill two birds with one stone in this swipe at a tenet of many forms of Hinduism
and Buddhism and – wait, make that three birds! – the New Age/past lives crowd:
Reincarnation? Right – get a life! But next time Come back with some proof
And of course, no Blasphemy Day contest would be complete without a California surfer’s
take on the Christian sacrilege that was heliocentric theory:
Telescope; awesome. So, like, we spin around them? Copernicus, dude!
For several years there have been Blasphemy Day t-shirt slogan contests, inspired in part by a United Nations resolution meant to pacify uber-sensitive Islamists. But that resolution was the very reason I took a “why bother/what’s the point?” attitude toward composing a Blasphemy Day slogan (or even haiku) for Islam. I mean, considering the possible reactions, who is going to wear a shirt poking fun at something that mandates death to fun-pokers?
The oft-quoted [7]Robert Ingersoll was one of the most notable orators and speechmakers and civil rights activists of his time (post-Civil War America)…yet few remember him today. Trained as an attorney, ’twas his oratory tours – speaking on topics as wide-ranging as Reconstruction period to Shakespearean literature to religion to science – that made him famous. He was…”the friend of Presidents, literary giants like Mark Twain, captains of industry like Andrew Carnegie, and leading figures in the arts. He was also beloved of reformers like Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Other Americans considered themselves his enemies, (as he bitterly opposed the Religious Right of his day. He was an early popularizer of Charles Darwin and a tireless advocate of science and reason. More, he argued for the rights of women and African-Americans. Ingersoll also praised the virtues of family and fireside. And he practiced what he preached. Contemporary sources say Ingersoll enjoyed almost idyllic contentment in family life. Opponents frequently despaired of finding anything to disparage in his personal life.” [8]
* * *
May you value your daily habits more than your magic pills; May you prize making memories over conserving energy; May your opponents despair of finding anything to disparage in your personal life; …and may the hijinks ensue.
[2] Translation: Nurture once again trumps nature, in that your lifestyle – your daily habits, from what you eat, how much you sleep, how you move through the world) are more impactful on your health and longevity than any magic pill ever will or could.
[3] “We evolved to conserve energy” – sounds more respectable, doesn’t it?
[6] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
As a longtime reader of (select) advice columns, moiself has come to think that they can open an interesting window into human motivations and behaviors. Over the years I have noticed an irritating pattern to many of the letters sent by advice-seekers: ( trigger alert: massive generalization ahead)
* A man will report his emotions sans even the slightest modicum of introspection
( “Why doesn’t she understand how she’s annoying me?!?!?” );
* A woman will report her emotions and second-guess herself ( she reports an astoundingly annoying thing – a thing that would even piss off Mr. Rogers or the Dali Llama – which was said or done to her, yet asks, “Am I right to be annoyed by ___?” )
“Yes, you can stop second-guessing yourself, sweetie, your boss really is a flaming asshat.”
Aside from the indisputable entertainment value of kitten-bops-enormous-dog’s-nose videos, social media ‘s worth goes up a few notches when you consider how it can be an effective way of transmitting insightful observations and analyses about the politics of personal relationships. One such analysis which I recently came across online (from “The Inner Pattern” ) addressed and partially explained the roots behind the complicated advice-column-letter-dynamic moiself mentions above.
What’s the most damaging thing patriarchy ever pulled off? Convincing everyone that male anger counts as objective reality, but female emotions get filed under subjective instability.
Watch how differently the same emotion gets treated depending on who’s feeling it. He slams a door and it’s “he had a rough day.” She raises her voice once and it’s “she needs to calm down.”
His frustration gets a cause. Hers gets a diagnosis.
We grew up watching men’s reactions get treated as data — something to analyze, respond to, take seriously. Meanwhile women’s reactions got treated as noise — something to soothe, dismiss, or wait out. So, we learned early to run our own feelings through a filter before anyone else even heard them. Is this reasonable enough? Am I being too sensitive? Will this get taken seriously or will it just get me labeled?
That filter isn’t caution. It’s conditioning. It’s decades of being taught that our inner world needs to justify itself before it’s allowed to exist.
Your anger was never irrational. It was just never given the same benefit of the doubt his got by default. (my emphases, FB, first seen by moiself on 9-5-26)
* * *
Department Of There Goes The Neighborhood
Dateline: The morning of August 5; SeaTac airport; Alaska Airline’s first-class lounge; waiting to board our flight to Iceland. Checking out the massive, multi-buffet table breakfast spread set out for the lounge passengers I see that, on the end buffet table, there is a contraption that look like a 3-D printer. This machine is labeled, “pancake printer,” and moiself alerts my family to its presence. None of us actually want a pancake, but we have to see how it works, and so I press its start button.
Five seconds after I start the pancake printer a woman walks past the side of the buffet table and eyes my family with confusion. She is dressed in that casual money style [1] and holds a plate of pastries which looked like they’d have French-sounding names. Meanwhile, my family – MH in his tie-dye tee, son K in his black leather jacket /death metal band shirt, daughter Belle in her in Pacific NW/Columbia lumberjack gear, and me in my CatZilla t-shirt – is crowded around the pancake printer.
I remain standing while the rest of my family bends forward, practically down on their knees, as they watch a blob of (ostensibly) pancake batter make its way down a series of the printer’s criss-crossing cooking treadmills. I make eye contact with the woman, and with widened eyes and a knowing nod of my head, I project (or so I intend) an amiable, joking, yeah right – like we’ve never seen a pancake before vibe. In return, her facial expression and body language…
Oh, how can I put it? So much attitude is succinctly and clearly expressed in the rolling/stink eye stare she flings toward me and mine:
“OMG, who let the Beverly Hillbillies into the first class lounge !?!”
Y’all come back now for the pancake breakfast, y’ hear?
* * *
Department Of Yeah, The Date… September 11 Memories
Twenty-five years ago, since those horrific ( and/yet mesmerizingly cinematic [2] ) terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. So much has changed in our nation; so much of that change is not for the better, and so much of this not-for-better change has been and is attributed to needing to Get Tough On Terrorism®.
I remember the unscripted eloquence of British PM Tony Blair, who interrupted his planned speech on a domestic issue to express his profound shock and sympathy for the American people and pledge his and his country’s full support for his allies.
I remember the stark contrast of Blair’s heartfelt articulateness with the glassy-eyed, aardvark-caught-in-the-headlights expression of the clearly-not-up-to-the-gravity-of-what-lies-ahead “leader” which was George W. Bush. The only solace I had been able to take from GWB’s mistaken ascendency to the presidency was that, up until 9-11, he had seemed destined to be a one-term president.
“Uh, Dad? Dick Cheney? Somebody, tell me what to do…”
But I’ll let the pundits and historians elaborate on that. After all these years, moiself is more interested in the personal stories – select memories, from those at Ground Zero and those of us across the country and out of the country [3] – of we who were affected by the attacks. It is the stories of our reactions, the memories of that impactful, holy-shit-am-I-watching-a-movie-or-is-this-real ?!?!?! day, which we will impart to our children who were too young to remember (or who were born after) the 9-11 attacks.
Moiself will always know that September 11, 2001 was on a Tuesday, because I was in my home office that morning, getting ready to leave for my Tuesday 7 am book club. I gathered my book club items – coffee mug, [4] purse, jacket, the book the group was currently discussing – and stepped out of the office. Before I could head down the hallway to the garage, I looked up at the sound of MH’s voice.
MH was standing in the upstairs hallway, leading against the stairway railing, a confused look on his face. He said he’d been listening to NPR’s Morning Edition, [5] which had just reported that an airplane had hit one of New York City’s World Trade Center Twin Towers. I replied that I remembered reading, several years ago, that a small/private plane had collided with a large sky scraper in some big city – I found that to be an odd and accident, as you’d think the pilot could see such an enormous building in his path…
MH, still confused, said, no, this was a commercial-sized jet, and the report was that less than a half hour later another jet hit the second tower, and “…what kind of air traffic control mixup or other accident could account for…”
I gasped as I interrupted him: “TWO jets? That’s no accident.”
After listening to a few news reports I grimly drove to book group, which met in the pastor’s office of our local UCC church. [6] Every member of the book group showed up, despite or because of having heard the news. We all had the same feeling: we wanted to be together. I was one of the last to arrive, and made my entrance feelings-first:
“Well, we are ALL FUCKED. This is how wars start.”
I forget the name of the book we were discussing. The leader of the group, the pastor, obviously felt some obligation to try to steer us toward the book, even as she was glassy eyed with shock and worry (her beloved sister-in-law was a flight attendant who often worked the American Airlines route from Boston to LAX) . [7] But (of course) we spent most of the morning discussing the attacks, speculating about all that we knew and did not know, and what might happen in the days to come.
