There once was a little girl named Skye, and a Raven would fly to her window every day, and she would feed it. And every night, the Raven would bring her a shiny treasure; sometimes a rusty nail, other times a bit of foil paper, a butterfly wing, a piece of sea glass. Over time, he would allow Skye to run her fingers over his blue-black feathers, and they would talk for hours. But every so often during his nightly visits to her window, he would bring her a delicate gold ring, and ask her to put it on her finger. Skye would never oblige, telling him he was silly, and would toss it back down into the hedges. The Raven liked her name, telling her that it reminded him of the places he would fly when he was not visiting her. These day and night visits went on for years and years, until one night Skye held the ring in her hands for a very long time, and then slipped it on her ringfinger, whispering a wish to the moon, that she would find her one true love. And with that, the Raven disappeared, only to reappear in the form of a handsome young man. He had grown up a spoiled young prince, without care or worry for anyone but himself, never appreciating all the gifts he was given, often turning up his nose and dismissing them. As is the case in so many other fairy tales, a witch got involved, chastising him for his selfish behaviors, and, after turning him into a Raven, cursed him with the task of spending his days searching for things with meaning and value, and gathering them until the sun went down, until he had learned his lesson. And they lived happy ever after......
Friday, July 31, 2015
Riddle Me This, Cos I Just Don't Get It
I wish that someone could explain to me how the health insurance/third party interlopers thing works.
And by "works," I mean, "best benefits the patient." You know, the one who has an actual health issue that needs to be addressed and treated. By medical professionals.
I have been going to a chiropractor for the past four and a half months. Well, let me back up a few paces.
In March 2014, I was involved in a car accident, during which time I was stopped at a red light and then rear-ended by a kid who had just gotten off a long shift at Publix and fell asleep at the wheel. Thankfully, it was not a life-threatening incident. My car at the time was a 2002 Chevy Cavalier that had given me little in the way of trouble for the 12 years I'd been driving her, but in the back of my mind, I had known for awhile that I would need to seriously think about car shopping in the not-so-distant future, because despite the car not giving me much in the way of issue, they just don't build stuff like they used to. Planned obsolescence. Just one more sad facet to the throwaway society in which we live.
While my car was not what you would describe as officially "totaled" in car insurance-speak, and the outer appearance gave very little indication of a sustenance of major damage, the fact of the matter is that the designated shop fixed it to the tune of about $2500 (which, truth be told, really is probably what the fair market value was for a used 2002 Cavalier).
I myself was also not "totaled," in that I had no broken bones or internal bleeding. I didn't have a concussion, there was no broken glass, and all of my organs were intact. So essentially, it went as well as a car accident could be expected to go. I wasn't at fault, and I hadn't lost any limbs.
I chose to go to the ER because within minutes of the impact, I began to notice that my neck and lower back were becoming sore (thankfully I did not choose to take an ambulance, since my health insurance co. does not cover ambulance rides-- go figure). Unfortunately I wound up spending about seven hours there, only to be sent home with a prescription for a handful of muscle relaxants and painkillers, and a report that advised me to follow up with my primary care physician.
The next day I awoke feeling like utter crap. I was beleaguered by phone calls from the insurance company, stressed out from filling out forms, all at the same time batting emails back and forth between my boss and coworkers to boot. In between all of this, I called my primary care doctor as instructed to follow up, assuming that I would no doubt be sent for MRI's etc. to rule out any damage that might be unseen via x-ray, and was told that they could not see or treat me, but would be happy to provide me a list of physicians who would see me. This sent up red flags immediately, and I envisioned the type of care that you get through personal injury lawyers and other seedy means. I was extremely upset and wound up calling my mother, who told me that a neighbor of hers saw a chiropractor whom she highly recommended. I called said chiropractor and she was kind enough to squeeze me in a day and a half later.
Meanwhile, my boss expected me to come to work that Friday, so that I could "have the whole weekend" to recuperate. Recuperate from a cervical sprain that I retained during a car accident. When I did drag my carcass into the office that Friday morning, she looked at me sideways, like how a dog does when it hears a funny sound. "Why don't you have a neck brace?"
"Because I... don't have a broken neck..?" I said it more as a question.
"Oh. I just figured if you injured your neck, they'd put you in a neck brace."
I guess since my injuries and pain were internal, they were therefore not valid. But not spared the wrath of the passive-aggressive boss.
After adjustments for nearly 2 months, I finally got the chiro to write me a script for MRIs of the three areas of my spine. It took two visits, spaced weeks apart, then weeks more to get the results faxed to the chiropractor. All the while, I'm still receiving questions from the car insurance company. All in all... inconclusive. Nothing in the way of real damage, but things that could or might indicate possible issues... Clear as mud.
After about six months, the insurance company was itching to settle. Since the chiropractor I was seeing basically said that there was no improvement, I had likely "plateau'd." So the insurance company sent me a check and I was done.
During a routine visit to my primary care doctor, I ranted about how all of my coworkers could book massage therapy appointments when they were "stressed" and our health insurance plan would cover it, but here I was, with a legitimate injury and pain, and because it could be car-accident-related, it is not covered by my health insurance. My doctor was kind enough to write a script for 14 visits for chiropractic care and physical therapy for my chronic headaches (which I've had for more than 20 years) so that it would not be flagged as being car-accident-related.
After 14 visits of massage, adjustments with the main chiropractor (the one I had been seeing was merely renting a space and using their electro-stimulus equipment) and physical therapy at the same office that originally provided the chiropractic care and electro-stimulus therapy, I asked the chiro about seeing him for treatment of my headaches on my own.
I've done so for several months, once a week, a half hour of massage, about five minutes of adjustments, and 10-15 minutes of electro-stim therapy.
Now my health insurance provider has a third-party administrator helping them to save money, and they have decided that "treatments" like mine are considered "maintenance," when they would much rather see a patient come by the office once a month or so, rather than on a regular basis like once a week.
Never mind that there have been times when I needed to schedule emergency appointments when my back and shoulders suddenly started spasming for no reason, causing great pain and often contributing to headaches and other discomfort.
And by "works," I mean, "best benefits the patient." You know, the one who has an actual health issue that needs to be addressed and treated. By medical professionals.
I have been going to a chiropractor for the past four and a half months. Well, let me back up a few paces.
In March 2014, I was involved in a car accident, during which time I was stopped at a red light and then rear-ended by a kid who had just gotten off a long shift at Publix and fell asleep at the wheel. Thankfully, it was not a life-threatening incident. My car at the time was a 2002 Chevy Cavalier that had given me little in the way of trouble for the 12 years I'd been driving her, but in the back of my mind, I had known for awhile that I would need to seriously think about car shopping in the not-so-distant future, because despite the car not giving me much in the way of issue, they just don't build stuff like they used to. Planned obsolescence. Just one more sad facet to the throwaway society in which we live.
While my car was not what you would describe as officially "totaled" in car insurance-speak, and the outer appearance gave very little indication of a sustenance of major damage, the fact of the matter is that the designated shop fixed it to the tune of about $2500 (which, truth be told, really is probably what the fair market value was for a used 2002 Cavalier).
I myself was also not "totaled," in that I had no broken bones or internal bleeding. I didn't have a concussion, there was no broken glass, and all of my organs were intact. So essentially, it went as well as a car accident could be expected to go. I wasn't at fault, and I hadn't lost any limbs.
I chose to go to the ER because within minutes of the impact, I began to notice that my neck and lower back were becoming sore (thankfully I did not choose to take an ambulance, since my health insurance co. does not cover ambulance rides-- go figure). Unfortunately I wound up spending about seven hours there, only to be sent home with a prescription for a handful of muscle relaxants and painkillers, and a report that advised me to follow up with my primary care physician.
The next day I awoke feeling like utter crap. I was beleaguered by phone calls from the insurance company, stressed out from filling out forms, all at the same time batting emails back and forth between my boss and coworkers to boot. In between all of this, I called my primary care doctor as instructed to follow up, assuming that I would no doubt be sent for MRI's etc. to rule out any damage that might be unseen via x-ray, and was told that they could not see or treat me, but would be happy to provide me a list of physicians who would see me. This sent up red flags immediately, and I envisioned the type of care that you get through personal injury lawyers and other seedy means. I was extremely upset and wound up calling my mother, who told me that a neighbor of hers saw a chiropractor whom she highly recommended. I called said chiropractor and she was kind enough to squeeze me in a day and a half later.
Meanwhile, my boss expected me to come to work that Friday, so that I could "have the whole weekend" to recuperate. Recuperate from a cervical sprain that I retained during a car accident. When I did drag my carcass into the office that Friday morning, she looked at me sideways, like how a dog does when it hears a funny sound. "Why don't you have a neck brace?"
"Because I... don't have a broken neck..?" I said it more as a question.
"Oh. I just figured if you injured your neck, they'd put you in a neck brace."
I guess since my injuries and pain were internal, they were therefore not valid. But not spared the wrath of the passive-aggressive boss.
After adjustments for nearly 2 months, I finally got the chiro to write me a script for MRIs of the three areas of my spine. It took two visits, spaced weeks apart, then weeks more to get the results faxed to the chiropractor. All the while, I'm still receiving questions from the car insurance company. All in all... inconclusive. Nothing in the way of real damage, but things that could or might indicate possible issues... Clear as mud.
After about six months, the insurance company was itching to settle. Since the chiropractor I was seeing basically said that there was no improvement, I had likely "plateau'd." So the insurance company sent me a check and I was done.
During a routine visit to my primary care doctor, I ranted about how all of my coworkers could book massage therapy appointments when they were "stressed" and our health insurance plan would cover it, but here I was, with a legitimate injury and pain, and because it could be car-accident-related, it is not covered by my health insurance. My doctor was kind enough to write a script for 14 visits for chiropractic care and physical therapy for my chronic headaches (which I've had for more than 20 years) so that it would not be flagged as being car-accident-related.
After 14 visits of massage, adjustments with the main chiropractor (the one I had been seeing was merely renting a space and using their electro-stimulus equipment) and physical therapy at the same office that originally provided the chiropractic care and electro-stimulus therapy, I asked the chiro about seeing him for treatment of my headaches on my own.
I've done so for several months, once a week, a half hour of massage, about five minutes of adjustments, and 10-15 minutes of electro-stim therapy.
Now my health insurance provider has a third-party administrator helping them to save money, and they have decided that "treatments" like mine are considered "maintenance," when they would much rather see a patient come by the office once a month or so, rather than on a regular basis like once a week.
Never mind that there have been times when I needed to schedule emergency appointments when my back and shoulders suddenly started spasming for no reason, causing great pain and often contributing to headaches and other discomfort.
Monday, June 22, 2015
wintergirl © 1998
Foreward: While embroiled in an intense friendship with a studio musician who longed to collaborate with me back in the mid-to-late 1990's, I was exposed to recordings from the early days of Fleetwood Mac, including the 1973 BUCKINGHAM NICKS album featuring Stevie and Lindsey, as well as some of Stevie's later solo work in the 1980's. I was beginning to wonder if perhaps I could "Find the Lindsey to my Stevie," and even though I protested whenever this friend would remind me that he really wanted to collaborate, modesty (and outright fear) prevented me from ever taking him up on the offer.
