My youngest son is now eighteen months old. A phase of early childhood development I commonly refer to as the "hey dad, let's see if you can stop me from killing myself" phase. This phase is highlighted by the fact that he now sees his short stature as a challenge to overcome by carefully scaling every large object in sight. He also apparently enjoys the "devil may care" thrill of climbing things positioned on non-carpeted floors. Anything hard and suicidal like brick, concrete, or ceramic tile suites him just fine.
On a positive note, his wish to test Newton's theory of gravity has really upped my time in the forty yard dash, or at least the ten yard dash. I can now make it from my chair in the living room to our kitchen table before the final consonant of whatever the expletive du jour is leaves my mouth. I feel like Indiana Jones as I sprint while leaping over the coffee table and dodging stray toys. And wouldn't you know it; as soon as I rescue the little monster from his own horrific judgement he screams at me and attempts to begin the climb again. Doesn't he understand heads are supposed to be round? Why is he in such a rush to add so many nice, symmetrical flat spots? If he's successful, he's gonna feel really silly when the prematurely bald Nolan gene catches up with him.
I wish I could say that my kids grow out of this type of self-destructive behavior, but so far Jackson is providing no evidence to support that theory. This summer we took him to Mobile, AL to join in the celebration of his cousin's birthday. It was a lovely party complete with tons of kids and an inflatable water slide. This slide stood about fifteen feet high and attaching your handy water hose to the top made all of the kids squeal with joy as they plummeted to the bottom. At the bottom there stood a backstop to catch the never-ending stream of flailing sixty pound bodies it would endure over the course of a hot summer afternoon. Jackson quickly identified that the backstop area at the bottom of the slide was collecting water at a dangerous pace. This would not do! How could he possibly stand for this apparent design flaw that would inexplicably lead to the drowning of his party mates.
Knowing that only he would be able to save them all, he sprang in to action and devised a plan. In order to "safely" remove the excess water from the slide, only one course of action would do. He would have to climb to the top of the slide, run and jump (thereby avoiding the pesky slide part), and cannonball on to the bottom of the slide. Like any good parent, I'm inside yucking it up with the gals, completely oblivious to the fact that my kid is FREAKING everyone out. One of Amanda's relatives taps me on the shoulder and says "umm, Jamey. Could you please ask Jackson to stop cannonballing off of the top of the slide. I think he's gonna really hurt himself." As those words leave her mouth I catch a glimpse of this beautiful human I helped create flying through the air, legs tucked in (perfect form no less), then smashing on the bottom to a chorus of "OH!" from the onlookers.
As he climbs up the stairs for round number: "God only knows" of this horrific daredevil stunt, I catch him by the ankle. He looks at me in a sort of "I know, it's cool right?" way and I immediately remove him from the slide. Our exchange goes as follows:
Me: Jackson, what in the world are you doing?
Jackson: (nearly screaming in delight, while not hearing the question, or caring) dad, did you see what I did? It was awesome! I did a cannonball and made a big splash..........(at this point he trailed off into the ramblings of an over-sugared six year old)
Me: JACKSON!
Jackson: What?
Me: Do NOT do that again! You could really hurt yourself.
Jackson: No dad, I'm fine. My neck only popped that one time.
Me: Listen to me carefully son. Don't tell your mom that last part.
I always crack up at people who post some obligatory "when I grew up we drank from the water hose" schtick on facebook, or hear someone claiming that kids these days are too soft and babied. I grew up in a small neighborhood with nine other boys near the same age. Our world certainly wasn't "nerfed" to protect us. We ran around barefooted, in the woods, most days with little to no supervision whatsoever. This led to the invention of games like "let's build our own zip line" or "baseball bat sword fight." These were not games developed by the good people who make those Baby Einstein videos. Far from it. The only thing we learned was the distinct auditory difference from the ping of two aluminum bats smashing together and the dull thud of soft tissue damage.
The zip line really stole the show. Steel wire, an enclosed wheel, and a small lat bar from a workout bench was all that was needed to get the party started. There's something quite exhilarating about breaking the highway speed limit while holding on to a slippery metal bar hanging twenty feet above the earth. If you were prone to sweaty palms, this was not the ride for you. The key to a safe zip line experience was learning when to bail out. You didn't want to let go too soon, or the drop would shatter your little ankles. Too late, and you might get to experience the taste of oak tree bark. And did we clear the landing zone of debris? Hell no. There's nothing like tumbling, in nothing but shorts, through overgrown grass and pine cones to toughen you up a bit.
You know what makes me a little sad? The thought that kids who grew up in cities would never know the joyous experience of having a pine cone splinter removed from the bottom of your foot. It's really a family bonding experience. Nothing says beautiful family memories like having to be physically restrained by your dad while "shaky hands" mom uses a sewing needle and tweezers to carefully remove all of the meat around the splinter so it can gently fall out on it's own. And thanks to modern medicine, infection would be no issue as the wound would most certainly be drenched in rubbing alcohol. Seriously. How bad can gangrene be? How about this mom? How about next time you just cauterize the wound with a glowing hot cattle brand? Ointment was apparently reserved for "sissies." Fine, put me in a dress, paint my nails, and put the alcohol AWAY!
People always say "look at me. I turned out just fine!" No you didn't. How many of us have too many scars to remember where they all came from? New flash; that's not supposed to happen. That cool shiny skin that permanently replaced your regular skin is a back up plan. You're body is only supposed to use it if you've done something really stupid. Or how about the fact that your knee hurts a little when it gets too humid? That's not by design. You're thirty! Those kind of stupid human tricks are usually reserved for war wounds and "I drank too much at a wedding one time and had a horrific chicken dance accident" stories. They're not supposed to happen when you're eight, and living through them isn't a testament to your strong will or manliness. It's simply that old man Murphy hasn't quite caught up with you yet. Sometimes it takes a generation or two for the theory of natural selection to kick in.
I'm aware of the insanity I passed on to my kids. I know that they are both hell bound and determined to test the fiscal limits of modern health insurance. Therefore, I'm committed to wearing expensive running shoes during their waking hours to ensure that they aren't done in because dad got a boo boo when he stepped on a lego block on the way to their rescue. Maybe nerfing the world is a little too far down the insane father path, but don't mock me when you notice that I tweak out like a spooked deer when they're out of my sight for too long. I know what they're capable of and I smart enough to know that my own survival was purely dumb luck.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Friday, October 7, 2011
When I Grow Up....