Two weeks later, when details of the terrorist plot were being revealed, the book group again set aside our book for the day and mostly discussed the attacks. One of the group members brought in an article he’d been reading, written by a foreign correspondent who’d been researching the recruiting process for Islamist terrorist groups. The article addressed a seemingly unfathomable question: given the human instinct for preserving one’s own life, how do you recruit young men for a suicide mission? The book club member began reading the article’s list of commonalities found among the terrorist recruits:
“…strong ties to hard-core religious beliefs; weak ties to their own families; political idealism; religious and cultural conservatism – and while not necessarily virgins themselves, the young men were attracted by the enticement that their martyrdom would be a righteous deed which would earn them a shortcut to heaven, where they would enjoy the sexual attentions of 72 dark-eyed virgins….”
I heard my own snorting-with-ridicule interruption as if it were coming from somewhere other than my own mouth:
“Yeah, right – that shows you what kind of mindset fanaticism appeals to. What kind of sexually ignorant, inexperienced idiots want – I mean, seventy-two *virgins*? That’s an enticement? Give them just one middle-aged woman who knows what she’s doing…”
I looked around the circle at my book comrades’ wide-eyed, Is that so? expressions, and thought, maybe middle-aged moiself should have kept that to moiself?
* * *
* * *
Department Of Not One Damn Recipe
I recently got a new cookbook, which is one of my favorite things to get. Cookbooks – moiself tends to read livres de cuisine like novels, as in, getting inspiration from more than actually following a recipe step by step. After reading through this new book I found moiself wondering, Why did I order this?
The book’s recipes concentrate on a culture whose cuisine is mostly unfamiliar to me – as do several cookbooks in my collection, so it’s not that. Sourcing many of the key ingredients would be difficult, but…see previous comment. It’s just that there was not one recipe that stood out, not onerecipe that made me think, I’d like to try that, or work up a variant moiself. My get a new one get rid of an old one policy, [8] has kept my cookbook supply steady at seventy-four. And it will remain at 74 as this new book goes into the list of sixty cookbooks I have recycled. [9]
A cigarette pack is one of the few consumer products…that practically insults its own customer. Buy a pack and you are greeted by…blunt declarations that your habit may kill you. Governments force tobacco companies to confess the danger directly on the packaging because the evidence is overwhelming: smoking causes cancer, cardiovascular disease, respiratory illness, and millions of deaths annually….
Yet the satirical image asks a deeply uncomfortable question: if cigarettes require warning labels because they can harm human beings, why do religions—whose histories include crusades, inquisitions, sectarian wars, terrorism, witch hunts, executions for heresy, honor killings, forced conversions, and systematic oppression—escape similar scrutiny?
The meme…exposes an asymmetry in moral outrage. Society treats physical harm as measurable and ideological harm as sacred.
The irony is brutal. A cigarette company cannot advertise without legal constraints, but a preacher can tell children they deserve eternal torture for doubting a doctrine and still be called a moral authority. Tobacco executives are condemned for manipulating fear and addiction, while some religious institutions have built entire civilizations around fear of invisible punishment….
Imagine if holy books carried labels modeled after cigarette warnings:
WARNING: This ideology has been linked to violence, intolerance, and persecution when interpreted literally.
WARNING: Excessive exposure may impair critical thinking and increase susceptibility to authoritarianism.
(from my supply of stickers I carry with me when I travel, in case the hotel room has a Gideon bible or other religious book in the dresser drawer.)
* * *
May you see your emotional reactions as data, not noise; May you practice the get a new one get rid of an old one policy; May you benefit from the experience of even one middle-aged woman who knows what she’s doing; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Like pornography, I know it when I see it, even if I can’t describe it…and so can you.
[2] I watched footage of the two places crashing into the towers, over and over, in a way trying to convince myself that it was real – it seemed like something out of a movie…but CGI was in its infancy then, and a Hollywood special effects crew couldn’t possibly have pulled off such an epic job.
[4] That was the one day a week that I drank coffee in the morning.
[5] Which was his Monday – Friday morning routine, before he got out of bed and we got our kids breakfast and ready for school.
[6] The church MH and I were members of for years, until we came out of the Happy Heathens® closet.
[7] She had no news about her SIL at that time, but later that day was assured that her SIL was not working that day.
[8] Which I apply to most “things,” from cookbooks to household items to clothing….
[9] As in given away to friends and/or family and/or Goodwill.
[10] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
“There’s a wonderful Japanese term, for which there isn’t a precise English translation. The term is Mono No Aware ( mo no no a- war -ey ) loosely means, a sensitivity to ephemera; the bittersweet feeling of seeing things change. Mono no awareis a wistful awareness of the transitory nature of existence. Since everything we see all around us will one day be gone, we must appreciate every millisecond. According to this idea, cherry blossoms are not only beautiful despite only blossoming for two weeks once a year, they are beautiful *because* they only blossom for two weeks once a year.
When you notice yourself fearing or resisting change, perhaps you can remember the concept of mono no aware, and find harmony with the impermanent nature of all things. As Jack Kornfield [1] said, ‘Like a sandcastle, all is temporary. Build it; tend it; enjoy it. And when the time comes, let it go.’ ” ( from Daily Calm morning meditation, 7-22-26 )
* * *
Department Of Apropos Of Nothing…
…or at least the nothing that now seems so important, or at least, memorable. Recently, both a book I was reading and a podcast I was listening to, on the subject of the history of the radical undergrounds [2] in the 1970s-1980s, mentioned an incident in Chicago where the boxer Muhammed Ali ( “the most recognizable man in the world” ) joined in on an action to disrupt the eviction of a poor Black family living in a Chicago tenement. I didn’t know about that incident; while I admired his acting on behalf of that family, hearing about it got me to thinking of the impressions I carried of Ali, and still do, to this day.
My parents were not very interested in boxing. Moiself actively opposed and was confused by its very existence: why were select men given money and medals for doing something that, if they did it in the streets instead of in a sporting arena, they’d be arrested ? [3] I refused to watch any boxing matches as a matter of principle, but when it came to the Ali-Frazier competitions I – like the entire country, it seemed – was well aware of the pre-matches hype and the post-matches analysis.
When it came to that classic rivalry – the three Frazier-Ali matches known as The Fight of The Century (1971) and the rematches Super Fight II (1974) and the Thrilla in Manila – my parents, like most Whites of that era (so it was assumed), supported Joe Frazier. Joe Frazier was shy, respectful, softspoken, and humble; those traits of his were ridiculed by Ali and his supporters as being more palatable to White people whom, they sneered, saw Frazier as a Good Negro®.
I admired Ali for how he stood up for himself and was willing to go to jail for his principles. I’d never heard of a Black man talking back to White people like Ali did. It wasn’t so much that Ali talked back, it was that he unapologetically stood up for himself. I lovedthat. And I hate hate hated the way Ali talked about, and to, Joe Frazier.
Joe Frazier supported Ali ( both publicly and financially ) after Ali refused induction into the US Army and was subsequently stripped of his title, banned from boxing, and threatened with jail. Frazier even lobbied the boxing powers that were ( and President Nixon! ) for Ali’s being able to return to the sport. Here is what Frazier got in return: Ali boasted about how “pretty” he himself was, and contrasted his own handsome visage [4] with the features of Frazier, called Frazier “ignorant” and “dumb” and “ugly,” and actually compared Frazier to a gorilla.
Those astoundingly racist epithets would’ve been called out as being just that if they had been uttered by a White person instead of being brashly spewed by the self-proclaimed [5] “Greatest.” You could try to excuse Ali’s taunting by saying it was part of the boxing culture’s pre-match hype; but Frazier didn’t, and never forgave Ali for the taunting and bullying he (and his family) endured from Ali supporters.
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899) was the celebrated agnostic orator of the 19th century, sparking what became known as The Golden Age Of Freethought. A Civil War officer, abolitionist, civil rights and women’s rights advocate, author, and skilled orater, Ingersoll’s lectures attracted thousands, and he was the person most responsible for the flowering of Freethought in the USA.
Although I knew *of* Ingersoll I did not encounter Ingersoll’s vow until after my own coming out as religion-free. Moiself got goosebumps, the first time I read this essay of his, to think of how the experiences of a someone of over 100 years ago so paralleled those of my own. It’s as if he was emptying my thoughts onto his pages.
The *news,* was not what Ingersoll realized he was convinced of ( e.g., the natural, not supernatural, origins of our world; the fact that religions are mythologies ) but rather of his ability – his*need,* his obligation, even – to express this openly.
When I became convinced that the Universe is natural – that all the ghosts and gods are myths – there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with light, and all the bolts, and bars, and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf, or a slave. There was for me no master in all the wide world, not even in infinite space. I was free –
* free to think, to express my thoughts; * free to live to my own ideal; * free to live for myself and those I loved; * free to use all my faculties, all my senses; * free to spread imagination’s wings; * free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope; * free to judge and determine for myself; * free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all the “inspired” books
that savages have produced,
and all the barbarous legends of the past; * free from popes and priests; * free from all the “called” and ‘set apart;’ * free from sanctified mistakes and holy lies; * free from the fear of eternal pain; * free from the winged monsters of the night; * free from devils, ghosts, and gods; for the first time, I was free.