The following poem/lyrics (entitled "wintergirl") was written with Stevie Nicks' voice in my head at the time. Looking on the lines now, they are weak, simplistic and juvenile, but... Maybe the kernel of the original spirit is still locked in them, somewhere...
The following poem/lyrics (entitled "wintergirl") was written with Stevie Nicks' voice in my head at the time. Looking on the lines now, they are weak, simplistic and juvenile, but... Maybe the kernel of the original spirit is still locked in them, somewhere...
WINTERGIRL
he said
I cannot love you
til you leave your
darkness
at the door
and I said
then i’ll stay
outside
pray it don’t snow
anymore
so I sat in my
winter
and never saw a
spring
no blossoms
flashing
under butterfly
wing
no sweet summer sun
not a single one
no honeymoon croon
‘neath an autumn
moon
he said
I cannot love you
til you come inside
my world
and I said
I don’t belong
i’m an ice and
crystal
winter girl
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
I Weep For This Country: A Voice for Choice
I really do. I have been doing so for quite some time now.
When I was eighteen, I was so excited to have the opportunity to vote, though ironically I didn't have the slightest clue about politics. I just knew that I didn't like Ronald Reagan, so therefore I must not like Republicans (as foolish on the surface as that assumption is, it turned out to be quite accurate). So I cast my first vote for a loser, the Democratic contender Michael Dukakis, a child of immigrants, living the American dream (cue the flag-waving and the brass band), the whole red-white-and-blue nine yards. I bought it. And after that three-ring-circus, otherwise known as the Debates that included millionaire businessman (and SNL soundbite) H. Ross Perot, George H.W. Bush won the election.
Then we were launched into war. When I was a junior in college, I knew young men who could conceivably be drafted for what appeared to be a senseless overseas exercise in bloodshed. I didn't know what the chant of "No Blood For Oil" truly meant, but I knew I was anti-war, and it was the early Nineties, after all. Everyone was a neo-pseudo-wannabe hippie back then, protesting for or against anything and everything, especially if they were college age. It was your God-given right to protest and oppose the Establishment, and pass out pamphlets about Amnesty International during music festivals. Funny how history seemed to recycle itself after twenty years passed. We simply traded tie-dye for plaid flannel.
When I was twenty-two, I proudly cast my vote for Democrat Bill Clinton. Even though he won the overall election, my particular vote didn't count toward his victory, as it had been cast while living in the Red State of Texas. Still, there was a swelling sense of hope, and even 70's icons (and Clinton favorite) Fleetwood Mac reunited for his inaugural bash, because their hit "Don't Stop" had unofficially become the Clinton campaign song of hope for the future. I was so excited to watch the spectacle on television. It felt as if the future was indeed in our hands, and the world was going to change for the better as a result of the MTV Youth Generation voting Clinton all the way.
The U.S. economy thrived during this time, even though between the ages of 22 and 28 I myself was still living at home, despite having completed a B.A. (albeit in the sketchy realm of Creative Writing), barely scraping by with menial work and for most of the time zero benefits (except, ironically, for my three-and-a-half year stint at a grocery store, when I had the best FREE health coverage I've had in my entire lifetime. By the way, those days are OVER, kids).
The U.S. economy continued to thrive despite a sex scandal in the White House, and still thrived despite a movement for impeachment that loomed over the Clinton administration. And all the while, Al Qaeda was looming as well. But we were all too busy going to Lollapalooza and Woodstock revivals and mourning the death/debating the cultural relevance of Kurt Cobain to notice.
Then, as it is with life, all good things must come to an end. Republican George W. Bush infamously stole the election from Al Gore, and the Great Hanging Chad Debacle in Florida once again made America (and the Conservative South) the butt of every joke around the world. And I had cast my vote for yet another loser.
And the warnings of impending doom continued to be ignored, first by the Clinton administration, and now the new Bush Junior regime, expertly puppeteered by grimacing Dick Cheney's hand up Bush Junior's ass. It was the latter administration who would pay for it in spades.
Well, in truth, 2,977 innocent people would be the ones to pay for it with their very lives, as that's how many casualties there were on that long-ago sunny sky-blue morning in September of 2001, when the world went grey and silent under ash for a time.
On the surface, it appeared that the world united over this tragedy. Everyone held hands and sang Kumbaya. Everyone had telethons and tributes around the clock. Everyone waved American flags that were ironically handcrafted in Chinese sweatshops. And over time, everyone became desensitized by the ubiquitous images of two buildings being hit by airplanes and crumbling into plumes of toxic dust.
I can only speak for myself, but to this day, nearly 14 years later, I can honestly say that I still feel my stomach lurch and my skin crawl with chills when I see any of those events replayed. It is a sense memory that I will likely never shake from my being. The only logical thing to do now was send our troops to war with a nation that had nothing to do with the attacks. Oh, and keep holding hands with the country (Saudi Arabia) from which the 19 hijackers came. Because both of those things made perfect, logical sense.
And the wounded, clueless American public somehow thought these things were okay, or at least, didn't put up too much of a fuss initially. To do so would be "un-American."
Somehow, this imbecile Bush Junior (otherwise known as "Shrub" by the brilliant, late journalist and author Molly Ivins) won a second Presidential term. I wasn't thrilled with John Kerry as a choice, but in my foolish stranglehold on retaining my youth (even at the ancient age of 34), I actually convinced myself to believe in the concept of a "lesser of two evils" and voted for him just to keep Bush Junior out. I especially didn't like Kerry's running mate, John Edwards. To me, there was just something innately despicable about him. I even said it out loud to someone once, with no basis or provocation: "I don't like him. Look at how much he's smiling. No one smiles that much. He's hiding something," And sure as shit, the truth came out much, much, later, during Edwards' own 2008 bid for the Presidency. Just another sex scandal. But in a Shakespearean twist, his mistress had their secret (and outrightly denied) lovechild out of wedlock, and the loyal wife was now dying of incurable cancer. Yeah, never good to have these things unearthed while you're running for the highest office in the land.
The next one who would have received a check-mark on my ballot during the post-Bush Jr. era was Hilary Clinton. In my unabashed ignorance, I still believed that I was a Democrat, and therefore had to vote as such, and she seemed like such a strong contender. And then the underlying dialogue became "Do we want the first Female President or do we want the first African American President?" Because those were the two choices now for the Democratic Party. But Clinton was blown out of the water by that young senator Obama from Illinois.
When Hilary was destroyed during those final debates, I actually went to bed and cried that night. I had never felt so helpless or hopeless at the hands of politics. And there was something inherently insidious about this Obama character to me. There was something too cocky in his swagger, and I was quite alarmed by the immediate embrace that the Media seemed to throw around him and his campaign. For me, an election has nothing to do with race or gender, religion or bank accounts. If you're an untrustworthy asshole, that's really all that matters. But vibes are not viewed as a relevant source for judgment of another human being, so all of the red flags I felt seemed to mean nothing to anyone else.
But I sure as hell didn't want a privileged pasty out-of-touch Republican rich boy like Romney in the White House, either, much less that overly-folksy Alaskan twat VP wannabe who had no concept of geography or politics in general.
There was no third party option to speak of for voters. No one else got any air time during the debates, much less during the hideous commercials that aired. I felt completely lost and adrift. And the mudslinging quickly turned to shit-slinging, racial slurs, and general ignorant commentary from both sides of the fence. I had never in my life witnessed such hatred and ugliness during a political race. I couldn't talk to anyone about my feelings. And what I was beginning to notice was even more alarming-- you had to choose a side. And no matter which side you chose, it was wrong.
The problem was, both sides were VERY wrong to me. And I couldn't understand why no one else seemed to notice just how wrong they both were.
I found that I could not have an intelligent conversation about this horrible discovery with anyone without it devolving into the following exchange:
"So if you're not voting for (Obama, Romney), you're basically saying that you'd rather that (Romney, Obama) was in the White House? Are you telling me you would rather have (Obama, Romney) in the White House, in control of this country and its people? You would rather have that moron (Palin, Biden) just a heartbeat away from the Presidency?"
I'm like, can you hear yourselves...?
You're exactly alike. You're saying the exact same shit about each other, but you're just swapping out the names.
(Looking to the Right): You're calling Obama a Muslim non-resident who wants to grant amnesty to all the illegals in this country.
(Looking to the Left): And you're calling Romney a supporter of the Right Wing Christian Coalition who wants to take away all women's reproductive rights.
All likely ugly, inconceivable stretches of the truth. Or maybe not. Maybe both of these ass-hats really are just that horrible.
So I'd ask them, the Right and the Left, why are you choosing one over the other? The standard, easiest, most common response I would get was as follows.
"Well, sometimes you just have to choose the lesser of two evils."
In the case of choosing who is to be running our country, I'm sorry, I don't believe there is a lesser of two evils.
And, by the way, why are there only two choices?
And why do we still have a fucked-up system like the Electoral College in place?
But see... all of those points I raised to both Democrats and Republicans were too confusing, too scary, too much for them to deal with and think about, because time was of the essence. So instead, they both took to deflecting and defending and making me feel like there was something very wrong with me.
For the first time in my lifetime, I did not cast a vote for a new President of the United States in 2008. I felt horrible. I felt guilty. But more than anything, I felt angry toward all of those people who made me feel horrible and guilty. In truth, I had not done anything to feel horrible about.
I firmly believe that if you're too lazy to get up off your layaway couch, brush the Taco Bell crumbs off your fat ass and waddle off to cast a vote, or if you're a ditzy, plugged-in, self-gratifying 20-something who "doesn't have time for politics" but does have time to devote hours to Worlds of Warcraft or Candy Crush, the Kardashians and Dancing With the Stars, then yes, you have no right to bitch about the results of an election. To a point, that is very true. But my case was not even remotely the same. And I hated anyone who dared to hint that my actions were the equivalent of said fat-ass morons who were content to bitch about the results of an election but too lazy to get up and do their "civic duty."
I lost sleep over it. I got into screaming matches with people because of it. I'm pretty sure people stopped talking to me because of my daring to voice my views on what a fucked-up process this had all turned into. I felt like I was an alien life form dropped unawares onto the surface of a very inhospitable planet comprised soley of black and white, baseless hatred, and fear tactics rather than thoughtful discourse, compromise, or a single solitary shade of grey.
When Obama won, I felt slightly sick, but during the Inauguration, I honestly (read: foolishly) believed that because this was the final result, because there was no going back and changing it, all I could do was hope for the best. I prayed that all of my inexplicable, irrational misgivings about him were completely misguided emotions and nothing more; that he had indeed been elected our President, I needed to give him the benefit of the doubt, and allow nature to take its course. Time would tell, and I was willing to accept that.
But nothing got better from that day forward. If anything, the people in this country only got uglier, and his swagger got to be more unbearable. His love affair with the Media has yet to relent, even now late into his second term. And he has done nothing to improve what is happening in our world.
Plain and simple, Obama won by a landslide because people hated George Bush, blamed him for 9/11 (even though a few Presidencies were ultimately to blame for that), blamed him for our continued presence in Iraq (well, yes, that part is true), and therefore, they wanted anything BUT a Republican. Yes, I understand the visceral reaction there, and who doesn't want change for the better? But the American people's first-- and perhaps, only-- mistake was that they looked no further than those two columns, Democrat and Republican.