I read an interesting article this week. It was titled "Why Men Are In Trouble," and it was posted on CNN.com. At first I was completely miffed at why I wasted five minutes of my life reading an old blow hard (author) pluck random statistics and form them into a drawn out version of "you darned kids!" He made broad generalizations about playing video games, religious involvement, education, and career motivations. It was all very lofty and pointed. I immediately labeled him a grouchy old man and tried to move on. But, the more I thought about his view points the more angry I became at the lack of a coherent counterpoint to his article. His main view was that men these days are nothing more than grown boys. We continuously avoid adulthood by fighting to conform to his concept of manhood.
As I ran this through my head I came up with one very real answer to his proposed problem. It was his own damn fault, or rather his generation. Look at the sociological influences that created his generation's version of manhood. World War, the great depression, nationalism on steroids, and limited rights and availability to anyone that was not a white man. Limited education, political positioning, employment, and role models combined with the above influences forced their hand. They had to grow up, farm to survive, and take the lives of foreign soldiers at war. That's some pretty intense stuff. But guess what, that has absolutely no semblance of meaning toward what I choose to do with my life and the path I choose to follow.
My generation was raised by those same people to believe in dreaming and the fact that we were all special. These concepts, while somewhat flawed themselves, were simply the regret our fathers poured out on us. We all do it. How many parents out there state that their goal for their kids is to have a better life than they had. Our previous generations were robbed of the opportunity to dream and be kid-like so they raised us to believe that we were somehow faced with an inevitable greatness because we had possibility. They knew that technology and education would provide us with the breathing room to reach. One problem. We have no idea what we are reaching for. Mom used to say "son, you can be anything in the world you want to be." What the hell does that mean? I have no idea what I want to be. My life is constantly bombarded with images of creative, boring, successful, poor, happy, sad, starving, and fat people, most of whom stumbled into the life they have and had little to do with how they got there.
We have no drivers. We have nothing to nudge us in to a direction. And most importantly, we are freaking terrified of settling on a path. I have a great job. I work every day toward something that I feel is morally right and necessary. I also have a horrible job that forces me to miss clear blue skies and my children's waking hours so that I can stare at a cubicle wall. All for what? To pay my car note? When I took this job a supervisor up the chain of command congratulated me by remarking "wow Jamey, congrats on the job. That's a great job. Ya know, you could be sitting in that same desk for the next twenty years!" To him, that was high praise. To me, it was a ball and chain with ominous organ music playing in the background. I suddenly felt like I couldn't catch my breath. Panic set in. Was my path decided? Was this the "anything" that mom spoke of so many times? Cheap particle board office furniture and microsoft outlook?
Since that date four years ago I've been tirelessly trying to decide the next move for my supposed possibility filled fate. It's hard work to pick the right profession that would take advantage of all this supposed potential. Therefore, I think it would be so much easier if I narrowed down the list by figuring out what is completely out of the question.
My list of awful jobs:
1. Astronaut
Ok, this is a pretty obvious one when you consider the fact that I wet my pants a little during very light turbulence on a one hour flight to Houston. I hate flying. Why big metal planes stay in the air is more puzzling to me than why big metal boats float. Plus, I'm always afraid that my pilot on these small regional flights is some twenty two year old kid who's only shaved twice in his entire life. I know my generation. We are way too distracted and a.d.d. to maintain the requisite amount of concentration needed to shoot me safely through the air for a few hundred miles. He'd probably have ears buds in, marveling at Justin Beiber's talent, completely unaware that we are hurdling to our deaths because he for got to fill the tank or release the emergency brake. Ok, I don't know exactly how planes work, but there has to be some FAA regulation out there that mandates an emergency brake.
Flying into space takes this concept to ridiculous proportions. If you've never seen a Saturn V, three stage rocket, then you have no idea of the true insanity of space travel. I've seen one. We took Jackson to Johnson Space Center in Houston. It's an incredible place where they celebrate the fact that certain human beings were born without the instinct of self-preservation. After eating astronaut ice cream and looking at simulators they shuttled us out to a warehouse three football fields in length. There laid a Saturn V. It looks like a giant piece of space age technology created by the brightest minds the world had at that time. Bullcrap.
The lowdown on this rocket is that they would take two (gemini) or three (apollo) astronauts and convince them that aliens had shown us how to go to space. This had to be the method because if they told them the truth they would've been indicted for attempted murder. Next, they cram these guys in a cone about the size of a ford focus. Then they use the strongest crazy glue and duct tape they can find to fasten this tiny cone to a gas tank the size of the Washington monument.
But wait, there's more. Do you know what these perverse psychopaths do next? They ignite the gas! That's right. This isn't high science. It's the grown up version of sticking firecracker up a bull frog's butt. They somehow made a firecracker so big that it would jettison humans from our freaking planet! That's a heck of a firecracker. The astronaut's orders are very simple. Don't die. That's about it. Once they are hurled into the most dangerous environment imaginable they float around for a while, pee through a tube, poop in a diaper, and fall back to earth. They fall so fast that the air can't get out of the way fast enough so it explodes. These tiny explosions heat the flying trash can up so hot that if one tiny little gap in protection exists, they are instantly vaporized. Then, if they survive the exploding air, they are left with a parachute to keep them from hitting the ocean at a bajillion miles per hour. All for what? Endless moon rock gifts for foreign dignitaries? Screw that. Let them catapult their own guys into space if they want moon rocks so badly.
So needless to say, I've scratched this one off the list.
2. Psychiatrist
Look, I consider myself to be a very empathetic person. For a long time I thought that I was empathy deficient. That's not the case. I care deeply for other people, but in spurts. I definitely have a cutoff point where I can no longer deal with whiny people. My career as a psychiatrist would, no doubt, be reduced to vast libraries containing only the notebooks of my doodles during sessions where people sit and pour their hearts out. I'm not an artist, so these doodles would be very repetitive. My doodle repertoire pretty much consists of 3D boxes and triangles, that I learned how to draw in the third grade, and human faces that look like something a mental patient would craft. It's the ears. I can never get the ears right. One is always so much larger than the other that it looks like my subject is suffering from elephantiasis of the ear lobe.
I don't think the practice would make perfect. I suck at ears, so why waste so many people's time luring them to my office under the guise of medical care just so I can have time to destroy the hearing of so many fictional characters.
3. Dentist
Seriously? Do I have to even explain this one. We have holes in our body where we store tiny little stones that we use to grind up material before it spoils. One problem; those little stones have a ton of crevices and hiding spots that allow the food to hang out and rot. Then we trust that people are disciplined enough to use a tiny brush to thoroughly clean the stones. I don't trust most people to handle a claw hammer without caving in their own heads, much less that they would be able to meticulously clean their mouths to the point where I would voluntarily touch them with my hands. Yuck.