There were no prohibited places in all the realms of thought – no air, no space, where fancy could not spread her painted wings – no chains for my limbs – no lashes for my back – no fires for my flesh – no master’s frown or threat – no following another’s steps – no need to bow, or cringe, or crawl, or utter lying words. I was free. I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously, faced all worlds.
And then my heart was filled with gratitude, with thankfulness, and went out in love to all the heroes, the thinkers who gave their lives for the liberty of hand and brain – for the freedom of labor and thought – to those who fell in the fierce fields of war, to those who died in dungeons bound with chains – to those who proudly mounted scaffold’s stairs – to those whose bones were crushed, whose flesh was scarred and torn – to those by fire consumed – to all the wise, the good, the brave of every land, whose thoughts and deeds have given freedom to the sons of men. And then I vowed to grasp the torch that they had held, and hold it high, that light might conquer darkness still.”
* * *
May you remember, or soon discover, the first time you realized that you are free; May you know the wistful joy of appreciating ephemera; May you feel free to spread imagination’s wings; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Jack Kornfield is a Jewish-American writer and teacher of the Vipassana style of Theravada Buddhism. He holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Burma and India, and has been teaching mindfulness meditation since 1974.
[2] The Weather Underground, The Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army.
[4] Which, as more than one White and Black pundit pointed out, was the result of having some European ancestry in his lineage – specifically, an Irish ancestor from County Clare.
[5] “To be a great champion you must believe you are the best. If you’re not, pretend you are.” “I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was.” Muhammed Ali In His Own Words.
[6] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
MH and moiself recently received this text from daughter Belle:
“Mom and Dad; you guys raised me to be such a safe driver that I am being urged to drive more dangerously by my friends.”
She then sent a copy of a message from a coworker…
…and added, to us:
“but don’t worry, you also raised me to not give in to peer pressure “
* * *
Department Of The Things We Rarely Do Via Venues Which Could End Up On Social Media
That would be tell the truth about knotty issues – truths that may not present ourselves and/or our loved ones in the best of light.
Sub-Department Of The Unflattering Memories I Did Not Write
On The Post Right Before And Then Right After My Late Mother’s Birthday… [1]
That was because it felt wrong to complain about her on or near that day…although my truth-telling was not so much complaining as it is realizing.
Department Of Self-Analysis
Dateline: a weekday some time ago; circa 7:30 am-ish; morning walk while listening to NSQ ( No Stupid Questions ) podcast. It was a repeat episode: How Can You Stop Comparing Yourself With Other People?[2] The main topic the hosts [3] were discussing was – wait for it – comparing yourself to other people. They of course mentioned social media, where it’s very easy to feel yourself dull and/or unfulfilled [4] when you look at the posts of other people, and see their pictures of them and their well-mannered, high-achieving children travelling to beautiful, exotic places …
These images came through my earbuds as I was about to take (and then post) a picture of the morning sunlight glistening off the top of the waves at Manzanita beach. I snickered at moiself, and resolved to do my part to fight this trend: Instead of posting a picture of this enviable costal sight I’ll return home, take a picture of the cat litter box, and post that instead. But before I could make a note to moiself to actually do that, the NSQ hosts distracted me with their comments on aspects of Social Comparisons Theory[5] (specifically upward and downward comparisons).
“Having more fun than you’ll ever have – I mean, wish you were here.”
“…the upward comparison is what people worry about with social media. You go on Instagram and it’s always sunset, and the wind is always blowing just so, and everyone looks amazing…. that is the dark side of upward social comparison. ‘…
schadenfreude, the idea of taking pleasure in somebody else’s misery, is kind of a form of downward social comparison. When we look down on other people and that, at least temporarily, boosts our self-esteem…”
The talk of upward/downward comparisons brought back a not-so-pleasant memory. Since I have included in this space ( in, e.g., The Summers I’m Not Forgetting, 6-28-19 ) an epic moment of my mother’s parenting (making me my favorite “fresh” apricot pie for my December birthday), equal time will now be given to an epic parenting failure of hers.
Backstory: From junior high through high school, the girls in my circle of friends were good-looking. As in, ranging from beautiful/cute to down-right-gorgeous, in both the face and “figure” departments. I didn’t befriend them for that reason; that was merely a fact, which was born out by another fact: they each had several of our guy schoolmates either lusting after or sincerely smitten with them. Moiself, I had conversations, and phone calls. Initiated by those guys. About my friends. With the phone calls, it would typically take the guy who called me many minutes (sometimes over an hour – no exaggeration) to get around to the real reason for his call.
The most memorable of those calls went on for two hours, during which time Guy Friend® AC and I discussed, among other pointless diversions topics, the possible interpretations of the rock group Chicago’s song, 25 or 6 to 4. [6] AC was the most prolific phone caller: from his first call, [7] to every single time he called, I found out I had to talk around the reason he’d called me. If I asked him to directly confirm why he’d called, it would take even longer to get to the point – I would finally get around to dragging out of him what he was really after. [8] Which was always something along the lines of: was (my friend) RR going to be at the JV basketball game after school tomorrow, and if not, could I figure out a way to get her to stay after school and watch the game with me, so AC could at least see her there and maybe even get up the courage to talk to her by coming up to the stands after the game to talk with me ( he had no qualms in doing that because, he said, I was “easier to talk to” )?
After that 2 hr marathon of a call I had a case of dry mouth and brain. I schlumped into our kitchen, shaking my head to (I thought) moiself as I reached into a cupboard for a water glass. My mother was at the sink doing something. [9] She noted the puzzled look on my face and asked me what was up. I told her about AC’s most recent phone call (she was aware of his series of calls), and my other conversations with male friends about my female friends whom they had crushes on/wanted to date. I told her that I found it all so…odd, and silly. I couldn’t understand the obsessions; certainly, my friends had positive – and in some cases, outstanding – qualities, which is why I was friends with them. These guys are missing so much! They’re intimidated by, for example, LM’s and RR’s beauty or MB’s body…if they’d just talk to them, they’d see how much more they have to offer than their…uh, pulchritudinous-ness….
I was just sharing (what I thought of as) the cluelessness of my male friends and acquaintances. My mother either misheard or misunderstood the situation, and jumped to the conclusion that instead of being bemused on behalf of my friends I was disappointed by the fact that moiself was not the object of the same kind of attention. In an oh-so-awkward, cringe-worthy, kinda-joking-but-kinda not manner, she began to give me advice I’d not asked for, which began with: Perhaps I needed to find myself a less attractive group of girlfriends?….
Oh yes, she did.
I didn’t let her finish all of her thoughts. I walked away, once again gobsmacked by how someone I’d lived with for all of my life could seemingly not know me at all. Was I adopted by aliens, or I was I the alien, whom my parents had adopted?
A tender motherly insight, shared with her daughter:
If you hang out with homely girls you’ll look more attractive by comparison.
Gotcha. Message received.
Gee, thanks Mom!
When contemplating the phone call scenarios, never-had-I-ever thought about my own appearance vis-à-vis that of my friends’ until *you* brought it up. But now, I certainly (and forever, gawdammit, ’cause that’s how memory works [10] ) will.
Decades ago, when I first heard (what was to be a series of comments from friends and family) someone mention my mother’s and moiself’s facial similarities, I blurted out, “Yep, I got my mother’s bones – she’s 65 now, and I’d like to give them back.” My mother and I were the two in our family (of six) who looked the most alike, in terms of general facial structure. When I look back on her boner-of-a-mother-daughter-moment, it is because of this physical similarity [11] that I can forgive her ham-handed comments. I interpreted them as a reflection of her insecurities about *her* own appearance.
All these years later I realize how significant her blundering “counsel” was to me at the time. Fortunately, all these years later it doesn’t sting with freshness of that moment, but now and then I still feel the wispy, wistful regrets, re the fact that she never really knew me…and it’s too late now. There can be no answers to the questions I would like to pose to her, given the chance.
Also, once and again/as she was wont to do, my mother had failed at Communications 101. That could have been an intimate, kitchen-sink-conversational-moment between the two of us. I was not asking for her guidance; why couldn’t she have just listened, instead of providing the totally unsolicited (and truly wretched, ego-deflating) advice that in order to make myself seem more attractive – which BTW was not my goal in life (which she would have known had she paid the least bit of attention to *who* I was, and what kind of person I was striving to be) – I should hang out with homely females, or at least ones even less attractive than moiself.