So here we go again. Obama's on his way out, and the ones who grew to hate him-- whether for rational or irrational reasons-- are now going to cause the pendulum to swing to the far Right this time, if I may be so bold as to make a prediction. But seriously, is that the answer?
During Obama's second run, I started researching other alternatives, because I was not going to leave the Presidential portion of my ballot blank ever again, no matter how dismal the choices I was "given," and no matter how ugly and hateful the dialogue became. My vote is, quite frankly, no one's business.
I took online quizzes and tests, examined polls and read articles in an attempt to figure out where in the hell my political loyalties did lay. It was a very confusing process, because I agree with a handful of classic Democrat views and a handful of classic Republican views. The thing is, I don't see any of these views as "Democrat" or "Republican," though. I see them as Common Sense.
I support the freedom to love and to marry-- let's not get into gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or other such labels and stir up even more hornets' nests. I believe in the enforcement of restrictions on immigration to this country-- our borders can only contain so many more human beings, and shouldn't those human beings come here through a legal system? Those are two big ones.
I believe in the legalization of marijuana for medical and recreational use-- marijuana is a plant, and all pharmaceuticals have their bases in plant life; and on the other side of the coin, does anyone remember a little thing called Prohibition? Does anyone remember how well that worked? I believe in smaller government-- doesn't anyone recall the phrase "...government by the People, for the People"? Do you really want the government deciding what type of health care you personally deserve, or what sort of personal reproductive rights women should have? Don't you want to live in a world where people are actually held accountable for their own actions, including our Government?
None of these views makes me a Democrat or a Republican. I know very few people who hold all of these views, therefore the PERCEPTION is that the views are surely diametrically-opposed, which is ludicrous, because they are not. One has nothing to do with the others.
So after wading through several questionnaires, it turns out that the party who best reflects the MAJORITY of my core beliefs and values is the Libertarian Party.
Unfortunately, the Libertarian Party has gotten something of a bad rap since Ron Paul attempted to run under their banner in the second Obama race. To me (and to many, I'm sure), he came across as a bit of a kook. Maybe not as much of a kook as Ross Perot back in 1988, but a kook nonetheless. A kook who flip-flopped and jumped on the Republican bandwagon when he realized that being labeled a Libertarian wasn't going to win him any races.
What are the basic tenets of the Libertarian party?
(Taken from The Party of Principle website, http://www.lp.org/platform#1.0)
After reading all of this, all I could say was... "Well, DUH..??!!!!"
At times I may not be blessed with an overabundance of common sense all of the time (particularly in the areas of mathematics and time management), but why is it that the concept of being responsible for one's own actions is such an alien one to the general population?
It's sort of like being trapped in one of those nightmares where you are trying to explain something to everyone and they either ignore you, or they yell at you, and you can't get your point across no matter what you do or say. Only this time, I'm awake and surrounded by the people of the world, and they would all rather be zombified by their iPhones and iPads, with eyeballs glued to the next blockbuster smash-up movie, and plugged into their newsfeeds than to recognize that something is truly wrong with our political system (and most importantly, to be willing to desire and bring CHANGE). Voters should be able to have a voice behind their choice.
A Voice for Choice... If I were more clever, I could market that, couldn't I? Unfortunately the word "choice" has become inextricably linked to the topic of Abortion and Reproductive Rights. So maybe not...
When I was eighteen, I was so excited to have the opportunity to vote, though ironically I didn't have the slightest clue about politics. I just knew that I didn't like Ronald Reagan, so therefore I must not like Republicans (as foolish on the surface as that assumption is, it turned out to be quite accurate). So I cast my first vote for a loser, the Democratic contender Michael Dukakis, a child of immigrants, living the American dream (cue the flag-waving and the brass band), the whole red-white-and-blue nine yards. I bought it. And after that three-ring-circus, otherwise known as the Debates that included millionaire businessman (and SNL soundbite) H. Ross Perot, George H.W. Bush won the election.
Then we were launched into war. When I was a junior in college, I knew young men who could conceivably be drafted for what appeared to be a senseless overseas exercise in bloodshed. I didn't know what the chant of "No Blood For Oil" truly meant, but I knew I was anti-war, and it was the early Nineties, after all. Everyone was a neo-pseudo-wannabe hippie back then, protesting for or against anything and everything, especially if they were college age. It was your God-given right to protest and oppose the Establishment, and pass out pamphlets about Amnesty International during music festivals. Funny how history seemed to recycle itself after twenty years passed. We simply traded tie-dye for plaid flannel.
When I was twenty-two, I proudly cast my vote for Democrat Bill Clinton. Even though he won the overall election, my particular vote didn't count toward his victory, as it had been cast while living in the Red State of Texas. Still, there was a swelling sense of hope, and even 70's icons (and Clinton favorite) Fleetwood Mac reunited for his inaugural bash, because their hit "Don't Stop" had unofficially become the Clinton campaign song of hope for the future. I was so excited to watch the spectacle on television. It felt as if the future was indeed in our hands, and the world was going to change for the better as a result of the MTV Youth Generation voting Clinton all the way.
The U.S. economy thrived during this time, even though between the ages of 22 and 28 I myself was still living at home, despite having completed a B.A. (albeit in the sketchy realm of Creative Writing), barely scraping by with menial work and for most of the time zero benefits (except, ironically, for my three-and-a-half year stint at a grocery store, when I had the best FREE health coverage I've had in my entire lifetime. By the way, those days are OVER, kids).
The U.S. economy continued to thrive despite a sex scandal in the White House, and still thrived despite a movement for impeachment that loomed over the Clinton administration. And all the while, Al Qaeda was looming as well. But we were all too busy going to Lollapalooza and Woodstock revivals and mourning the death/debating the cultural relevance of Kurt Cobain to notice.
Then, as it is with life, all good things must come to an end. Republican George W. Bush infamously stole the election from Al Gore, and the Great Hanging Chad Debacle in Florida once again made America (and the Conservative South) the butt of every joke around the world. And I had cast my vote for yet another loser.
And the warnings of impending doom continued to be ignored, first by the Clinton administration, and now the new Bush Junior regime, expertly puppeteered by grimacing Dick Cheney's hand up Bush Junior's ass. It was the latter administration who would pay for it in spades.
Well, in truth, 2,977 innocent people would be the ones to pay for it with their very lives, as that's how many casualties there were on that long-ago sunny sky-blue morning in September of 2001, when the world went grey and silent under ash for a time.
On the surface, it appeared that the world united over this tragedy. Everyone held hands and sang Kumbaya. Everyone had telethons and tributes around the clock. Everyone waved American flags that were ironically handcrafted in Chinese sweatshops. And over time, everyone became desensitized by the ubiquitous images of two buildings being hit by airplanes and crumbling into plumes of toxic dust.
I can only speak for myself, but to this day, nearly 14 years later, I can honestly say that I still feel my stomach lurch and my skin crawl with chills when I see any of those events replayed. It is a sense memory that I will likely never shake from my being. The only logical thing to do now was send our troops to war with a nation that had nothing to do with the attacks. Oh, and keep holding hands with the country (Saudi Arabia) from which the 19 hijackers came. Because both of those things made perfect, logical sense.
And the wounded, clueless American public somehow thought these things were okay, or at least, didn't put up too much of a fuss initially. To do so would be "un-American."
Somehow, this imbecile Bush Junior (otherwise known as "Shrub" by the brilliant, late journalist and author Molly Ivins) won a second Presidential term. I wasn't thrilled with John Kerry as a choice, but in my foolish stranglehold on retaining my youth (even at the ancient age of 34), I actually convinced myself to believe in the concept of a "lesser of two evils" and voted for him just to keep Bush Junior out. I especially didn't like Kerry's running mate, John Edwards. To me, there was just something innately despicable about him. I even said it out loud to someone once, with no basis or provocation: "I don't like him. Look at how much he's smiling. No one smiles that much. He's hiding something," And sure as shit, the truth came out much, much, later, during Edwards' own 2008 bid for the Presidency. Just another sex scandal. But in a Shakespearean twist, his mistress had their secret (and outrightly denied) lovechild out of wedlock, and the loyal wife was now dying of incurable cancer. Yeah, never good to have these things unearthed while you're running for the highest office in the land.
The next one who would have received a check-mark on my ballot during the post-Bush Jr. era was Hilary Clinton. In my unabashed ignorance, I still believed that I was a Democrat, and therefore had to vote as such, and she seemed like such a strong contender. And then the underlying dialogue became "Do we want the first Female President or do we want the first African American President?" Because those were the two choices now for the Democratic Party. But Clinton was blown out of the water by that young senator Obama from Illinois.
When Hilary was destroyed during those final debates, I actually went to bed and cried that night. I had never felt so helpless or hopeless at the hands of politics. And there was something inherently insidious about this Obama character to me. There was something too cocky in his swagger, and I was quite alarmed by the immediate embrace that the Media seemed to throw around him and his campaign. For me, an election has nothing to do with race or gender, religion or bank accounts. If you're an untrustworthy asshole, that's really all that matters. But vibes are not viewed as a relevant source for judgment of another human being, so all of the red flags I felt seemed to mean nothing to anyone else.
But I sure as hell didn't want a privileged pasty out-of-touch Republican rich boy like Romney in the White House, either, much less that overly-folksy Alaskan twat VP wannabe who had no concept of geography or politics in general.
There was no third party option to speak of for voters. No one else got any air time during the debates, much less during the hideous commercials that aired. I felt completely lost and adrift. And the mudslinging quickly turned to shit-slinging, racial slurs, and general ignorant commentary from both sides of the fence. I had never in my life witnessed such hatred and ugliness during a political race. I couldn't talk to anyone about my feelings. And what I was beginning to notice was even more alarming-- you had to choose a side. And no matter which side you chose, it was wrong.
The problem was, both sides were VERY wrong to me. And I couldn't understand why no one else seemed to notice just how wrong they both were.
I found that I could not have an intelligent conversation about this horrible discovery with anyone without it devolving into the following exchange:
"So if you're not voting for (Obama, Romney), you're basically saying that you'd rather that (Romney, Obama) was in the White House? Are you telling me you would rather have (Obama, Romney) in the White House, in control of this country and its people? You would rather have that moron (Palin, Biden) just a heartbeat away from the Presidency?"
I'm like, can you hear yourselves...?
You're exactly alike. You're saying the exact same shit about each other, but you're just swapping out the names.
(Looking to the Right): You're calling Obama a Muslim non-resident who wants to grant amnesty to all the illegals in this country.
(Looking to the Left): And you're calling Romney a supporter of the Right Wing Christian Coalition who wants to take away all women's reproductive rights.
All likely ugly, inconceivable stretches of the truth. Or maybe not. Maybe both of these ass-hats really are just that horrible.
So I'd ask them, the Right and the Left, why are you choosing one over the other? The standard, easiest, most common response I would get was as follows.
"Well, sometimes you just have to choose the lesser of two evils."
In the case of choosing who is to be running our country, I'm sorry, I don't believe there is a lesser of two evils.