4. Homemaker
Ok, so all of my female readers, who are homemakers, just internally said "oh no he isn't!" Oh yes I am. I couldn't do it. There's no way. I love my kids; they are completely awesome, but there is no freaking way that I would subject myself to their company 24/7. I'm not saying I'd rather be an astronaut, but after an afternoon alone with my youngest, where maybe he didn't get a great nap, I'm looking a little harder at the Saturn V. When I'm home Amanda and I trade off duties. I usually come in from work and assume Matthew duties for a few hours to give her a break. And do you know what she does with this break time? Nothing. She does exactly what she has been dreaming about all day long. She takes some time to walk outside, go into another room, or just to not jump when he begins freaking out about something. That's not exactly true. It's usually the only time where she can completely focus on the other tasks at hand without having to hit pause and stop him from climbing up the fireplace mantel.
One of my presents to Amanda for our last anniversary was "nothing." I took off work on a Friday and gave her 24 straight hours to have absolutely no responsibilities. It was like she was a drifter living in our home. She came and went as she pleased, watched what she wanted to watch, and for one whole day didn't touch a bottle or diaper. The relief on her face truly sealed the deal for me. Watching the tension roll off of her showed me exactly what she goes through every day. That's not for me. Before long, I'd be the one in diapers drooling in the corner.
5. Nail Shop Worker
First off, the smell of those chemicals can't be healthy. However, that is nothing compared to the concept that a person could shoot me a twenty to grind funk off of their nasty hammer toes. Guess what, it's not the nice, clean, symmetrical feet that those poor women face every day. It's the cashier from Fred's who's been working double shifts all week in her SAS's, with a corn the size of a golf ball and hangnails on four out of five toes.
I walk down the hall of my office and around lunchtime I can tell who brought in leftover spaghetti or maybe a nice bag of popcorn. Can you imagine the olfactory file folder of foot smells that these women carry with them at all times. The volumes of toe lint, fungus, and general cheese they've smelled raises the hair on the back of my neck. I'm getting the heeby jeebies just thinking about it.
So that's my list so far. Maybe one day I'll be left with only a calling that truly suits me, maybe not. Maybe I'll just keep on searching, moving from thing to thing until I give up on it all and write silly blogs for a living. The pay sucks but at least it doesn't smell like cashier Fran's left foot.
As I ran this through my head I came up with one very real answer to his proposed problem. It was his own damn fault, or rather his generation. Look at the sociological influences that created his generation's version of manhood. World War, the great depression, nationalism on steroids, and limited rights and availability to anyone that was not a white man. Limited education, political positioning, employment, and role models combined with the above influences forced their hand. They had to grow up, farm to survive, and take the lives of foreign soldiers at war. That's some pretty intense stuff. But guess what, that has absolutely no semblance of meaning toward what I choose to do with my life and the path I choose to follow.
My generation was raised by those same people to believe in dreaming and the fact that we were all special. These concepts, while somewhat flawed themselves, were simply the regret our fathers poured out on us. We all do it. How many parents out there state that their goal for their kids is to have a better life than they had. Our previous generations were robbed of the opportunity to dream and be kid-like so they raised us to believe that we were somehow faced with an inevitable greatness because we had possibility. They knew that technology and education would provide us with the breathing room to reach. One problem. We have no idea what we are reaching for. Mom used to say "son, you can be anything in the world you want to be." What the hell does that mean? I have no idea what I want to be. My life is constantly bombarded with images of creative, boring, successful, poor, happy, sad, starving, and fat people, most of whom stumbled into the life they have and had little to do with how they got there.
We have no drivers. We have nothing to nudge us in to a direction. And most importantly, we are freaking terrified of settling on a path. I have a great job. I work every day toward something that I feel is morally right and necessary. I also have a horrible job that forces me to miss clear blue skies and my children's waking hours so that I can stare at a cubicle wall. All for what? To pay my car note? When I took this job a supervisor up the chain of command congratulated me by remarking "wow Jamey, congrats on the job. That's a great job. Ya know, you could be sitting in that same desk for the next twenty years!" To him, that was high praise. To me, it was a ball and chain with ominous organ music playing in the background. I suddenly felt like I couldn't catch my breath. Panic set in. Was my path decided? Was this the "anything" that mom spoke of so many times? Cheap particle board office furniture and microsoft outlook?
Since that date four years ago I've been tirelessly trying to decide the next move for my supposed possibility filled fate. It's hard work to pick the right profession that would take advantage of all this supposed potential. Therefore, I think it would be so much easier if I narrowed down the list by figuring out what is completely out of the question.
My list of awful jobs:
1. Astronaut
Ok, this is a pretty obvious one when you consider the fact that I wet my pants a little during very light turbulence on a one hour flight to Houston. I hate flying. Why big metal planes stay in the air is more puzzling to me than why big metal boats float. Plus, I'm always afraid that my pilot on these small regional flights is some twenty two year old kid who's only shaved twice in his entire life. I know my generation. We are way too distracted and a.d.d. to maintain the requisite amount of concentration needed to shoot me safely through the air for a few hundred miles. He'd probably have ears buds in, marveling at Justin Beiber's talent, completely unaware that we are hurdling to our deaths because he for got to fill the tank or release the emergency brake. Ok, I don't know exactly how planes work, but there has to be some FAA regulation out there that mandates an emergency brake.
Flying into space takes this concept to ridiculous proportions. If you've never seen a Saturn V, three stage rocket, then you have no idea of the true insanity of space travel. I've seen one. We took Jackson to Johnson Space Center in Houston. It's an incredible place where they celebrate the fact that certain human beings were born without the instinct of self-preservation. After eating astronaut ice cream and looking at simulators they shuttled us out to a warehouse three football fields in length. There laid a Saturn V. It looks like a giant piece of space age technology created by the brightest minds the world had at that time. Bullcrap.
The lowdown on this rocket is that they would take two (gemini) or three (apollo) astronauts and convince them that aliens had shown us how to go to space. This had to be the method because if they told them the truth they would've been indicted for attempted murder. Next, they cram these guys in a cone about the size of a ford focus. Then they use the strongest crazy glue and duct tape they can find to fasten this tiny cone to a gas tank the size of the Washington monument.
But wait, there's more. Do you know what these perverse psychopaths do next? They ignite the gas! That's right. This isn't high science. It's the grown up version of sticking firecracker up a bull frog's butt. They somehow made a firecracker so big that it would jettison humans from our freaking planet! That's a heck of a firecracker. The astronaut's orders are very simple. Don't die. That's about it. Once they are hurled into the most dangerous environment imaginable they float around for a while, pee through a tube, poop in a diaper, and fall back to earth. They fall so fast that the air can't get out of the way fast enough so it explodes. These tiny explosions heat the flying trash can up so hot that if one tiny little gap in protection exists, they are instantly vaporized. Then, if they survive the exploding air, they are left with a parachute to keep them from hitting the ocean at a bajillion miles per hour. All for what? Endless moon rock gifts for foreign dignitaries? Screw that. Let them catapult their own guys into space if they want moon rocks so badly.