For that incident, and a few others which followed over the years, I am soooooograteful for not growing up in the world of social media. I mostly put that situation – and my mother’s unintentionally [12] yet nonetheless degrading comment – out of my mind. Although it later reared its ugly head several times. [13]
Particular head-rearing examples from the After College Years®: on more than one occasion a man with whom I had a passing acquaintance/lives-down-the-apartment-hallway/met at a mutual friend’s party/co-worker kind of relationship, asked me about a friend/acquaintance/coworker of mine (or in one case, my younger sister). As in, he found her attractive and wanted my advice re asking her out.
Not for the first time I was bemused by the request, and not for the first time, my answer was hardly earth-shatteringly original: I encouraged him to approach her directly. Strike up conversations in the hallway and/or at the mailboxes; pay attention to cues…DUDE, just ask her. And not for the first time, such basic, straightforward advice of mine was countered with, You just don’t get it, followed by his confession that he found talking to “girls” difficult, to the point of being intimidated. “But, we are, at this very moment, are talking,” I would point out. To which he and all the other he’s over the years, would respond with a version of:
“Yeah but, this is different. I don’t know what it is,
but I can’t talk to a girl I find attractive.
Sure, I can talk with *you,* no problem….”
Each time it happened, I decided not to further enlighten the clueless Date Fail Men – [14] all of whom, with their obliviously demeaning comments, reminded me of my mother, in ways I didn’t see at the time.
Another reminder came from the source itself, from a letter my mother sent me when I’d been married for less than two years. Not long after MH and I had visited my parents at their home in Santa Ana, I received a four-page letter (two pages of a yellow legal pad, written on both sides) from her, the gist of which is that she and my father had found my then-current hairstyle unattractive.
Really. Four pages.
Some of the page space was devoted to examples of people she knew (mostly her age) who’d found a flattering hairstyle in their twenties and stuck with it. [15] Was it a matter of money, she posited? If so, she offered that she and my dad would be happy to pay a competent stylist…. Also, after my and MH’s visit, she felt moved to get out her favorite picture of me, the one where I’m waving goodbye to her and my father after they’d helped me move into the UC Davis dorms the fall of my freshman year. How sad, she wrote, that I now looked “ten years older” than I did in that picture.
Holy epitome of obliviousness. I look ten years older? Uh, yeah, I’ll take that. Mom – I am, as of this writing, almost *fourteen years older* than I was when that picture was taken. Cutting/styling my hair in *any* way ain’t gonna change that.
(And that wasn’t the worst comment/jab. She also wrote that the way I was currently wearing/styling my hair wasn’t how I had it when MH first met me…and implied that if I looked then how I looked now, he wouldn’t have been attracted to/married me).
After I got over my initial WTF!?!?!? shock, I xeroxed her letter, circled and numbered the major points she made ( so that she could see – and not deny – what she’d written), and wiped the floor with her obtuseness addressed them all in a letter of my own, which I attached to the copy of her letter. I was brutally upfront: Your opinion about my hair is the forest you can’t see for all the straggly trees in your way. Imagine how I felt, getting a four-letter page from my parents essentially telling me how old and unattractive they find me.
I reread the letter one more time before I sent my response, and realized what was at the root of the hairstyle red herring. Of their four children, I was the one who lived farther away from my parents. Several times I’d discussed with my siblings how, when I saw our parents in person, I was very cognizant that they were getting older. [16] This can be jarring for an adult child to realize, but it is also the Natural Order of Things ®. What we don’t often think about is that it can happen the other way. When I’d made the trip to SoCal (which prompted the haircut-diatribe letter) it had been almost a year since I’d seen my parents. For whatever reasons, I looked older to them. Now, if a parent notices that their adult child is getting older, what does that say about *their* own aging?
Here is the gist of how I ended the response to my mother, followed by my signoff:
I get it, Mom, even though you obviously don’t. Since we share some bone structure/facial similarity, if you notice that I seem older to you, well then, what does that say about *you*? I hate the be the one to break it to you, but you are – surprise! – getting older. And you need to deal with whatever issues you have about that before dumping your own insecurities onto one of your children.
I love you because you’re my mother, but I don’t like you very much right now.
She telephoned me as soon as she received my letter. She apologized, said she was so embarrassed for having sent the letter; she asked me to throw it away, and she promised that she would throw away her copy.
I can’t remember how I phrased my bald-faced lie. [17] I agreed with her request, even though I had NO intention of throwing that letter away – Are you effin’ kidding me? This is exhibit A. No way was I giving her the nonexistence of the letter as a proof of her likely denial ( “I never said, would never say, such a thing” ! ), should the subject ever come up again.
“If the veil of self-condemnation, inherited shame, religious fear, and psychological self-rejection were finally pulled back, we might discover something terrifying to systems built on control: that human beings are not cosmic mistakes in need of metaphysical cover-up. We are expressions of existence itself, carrying immense depth, creativity, consciousness, relational capacity, beauty, and becoming within us.”
May your safe driving inspire (or intimidate) your friends; May you talk to people you’re crushing on directly, instead of going through mutual friends; May you share the hidden meaning (if you figure it out) behind Chicago’s 25 or 6 to 4; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Those blog posts would be either the last Friday of June or first Friday of July.
[3] Psychologist and author Angela Duckworth and economist and Author Stephen Dubner.
[4] The FOMO experience…which sometimes seems to be the primary purpose of social media.
[5] Nutshell presentation: Social comparison helps us evaluate ourselves by comparing our traits and abilities to others. The upside: – upward comparisons may push us to improve; downward comparisons make us feel better about ourselves. Either way, comparing ourselves can also lead to misleading judgments about our abilities.
[6] (aside from it’s amazing guitar solo, what was the song really about?)
[7] We were somewhat friendly and were in a couple of classes together. The first call came as a surprise, as he’d never asked for my phone number. He must have gotten it from that retro form of information dissemination, the phone book.
[8] I never hung up on him; the calls – thanks in great part to MY conversational skills –wandered into some really interesting and entertaining territories (e.g. music and art and politics)…. Or so I thought when I was seventeen.
[9] Not the dishes – that was my after-dinner chore.
[10] Many a psychological and/or neurological study has shown that “…insults linger longer than praise or compliments….” (“Spoken Insults Stir Up More Brain Activity Than Compliments And Linger For Longer, Too,” sciencealert, 9-4-22), and that humiliation is the strongest emotion we can feel (“Does This Brain Research Prove That Humiliation Is the Most Intense Human Emotion? Wired.com)
[11] Which I always found ironic, once it surfaced, as we were the two least alike (re interests, personalities, worldview) in the family.
[18] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
Department Of Things I Love To Say ( Or Even Think )
This one came to me after returning from an early morning walk and passing the fruit tree in our front yard: “It’s time to pare the pears.”
Gotta make sure the branches stay healthy and will be able to do their holiday duty, supporting the Partridges we host in our pear tree every Yuletide.
* * *
Department Of What Would Sir Paul Do?
If it had been anyone else’s post, I might’ve sent a private message along the lines of,
“Check your account. I think you’ve been hacked. Someone posing as you posted an embarrassing, cringe-worthy, face-palmingly clueless, humble-brag-of-a-tone-deaf…”
Why did I keep reading after the first sentence, of theyou’ve-gotta-be-fucking-joking-but-no-apparently-it’s-serious post I saw on a friend’s social media page? I’m still asking moiself that question: Department Of Why Didn’t I Just Scroll Past After The First Line… Like I’ve Done 1000 Times Before?
As for the post’s last sentence/request: “I would love to hear what others have experienced!”
Really. I really doubt it.
I loathe that which makes me experience one of my least favorite states of mind: being embarrassed on behalf of someone else (if you know what I mean and I think you do)…
…regardless of how strong, or so-weak-as-to-be-essentially-nonexistent their connection is to moiself .
Readers of this blog, and anyone spending a modicum of time on Social Media Sites, likely have at least one acquaintance among their group of SMS friends fitting this criteria: they are someone whose friend request you accepted on behalf of a childhood/long-ago friendship you had with them, even though your present relationship is for all intents and purposes nonexistent, or merely social media functional…. [1]
So, why not, Department Of I Should Just Let It Go, Right?
Instead…
Department Of Yep, I’m Gonna Do It
A burning bridge is perhaps not the best, or most apt, idiom for the situation. But for someone whom I (used to) respect, who posts such claptrap and then solicits responses…are they to get off Scott-free?
BTW: why is the expression Scott free, and not Andrew-free, or Thomas-free or Ian-free? A brief bit o ‘web research shows me that, first of all, the phrase is actually “scot-free” (one “t; not capitalized”), and is used to imply that one had escaped punishment, blame, or penalty for a wrongdoing. The idiom goes way back; it refers to medieval European financial penalties and has no relation to, say, a tax cheat named Scott.
Yet again, I digress.