And, by the way, why are there only two choices?
And why do we still have a fucked-up system like the Electoral College in place?
But see... all of those points I raised to both Democrats and Republicans were too confusing, too scary, too much for them to deal with and think about, because time was of the essence. So instead, they both took to deflecting and defending and making me feel like there was something very wrong with me.
For the first time in my lifetime, I did not cast a vote for a new President of the United States in 2008. I felt horrible. I felt guilty. But more than anything, I felt angry toward all of those people who made me feel horrible and guilty. In truth, I had not done anything to feel horrible about.
I firmly believe that if you're too lazy to get up off your layaway couch, brush the Taco Bell crumbs off your fat ass and waddle off to cast a vote, or if you're a ditzy, plugged-in, self-gratifying 20-something who "doesn't have time for politics" but does have time to devote hours to Worlds of Warcraft or Candy Crush, the Kardashians and Dancing With the Stars, then yes, you have no right to bitch about the results of an election. To a point, that is very true. But my case was not even remotely the same. And I hated anyone who dared to hint that my actions were the equivalent of said fat-ass morons who were content to bitch about the results of an election but too lazy to get up and do their "civic duty."
I lost sleep over it. I got into screaming matches with people because of it. I'm pretty sure people stopped talking to me because of my daring to voice my views on what a fucked-up process this had all turned into. I felt like I was an alien life form dropped unawares onto the surface of a very inhospitable planet comprised soley of black and white, baseless hatred, and fear tactics rather than thoughtful discourse, compromise, or a single solitary shade of grey.
When Obama won, I felt slightly sick, but during the Inauguration, I honestly (read: foolishly) believed that because this was the final result, because there was no going back and changing it, all I could do was hope for the best. I prayed that all of my inexplicable, irrational misgivings about him were completely misguided emotions and nothing more; that he had indeed been elected our President, I needed to give him the benefit of the doubt, and allow nature to take its course. Time would tell, and I was willing to accept that.
But nothing got better from that day forward. If anything, the people in this country only got uglier, and his swagger got to be more unbearable. His love affair with the Media has yet to relent, even now late into his second term. And he has done nothing to improve what is happening in our world.
Plain and simple, Obama won by a landslide because people hated George Bush, blamed him for 9/11 (even though a few Presidencies were ultimately to blame for that), blamed him for our continued presence in Iraq (well, yes, that part is true), and therefore, they wanted anything BUT a Republican. Yes, I understand the visceral reaction there, and who doesn't want change for the better? But the American people's first-- and perhaps, only-- mistake was that they looked no further than those two columns, Democrat and Republican.
So here we go again. Obama's on his way out, and the ones who grew to hate him-- whether for rational or irrational reasons-- are now going to cause the pendulum to swing to the far Right this time, if I may be so bold as to make a prediction. But seriously, is that the answer?
During Obama's second run, I started researching other alternatives, because I was not going to leave the Presidential portion of my ballot blank ever again, no matter how dismal the choices I was "given," and no matter how ugly and hateful the dialogue became. My vote is, quite frankly, no one's business.
I took online quizzes and tests, examined polls and read articles in an attempt to figure out where in the hell my political loyalties did lay. It was a very confusing process, because I agree with a handful of classic Democrat views and a handful of classic Republican views. The thing is, I don't see any of these views as "Democrat" or "Republican," though. I see them as Common Sense.
I support the freedom to love and to marry-- let's not get into gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or other such labels and stir up even more hornets' nests. I believe in the enforcement of restrictions on immigration to this country-- our borders can only contain so many more human beings, and shouldn't those human beings come here through a legal system? Those are two big ones.
I believe in the legalization of marijuana for medical and recreational use-- marijuana is a plant, and all pharmaceuticals have their bases in plant life; and on the other side of the coin, does anyone remember a little thing called Prohibition? Does anyone remember how well that worked? I believe in smaller government-- doesn't anyone recall the phrase "...government by the People, for the People"? Do you really want the government deciding what type of health care you personally deserve, or what sort of personal reproductive rights women should have? Don't you want to live in a world where people are actually held accountable for their own actions, including our Government?
None of these views makes me a Democrat or a Republican. I know very few people who hold all of these views, therefore the PERCEPTION is that the views are surely diametrically-opposed, which is ludicrous, because they are not. One has nothing to do with the others.
So after wading through several questionnaires, it turns out that the party who best reflects the MAJORITY of my core beliefs and values is the Libertarian Party.
Unfortunately, the Libertarian Party has gotten something of a bad rap since Ron Paul attempted to run under their banner in the second Obama race. To me (and to many, I'm sure), he came across as a bit of a kook. Maybe not as much of a kook as Ross Perot back in 1988, but a kook nonetheless. A kook who flip-flopped and jumped on the Republican bandwagon when he realized that being labeled a Libertarian wasn't going to win him any races.
What are the basic tenets of the Libertarian party?
(Taken from The Party of Principle website, http://www.lp.org/platform#1.0)
Individuals should be free to make choices for themselves and to accept responsibility for the consequences of the choices they make. Our support of an individual's right to make choices in life does not mean that we necessarily approve or disapprove of those choices. No individual, group, or government may initiate force against any other individual, group, or government.
That last line requires some exposition for me, personally. Does it mean that no one can stop a riot, or a crime in progress? If it does, then what's the point of having any laws or regulations? I do not agree with this, if this is what it is saying.
That last line requires some exposition for me, personally. Does it mean that no one can stop a riot, or a crime in progress? If it does, then what's the point of having any laws or regulations? I do not agree with this, if this is what it is saying.
Individuals own their bodies and have rights over them that other individuals, groups, and governments may not violate. Individuals have the freedom and responsibility to decide what they knowingly and voluntarily consume, and what risks they accept to their own health, finances, safety, or life.
If this means what I think it does, well, corporations and the Government have both lied to us about the quality of our air, water and food-- so I'm not sure how we as citizens are supposed to arrive at the truth about the ensured safety of these basic needs. If what the phrase means is that people are free to smoke a bunch of dope and do stupid shit, then by all means, go for it. They do that now, and they do it with legal substances.
If this means what I think it does, well, corporations and the Government have both lied to us about the quality of our air, water and food-- so I'm not sure how we as citizens are supposed to arrive at the truth about the ensured safety of these basic needs. If what the phrase means is that people are free to smoke a bunch of dope and do stupid shit, then by all means, go for it. They do that now, and they do it with legal substances.
We support full freedom of expression and oppose government censorship, regulation or control of communications media and technology. We favor the freedom to engage in or abstain from any religious activities that do not violate the rights of others. We oppose government actions which either aid or attack any religion.
Libertarians advocate individual privacy and government transparency. We are committed to ending government’s practice of spying on everyone. We support the rights recognized by the Fourth Amendment to be secure in our persons, homes, property, and communications. Protection from unreasonable search and seizure should include records held by third parties, such as email, medical, and library records.
Sexual orientation, preference, gender, or gender identity should have no impact on the government's treatment of individuals, such as in current marriage, child custody, adoption, immigration or military service laws. Government does not have the authority to define, license or restrict personal relationships. Consenting adults should be free to choose their own sexual practices and personal relationships.
Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.
Government exists to protect the rights of every individual including life, liberty and property. Criminal laws should be limited to violation of the rights of others through force or fraud, or deliberate actions that place others involuntarily at significant risk of harm. We favor the repeal of all laws creating "crimes" without victims, such as the use of drugs for medicinal or recreational purposes, since only actions that infringe on the rights of others can properly be termed crimes. Individuals retain the right to voluntarily assume risk of harm to themselves. We support restitution to the victim to the fullest degree possible at the expense of the criminal or the negligent wrongdoer. We oppose reduction of constitutional safeguards of the rights of the criminally accused. The rights of due process, a speedy trial, legal counsel, trial by jury, and the legal presumption of innocence until proven guilty, must not be denied. We assert the common-law right of juries to judge not only the facts but also the justice of the law.
The only legitimate use of force is in defense of individual rights — life, liberty, and justly acquired property — against aggression. This right inheres in the individual, who may agree to be aided by any other individual or group. We affirm the individual right recognized by the Second Amendment to keep and bear arms, and oppose the prosecution of individuals for exercising their rights of self-defense. Private property owners should be free to establish their own conditions regarding the presence of personal defense weapons on their own property. We oppose all laws at any level of government restricting, registering, or monitoring the ownership, manufacture, or transfer of firearms or ammunition.
Libertarians want all members of society to have abundant opportunities to achieve economic success. A free and competitive market allocates resources in the most efficient manner. Each person has the right to offer goods and services to others on the free market. The only proper role of government in the economic realm is to protect property rights, adjudicate disputes, and provide a legal framework in which voluntary trade is protected. All efforts by government to redistribute wealth, or to control or manage trade, are improper in a free society.
As respect for property rights is fundamental to maintaining a free and prosperous society, it follows that the freedom to contract to obtain, retain, profit from, manage, or dispose of one’s property must also be upheld. Libertarians would free property owners from government restrictions on their rights to control and enjoy their property, as long as their choices do not harm or infringe on the rights of others. Eminent domain, civil asset forfeiture, governmental limits on profits, governmental production mandates, and governmental controls on prices of goods and services (including wages, rents, and interest) are abridgements of such fundamental rights. For voluntary dealings among private entities, parties should be free to choose with whom they trade and set whatever trade terms are mutually agreeable.
We support a clean and healthy environment and sensible use of our natural resources. Private landowners and conservation groups have a vested interest in maintaining natural resources. Pollution and misuse of resources cause damage to our ecosystem. Governments, unlike private businesses, are unaccountable for such damage done to our environment and have a terrible track record when it comes to environmental protection. Protecting the environment requires a clear definition and enforcement of individual rights in resources like land, water, air, and wildlife. Free markets and property rights stimulate the technological innovations and behavioral changes required to protect our environment and ecosystems. We realize that our planet's climate is constantly changing, but environmental advocates and social pressure are the most effective means of changing public behavior.
While energy is needed to fuel a modern society, government should not be subsidizing any particular form of energy. We oppose all government control of energy pricing, allocation, and production.
All persons are entitled to keep the fruits of their labor. We call for the repeal of the income tax, the abolishment of the Internal Revenue Service and all federal programs and services not required under the U.S. Constitution. We oppose any legal requirements forcing employers to serve as tax collectors. Government should not incur debt, which burdens future generations without their consent. We support the passage of a "Balanced Budget Amendment" to the U.S. Constitution, provided that the budget is balanced exclusively by cutting expenditures, and not by raising taxes.
We favor free-market banking, with unrestricted competition among banks and depository institutions of all types. Markets are not actually free unless fraud is vigorously combated and neither profits nor losses are socialized. Individuals engaged in voluntary exchange should be free to use as money any mutually agreeable commodity or item. We support a halt to inflationary monetary policies and unconstitutional legal tender laws.
Libertarians support free markets. We defend the right of individuals to form corporations, cooperatives and other types of entities based on voluntary association. We oppose all forms of government subsidies and bailouts to business, labor, or any other special interest. Government should not compete with private enterprise.