So needless to say, I've scratched this one off the list.
2. Psychiatrist
Look, I consider myself to be a very empathetic person. For a long time I thought that I was empathy deficient. That's not the case. I care deeply for other people, but in spurts. I definitely have a cutoff point where I can no longer deal with whiny people. My career as a psychiatrist would, no doubt, be reduced to vast libraries containing only the notebooks of my doodles during sessions where people sit and pour their hearts out. I'm not an artist, so these doodles would be very repetitive. My doodle repertoire pretty much consists of 3D boxes and triangles, that I learned how to draw in the third grade, and human faces that look like something a mental patient would craft. It's the ears. I can never get the ears right. One is always so much larger than the other that it looks like my subject is suffering from elephantiasis of the ear lobe.
I don't think the practice would make perfect. I suck at ears, so why waste so many people's time luring them to my office under the guise of medical care just so I can have time to destroy the hearing of so many fictional characters.
3. Dentist
Seriously? Do I have to even explain this one. We have holes in our body where we store tiny little stones that we use to grind up material before it spoils. One problem; those little stones have a ton of crevices and hiding spots that allow the food to hang out and rot. Then we trust that people are disciplined enough to use a tiny brush to thoroughly clean the stones. I don't trust most people to handle a claw hammer without caving in their own heads, much less that they would be able to meticulously clean their mouths to the point where I would voluntarily touch them with my hands. Yuck.
4. Homemaker
Ok, so all of my female readers, who are homemakers, just internally said "oh no he isn't!" Oh yes I am. I couldn't do it. There's no way. I love my kids; they are completely awesome, but there is no freaking way that I would subject myself to their company 24/7. I'm not saying I'd rather be an astronaut, but after an afternoon alone with my youngest, where maybe he didn't get a great nap, I'm looking a little harder at the Saturn V. When I'm home Amanda and I trade off duties. I usually come in from work and assume Matthew duties for a few hours to give her a break. And do you know what she does with this break time? Nothing. She does exactly what she has been dreaming about all day long. She takes some time to walk outside, go into another room, or just to not jump when he begins freaking out about something. That's not exactly true. It's usually the only time where she can completely focus on the other tasks at hand without having to hit pause and stop him from climbing up the fireplace mantel.
One of my presents to Amanda for our last anniversary was "nothing." I took off work on a Friday and gave her 24 straight hours to have absolutely no responsibilities. It was like she was a drifter living in our home. She came and went as she pleased, watched what she wanted to watch, and for one whole day didn't touch a bottle or diaper. The relief on her face truly sealed the deal for me. Watching the tension roll off of her showed me exactly what she goes through every day. That's not for me. Before long, I'd be the one in diapers drooling in the corner.
5. Nail Shop Worker
First off, the smell of those chemicals can't be healthy. However, that is nothing compared to the concept that a person could shoot me a twenty to grind funk off of their nasty hammer toes. Guess what, it's not the nice, clean, symmetrical feet that those poor women face every day. It's the cashier from Fred's who's been working double shifts all week in her SAS's, with a corn the size of a golf ball and hangnails on four out of five toes.
I walk down the hall of my office and around lunchtime I can tell who brought in leftover spaghetti or maybe a nice bag of popcorn. Can you imagine the olfactory file folder of foot smells that these women carry with them at all times. The volumes of toe lint, fungus, and general cheese they've smelled raises the hair on the back of my neck. I'm getting the heeby jeebies just thinking about it.
So that's my list so far. Maybe one day I'll be left with only a calling that truly suits me, maybe not. Maybe I'll just keep on searching, moving from thing to thing until I give up on it all and write silly blogs for a living. The pay sucks but at least it doesn't smell like cashier Fran's left foot.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Sometimes the Cure is Worse
OK, so I told this story to some friends today and was inspired to put it down on "paper."
Disclaimer: The following story does involve some brief mention of bodily functions, but will in no way be graphic. So have no fear.
Also, my old neighbor Mark resurfaces in this story. If you haven't already, please go and read my posting titled "Nutty as a Fruitcake" to gain some perspective on our relationship.
When Amanda and I moved to Slidell in 2004 I was stationed in the USCG command center in NOLA. I worked from six in the evening until six in the morning. Therefore, I had breakfast for supper most days. I would come in from work, wake Amanda up, and fix a big ole omelet stuffed with all of the goodies. Little did I know that my frequency of omelet intake was going to cause me some significant issues in the near future.
One peaceful fall Saturday morning, I sprang from the bed, looking forward to a day filled with college football. I barely even noticed the slight cramping feeling in my big toe. It was a small sting that felt almost arthritic, but I paid it little mind. While sitting in the living room talking to Amanda, I began to complain about this sore little piggy and decided to grab it and give it a good popping. As soon as it popped, I howled in pain. Apparently, my hardcore strength had broken my toe, or so I thought. I really needed to be more careful with these guns I called arms. After all, I had a young child now. What if he were to fall victim to my superhuman strength. I could never live with myself if I accidentally ripped one of his little arms off whilst trying to retrieve him from his crib. While these ludicrous concepts flashed through my mind I noticed that my foot was turning a very bright red and swelling to nearly the size of a cantaloupe. Yep, I broke myself alright.
After some discussions with a corpsman combined with the fact that I could only apply pressure to my heel without letting out an embarrassing, and all too feminine squeal, I decided that a trip to the emergency room was in order. I stumbled into the back room and alerted the nurse that I needed an x-ray because I definitely broken the joint that connects my big toe to my foot. She looked closely at my swollen piggy, which was almost visibly pulsating and informed me that it most likely wasn't broken. Based upon the concerned, and somewhat confused look on her face, I certainly didn't have visions of sugarplums dancing through my head. A few minutes later a doctor strolled in and asked me about my dietary habits. I told him about the omelets and my love of chicken. He nodded and asked me if I drank red wine. As a man of high society, I informed him that I would occasionally drink wine, but only the finest boxed "red" wine would grace the Nolan house. He gave another knowing look, which I interpreted to mean that he obviously recognized class when he saw it. Apparently I misjudged his look, because the next words out of his mouth were some of the most traumatic I've ever experienced.
Doc: Mr. Nolan, you have gout.
long awkward silent pause
Me: uhh, that's impossible.
Doc: Why? People get gout all the time.
Me: Yeah, really old people who wears orthopedic sneakers.