Here is the claptrap post that frosted my butt:
“I thought it might be kind of cool to share some of the wonderful things that God has done for me in my life. Here’s one of my favorites:
Several years ago, at a very challenging point in my life, the upper hinge of a frequently used kitchen cupboard broke in half when I went to open it. Not knowing what to do and feeling utterly overwhelmed, I asked God to please send me some help for it. I assumed He would soon bring across my path someone who could fix it, a common enough answer to prayer. But a few minutes later, as I went about my tasks in the kitchen, I gingerly went to open the broken cupboard, only to find that the metal hinge was now completely fixed and restored to an unbroken state. My Miracle of the Hinge 💖
I would love to hear what others have experienced!”
Yep. That’s it.
Again, regarding that last sentence: Unless the what others have experienced would be self-delusional -reinforcing, along the lines of the proverbial choir singing to itself ( “Jesus found my lost car keys when I was late for the PTA meeting *and* removed that pesky grass stain from my husband’s trousers!” ), it’s strongly likely the poster really doesn’t want know what others are experiencing.
The poster is someone I knew from…
…and our current relationship/only point of contact for the past decade plus is that we’re social media friends in, as I earlier mentioned, The Way That One Often Does® with old friends who have morphed into acquaintances. It’s because of posting like the above that I’ve had to silence this person’s posts every once in a while. But this one….it felt patronizing to *not* respond in some way.
But Paul’s currently on tour and doesn’t return my texts. So, here’s the reply [2] I wanted to make, but didn’t:
Are you fucking kidding me?
* All over the planet, sincere and desperate people are appealing to their god(s).
* Many (if not the majority) of these prayers for intercession/assistance are directed to the deity whose belief in/worship of they share with you (aka Yaweh; “The Christian” god; Jesus Christ ).
* Many (if not the majority) of these prayers for intercession/assistance are asking for help in situations far more dire and consequential than that of malfunctioning kitchen hardware. They’re asking for help in surviving/preventing/healing from
– chronic, fatal, debilitating, painful and humiliating illnesses; – horrendous, disfiguring and disabling accidents; – vicious physical and sexual assaults; – persecutions based on religious, gender, sexual orientation and civil rights identities; – soul-crushing betrayals by loved ones; – death and destruction from hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and other natural disasters; – school children gunned down in their classroom; – the devastation caused by wars, armed conflicts, and acts of terrorism
There are recordings of terrified passengers on the Sept 11 United Airlines flight 93, praying with a 911 operator, a family member, and even telephone answering machines…. Despite those prayers for help – as heartfelt and sincere as ever such a plea could be, considering the circumstances – their hijacked plane plummeted down, killing all aboard.
Your god, [3] whom you believe has the ability to act in the natural world (which you believe it has created), has dropped the ball on countless of these and other “please send me help for…” requests – requests which so many of my friends and family and neighbors and coworkers have shared with me. These people are/were true believers in your same god, and had to/have to juggle and justify the devastating silence from that same god, as they, their loved ones, and the entire world continue to suffer.
Your fellow Christians call out for help to your god, both alone and in groups, as the false comfort of scriptural promises lie flaccid on the pages of their holy book. [4] Their god, your god, idly stands by, effectively deaf when it comes to rescuing the displaced Nigerian Christian woman, who screams Someone help me! Help me Jesus! as she is beaten and gang-raped in the refugee camp…and yet this god somehow found time to save you from the hassle of your allegedly broken cabinet hinge.
‘Twas interesting to do a bit of self-analysis on my reaction to this post, on why moiself ultimately decided I needed to write about it. Is it because I used to be a part of that world – or, at least I let everyone think that I was – and I carry guilt over not speaking up sooner/more often at the ultimately harmful (even if surface-seemingly silly) ideas that were propagated by it?
Translation: I should’ve called bullshit more often than I did, and I didn’t.
May you examine your criteria for what constitutes a miracle; May you take Sir Paul’s advice better than I did; May you remember that it’s never too early to prep a soft landing spot
for any partridges that may want to nest in your pear tree; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] As in, every now and then they do post some adorable animal videos.
[2] language toned down, if you can fucking believe that.
[3] Whom you believe exists so I will write as if it does…but I do not capitalize the name god, seeing as how it is not a proper name…and even if your deity existed its name would not likely be, god.
[4] “Whatever you will ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. (John 14:13; World English Bible; ) “Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth concerning anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in Heaven.” (Matthew 18:19 KJV )
[5] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
Moiself changed that from, “As I age,” when I remembered that As We Age was the name of a mail order catalog with which the-gods-I-don’t-believe-in pranked me, by sending said catalog to me a on a quarterly basis. The catalog’s pages were filled with pictures of women (in their late twenties-early thirties pretending to be in their fifties and sixties) alternatively modeling sensible beach coverups, loud floral-patterned loungewear and the like.
Moiself was mildly intrigued by receiving this publication, and flipped through the first issue I received. Doing so provided me with several minutes of petty satisfactions, as in, getting all snarky re the catalog’s, Oh crap you’re getting older, “be your best“ products, all counting on proving their worthiness for purchase by magnifying the cultural current/subtext of Celebrate Yourself ® Because You’re Going Downhill And You’ll Slide Even Further Unless You Use This Rejuvenation Cream/Powder/Supplement/Slimming regimen/Thigh Tightener….
Then, in the very middle of the catalog, I stumbled upon two pages of…well, dildos. Some of them were described euphemistically as “massage wands” while the other Bobs [1] and selfie sticks were more wink-wink-nudge-nudge about it.
Yet again, I digress (which, BTW, happens as we age to everyone).
As I live my life, as I observe myself and my fellow members of my species – what (IMO) “works” and what doesn’t; what I admire and what I frown upon; what I think is helpful, both personally and society, and what I think is no fucking way are you serious? – I have developed an OSITY file.
Clarification: The OSITY file isn’t a material folder of any kind. Rather, it is a mental accounting of the characteristics I find essential to Being A Good Person® – characteristics I hope to maintain and hone…most of which I think can be broadly classified into two categories: curiosity, and generosity.
Yep; I think that covers just about everything.
* * *
Department Of I Don’t Mind…
That when I’m looking for something on youtube, somehow – most likely because The Internet ® knows that I have the heart and soul of a 11-year-old – my search window defaults to this:
* * *
Department of Employee Of The Month
It’s that time, to bestow that prestigious award upon moiself. Again. The need for which I wrote about here. [2]
“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.” ( François-Marie Arouet, better known by his pen name, Voltaire [4] )
“If something does not look odd, it is less likely to be investigated.
That is precisely why ‘normalcy’ serves as such a protective covering for so many patriarchal institutions.” ( Cynthia Enloe, American author, political theorist, and professor, quote from her book,
Seriously!: Investigating Crashes and Crises as If Women Mattered )
* * *
May you cultivate your own osityfile; May you maintain (or at least appreciate) the heart and soul of an eleven year old; May you judge people by their questions and not (necessarily) their answers; …and may the hijinks ensue.
[2] Several years ago, MH received a particularly glowing performance review from his workplace. As happy as I was for him when he shared the news, it left me with a certain melancholy I couldn’t quite peg. Until I did.
One of the many “things” about being a writer (or any occupation working freelance at/from home) is that although you avoid the petty bureaucratic policies, bungling bosses, mean girls’ and boys’ cliques, office politics, and other irritations inherent in going to a workplace, you also lack the camaraderie and other social perks that come with being surrounded by your fellow homo sapiens. No one praises me for fixing the paper jam in the copy machine, or thanks me for staying late and helping the new guy with a special project, or otherwise says, Good on you, sister. Once I realized the source of the left-out feelings, I came up with a small way to lighten them.
[3] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
[4] Voltaire was “… a French Enlightenment writer, philosopher (philosophe), satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit and his criticism of Christianity (especially of the Catholic Church) and of slavery, Voltaire was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.” (Wikipedia entry)
Because moiself be doing a rerun. Similar to the monthly Blast From The Past® feature, [1] this is a blog segment I ran across while looking for something else. Specifically, one from ten years ago last month, found while I was lamenting this year’s lack of April Fool’s Day pranks:
Department Of Fun With Student Drivers
Dateline: Tuesday, early a.m., out for my morning walk, waiting to cross a street. As I watched the cross traffic’s stoplight and saw the green-changing-to-yellow light – the pedestrian’s rewarding indicator that it will soon be your turn to cross the street – I noticed a white sedan slowing down much more deliberately than is usual yet still not managing to come to a complete stop until the car’s front bumper was just a tad into the crosswalk.
My light changed to green, I began to cross the street, and saw the telltale red and yellow logo for a local driving academy on the car’s driver’s door. A student driver?
Excellent.
I looked inside the car: the student in the driver’s seat sat ramrod straight, an expression of nervous anticipation drenching her face. Her white-knuckled hands gripped the steering wheel and her gaze was fixed ahead. Her instructor was looking down at a clipboard he held; neither of them seemed aware of my approaching presence.
My instinctive reaction was to throw myself onto the hood of the car and scare the living pee-pee out of both of them.
How I managed to restrain myself, I’ll never know.