Employment and compensation agreements between private employers and employees are outside the scope of government, and these contracts should not be encumbered by government-mandated benefits or social engineering. We support the right of private employers and employees to choose whether or not to bargain with each other through a labor union. Bargaining should be free of government interference, such as compulsory arbitration or imposing an obligation to bargain.
Education is best provided by the free market, achieving greater quality, accountability and efficiency with more diversity of choice. Recognizing that the education of children is a parental responsibility, we would restore authority to parents to determine the education of their children, without interference from government. Parents should have control of and responsibility for all funds expended for their children's education.
We favor a free market health care system. We recognize the freedom of individuals to determine the level of health insurance they want (if any), the level of health care they want, the care providers they want, the medicines and treatments they will use and all other aspects of their medical care, including end-of-life decisions. People should be free to purchase health insurance across state lines.
Retirement planning is the responsibility of the individual, not the government. Libertarians would phase out the current government-sponsored Social Security system and transition to a private voluntary system. The proper and most effective source of help for the poor is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals. We believe members of society will become more charitable and civil society will be strengthened as government reduces its activity in this realm.
The protection of individual rights is the only proper purpose of government. Government is constitutionally limited so as to prevent the infringement of individual rights by the government itself. The principle of non-initiation of force should guide the relationships between governments.
We support the maintenance of a sufficient military to defend the United States against aggression. The United States should both avoid entangling alliances and abandon its attempts to act as policeman for the world. We oppose any form of compulsory national service.
The defense of the country requires that we have adequate intelligence to detect and to counter threats to domestic security. This requirement must not take priority over maintaining the civil liberties of our citizens. The Constitution and Bill of Rights shall not be suspended even during time of war. Intelligence agencies that legitimately seek to preserve the security of the nation must be subject to oversight and transparency. We oppose the government's use of secret classifications to keep from the public information that it should have, especially that which shows that the government has violated the law.
American foreign policy should seek an America at peace with the world. Our foreign policy should emphasize defense against attack from abroad and enhance the likelihood of peace by avoiding foreign entanglements. We would end the current U.S. government policy of foreign intervention, including military and economic aid. We recognize the right of all people to resist tyranny and defend themselves and their rights. We condemn the use of force, and especially the use of terrorism, against the innocent, regardless of whether such acts are committed by governments or by political or revolutionary groups.
We support the removal of governmental impediments to free trade. Political freedom and escape from tyranny demand that individuals not be unreasonably constrained by government in the crossing of political boundaries. Economic freedom demands the unrestricted movement of human as well as financial capital across national borders. However, we support control over the entry into our country of foreign nationals who pose a credible threat to security, health or property.
Libertarians embrace the concept that all people are born with certain inherent rights. We reject the idea that a natural right can ever impose an obligation upon others to fulfill that "right." We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant. Government should neither deny nor abridge any individual's human right based upon sex, wealth, ethnicity, creed, age, national origin, personal habits, political preference or sexual orientation. Members of private organizations retain their rights to set whatever standards of association they deem appropriate, and individuals are free to respond with ostracism, boycotts and other free market solutions. Parents, or other guardians, have the right to raise their children according to their own standards and beliefs. This statement shall not be construed to condone child abuse or neglect.
We support election systems that are more representative of the electorate at the federal, state and local levels. As private voluntary groups, political parties should be allowed to establish their own rules for nomination procedures, primaries and conventions. We call for an end to any tax-financed subsidies to candidates or parties and the repeal of all laws which restrict voluntary financing of election campaigns. We oppose laws that effectively exclude alternative candidates and parties, deny ballot access, gerrymander districts, or deny the voters their right to consider all legitimate alternatives. We advocate initiative, referendum, recall and repeal when used as popular checks on government.
Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of individual liberty, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to agree to such new governance as to them shall seem most likely to protect their liberty.
After reading all of this, all I could say was... "Well, DUH..??!!!!"
At times I may not be blessed with an overabundance of common sense all of the time (particularly in the areas of mathematics and time management), but why is it that the concept of being responsible for one's own actions is such an alien one to the general population?
It's sort of like being trapped in one of those nightmares where you are trying to explain something to everyone and they either ignore you, or they yell at you, and you can't get your point across no matter what you do or say. Only this time, I'm awake and surrounded by the people of the world, and they would all rather be zombified by their iPhones and iPads, with eyeballs glued to the next blockbuster smash-up movie, and plugged into their newsfeeds than to recognize that something is truly wrong with our political system (and most importantly, to be willing to desire and bring CHANGE). Voters should be able to have a voice behind their choice.
A Voice for Choice... If I were more clever, I could market that, couldn't I? Unfortunately the word "choice" has become inextricably linked to the topic of Abortion and Reproductive Rights. So maybe not...
Thursday, April 23, 2015
untitled © 2010
11/07/2010
 |
| Bleecker at Bowery Photo © 1992 by Heather L. Gibson |
you
make me want
to
see New York
make
me want
a
dirty water dog
and
to walk the Village
mourn
the places we used to go
now
in their newest
(saddest)
skeletal
soulless
incarnations
to
see the lights of the City at night
from
your cliffside rooftop
or
from the Empire State
either
way
neither
is a climb I've yet to make
the
marred skyline
so
different from the one i knew
jawbone
missing two teeth
i'd
rather face it now with you
and
blow astral kisses
to
the spirit thousands
and tell them how
not a single day has passed
without a thought for them
now released from my guilt
and tell them how
not a single day has passed
without a thought for them
now released from my guilt
i
can finally wipe
this clinging ash away
this clinging ash away
and
if i can't
could you help me wash it away
could you help me wash it away
the
subway stink
pounding loudness
and the love
of concrete
bootheels
gritty
greasy pavement papers crumpled
trash
and tourists cellphones scattered
neon
screaming corners
no
i've never been to Times Square
seriously,
never had a dirty water dog
or
street pizza
unbelievable,
i know
how
green can you get
let's
visit those
cold
lovely Lions
Patience
+ Fortitude
eat
a cruller outside Tiffany's
read
Cards at Cafe Reggio
like
Judy and I did eons ago
take
me to a
real
Irish pub
where
the bartenders
will
hate me and leer
but
take my money anyway
and
you can laugh
while
i get lit
oh
i'm your dizzy funny bonnie lass
and
i'll do it cos I love to hear you laugh
no
matter the expense
I'll
pay the tab and fall to the floor
and
you can laugh and walk me
back out the door
and i can interrupt to tell you
back out the door
and i can interrupt to tell you
about
the time my dad
got
hit by a cab
on
St. Paddy's Day
nineteen
sixty-something-or-other
let's
do all the lame shit
that
tourists do
show
me the sights
make
like i'm some sort of
suburban
alien bridge and tunnel geek
i'd
love every single silly minute
never
thought i'd see it all again
but
through closed eyes
in
dream
take
me there, will you
if
only on eagle wing
and 2:00
a.m. lucidity
take
me there
Saturday, March 14, 2015
The Politics of Bullying, or, Remaining the Alien
So it seems that a hot button topic for the age is the subject of Bullying. All varieties of bullying. But these days in particular, Cyber-bullying, which encompasses cruelty via text, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and probably a dozen or more online outlets that I've never heard of because I am currently the positively ancient age of forty-five.
Back in my day (just a phrase to prove the point of being positively ancient), bullying was expressed by pushing you into a locker, stealing your lunch money, snagging your street clothes from your gym locker and tossing them out a window, and even switching your shampoo for Nair hair remover. It was embodied by writing ugly phrases on your hallway locker in permanent marker, smashing your lunch bag, putting gum in your hair as you sat unawares in your bus seat, or the more passive-aggressive practice of picking you last for teams at recess or in gym class.
To my recollection, none of these cruel incidents befell me. As a matter of fact, from the age of eight to approximately ten-and-a-half, I was the Golden Child. I was the Girl Who Could Do No Wrong. Every teacher from the second to fifth grade acted as though I hung the moon and strung the stars from the moon to the earth. I made straight A's with minimal (often zero) effort. I could draw any cartoon character posed to me, thus prompting me to create my own and feature them in stories and comic strips of my own devising.
I made a friend in my second grade class named Eric during my first year in Pennsylvania. He possessed the same sarcastic sense of humor and precocious sense of irony that I had. We both embodied a boisterous creative spirit which carried through in our writing and artwork, and our combined work ethic was anything if not industrious. It was Eric who inspired me to write stories morning, noon and night, and often during class time when I had already finished my homework. We even embarked on co-creating a publication, hemmed together with oak tag and magic marker, glitter and glue, pipe cleaners and sticky stars, and gave it the very ill-conceived moniker of The Monthly Cramp, if you can imagine it; "Monthly" for its timeframe of production, and "Cramp" for the little cartoonish creature comprised of what appeared to be a right angle filled with teeth and perhaps a googly eye or two to lend it an anthropomorphic/bestiary quality that formed the letter "C". I can only imagine our teachers in the second and third grade stifling a snort when gazing upon what we considered to be a work of unparalleled brilliance. I mean, we featured articles, comic strips, stories, you name it. I often wondered why my mother made a weird face whenever I would babble about it, trying to convince me to change the name of the magazine. We were eight, for godsakes. Back then, we didn't know anything about that stuff. That would come about a year later.
While I was still fairly new, I was quick to observe and navigate the social complexities of my surroundings, a practice that sounds odd for an eight year-old to comprehend. I picked up very quickly on the cliques that were already forming, who was cool, who wasn't. I initially didn't give any thought to my friends being "cool" or not. I had friends who were odd but creative ducks like myself, like Eric. I had other friends who liked my drawings and my writings. I had a friend I'd made in class who was definitely one who marched to her own internal band. Her handwriting and housekeeping were equally atrocious-- so much so that our second grade teacher, Mrs. Ross, once made an example of her by tipping her desk upside down and dumping a cascade of crumpled papers, dull-tipped no. 2 pencils and index card onto the floor, punctuated by the startling crash and shatter of a small glass elephant she had brought in to class one day for show-and-tell. The poor thing just stood there, red-faced, as Mrs. Ross coolly pointed out that if she had only kept her desk neat, then perhaps her precious knick-knack might not have been broken. My friend held it together, didn't pitch a holy fit, wouldn't give anyone that satisfaction. Because even though she wore hand-me-down threads from three sisters ahead of her, and her hair wasn't combed, and her grades weren't the best, she had something many kids didn't have: street smarts. And a truly goofy sense of humor.
I really liked her. She was one of my first girl friends in the second grade, who lived in the same subdivision as I did, and was only a short bike ride away. We often played at each other's houses, and attended Brownie troop meetings together. I remember listening to the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack one afternoon in her bedroom, not having a clue what a "Sweet Transvestite" from Transsexual Transylvania was. To be fair, we listened to the Muppets' The Frog Prince LP, too. We could laugh about farts and create weird sculptures out of Play-Doh, and sing songs until we were hoarse.
But not all of the kids in my class liked her.
There was a growing contingent of "popular" girls in my class, yes, in the second grade, the last bastion of childhood. They made fun of her well-worn clothes and her messy hair, and who knows what other faults they found in her. I unearthed a memory when I was in my thirties dating back to this period, an afternoon spent on the playground at recess, when this group of girls was making fun of my friend. I was standing with them, not so much participating, but observing and making what could have been a fateful judgment call as a result. I remember walking over to my friend, and cupping my hand by her ear to whisper, "If I'm ever with them, and I make fun of you, don't believe me. Because it's not true."