Doc: Well, now you have it.
Sidebar. If you are creeped out at the idea of gout, you're not alone. I had no idea what it was, and assumed that it was most likely some type of age related flesh eating disease that somewhat resembled leprosy. Great, now my foot's going to fall off. I then envisioned me limping around on a wooden peg for the rest of my life making up manly stories about how I lost my foot in some sort of combine accident, or maybe I was a child laborer who escaped the perils of the industrial revolution with only this damn peg as a reminder to live the remainder of my life to it's fullest.
I was quickly brought back down to earth by the facts of gout. Gout is the body's inability to process uric acid. Once the acid stores up, it crystallizes in your joints, usually a big toe. This causes the toe to become inflamed, and potentially demon possessed.
After a quick anatomy lesson, he proposed my treatment options. This conversation went something like this:
Doc: OK, there are two basic treatments. It's your choice which one to take. Treatment A is really bad and will take three days to completely relieve your symptoms. Treatment B is the worst thing you've ever been through, but will relieve your symptoms in 24 hours. Your call?
Me: Did you say 24 hours?
Doc: Uhh, yeah.
Me: I'll take it.
I completely glossed over his prophetic descriptions and chose the path of shorter pain.
We dropped my prescription off at the wal-mart pharmacy and I hobbled over the the shaving isle to retrieve some other needed essentials. After a few minutes I heard my name being summoned back to the pharmacy. When I reached the counter, the pharmacist looked very troubled at me and my prescription. She immediately asked me if I had gout. I embarrassingly responded yes, and gently hushed her volume level to keep the rest of wal-mart from knowing of my illness. She then asked me if the doctor explained exactly what he'd given me. I told her no, and this was her response:
Concerned Drugist: Well, the amount of medicine you were prescribed is really dangerous. I won't even fill this drug for the elderly because it could kill them.
Me: Did you say kill? What did he prescribe me, drano?
Concerned Drugist: No, but it's almost that bad. Mr. Nolan, please follow the instructions on the bottle to the letter. If you over do it, please go immediately to the hospital.
Me: How will I know if I've over done it?
Concerned Drugist: Trust me, you'll know.
She handed me the medicine bottle and asked me to read the instructions in her presence to ensure that I took her seriously. The directions were as follows:
"Take one pill with a glass of water every hour stopping at the onset of explosive diarrhea."
Me: Come on, did you really have to add the adjective "explosive?"
Adamant Drugist: Yes. This isn't a joke. Please don't deviate from the instructions.
To say I was freaked out would be an understatement. But the good news is that if I have any left over I could probably use them to clear a clogged drain or flush the fuel injection on my saturn. Like a good little soldier I started the regimen. Ten hours later, the pills were all gone, and my foot still hurt. I became very cavalier about the whole scary meds conversation, feeling that somehow that idiot pharmacist clearly couldn't fathom intestines as sturdy as mine.
The next day Amanda and I traveled to my parents house for a visit. You would think that staring down the barrel at "explosive" issues would encourage me not to travel more than twenty feet from the nearest potty. You would think. Our visit went well. I'm not sure what I showed off more, my new infant or the cantaloupe foot. Sometime around four in the afternoon, I began to realize that we may have a problem as a tummy tingle or two sent instant panic rushing down my spine. I graciously excused myself to my parents unsuspecting restroom and was truly humbled by the gravity of modern medicine for the following forty five minutes. My cavalier attitude was instantly erased and replaced by the fact that I was now an hour from home. By this point, an hour seemed like an eternity of "cleansing."
As wave one of the storm passed, I rushed Amanda out to our car, threw her the keys, and curled up in the fetal position in the passenger seat. She spent the next hour laughing hysterically and warning me to be proactive about my condition. If I felt the slightest of tingles she would hit the shoulder of the road and I would be remanded to "recuperate" on the side of the interstate.
Hopefully you are caught up on who Mark is, and why we didn't seem to see eye to eye. We were loud, party throwing neighbors who were seemingly unconcerned over the uniformity of our grass height. He was an anal retentive psychopath.
As we neared our neighborhood the tingle had turned in to a gastrointestinal tornado. Mark stood in his yard, horrified as the following scene played out in front of him. Showing no care to the safety of the kids of our neighborhood, Amanda flies down our street, barely breaking as she slides our honda into the driveway, mere inches from our garage door. As the car violently slams to a halt, I kick my door open and projectile vomit a good ten feet in to the yard. Nearly falling out of the car, I stumble across the driveway and slump against the wall until Amanda can unlock the door. His jaw rested ever so gently on his perfectly manicured lawn, mind racing at the crazy guy next door who is apparently fall down drunk on a Sunday afternoon. I never told him the real story. He wouldn't have believed me if I did.
Thanks to the healing powers of gatorade, I survived the next twelve hours or so and my foot slowly returned from Quasimodo-like proportions. Since then, my gout has never returned. Thankfully, I've never had to make the choice between medicine and peg leg again. Next time, peg leg will probably win by a nose. To this day, I still shutter when some fancy chef on the food network makes an omelet. Don't they know they're playing with peoples lives?
Disclaimer: The following story does involve some brief mention of bodily functions, but will in no way be graphic. So have no fear.
Also, my old neighbor Mark resurfaces in this story. If you haven't already, please go and read my posting titled "Nutty as a Fruitcake" to gain some perspective on our relationship.
When Amanda and I moved to Slidell in 2004 I was stationed in the USCG command center in NOLA. I worked from six in the evening until six in the morning. Therefore, I had breakfast for supper most days. I would come in from work, wake Amanda up, and fix a big ole omelet stuffed with all of the goodies. Little did I know that my frequency of omelet intake was going to cause me some significant issues in the near future.
One peaceful fall Saturday morning, I sprang from the bed, looking forward to a day filled with college football. I barely even noticed the slight cramping feeling in my big toe. It was a small sting that felt almost arthritic, but I paid it little mind. While sitting in the living room talking to Amanda, I began to complain about this sore little piggy and decided to grab it and give it a good popping. As soon as it popped, I howled in pain. Apparently, my hardcore strength had broken my toe, or so I thought. I really needed to be more careful with these guns I called arms. After all, I had a young child now. What if he were to fall victim to my superhuman strength. I could never live with myself if I accidentally ripped one of his little arms off whilst trying to retrieve him from his crib. While these ludicrous concepts flashed through my mind I noticed that my foot was turning a very bright red and swelling to nearly the size of a cantaloupe. Yep, I broke myself alright.