But, I did. Okay?
Had I gone through with my whimsical notion, ‘twould have made a good – dare I say, even legendary? – April Fool’s Day prank.
You gotta love a day that is devoted to honoring and encouraging practical jokes, hoaxes, and pranks both well- and feebly-played.
The origins of April Fools Day’s are not completely agreed upon by historians, and have been variously attributed. What is agreed upon is that many cultures, going back to the ancient Romans and Egyptians, have set aside days for celebrating jokes and pranksters. Perhaps, as some people have speculated, there’s just something about the day’s timing – the fading of winter and the blooming of spring, which lends itself to the observance of light-hearted frivolity.
I can recall only a few of the pranks I’ve played on friends, family and co-workers over the years. The memories are silly but fond, and include:
* Sneaking a package of Hydrox cookies [2] from the family snack drawer and replacing all the cream fillings in the second row of cookies with toothpaste.
* Showing two positive pregnancy test dipsticks to a newbie Planned Parenthood co-worker and telling her I was pregnant with twins.
* Adding just a couple of drops of blue food coloring to the carton of nonfat milk in my parent’s refrigerator.
* Calling my father at his office and convincing him (if only temporarily) that someone had bought a raffle ticket in his name for the local animal shelter’s fundraising event, he’d won the raffle, and could he please let the shelter know when he was coming to claim his prize: an English Mastiff and a week’s supply – a 100 lb. bag of kibble – of the dog’s food. [3]
“I don’t get it. Why would that be funny?”
* Swapping my and my siblings’ framed high school graduation pictures, which hung in my parent’s hallway, with pictures of the members of Led Zeppelin.
* Replacing the hard-boiled egg in my sister’s school lunch bag with a raw egg.
* Cutting my finger, smearing my blood on the scissors in co-worker Roger’s cubicle, leaving a note on my computer saying I had been threatened by Roger and feared for my life, then faking my own death and leaving town.
Oops, that’s right – I never got around to implementing the last one.
As pleasurable as it is to pull off an epic prank, it can be equally fun, IMHO, to have a great prank played on your own self. I hope y’all have a Happy April Fools’ Day…and I hope that I do not regret having made that previous declaration. ( excerpts; 4-1-2016;The Instinct I’m Not Obeying)
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Department Of Seeing Yourself Through Other Eyes…Or, Not?
Dateline: Monday morning; scrolling through the previous night’s Nehalem BBQ posts. The BBQ is an online bulletin board of sorts. As per its mission statement:
The BBQ is a free public service provided to the citizens of the Oregon North Coast. It is dedicated to the promotion of community building by establishing a website forum whereon citizens may announce important matters and events, offer goods and services, express needs and provide information of general interest. [4]
Moiself clicks on the post that catches my eye – the one titled, North Coast Pinball Updates May 2026. North Coast Pinball is arguably my favorite beach business. I always spend a couple of hours there at least once a week. [5] I adore the owner’s community spirit, his generous, welcoming personality, his freethinking/humanist, feminist politics…and has NCP really been open for five years? Here is how the post begins:
“Fun fact: we’ve been doing this thing for five years now. Sold 562 used pinballs and 1272 stickers. Rebuilt more flippers than I quite know how to count. Gave away *so* many mystery tokens. Maybe you’ve seen our chess set in the corner; guess how many pieces have gone missing in five years?
None! Well, there was that knight who wandered off one day but it came back before I noticed it was gone. [6] Y’all are the best. Thanks for making NCP NCP.
Oh! Also in those five years I wrote a book about the place, which should be out later this month. You can learn more about that at www.mysterytoken.pub.”
I assume the post was written by NCP’s owner, with whom I am on a friendly/first name basis (moiself also assumes (1) he is writing the book; (2) trhe book will be self-published).
Wondering how/if he will write about those of us who might be considered regulars of NCP, I follow that link, which leads to this teaser/excerpt: (my emphases):
Can You Feel It?
stories from North Coast Pinball
“…another day, you may write in your journal that three people, who did not know each other a month ago, who live in three different towns, and who met each other playing pinball in your place, are now out on a hike together. Your journal will reflect a feeling that the purpose of your life has been fulfilled.”
“…five years later you’ll write a weird little book. A book that’s not so much about pinball as it is about how it feels at North Coast Pinball in Nehalem, Oregon….
“A book about what it’s like for the five-year-old peering through the window as you prepare to open. What it’s like for your ten-year-old regular, back once again to improve on his high score. What it’s like for the sullen teenager, dragged against their will on an obligatory family trip….
What it’s like for the sixty-something beach bum who comes in weekly for $20 in tokens, plays each game exactly once, and leaves her leftovers in the community donation jar….
“Holy crap, that’s me,” I blurt out, first to moiself, then to MH. I read the underlined section of the post to him, then wonder how the book’s author can accurately write a *nonfiction* book about “what it’s like” for the five-year-old, or the sullen teenager, or the beach bum, without interviewing said characters. [7]
My reaction surprises moiself. That (underlined) pretty much describes what I do when I’m there. I am sixty-something; I do frequent NCP weekly (when in town); I do get $20 in tokens; I do play the games once…but sometimes twice (and not all of them – I avoid the easy ones/the one-token-per-game ones…and when I win a free game I don’t play it again – I like to leave the free game available for a kid to discover); I do make sure to not use up all my tokens so that I may leave the leftoversin the community donation jar.
“But,” I confess to MH, “I don’t know how I feel about being described as a ‘beach bum.’ ” ( Although I realize that my ubiquitous attire – yoga pants and t- shirts and OR rain/sun hat – are casual to the max and could tilt perceptions of moiself toward the latter category.)
MH points out to me that the description could fit many people at the coast. [8] Nice try, honey. I’m not a vain person (what would be the point?). [9] Still…. Beach bum is one of those phrases that could mean colorful character to some people, or one-step-above-a-grungy/homeless person-and/or-those-men-in-their-eighties-with-their-pants-hiked-up-to-their-nipples-who-patrol-the-beach-with-metal-detectors to other folks. [10]
Beach bum. Okay; it’s two words. Until I have evidence otherwise I’ll take the description to be one that is meant with fondness. And although I’ll maintain my smugness re self-published books, I will buy a copy when it comes out.
My high score in one of my fave pinball machines, which I rented from NCP and got to have in our home (terrorizing/entertaining the neighbors) for three months a couple of years ago.
May you have unending patience with apprentice drivers; May you be entertained by how you might be described by others; May your you enjoy religion-free casseroles; and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
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[1] Wherein yours truly posts a segment from a blog of the second Friday of years ago….which I just did last week. Lazy ass writer that I am.
[2] Anyone else remember the precursor (and competitor) to Oreos?
[3] My sisters making muffled barking sounds to approximate background animal shelter noise was a great help in pulling off this prank.
[4] To post on this BBQ you must be a subscriber or non-subscriber who operates a business on, lives on or has a second home on the Oregon North Coast.
[5] …when I’m at the coast. That time has been rare since my November foot surgery and now since MH and I cannot easily get to Manzanita unless we can arrange the complicated care for our elderly, kidney-disease stricken cat…
[6] Okay…there is some missing info here. How did you know it was gone, if you didn’t notice it was gone, and then it was back and so it wasn’t gone?
[8] Perhaps…but how many of them play pinball at the NCP place and in the manner described?
[9] (that would be an exercise in futility – in vain?)
[11] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
Department Of Not One Damn Popover Was Ever Baked In Our Home
Moiself has nothing against popovers. I didn’t really know what they were before I got married, then had little interest afterward when someone described them to me as dinner rolls on steroids. Perhaps I had a lingering case of PPA (Premarital Popover Aversion)…?
MH’s and my wedding anniversary was this past week. Somehow, this memory popped (sorry) [1] to mind:
Dateline: However many years ago; some place in Palo Alto, CA; wedding reception of MH and moiself. I have been roped into small talk with a large man, one of the many Perfectly Nice People Whom I’ve Never Met Before And Whom MH Knows Only Vaguely Because They Are Relatives/Friends Of His Parents ® .
This PNPWINMBAWMKOVBTAR/FOHPis an older man who decides to engage me in conversation (translation: I listen to him talk about) the wedding present he and his wife got us: a popover pan.
Popover pan, sans popovers
A popover pan. This is the first time I’ve heard of such a specific piece of baking equipment (the Parnells were not a popover-consuming family). “I said, ‘Let’s get them a popover pan,’ “ this man tells me, recreating the pivotal gift-giving conversation he had with his wife. He also tells me, with evident pride in overturning the stereotypical, who-buys-the-wedding gift assumptions, that *he himself* volunteered to purchase and wrap the pan! And that he was happy to do so! Because, “I always loved it when my wife made me popovers, and I hope that MH will have the same experience.”[2]
I thank him, drain my glass of champagne in two gulps, and say, (while beaming the most oblivious-to-sexist-expectations smile that I can muster) [3] “I’m looking forward to MH learning to bake us popovers!”