This memory came out of no where, just one of those things triggered by god-knows-what. But it sent shivers down my spine, the calculating coldness of the words making me slightly sick to my stomach. If I had been my friend, I would have told me to kindly fuck off, in some second grader's way of expressing said sentiment.
But, amazingly, she didn't.
As a matter of fact, we remained friends throughout elementary, junior high and even the end of high school. I never did make fun of her, at least, no memories have been triggered to believe otherwise, but the fact that I knew enough to balance my social comings and goings at the age of eight is pretty chilling to me. I was always on the lookout to keep myself safe, first and foremost. It was a shadowing of things to come, I guess.
I floated through elementary school without a worry in the world. These were those wonderful years you hear about, when we all played TV Freeze Tag until the sun went down and the fireflies came out. When backyards all ran into one another, unfettered by fences, and the one next-door neighbor's pool was open to all whenever there was a block party on Memorial Day or the Fourth of July. The parents drank beer and jug wine, and the kids drank artificial fruit juices in those little plastic barrels with the foil-sealed tops and ate Bomb Pops while running through the sprinklers half-naked. We rode our bikes everywhere, bought penny candy and pizza with our allowances, and stayed up late on Saturday nights playing games on the Atari 2600 and watching The Love Boat and Fantasy Island and the occasional scary movie. Life was really good. It was classic Suburbia. I wouldn't change a moment.
I was blessed with two parents who loved me and fostered my creativity whenever they saw a spark. When I showed an aptitude for playing music by ear, they bought a piano and lessons. When I wanted to play softball or do gymnastics, they signed me up. I was active and had tons of friends, but they also recognized my artistic, introspective side, and gave me my space when I wanted to stay in my room and create, write, draw...
Not an awkward child by any means (though by all means certainly quirky and imaginative), I had no shortage of friends, and plenty of acquaintances in my classes. I enjoyed entertaining them with my drawings and stories, and they would always tell me what I was going to be when I grew up. "You're going to be a famous artist!" or "You're going to be a writer!"
While it was commonplace for me to earn A's during every marking period and win creative writing contests, I never bragged to anyone. Even though receiving said grades and accolades had become almost old-hat to me, bordering on expectation, I never completely understood why, or how they all came so easily. I was never the last to be picked for kickball teams. I loved running around with the boys, getting down in the dirt, playing with Star Wars action figures... My teachers all parroted my friends' praises, and I was no doubt a Teacher's Pet, helping them put together display case decorations each month, and earning good grades on tests and homework assignments. You would think these precocious traits would make me a target for cruelty doled out by disgruntled students in my classes, but they simply didn't.
Until the fifth grade.
We had a burly teacher named Mrs. Jacobson. She didn't take any shit, basically. And kids in 1980 were just starting to get to be a little more than unruly and obnoxious. It was the calm before the shit-storm of hormones that was about to hit most of us. And Mrs. J. just didn't suffer fools. Or ten year-olds with attitude. After all, back then, the teacher was still the authority figure, and we were expected to behave.
This of course branded her a complete bitch, as she had a scary, raspy voice and thought nothing of raising it to a frightening squawk if you were carrying on. There were consequences to your actions back then. But I was blissfully immune to the rabble-rousing and resulting punishments. I just flitted around, drawing my cartoons, writing my stories, dreaming of working for Walt Disney Productions, maybe writing a series of novels, or studying sharks as a marine biologist.
Enter Deirdre and Lauren.
Deirdre was a short girl with a brown bowl-cut, a little pointed nose that was dusted with freckles. She declared that she had a "boyfriend" (yes, at the age of nine and ten, we really had no clue what that meant, back in the Dark Ages of the tail-end of the Seventies), Patrick (a perfect match made in white trash Irish under-aged heaven, no?), and they proved all of this to the class during indoor recess when the two of them made out in the coat closet. I mean, I knew what it was to have a crush-- I'd been crushing on boys since the age of five-- but my crushes went no further than Shaun Cassidy, and Shawn Ortman, who skated a couples dance with me at the Rollerama in the third grade. But, I digress.
It was right around this time that Deirdre decided to point out to me in a very public way that I really needed to get myself some designer jeans.
Recall again that this was 1979-1980-1981, the end of a period of inflation in our economy, and that a ten year-old asking her parents for $50 jeans with Gloria Vanderbilt's signature, a Jordache horse head, or Calvin Klein emblazoned across one buttcheek would likely be met with horror or, even worse, laughter. Add to this the fact that even if my parents had dispensible income like that laying around, I probably could not have squeezed said buttcheeks into the jeans, as they were of a very straight slender cut, and I was not. This is probably why Deirdre made the less-than-subtle suggestion about my wardrobe. There was no way I could possibly slithered my J-Lo behind and hips into a girl's pair of designer jeans.
Lauren, as I recall, was a "new girl." She started at our elementary school in the fifth grade. There was no history there between us. I had no reason to dislike her. I didn't even know her. You would think the same would be true from her side of the fence, where I was concerned.
This was clearly not the case, for reasons that I could never, to this very day, figure out.
She always seemed to have a smile on her face. But it wasn't a friendly, happy smile. There was something else behind it that I could never quite put my finger on-- it was like she was sizing me up like a shark would while circling its prey.
She was a good deal taller than I was-- probably the first girl, or classmate in general, who was. I was always one of the tallest in my classes. So her form was rather imposing. She wasn't a skinny girl by any means, not one of those ballet/gymnast bodies that resembled a stick figure as was common at age ten.
And yet she had the audacity to call me out as "fat."
She did this during music class, when she got her hands on a pair of drumsticks and, while I was kneeling on the floor doing something, she got behind me and proceeded to beat a drum solo on my ass. When I whipped around to face her, she had the same stupid wide smile on her face, all innocence. "What?" she exclaimed, to what to have been my guppy-mouthed expression of shock. "I was only playing your drums..." This was apparently hysterically funny to several of my classmates.
I don't know if it was during this same music class, but I had a very bad cold and case of laryngitis. Why our music teacher picked me to sing a solo in front of everyone is beyond me. On a good day, I would have nailed it, even with my chronic nasal congestion at that age. On this day, however, with Lauren sitting right in front of me still wearing that big stupid smile on her face, all I could do was weakly squeak out a few notes, and probably turn several shades of Embarrassment.
The drum solo incident seemed to spark similar teasing from other classmates, mostly the boys. One of them write in my autograph book that he wished me luck in the Miss Piggy Contest. He delighted in telling me that he was going to grow up to be a great writer, and I was going to be home eating bon bons. Another kid used to sing "Blip, blip, blip, blip" at me, from a commercial for an electronic game that was popular at the time. He also addressed me as Blip, both in person and in my autograph book.
Then an anonymous brat decided it would be fun to take my sand painting I'd made during a vacation in San Diego and shake the jar so that all the colored sand layers were jumbled together. I never learned who did it, or why.
Lauren led the charge when it came to making fun of my drawings, particularly my cartoons. Why? I don't know, maybe she couldn't draw a stick figure and was jealous? I had no idea, but I certainly never made fun of anything she'd ever done.
She rode the same bus that I did, clear on up through high school, and whenever she would see me (I would witness this out of my peripheral vision), she would turn to whomever was sitting beside her, and then proceed to loudly recount some ridiculous tale from the fifth grade about me, and erupt into hysterical laughter.
The pivotal year of sixth grade was the first year we took part in a middle school setting. Instead of getting to "rule the school" in elementary school, we were instead plucked from the near-top of the mountain and dropped back down to the bottom rung of what used to be called junior high. We were the little kids again, divided into "teams," along with two other elementary schools' worth of kids, so we were mixed with many people we'd never met before.
It was between the fifth and sixth grade that all of my previous teachers had gone against the school board to insist that I be admitted into the Gifted program. Even though my standardized tests were off the charts, and my performance in class was beyond above-average, when it came to taking the IQ tests administered by the district's school psychologist to determine placement, I always missed the Gifted range by a point or two, and was never admitted into the program. I was still in the highest reading and math groups, but the mysterious Gifted program eluded me. All I knew about the Gifted program was that a handful of kids got to disappear for an hour or so one day a week to some other classroom, and do really fun stuff like create filmstrips and learn things like Logic and Problem-Solving.
So here I was, in a new school, with a locker that became my mortal enemy (could almost never get it to open), with new kids I didn't know, a face full of acne, thick glasses, braces, stringy brown hair, and I'd not only grown three inches over the summer, but I'd gained about 20 pounds. I loved unicorns and science fiction, and a couple of new friends had introduced me to a game that their older brothers played called Dungeons & Dragons (even though I never actually played it). I was the epitome of Nerd.
And I was also no longer the smart kid.
I don't know what I missed out on from not being in the Gifted program from birth, but clearly my brain worked differently than the rest of these kids, because I could not get a grade higher than a D to save my life. This, from a kid who formerly had never seen a grade lower than an A. I was also shoved into a higher math group to boot, and that's when things really got messed-up. More D's and F's. My parents tried to get me taken out of the level I'd be shoved into, but were told by the District that they "had quotas to meet" (my school district was among the top 10% in the country). So I was stuck in accelerated math courses until my senior year of high school, when I was no longer required to take math.
So I was ugly, chunky, no longer smart, and clearly all the things that I once cared about were now stupid. You can probably imagine where this introspection took me. Right down the rabbit hole.
And through it all, the bitchy girls were there at every turn. I managed to still retain actual friends (how, I have no idea, as my attitude was morphed and twisted by an influx of hormones and an intense self-loathing from the inside out). No matter what I did-- from a Halloween costume worn to and made fun of during a dance to a body-wave perm I got which was loudly derided during chorus practice in the seventh grade by a gaggle of Jewish girls who pretty much ruled the school-- I couldn't win.
And there was Lauren, on the bus, or in the hallway. It wasn't an everyday thing-- but she would always appear when I least expected it, to say something moronic in completely non sequitur fashion, for no reason at all, to bring me right back to our fifth grade classroom and make me feel like a powerless squib of a girl.
I never found my voice at the right time and place. I had a mouth on me, to be sure, and I knew how to pick a fight-- but the people who received the brunt of my unpleasantness and ugliness were those who never deserved it: my true friends, and my family. I was perfectly hideous to my parents, and later in high school, I made a sadistic game out of pushing my friends away, having them crawl back to me in literal tears and confusion as to what they had done to make me so angry, only to smack them down again.
Looking back on my actions decades later, I can only deduce this, in reviewing my Self back then as a separate entity completely: I hated myself so very much, that the best way to do damage to myself, without doing actual physical damage, was to hurt those that I cared about the most. It was almost like going out-of-body; the ugly, damaged, pissed-off half of my being would take over, and it would essentially hold the good, kind, empathic portion of myself hostage, as if tying her to a chair and whispering, "Watch this..." and then being cruel and heinous to those who actually knew the "real" me, and more importantly, those who cared about her a great deal.