After some discussions with a corpsman combined with the fact that I could only apply pressure to my heel without letting out an embarrassing, and all too feminine squeal, I decided that a trip to the emergency room was in order. I stumbled into the back room and alerted the nurse that I needed an x-ray because I definitely broken the joint that connects my big toe to my foot. She looked closely at my swollen piggy, which was almost visibly pulsating and informed me that it most likely wasn't broken. Based upon the concerned, and somewhat confused look on her face, I certainly didn't have visions of sugarplums dancing through my head. A few minutes later a doctor strolled in and asked me about my dietary habits. I told him about the omelets and my love of chicken. He nodded and asked me if I drank red wine. As a man of high society, I informed him that I would occasionally drink wine, but only the finest boxed "red" wine would grace the Nolan house. He gave another knowing look, which I interpreted to mean that he obviously recognized class when he saw it. Apparently I misjudged his look, because the next words out of his mouth were some of the most traumatic I've ever experienced.
Doc: Mr. Nolan, you have gout.
long awkward silent pause
Me: uhh, that's impossible.
Doc: Why? People get gout all the time.
Me: Yeah, really old people who wears orthopedic sneakers.
Doc: Well, now you have it.
Sidebar. If you are creeped out at the idea of gout, you're not alone. I had no idea what it was, and assumed that it was most likely some type of age related flesh eating disease that somewhat resembled leprosy. Great, now my foot's going to fall off. I then envisioned me limping around on a wooden peg for the rest of my life making up manly stories about how I lost my foot in some sort of combine accident, or maybe I was a child laborer who escaped the perils of the industrial revolution with only this damn peg as a reminder to live the remainder of my life to it's fullest.
I was quickly brought back down to earth by the facts of gout. Gout is the body's inability to process uric acid. Once the acid stores up, it crystallizes in your joints, usually a big toe. This causes the toe to become inflamed, and potentially demon possessed.
After a quick anatomy lesson, he proposed my treatment options. This conversation went something like this:
Doc: OK, there are two basic treatments. It's your choice which one to take. Treatment A is really bad and will take three days to completely relieve your symptoms. Treatment B is the worst thing you've ever been through, but will relieve your symptoms in 24 hours. Your call?
Me: Did you say 24 hours?
Doc: Uhh, yeah.
Me: I'll take it.
I completely glossed over his prophetic descriptions and chose the path of shorter pain.
We dropped my prescription off at the wal-mart pharmacy and I hobbled over the the shaving isle to retrieve some other needed essentials. After a few minutes I heard my name being summoned back to the pharmacy. When I reached the counter, the pharmacist looked very troubled at me and my prescription. She immediately asked me if I had gout. I embarrassingly responded yes, and gently hushed her volume level to keep the rest of wal-mart from knowing of my illness. She then asked me if the doctor explained exactly what he'd given me. I told her no, and this was her response:
Concerned Drugist: Well, the amount of medicine you were prescribed is really dangerous. I won't even fill this drug for the elderly because it could kill them.
Me: Did you say kill? What did he prescribe me, drano?
Concerned Drugist: No, but it's almost that bad. Mr. Nolan, please follow the instructions on the bottle to the letter. If you over do it, please go immediately to the hospital.
Me: How will I know if I've over done it?
Concerned Drugist: Trust me, you'll know.
She handed me the medicine bottle and asked me to read the instructions in her presence to ensure that I took her seriously. The directions were as follows:
"Take one pill with a glass of water every hour stopping at the onset of explosive diarrhea."
Me: Come on, did you really have to add the adjective "explosive?"
Adamant Drugist: Yes. This isn't a joke. Please don't deviate from the instructions.
To say I was freaked out would be an understatement. But the good news is that if I have any left over I could probably use them to clear a clogged drain or flush the fuel injection on my saturn. Like a good little soldier I started the regimen. Ten hours later, the pills were all gone, and my foot still hurt. I became very cavalier about the whole scary meds conversation, feeling that somehow that idiot pharmacist clearly couldn't fathom intestines as sturdy as mine.
The next day Amanda and I traveled to my parents house for a visit. You would think that staring down the barrel at "explosive" issues would encourage me not to travel more than twenty feet from the nearest potty. You would think. Our visit went well. I'm not sure what I showed off more, my new infant or the cantaloupe foot. Sometime around four in the afternoon, I began to realize that we may have a problem as a tummy tingle or two sent instant panic rushing down my spine. I graciously excused myself to my parents unsuspecting restroom and was truly humbled by the gravity of modern medicine for the following forty five minutes. My cavalier attitude was instantly erased and replaced by the fact that I was now an hour from home. By this point, an hour seemed like an eternity of "cleansing."
As wave one of the storm passed, I rushed Amanda out to our car, threw her the keys, and curled up in the fetal position in the passenger seat. She spent the next hour laughing hysterically and warning me to be proactive about my condition. If I felt the slightest of tingles she would hit the shoulder of the road and I would be remanded to "recuperate" on the side of the interstate.
Hopefully you are caught up on who Mark is, and why we didn't seem to see eye to eye. We were loud, party throwing neighbors who were seemingly unconcerned over the uniformity of our grass height. He was an anal retentive psychopath.
As we neared our neighborhood the tingle had turned in to a gastrointestinal tornado. Mark stood in his yard, horrified as the following scene played out in front of him. Showing no care to the safety of the kids of our neighborhood, Amanda flies down our street, barely breaking as she slides our honda into the driveway, mere inches from our garage door. As the car violently slams to a halt, I kick my door open and projectile vomit a good ten feet in to the yard. Nearly falling out of the car, I stumble across the driveway and slump against the wall until Amanda can unlock the door. His jaw rested ever so gently on his perfectly manicured lawn, mind racing at the crazy guy next door who is apparently fall down drunk on a Sunday afternoon. I never told him the real story. He wouldn't have believed me if I did.
Thanks to the healing powers of gatorade, I survived the next twelve hours or so and my foot slowly returned from Quasimodo-like proportions. Since then, my gout has never returned. Thankfully, I've never had to make the choice between medicine and peg leg again. Next time, peg leg will probably win by a nose. To this day, I still shutter when some fancy chef on the food network makes an omelet. Don't they know they're playing with peoples lives?
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Bumps and Bruises (Parenting at it's Finest)
I haven't had this theory confirmed yet, but I truly believe that something about the mixture of my DNA with Amanda's leads to magnetism of the skull of our offspring. This is the only, true common sense reason that explains how both of our children are so prone to smashing their heads in to any hard or sharp object. Then again, maybe it's just my DNA. Let's discuss. Collectively, my boys have lived for about eight and a half years, yet they've managed to test the density of every object in our house.