Another happy couple looks forward to consecrating their marriage with the popover experience.
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Department Of Not What We Were Looking For, But A Fun Surprise
Dateline: last week; MH and I searching closets, file cabinets, the attic, the We-never-would-have-moved-them-here drawers…. When we had the house interior painted many months back, MH cleared out the room where our treasured LPs and cassettes were kept. [4]. And now we can’t find them.
We’ve become friendly with several of the Rock Creek staff. There are two newer servers – a brother and sister, [5] both of whom are into (what they call) “retro” music. I asked the young woman, “Nellie,” for examples of what she considered retro she mentioned several singers/bands (which I recognized as the soundtrack from my retro youth). When Nellie said that she really liked Joan Jett, I said, “I’m going to impress you, then.”
I told Nellie about having seen JJ twice in concert – once when Jett was with The Runaways, [6] and once with her band Joan Jett and The Blackhearts. And as if that wasn’t impressive enough…
…many years ago my grooviest friend in the world, former WWDC 101 disc jockey EDK, met Ms. Jett when she was in DC for a concert. Jett visited the radio station, as bands often do when they’re on tour. While she was there EDK asked her to record some station promos, AND wish me a happy birthday, which he recorded and sent to me on tape.
Nellie’s eyes widened with delight; she begged me to bring in the tape and play it for her.
But here’s something MH did find, in a file of old tax returns. He took pictures of the letter I’d written to the IRS (after our first filing as a married couple), and sent the pictures to our offspring: “While searching for other archived items, I came across this. Thought you might enjoy reading some nonfiction writing by your mother.” Transcript (with address/personal details redacted) below.
I have only the barest memory of writing the letter, and of the bureaucratic injustice which spurred me to do so. But after reading it I told MH, “Yep; sounds like me.” What’s nice is that I got the unexpected: a personal response, from a government bureaucrat! And it was a good one (I’ll spare you thattranscript) …although, as MH noted, you can consider it ironic or fitting, given the subject, that the IRS’ response letter is signed with a woman’s name, signing for the (male) IRS Director of Returns.
You may want to sit down; lest you be overcome with excitement.
I am writing to you regarding an inaccuracy on my Federal Income Tax refund check.
My husband and I filed joint returns for ____ (year). I have attached a copy of our Federal Income Tax refund check, which, as you can see, is made payable to “____ ( MH’s first name and middle initial and surname) and “Roby _____ (MH’s surname). While my husband’s name is indeed ____ (MH’s first name and middle initial and surname), my last name is Parnell. I am not Robyn _____ (MH’s surname) (and I am most certainly not “Roby MH’s surname”); there is no Robyn ____ ( MH’s surname) that I am aware of who is married to my husband and who has my Social Security number.
Two areas of interest regarding this matter:
a space for Spouse’s Signature (“if joint return BOTH must sign”) is provided on the 1040 form, yet there is no space, at the beginning of the form, for spouse’s name to be printed, although there is a space for spouse’s SSN.
despite not having a space to record my name, my Social Security number was provided, as was my signature, which, while admittedly not renowned for its legibility, is obviously not of someone whose last name begins with the letter “W.” I kept my birthname at marriage, as did my husband. I have never been “Robyn ____ (MH’s surname”) – the name is not mine, nor does it appear on any of my legal or personal records, nor is it associated with ____ (my SSN).
Taking all of this in to account – and not for one moment daring to assume that a governmental agency would change my name without my knowledge, consent or request to perhaps follow a sexist, outdated assumption of what happens to the surname of a woman when she marries – I am at a loss to figure out how that name got on our check. Perhaps someone at the IRS can enlighten me?
(Don’t be too hard on yourselves – the state of California didn’t do any better. We also filed a joint state income tax return, with my name listed as filer and my husband’s SS# listed as “Spouse.” Our state refund check was made payable to two different versions of my name, neither of which even remotely resembled my husband’s name).
A friend of mine encountered a similar situation last year: her federal refund check was made payable to her and her husband, each listed as having her husband’s surname, which is not her surname, professionally, personally or otherwise. Both endorsed the check as it was written, per their banker’s instructions. A few weeks after depositing the check they received letters from the IRS inquiring as to who the second payee was who endorsed the check, as they have no records of any such person – the name they erroneously put on the check – having my friend’s Social Security number!
If this seems like small potatoes to you – “What’s a few letters changed here and there” – consider what would happen if I or any taxpayer had such a cavalier attitude toward listing and recording our expenses and deductions (“What’s a few numbers or decimal points changed or eliminated”)…we’d be in holy hot water (bureaucratically speaking, of course) quicker than you could say, “Subtract line 30 from line 23.”
IRS Commissioner Gibbs writes “…working together with you, I believe we jointly (my emphasis) can find ways to make taxes less taxing for all of us.” * By bringing this matter to your attention, I am trying to do my part.
Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to your reply.
Sincerely, your “valued customer,” *
Robyn Parnell
cc: – Office of Management and Budget, Paperwork Reduction Project
-Lawrence B. Gibbs, IRS Commissioner
* quotes taken from the From the Commissioner letter in the 1040 forms and instructions booklet.
“New rule: If churches don’t have to pay taxes, they also can’t call the fire department when they catch fire. Sorry reverend, that’s one of those services that goes along with paying in. I’ll use the fire department I pay for. You can pray for rain.” ( Bill Maher, “Real Time,” 2-17-2006 )
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May you have your own version of a popover experience; May you have a memorable communiqué with a bureaucrat; May you get the services you pay (not pray) for; …and may the hijinks ensue.
[2] I still remember his odd (to me) choice of words…but then, a popover ignoramus such as moiself might not know that having popovers is an experience.
[3] And that was my second of what would be many glasses of bubbly that night, so there was mustering to be done.
[7] Nor can we find a lot of others, and some really cool LPs…but, as my father used to say, “It’ll turn up.”
[8] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
Department Of Seriously, Chef? Sub-Department of Something Light (The Calm Before The Storm)
Dateline: late last week; perusing my latest copy of VegNews: The Best of Vegan issue. Moiself is happy to note the good travel news about Iceland, which the magazine selected for their category of Best Countries To Travel To for being the country with the highest percentage of restaurants that include vegan options on their menus. [1] Then I come upon the Best Restaurant awards, which has many, many categories. I’m looking for the local winners – Portland is renowned for its many plant-eater-friendly restaurants and cafes – and in the Best Mexican restaurant category I find…this listing.
Would you like a side of identity politics with your salsa?
This is too special, even for Portland.
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Department Of And Now, The Storm Department Of This Is How Easily It Can Happen Department Of What Do You Call Something That Almost Happened,
That Makes You Realize How Easily It Could Have Happened? Department Of Not All Men But Yeah…A Lot Of Men Department Of Not All Men, But Even Men Who Are “Nice Guys®” Department Of How Many Departments Will One Blog Department Get?
I’m not 100% sure what sparked my recollection of the story moiself will share here, but it’s likely related to certain news story that has been much in the headlines. I had been trying to do the seemingly impossible: avoid the news about CNN’s investigation of a “Rape Academy“ – a global network of online forums and chat groups where men advise, encourage and even teach other men how to drug, sexually assault and then film women and girls, including their own wives and girlfriends.
How I wish I were making this up. How I wish that the news of the existence of this global network of How To Become A Sexual Predator shocked moiself.
I snorted the third time I scrolled past a reference to the “Rape Academy” I saw on several friends’ FB posts, then heard a voice – which turned out to be my own – thinking loudly and derisively,
“Like this is anything new – no need for an ‘academy’
or any type of school, what with
the tried-and-true methods guys have been using for years….”
Then came another thought: thetried-and-truemethods…does that include what was tried on me which, fortunately, was not ultimately true? I will never know for sure. But I will also never forget. [2]
Dateline: last Saturday night. MH and I are getting dinner at a small café/bar in Manzanita. We’re enjoying a comfortable, slightly breezy night on the café’s outside porch, playing card games with the mini card deck I always carry in my purse, and talking about various subjects (to distract from the fact that the cards seemingly favor MH, and he is winning EVERY HAND).
The subject of dates comes up, and I share a story about four amusing dates I had, way back before I met MH, with a Stanford MBA student. Our fourth date was my first (and so far, only) time at a professional ice hockey game. It turned out to be our last date because of something that struck a sour note for me. Nothing “bad” happened, but I was irritated that Mr. MBA seemed at first mystified, then annoyed, at my asking him about the rules of the game. Ice hockey was a sport with which I was unfamiliar, and I wanted to watch it more perceptively: those different colored lines on the ice must mean something, and the ref keeps blowing his whistle for reasons I can’t discern; I played field hockey in high school, and perhaps there are some analogous rules….? His reply to all of my questions was some variant of, Nobody knows the rules of ice hockey, and nobody cares.