I could only get down a hallway by putting an invisible mask on my face and never making eye contact with those I might run into. The cliques of black girls who would gather and line up by the lockers would shout out things at anyone passing by, but would grow silent when I came by. The cheerleaders and the jocks no longer noticed me. The smarter-than-thou honors society kids didn't see me. The artsy punk and goth and theatre kids didn't know I was alive. Despite my aloof appearance, I took careful note of all of them. I knew their uniforms and their haircuts, their style of dress and the music they listened to. And while a teenager's grandest desire, second only to being "understood," is to be accepted, I was content to flit in a very surface manner between these "groups," barely making a ripple, knowing just the right things to say, the right things to comment on or to bring up, and then glide away, untouched, unscathed. I became a Social Chameleon.
And by the end of junior year, I had no idea who I was. And I no longer cared.
I no longer cared about social convention and the bullshit politics of belonging. All I cared about was the music that brought me joy (anything by Duran Duran-- particularly their Rio album, David Bowie's Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars LP, Cyndi Lauper and her original band's debut Blue Angel, Blondie's Plastic Letters), the quintessential Eighties' novels of Bright Lights Big City and Less Than Zero, the books and magazine articles about Andy Warhol, CBGB's, the birth of Punk and New Wave, and the colored pencils, paints, and charcoal that I used to fill my sketch books with portraits of models and rock stars. Long-gone were the sketches of Disney and Warner Bros. cartoons, of Snoopy and Marmaduke and Garfield, or the creations of my own design. Gone were the piano lessons when I no longer bothered to practice-- though I would sit at the keys and bang out my emotions after having a shitty day.
I remember befriending a girl in my senior year creative writing class. I remembered her from as far back as middle school. She was picked on by others, kept largely to herself except for maybe one or two friends. But in class, as I sat beside her, I noticed she was always scribbling in a small notepad-- either writing that was too small to read, or else little cartoonish drawings. Over time she and I would talk, and I discovered that she was quite humorous and kind, and she reminded me somewhat of myself from several years ago. One lunch period I asked her to sit with me, and later one of my supposed friends asked me what the hell my problem was, inviting such a dork to join us. I went off on a rampage, asking who the fuck did she think she was to decide who could sit where, and that if she had ever bothered to take the time to get to know this girl, she would realize she's really quite cool. I didn't care what anyone thought of me any more. I was done.
For some reason, I tend to trace my sense of self and lack of self-esteem back to Lauren, to this very day. Even though I am far into adulthood, now approaching middle age, I don't know why all of life's experiences since that time have done nothing to diminish completely how I feel about myself and my abilities. I used to still have dreams about her picking on me well into my 20's and 30's, never realizing in my dream that I could just walk up to her face and tell her most emphatically to fuck off, or perhaps devolve into violence and punch her square between the eyes.
In this magical universe of connectivity, I have found her on Facebook. I find it mildly ironic that her posts are all about her precious kids, a couple with special needs, and what a warm, empathic mask she has crafted for herself. She has posted several things about kids' cruelty to other kids, and it makes my blood boil. Instead of being smugly pleased that she has obviously matured since my experiences with her from age 10-18, I am incensed. For whatever reason, I have never been able to let go of the anger that I have toward her, perhaps because I never directed it at her 30+ years ago when and where it was needed. As supposedly intelligent as I am, I do not know how to move past whatever "damage" I allowed her to do to me, to literally change who I was as a person overnight.
I look around at those with whom I went to school, and all of them-- the "ugliest," the "dorkiest," the "meanest," the "shyest," the "rudest," whatever slots they fell into back in the day-- are married, some several times, most with kids, with families, with careers, with family vacations and interests and accomplishments and accolades.
I feel like an alien, in comparison-- as I always have.
This -- post-- is a work in progress.
Back in my day (just a phrase to prove the point of being positively ancient), bullying was expressed by pushing you into a locker, stealing your lunch money, snagging your street clothes from your gym locker and tossing them out a window, and even switching your shampoo for Nair hair remover. It was embodied by writing ugly phrases on your hallway locker in permanent marker, smashing your lunch bag, putting gum in your hair as you sat unawares in your bus seat, or the more passive-aggressive practice of picking you last for teams at recess or in gym class.
To my recollection, none of these cruel incidents befell me. As a matter of fact, from the age of eight to approximately ten-and-a-half, I was the Golden Child. I was the Girl Who Could Do No Wrong. Every teacher from the second to fifth grade acted as though I hung the moon and strung the stars from the moon to the earth. I made straight A's with minimal (often zero) effort. I could draw any cartoon character posed to me, thus prompting me to create my own and feature them in stories and comic strips of my own devising.
I made a friend in my second grade class named Eric during my first year in Pennsylvania. He possessed the same sarcastic sense of humor and precocious sense of irony that I had. We both embodied a boisterous creative spirit which carried through in our writing and artwork, and our combined work ethic was anything if not industrious. It was Eric who inspired me to write stories morning, noon and night, and often during class time when I had already finished my homework. We even embarked on co-creating a publication, hemmed together with oak tag and magic marker, glitter and glue, pipe cleaners and sticky stars, and gave it the very ill-conceived moniker of The Monthly Cramp, if you can imagine it; "Monthly" for its timeframe of production, and "Cramp" for the little cartoonish creature comprised of what appeared to be a right angle filled with teeth and perhaps a googly eye or two to lend it an anthropomorphic/bestiary quality that formed the letter "C". I can only imagine our teachers in the second and third grade stifling a snort when gazing upon what we considered to be a work of unparalleled brilliance. I mean, we featured articles, comic strips, stories, you name it. I often wondered why my mother made a weird face whenever I would babble about it, trying to convince me to change the name of the magazine. We were eight, for godsakes. Back then, we didn't know anything about that stuff. That would come about a year later.
While I was still fairly new, I was quick to observe and navigate the social complexities of my surroundings, a practice that sounds odd for an eight year-old to comprehend. I picked up very quickly on the cliques that were already forming, who was cool, who wasn't. I initially didn't give any thought to my friends being "cool" or not. I had friends who were odd but creative ducks like myself, like Eric. I had other friends who liked my drawings and my writings. I had a friend I'd made in class who was definitely one who marched to her own internal band. Her handwriting and housekeeping were equally atrocious-- so much so that our second grade teacher, Mrs. Ross, once made an example of her by tipping her desk upside down and dumping a cascade of crumpled papers, dull-tipped no. 2 pencils and index card onto the floor, punctuated by the startling crash and shatter of a small glass elephant she had brought in to class one day for show-and-tell. The poor thing just stood there, red-faced, as Mrs. Ross coolly pointed out that if she had only kept her desk neat, then perhaps her precious knick-knack might not have been broken. My friend held it together, didn't pitch a holy fit, wouldn't give anyone that satisfaction. Because even though she wore hand-me-down threads from three sisters ahead of her, and her hair wasn't combed, and her grades weren't the best, she had something many kids didn't have: street smarts. And a truly goofy sense of humor.
I really liked her. She was one of my first girl friends in the second grade, who lived in the same subdivision as I did, and was only a short bike ride away. We often played at each other's houses, and attended Brownie troop meetings together. I remember listening to the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack one afternoon in her bedroom, not having a clue what a "Sweet Transvestite" from Transsexual Transylvania was. To be fair, we listened to the Muppets' The Frog Prince LP, too. We could laugh about farts and create weird sculptures out of Play-Doh, and sing songs until we were hoarse.
But not all of the kids in my class liked her.
There was a growing contingent of "popular" girls in my class, yes, in the second grade, the last bastion of childhood. They made fun of her well-worn clothes and her messy hair, and who knows what other faults they found in her. I unearthed a memory when I was in my thirties dating back to this period, an afternoon spent on the playground at recess, when this group of girls was making fun of my friend. I was standing with them, not so much participating, but observing and making what could have been a fateful judgment call as a result. I remember walking over to my friend, and cupping my hand by her ear to whisper, "If I'm ever with them, and I make fun of you, don't believe me. Because it's not true."
This memory came out of no where, just one of those things triggered by god-knows-what. But it sent shivers down my spine, the calculating coldness of the words making me slightly sick to my stomach. If I had been my friend, I would have told me to kindly fuck off, in some second grader's way of expressing said sentiment.
But, amazingly, she didn't.
As a matter of fact, we remained friends throughout elementary, junior high and even the end of high school. I never did make fun of her, at least, no memories have been triggered to believe otherwise, but the fact that I knew enough to balance my social comings and goings at the age of eight is pretty chilling to me. I was always on the lookout to keep myself safe, first and foremost. It was a shadowing of things to come, I guess.
I floated through elementary school without a worry in the world. These were those wonderful years you hear about, when we all played TV Freeze Tag until the sun went down and the fireflies came out. When backyards all ran into one another, unfettered by fences, and the one next-door neighbor's pool was open to all whenever there was a block party on Memorial Day or the Fourth of July. The parents drank beer and jug wine, and the kids drank artificial fruit juices in those little plastic barrels with the foil-sealed tops and ate Bomb Pops while running through the sprinklers half-naked. We rode our bikes everywhere, bought penny candy and pizza with our allowances, and stayed up late on Saturday nights playing games on the Atari 2600 and watching The Love Boat and Fantasy Island and the occasional scary movie. Life was really good. It was classic Suburbia. I wouldn't change a moment.
I was blessed with two parents who loved me and fostered my creativity whenever they saw a spark. When I showed an aptitude for playing music by ear, they bought a piano and lessons. When I wanted to play softball or do gymnastics, they signed me up. I was active and had tons of friends, but they also recognized my artistic, introspective side, and gave me my space when I wanted to stay in my room and create, write, draw...
Not an awkward child by any means (though by all means certainly quirky and imaginative), I had no shortage of friends, and plenty of acquaintances in my classes. I enjoyed entertaining them with my drawings and stories, and they would always tell me what I was going to be when I grew up. "You're going to be a famous artist!" or "You're going to be a writer!"
While it was commonplace for me to earn A's during every marking period and win creative writing contests, I never bragged to anyone. Even though receiving said grades and accolades had become almost old-hat to me, bordering on expectation, I never completely understood why, or how they all came so easily. I was never the last to be picked for kickball teams. I loved running around with the boys, getting down in the dirt, playing with Star Wars action figures... My teachers all parroted my friends' praises, and I was no doubt a Teacher's Pet, helping them put together display case decorations each month, and earning good grades on tests and homework assignments. You would think these precocious traits would make me a target for cruelty doled out by disgruntled students in my classes, but they simply didn't.
Until the fifth grade.
We had a burly teacher named Mrs. Jacobson. She didn't take any shit, basically. And kids in 1980 were just starting to get to be a little more than unruly and obnoxious. It was the calm before the shit-storm of hormones that was about to hit most of us. And Mrs. J. just didn't suffer fools. Or ten year-olds with attitude. After all, back then, the teacher was still the authority figure, and we were expected to behave.
This of course branded her a complete bitch, as she had a scary, raspy voice and thought nothing of raising it to a frightening squawk if you were carrying on. There were consequences to your actions back then. But I was blissfully immune to the rabble-rousing and resulting punishments. I just flitted around, drawing my cartoons, writing my stories, dreaming of working for Walt Disney Productions, maybe writing a series of novels, or studying sharks as a marine biologist.
Enter Deirdre and Lauren.