We Nolan's are known for our melon-sized craniums. My head is giant. So big in fact that I can't peacefully rest my head on Amanda's stomach without her straining to seem polite, while gasping for life's last breath. That kid in Jerry Maguire was full of crap, my head weight passed eight pounds while I was still in diapers. When I joined the Coast Guard my first duty station was a buoy tender in North Carolina. Filled with pride and anticipation I reported eager to get to work. While being introduced to the rest of the crew, my introduction to the XO went something like this:
Me: "Good morning MK1, I'm Seaman Nolan, it's nice to meet you!"
XO: "Jesus Christ son, your head is gigantic. Hey Chief, if Nolan's is on the hose crew, we are going to have to order a bigger fire helmet."
Umm, that didn't quite go as planned. Apparently the size of my head had the ability to put the lives of the entire crew in danger. That's a new one. I can now indirectly kill people with my mere existence.
My boys are no different. While beautiful, they do appear to be trying to balance a bowling ball on a toothpick. At first, this was my conclusion over why they each had so many head injuries. Their poor little necks could no longer suffer the tasks God and dad had given them, and simply relented to the law of gravity. Two incidents really come to mind.
When Jackson was about 18 months old he was very active. He walked everywhere, climbed on anything near his height, and kept me in a heightened state of fear at all times. I recently described this age as the "hey dad, try to keep me from killing myself" stage of development. It's like they have a real intent to harm themselves, and are daring you to let it happen. One day our house was a buzz with Saturday afternoon energy. We'd gone to the store and picked up all the items needed for a nice spring bbq. As Amanda tended the required accoutrement I, like any manly man, was in charge of the grilling duties. I raised the blinds for the windows overlooking our back porch and used my Alton Brown approved chimney starter to get the charcoal going. During all the excitement Jackson rushed over to the windows to supervise dad's hard work. The window seal was about waist high for him, so he rested against it for the show. Noticing his intrigue over my grilling prowess, I flashed him a quick smile and a "hey little buddy." Something about this scene apparently caused his knees to complete give out, and with a faint smile he face-planted, scratch that, head-planted on to the edge of the window.
The whole world was silent for a split second as I rushed in to grab him, Amanda sprinted from the kitchen, and he took a breath sufficiently sized to scream at the appropriate, blood curdling volume. By the time he took his second breath a golf ball size lump surfaced on his forehead. Amanda and I stared at each other, and in a flash equally relayed our fear that we were not prepared for this moment. Nothing, in any parenting book or blog can prepare you for how to react to attempted suicide from a toddler. So we did the only thing we knew to do; we threw him in the car, barely buckled properly, and rushed him to the emergency room.
Apparently NOTHING gets you back to see an emergency room physician faster than a combination of the words "child" and "head injury." Good to know. They rush us back and a nurse is quickly at our side. We are treating Jackson with such fragility, so as not to further damage our little snowflake. This nurse walks in, jabs her fat thumb in to his skull, sighs, and casually walks out. A few minutes later, a tired ER doc walks in, checks Jackson's awareness and vision and walks out again. Amanda and I assume that he is surely fetching the appropriate law enforcement officials and a social worker. In reality, he was probably going to get a refill of coffee. After a while he returns and informs us that "out is good, in is bad." If the bump pokes out, give him some tylenol; if it dents in, congratulations, you broke a human. We quickly and quietly gather our things and head for the door, hoping no poor sap died in the waiting room while the poster model for new parents rushed to treat a booboo.
The next incident actually occurred in a hospital, a children's hospital. As many of you know, Jackson had really troublesome ears as a child. In total he's had seven surgeries to release pressure behind his ear drums. During the first, maybe even second surgery, Amanda and I were very tense and cautious. By number four, we were just tired of getting up at the crack of dawn and going through the whole presurgery rigamarole. So we may, just maybe, have gotten a little loose with the whole process. If your child hasn't gone through this awful process, let me drop some knowledge on you. They get your kid drunk. Not buzzed, or a little flighty. More like, shotgunned a fifth of tequila drunk. Apparently, falling down hammered is exactly what they are looking for to make sure your kid is cooperative enough for the IV. To us, this was comedic gold. So they give them a shot glass of "medicine" to grease the skids. In about fifteen minutes Jackson looks like any nineteen year old coed on karaoke night. He's slurring and stumbling, while maintaining a gigantic smile. He wants to hug and hold hands. What can I say, the kid's a lush.
While we are taking in the show, we somehow forget about the fact that balance + skull may quickly become an issue. For some unforeseen reason, maybe the wind, he gets a little off balance, and time slowed to a crawl as we see him stumble in slow motion, crossing the threshold of the door to our room, and slide forehead first on the carpet of the hall outside. As I rush to his aide I notice that all activity in the hallway had ground to a halt at the sight of this child's head bouncing repeatedly on the ground. I scoop him up, flash an unconcerned look, and rush back in to our room to survey the damage.
Like using silly putty to transpose a newspaper, he has a perfect patterned imprint of the carpet across the length of his head. Like an idiot, I spent the next ten minutes trying to somehow rub it off with my thumb. Thankfully, it wasn't permanent.
With all that said, I leave you with a quick story from my life that is most likely the real reason why my kids love to hurt themselves. It's my fault. I'm a klutz with too much energy. This story makes Amanda laugh harder than any other from my past.
When I was about ten years old, I rode my bike most everywhere. I logged tons of miles and it was rare that I was without it. However, one day in particular, I was on foot. When I think about growing up in the eighties, I'm continually amazed that I survived. We were pretty much cast out in to the world with no safety nets. Growing up in Purvis, Mississippi meant that I would have to deal with one very daunting obstacle everyday. Highway 11. Our town was bifurcated by a US highway that everyone used to travel back and forth to the nearest city, Hattiesburg. Unfortunately for me, my house sat on one side of the highway, while the rest of the town sat on the opposite side. This pretty much required me, at a young age, to cross a major highway many times a day.
On this one day, I prepared to cross the highway while cars were stopped at a traffic light in between a Sonic and a gas station. In true prisoner to imagination, Jamey-like, fashion I couldn't simply go in between cars while surveying oncoming traffic from the opposite lane and cross safely. Instead, I was transported to the Olympics, where I became the U.S.'s only hope at gold in the 100 meter sprint. I lined up, set my feet in the "blocks" of the gravel parking lot, and waited for the starting gun. The starting gun in this race, was represented by the car directly in front of me moving forward to create the gap between it and the jeep on it's bumper. I put one hand on the ground and stared up at my right. Just then I was given the green light, as the car shifted forward. My legs sprang in to action and I burst from them blocks.
One problem. The car hadn't shifted forward quite as much as I thought. Just as I raised my head to really hit my stride, my left cheek was rudely met by the rear quarter panel of a mid-eighties Oldsmobile. As my body bounced like a ping pong ball off the car, tumbling head over heels back in to the parking lot, I realized the gravity of my miscalculation. I just assaulted a 4000 pound car with an eighty-four pound human body. I lost.