After he’d said that for the fourth time, I got the translation: Mr. MBA, you mean, *you* don’t know and/or don’t care about the rules. And that’s not a good look, blaming it on nobody. By date #4 I’d already figured out that we were a mismatch, what with him majoring in “MONEY” (his word and emphasis, not mine). Looking back, I felt fortunate, I told MH, in not having had many bad dates. “But there *was* one….”
It came to mind; I took a couple of yoga breaths and told MH about it.
In the mid-1980s I had a job at Vendtech, [3] a company whose core workforce was people around my age (early through late twenties), most of whom also socialized after work. One early night I was visiting friend and Vendtech coworker Ann, [4] whose apartment was directly across the street from a condo I rented with my friend Marie. [5] Ann and I were shooting the shit about whatever, when her phone rang. It was Ray, [6] a fellow Vendtecher. Ray had tickets to a concert at a local club and was calling to invite Ann to go with him. She amiably declined, briefly chatting with him before hanging up. When she told me why Ray had called we both laughed and I said, “Well then, I better hurry back home to answer the phone.”
Ray had a (well-known, among Vendtechers) crush on Ann. Ann, like most of our female Vendtech coworkers, considered Ray a Nice Guy®, and a friend. She had socialized with him in the small work group gatherings, and also one-on-one (e.g. a couple of movie dates), but had no romantic interest in him. I also got along with Ray, [7] and had been to the movies with him and to a couple of other outings which, when Ann and I had shared What-did-you-do-this-weekend?stories, always coincided with him having first asked Ann to see that particular movie, or whatever.
It never bothered me to be his second (or third, or…who knows?) choice. Ray was not a romantic choice of mine, nor I of him, I’d assumed, due to his frequently confiding in me re his interest in Ann (and also in another woman at Vendtech). Ray and I got along well, had overlapping taste in movies and music. Other than his always insisting on paying no matter what the outing (which I appreciated, as his salary was *way* higher than I mine), Ray was easy to be around.
Sure enough, it wasn’t five seconds after I entered my condo when the phone rang. It was Ray, asking if I’d like to go to the concert, which was this coming Friday night. The show started early (8 pm, early for a rock concert) and probably wouldn’t run that late, what with only one band on the bill. Sure, I said.
The concert venue was in a large hall set up to resemble nightclub, where the attendees were seated at small tables. The club had waiter/table service, and there was a snack bar at the back of the club.
Contextual info: I wasn’t much of a drinker. More than one Vendtecher had “accused” me (really; it was said in an accusatory tone of voice) of being a “teetotaler,” which I found bemusing and baffling. Apparently, this was because at work-related parties or events where alcohol beverages were offered, [8] over the course of the events (which often lasted four or more hours) I would have one or at most two drinks, while my hard-partying comrades downed five or six (or more).
Meanwhile, back at the club: as soon as we were seated a waiter came to our table. Ray ordered some chips for us and a pint of beer for himself, and asked me what’d I’d like to drink. I’d been to the club and knew that their vino selection was limited to three corky-tasting house wines, in shades of white, red, or pink. I didn’t drink beer and had limited experience with the so-called hard spirits. Gin and tonic was my go-to order, but I thought I’d try something different. I really liked the taste of tonic water with lime…hmm, what else to try? I ordered a vodka tonic.
The concert began; the band was good (and loud); the server returned to our table. Ray asked for a glass of water and another beer, but a half instead of a full pint. I declined Ray’s offer of another vodka tonic, and told our server that I’d like a glass of tonic water with lime only – no vodka – and a glass of water…I remember seeing Ray out of the corner of my eye making some kind of gesture to our server after I had ordered. This sequence repeated itself several times (however, I never got my glass of plain water, even though Ray got his), with Ray drinking smaller and smaller amounts of beer and me specifying plain tonic water and lime.
As the concert got to the obligatory, band-pretends-to-play-their-last-number-but-is-really-just-waiting-offstage-for-the-audience-to-call-them-back-for-an-encore, it hit me. Borrowing poetic license from Miley Cyrus, it came in like a wrecking ball. All-of-the-proverbial-sudden, I was blurry. The room was swirling; I told Ray I didn’t feel well and wanted to go home. He stood up, said he needed to use the bathroom, and that I should stay put and he’d be right back and take me right home.
I didn’t understand. How could I be…intoxicated, was it?…via one cocktail that I’d had almost two and a half hours ago? I looked at what was left of my fourth (or fifth…or sixth?) glass of tonic water, which was mostly ice cubes at that point. I sniffed it just as our server arrived, and I asked her ( I remember trying to *not* sound like an idiot, and forming my words carefully, as I felt my tongue was too big for my mouth ) What was this drink? Was there something else in my tonic water and lime? It was so loud in the hall — had she misunderstood me, or had she gotten my order mixed up with someone else’s?
She gave me an odd look, and told me that at our first drink refill, my “friend” had told her that I’d changed my mind, and wanted the full vodka tonic(s). Which is what she’d been bringing out to me.
I was too fuzzy to be angry…I was mostly confused. Huh? Why would he do that – why would he “override” my order?
I don’t remember walking to Ray’s car, or the drive to my place. I remember him helping me up the stairs of the condo I shared with Marie, who was not home yet (Marie managed a retail store, and worked a late closing shift on Fridays). He helped me to my bed, where I collapsed, face up…and then, he was kissing me.
I remember laughing at him – what was he doing? It’s not like we were… “What are you doing?” I giggled aloud. He pulled back and looked down at me; I remember my upper lip and chin feeling ragged, almost burned, as though instead of kissing me he had dragged a rasp over my skin (the Miami Vice stubble was a popular look for guys at that time, and Ray had a two-three days’ worth of beard growth.) “No,” he said softly, and stood up. He said he’d let himself out, and left my bedroom. I fell asleep (blacked out?), and didn’t hear the sound of the front door closing.
The next morning I awoke, fully clothed, shoes still on. Marie said she’d noticed that I’d forgotten to lock the front door when I’d come home. I said I didn’t remember that, and apologized. Ann came over later in the day, and asked me about the concert. I told her what I remembered of it; I was still confused about the mysterious (to me) drink situation. She wrinkled her nose and exclaimed, “That’s like…attempted rape!”
Ray and I never spoke with one another about what had happened. I ended up working for Vendtech for a few more months, [9] and continued to attend group activities with other Vendtech employees, which sometimes included Ray, but never went to another movie or one-on-one activity with him.
* * *
As I finished telling MH the story, it dawned upon me that I’d never really reckoned with what almost/could have happened: That someone I considered a friend – someone whom everyone knew as a good guy – had, essentially, poisoned me. This man didn’t (as far as I know) slip a mickey into my drink, but he might as well have. And this is how many women are raped.
MH listened quietly and thoughtfully to my story, and said, “I’m glad it didn’t happen,” when I was finished telling it. “Me, too,” I replied, and wondered why I hadn’t told him the story before. It had just faded into background history
I’d almost told K and Belle about it years ago, when they started going out with friends. MH and I had talked with both of our offspring about the existence of Rohypnol® and other so-called “date rape” drugs, and cautioned them to never accept a beverage at a party or any venue, from someone else, unless it was an unopened can of, say, soda, or unless you could be sure of what was in (or not in) the drink. I thought perhaps I should personalize that advice for Belle, about how this is not theoretical and it is not something that just happens “to *other* people…” But I didn’t.
I don’t know what stopped me. I don’t like thinking of moiself as a victim, of anything, in any situation – was that it? Was I protecting my daughter and my son, or me, or MH, from having the opportunity to have even a fleeting thought that I’d been naïve, or stupid, or….? I didn’t blame moiself, then or now, and it isn’t something that haunts my existence. [10] And again, it happened a long time ago in a galaxy far far away…which, unfortunately, when it comes to male predatory sexual behavior, resembles a lower tech version of the galaxy we’re still living in today.
I don’t know about y’all, but I’d like some sloth peekaboo therapy right now.
( Katha Pollitt is an American author, activist, poetic, social critic )
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May you never get a free meal due to your ethnicity or gender expression; May you never have someone override your food or drink order; May you use your bare hands to rip the spleen out of anyone you see who
poisons the food or beverage of his “friend,” or anyone else; …and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
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[1] Which bodes well for our upcoming trip there, this summer, to watch the eclipse…and eat good food (including non-vegan Icelandic cod).
[2] And by, I will never forget, I do not mean that I constantly remember what happened. I have lived my life for years, decades even, without thinking about it. I am not scarred; just aware.
[10] Or didn’t, until I had reason to think of it and told MH… then I realized I was going to have to write about it, because that is how I process things.
[11] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
Active, reliable, sarcastic, affectionate, bipedal, cynical optimist, writer, freethinker, parent, spouse and friend, I am generous with my handy supply of ADA-approved spearmint gum and sometimes refrain from humming in public.