Deirdre was a short girl with a brown bowl-cut, a little pointed nose that was dusted with freckles. She declared that she had a "boyfriend" (yes, at the age of nine and ten, we really had no clue what that meant, back in the Dark Ages of the tail-end of the Seventies), Patrick (a perfect match made in white trash Irish under-aged heaven, no?), and they proved all of this to the class during indoor recess when the two of them made out in the coat closet. I mean, I knew what it was to have a crush-- I'd been crushing on boys since the age of five-- but my crushes went no further than Shaun Cassidy, and Shawn Ortman, who skated a couples dance with me at the Rollerama in the third grade. But, I digress.
It was right around this time that Deirdre decided to point out to me in a very public way that I really needed to get myself some designer jeans.
Recall again that this was 1979-1980-1981, the end of a period of inflation in our economy, and that a ten year-old asking her parents for $50 jeans with Gloria Vanderbilt's signature, a Jordache horse head, or Calvin Klein emblazoned across one buttcheek would likely be met with horror or, even worse, laughter. Add to this the fact that even if my parents had dispensible income like that laying around, I probably could not have squeezed said buttcheeks into the jeans, as they were of a very straight slender cut, and I was not. This is probably why Deirdre made the less-than-subtle suggestion about my wardrobe. There was no way I could possibly slithered my J-Lo behind and hips into a girl's pair of designer jeans.
Lauren, as I recall, was a "new girl." She started at our elementary school in the fifth grade. There was no history there between us. I had no reason to dislike her. I didn't even know her. You would think the same would be true from her side of the fence, where I was concerned.
This was clearly not the case, for reasons that I could never, to this very day, figure out.
She always seemed to have a smile on her face. But it wasn't a friendly, happy smile. There was something else behind it that I could never quite put my finger on-- it was like she was sizing me up like a shark would while circling its prey.
She was a good deal taller than I was-- probably the first girl, or classmate in general, who was. I was always one of the tallest in my classes. So her form was rather imposing. She wasn't a skinny girl by any means, not one of those ballet/gymnast bodies that resembled a stick figure as was common at age ten.
And yet she had the audacity to call me out as "fat."
She did this during music class, when she got her hands on a pair of drumsticks and, while I was kneeling on the floor doing something, she got behind me and proceeded to beat a drum solo on my ass. When I whipped around to face her, she had the same stupid wide smile on her face, all innocence. "What?" she exclaimed, to what to have been my guppy-mouthed expression of shock. "I was only playing your drums..." This was apparently hysterically funny to several of my classmates.
I don't know if it was during this same music class, but I had a very bad cold and case of laryngitis. Why our music teacher picked me to sing a solo in front of everyone is beyond me. On a good day, I would have nailed it, even with my chronic nasal congestion at that age. On this day, however, with Lauren sitting right in front of me still wearing that big stupid smile on her face, all I could do was weakly squeak out a few notes, and probably turn several shades of Embarrassment.
The drum solo incident seemed to spark similar teasing from other classmates, mostly the boys. One of them write in my autograph book that he wished me luck in the Miss Piggy Contest. He delighted in telling me that he was going to grow up to be a great writer, and I was going to be home eating bon bons. Another kid used to sing "Blip, blip, blip, blip" at me, from a commercial for an electronic game that was popular at the time. He also addressed me as Blip, both in person and in my autograph book.
Then an anonymous brat decided it would be fun to take my sand painting I'd made during a vacation in San Diego and shake the jar so that all the colored sand layers were jumbled together. I never learned who did it, or why.
Lauren led the charge when it came to making fun of my drawings, particularly my cartoons. Why? I don't know, maybe she couldn't draw a stick figure and was jealous? I had no idea, but I certainly never made fun of anything she'd ever done.
She rode the same bus that I did, clear on up through high school, and whenever she would see me (I would witness this out of my peripheral vision), she would turn to whomever was sitting beside her, and then proceed to loudly recount some ridiculous tale from the fifth grade about me, and erupt into hysterical laughter.
The pivotal year of sixth grade was the first year we took part in a middle school setting. Instead of getting to "rule the school" in elementary school, we were instead plucked from the near-top of the mountain and dropped back down to the bottom rung of what used to be called junior high. We were the little kids again, divided into "teams," along with two other elementary schools' worth of kids, so we were mixed with many people we'd never met before.
It was between the fifth and sixth grade that all of my previous teachers had gone against the school board to insist that I be admitted into the Gifted program. Even though my standardized tests were off the charts, and my performance in class was beyond above-average, when it came to taking the IQ tests administered by the district's school psychologist to determine placement, I always missed the Gifted range by a point or two, and was never admitted into the program. I was still in the highest reading and math groups, but the mysterious Gifted program eluded me. All I knew about the Gifted program was that a handful of kids got to disappear for an hour or so one day a week to some other classroom, and do really fun stuff like create filmstrips and learn things like Logic and Problem-Solving.
So here I was, in a new school, with a locker that became my mortal enemy (could almost never get it to open), with new kids I didn't know, a face full of acne, thick glasses, braces, stringy brown hair, and I'd not only grown three inches over the summer, but I'd gained about 20 pounds. I loved unicorns and science fiction, and a couple of new friends had introduced me to a game that their older brothers played called Dungeons & Dragons (even though I never actually played it). I was the epitome of Nerd.
And I was also no longer the smart kid.
I don't know what I missed out on from not being in the Gifted program from birth, but clearly my brain worked differently than the rest of these kids, because I could not get a grade higher than a D to save my life. This, from a kid who formerly had never seen a grade lower than an A. I was also shoved into a higher math group to boot, and that's when things really got messed-up. More D's and F's. My parents tried to get me taken out of the level I'd be shoved into, but were told by the District that they "had quotas to meet" (my school district was among the top 10% in the country). So I was stuck in accelerated math courses until my senior year of high school, when I was no longer required to take math.
So I was ugly, chunky, no longer smart, and clearly all the things that I once cared about were now stupid. You can probably imagine where this introspection took me. Right down the rabbit hole.
And through it all, the bitchy girls were there at every turn. I managed to still retain actual friends (how, I have no idea, as my attitude was morphed and twisted by an influx of hormones and an intense self-loathing from the inside out). No matter what I did-- from a Halloween costume worn to and made fun of during a dance to a body-wave perm I got which was loudly derided during chorus practice in the seventh grade by a gaggle of Jewish girls who pretty much ruled the school-- I couldn't win.
And there was Lauren, on the bus, or in the hallway. It wasn't an everyday thing-- but she would always appear when I least expected it, to say something moronic in completely non sequitur fashion, for no reason at all, to bring me right back to our fifth grade classroom and make me feel like a powerless squib of a girl.
I never found my voice at the right time and place. I had a mouth on me, to be sure, and I knew how to pick a fight-- but the people who received the brunt of my unpleasantness and ugliness were those who never deserved it: my true friends, and my family. I was perfectly hideous to my parents, and later in high school, I made a sadistic game out of pushing my friends away, having them crawl back to me in literal tears and confusion as to what they had done to make me so angry, only to smack them down again.
Looking back on my actions decades later, I can only deduce this, in reviewing my Self back then as a separate entity completely: I hated myself so very much, that the best way to do damage to myself, without doing actual physical damage, was to hurt those that I cared about the most. It was almost like going out-of-body; the ugly, damaged, pissed-off half of my being would take over, and it would essentially hold the good, kind, empathic portion of myself hostage, as if tying her to a chair and whispering, "Watch this..." and then being cruel and heinous to those who actually knew the "real" me, and more importantly, those who cared about her a great deal.
I could only get down a hallway by putting an invisible mask on my face and never making eye contact with those I might run into. The cliques of black girls who would gather and line up by the lockers would shout out things at anyone passing by, but would grow silent when I came by. The cheerleaders and the jocks no longer noticed me. The smarter-than-thou honors society kids didn't see me. The artsy punk and goth and theatre kids didn't know I was alive. Despite my aloof appearance, I took careful note of all of them. I knew their uniforms and their haircuts, their style of dress and the music they listened to. And while a teenager's grandest desire, second only to being "understood," is to be accepted, I was content to flit in a very surface manner between these "groups," barely making a ripple, knowing just the right things to say, the right things to comment on or to bring up, and then glide away, untouched, unscathed. I became a Social Chameleon.
And by the end of junior year, I had no idea who I was. And I no longer cared.
I no longer cared about social convention and the bullshit politics of belonging. All I cared about was the music that brought me joy (anything by Duran Duran-- particularly their Rio album, David Bowie's Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars LP, Cyndi Lauper and her original band's debut Blue Angel, Blondie's Plastic Letters), the quintessential Eighties' novels of Bright Lights Big City and Less Than Zero, the books and magazine articles about Andy Warhol, CBGB's, the birth of Punk and New Wave, and the colored pencils, paints, and charcoal that I used to fill my sketch books with portraits of models and rock stars. Long-gone were the sketches of Disney and Warner Bros. cartoons, of Snoopy and Marmaduke and Garfield, or the creations of my own design. Gone were the piano lessons when I no longer bothered to practice-- though I would sit at the keys and bang out my emotions after having a shitty day.
I remember befriending a girl in my senior year creative writing class. I remembered her from as far back as middle school. She was picked on by others, kept largely to herself except for maybe one or two friends. But in class, as I sat beside her, I noticed she was always scribbling in a small notepad-- either writing that was too small to read, or else little cartoonish drawings. Over time she and I would talk, and I discovered that she was quite humorous and kind, and she reminded me somewhat of myself from several years ago. One lunch period I asked her to sit with me, and later one of my supposed friends asked me what the hell my problem was, inviting such a dork to join us. I went off on a rampage, asking who the fuck did she think she was to decide who could sit where, and that if she had ever bothered to take the time to get to know this girl, she would realize she's really quite cool. I didn't care what anyone thought of me any more. I was done.
For some reason, I tend to trace my sense of self and lack of self-esteem back to Lauren, to this very day. Even though I am far into adulthood, now approaching middle age, I don't know why all of life's experiences since that time have done nothing to diminish completely how I feel about myself and my abilities. I used to still have dreams about her picking on me well into my 20's and 30's, never realizing in my dream that I could just walk up to her face and tell her most emphatically to fuck off, or perhaps devolve into violence and punch her square between the eyes.
In this magical universe of connectivity, I have found her on Facebook. I find it mildly ironic that her posts are all about her precious kids, a couple with special needs, and what a warm, empathic mask she has crafted for herself. She has posted several things about kids' cruelty to other kids, and it makes my blood boil. Instead of being smugly pleased that she has obviously matured since my experiences with her from age 10-18, I am incensed. For whatever reason, I have never been able to let go of the anger that I have toward her, perhaps because I never directed it at her 30+ years ago when and where it was needed. As supposedly intelligent as I am, I do not know how to move past whatever "damage" I allowed her to do to me, to literally change who I was as a person overnight.
I look around at those with whom I went to school, and all of them-- the "ugliest," the "dorkiest," the "meanest," the "shyest," the "rudest," whatever slots they fell into back in the day-- are married, some several times, most with kids, with families, with careers, with family vacations and interests and accomplishments and accolades.
I feel like an alien, in comparison-- as I always have.
This -- post-- is a work in progress.
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