My assault led to much concern from the drivers of the Oldsmobile and the Jeep. I can only imagine the scene they'd just witnessed. For no apparent reason, a four and a half foot tall kid just lined up for a race and headbutted a damn tank. They then witnessed my little body bouncing backward in defeat. Surely, I must've been "hopped up" on something. But in true tweaker fashion, just as they reached me to survey the damage, I jumped up like a terrified deer, muttered a terrified grunt, and sprinted across the highway. I don't think I stopped once until I reached home. I guess I thought I was in trouble, like I would be arrested for damaging that man's poor defenseless car. My embarrassments amaze even me.
Maybe that's the issue with my boys. Maybe they got a little too much of dad's tweaked out deer DNA. Hopefully, they are able to survive the bumps and bruises that my unfortunate influence has bestowed upon them. I know one thing; thank God Oldsmobile went out of business. At least they won't have to deal with that!
We Nolan's are known for our melon-sized craniums. My head is giant. So big in fact that I can't peacefully rest my head on Amanda's stomach without her straining to seem polite, while gasping for life's last breath. That kid in Jerry Maguire was full of crap, my head weight passed eight pounds while I was still in diapers. When I joined the Coast Guard my first duty station was a buoy tender in North Carolina. Filled with pride and anticipation I reported eager to get to work. While being introduced to the rest of the crew, my introduction to the XO went something like this:
Me: "Good morning MK1, I'm Seaman Nolan, it's nice to meet you!"
XO: "Jesus Christ son, your head is gigantic. Hey Chief, if Nolan's is on the hose crew, we are going to have to order a bigger fire helmet."
Umm, that didn't quite go as planned. Apparently the size of my head had the ability to put the lives of the entire crew in danger. That's a new one. I can now indirectly kill people with my mere existence.
My boys are no different. While beautiful, they do appear to be trying to balance a bowling ball on a toothpick. At first, this was my conclusion over why they each had so many head injuries. Their poor little necks could no longer suffer the tasks God and dad had given them, and simply relented to the law of gravity. Two incidents really come to mind.
When Jackson was about 18 months old he was very active. He walked everywhere, climbed on anything near his height, and kept me in a heightened state of fear at all times. I recently described this age as the "hey dad, try to keep me from killing myself" stage of development. It's like they have a real intent to harm themselves, and are daring you to let it happen. One day our house was a buzz with Saturday afternoon energy. We'd gone to the store and picked up all the items needed for a nice spring bbq. As Amanda tended the required accoutrement I, like any manly man, was in charge of the grilling duties. I raised the blinds for the windows overlooking our back porch and used my Alton Brown approved chimney starter to get the charcoal going. During all the excitement Jackson rushed over to the windows to supervise dad's hard work. The window seal was about waist high for him, so he rested against it for the show. Noticing his intrigue over my grilling prowess, I flashed him a quick smile and a "hey little buddy." Something about this scene apparently caused his knees to complete give out, and with a faint smile he face-planted, scratch that, head-planted on to the edge of the window.
The whole world was silent for a split second as I rushed in to grab him, Amanda sprinted from the kitchen, and he took a breath sufficiently sized to scream at the appropriate, blood curdling volume. By the time he took his second breath a golf ball size lump surfaced on his forehead. Amanda and I stared at each other, and in a flash equally relayed our fear that we were not prepared for this moment. Nothing, in any parenting book or blog can prepare you for how to react to attempted suicide from a toddler. So we did the only thing we knew to do; we threw him in the car, barely buckled properly, and rushed him to the emergency room.
Apparently NOTHING gets you back to see an emergency room physician faster than a combination of the words "child" and "head injury." Good to know. They rush us back and a nurse is quickly at our side. We are treating Jackson with such fragility, so as not to further damage our little snowflake. This nurse walks in, jabs her fat thumb in to his skull, sighs, and casually walks out. A few minutes later, a tired ER doc walks in, checks Jackson's awareness and vision and walks out again. Amanda and I assume that he is surely fetching the appropriate law enforcement officials and a social worker. In reality, he was probably going to get a refill of coffee. After a while he returns and informs us that "out is good, in is bad." If the bump pokes out, give him some tylenol; if it dents in, congratulations, you broke a human. We quickly and quietly gather our things and head for the door, hoping no poor sap died in the waiting room while the poster model for new parents rushed to treat a booboo.
The next incident actually occurred in a hospital, a children's hospital. As many of you know, Jackson had really troublesome ears as a child. In total he's had seven surgeries to release pressure behind his ear drums. During the first, maybe even second surgery, Amanda and I were very tense and cautious. By number four, we were just tired of getting up at the crack of dawn and going through the whole presurgery rigamarole. So we may, just maybe, have gotten a little loose with the whole process. If your child hasn't gone through this awful process, let me drop some knowledge on you. They get your kid drunk. Not buzzed, or a little flighty. More like, shotgunned a fifth of tequila drunk. Apparently, falling down hammered is exactly what they are looking for to make sure your kid is cooperative enough for the IV. To us, this was comedic gold. So they give them a shot glass of "medicine" to grease the skids. In about fifteen minutes Jackson looks like any nineteen year old coed on karaoke night. He's slurring and stumbling, while maintaining a gigantic smile. He wants to hug and hold hands. What can I say, the kid's a lush.
While we are taking in the show, we somehow forget about the fact that balance + skull may quickly become an issue. For some unforeseen reason, maybe the wind, he gets a little off balance, and time slowed to a crawl as we see him stumble in slow motion, crossing the threshold of the door to our room, and slide forehead first on the carpet of the hall outside. As I rush to his aide I notice that all activity in the hallway had ground to a halt at the sight of this child's head bouncing repeatedly on the ground. I scoop him up, flash an unconcerned look, and rush back in to our room to survey the damage.
Like using silly putty to transpose a newspaper, he has a perfect patterned imprint of the carpet across the length of his head. Like an idiot, I spent the next ten minutes trying to somehow rub it off with my thumb. Thankfully, it wasn't permanent.
With all that said, I leave you with a quick story from my life that is most likely the real reason why my kids love to hurt themselves. It's my fault. I'm a klutz with too much energy. This story makes Amanda laugh harder than any other from my past.
When I was about ten years old, I rode my bike most everywhere. I logged tons of miles and it was rare that I was without it. However, one day in particular, I was on foot. When I think about growing up in the eighties, I'm continually amazed that I survived. We were pretty much cast out in to the world with no safety nets. Growing up in Purvis, Mississippi meant that I would have to deal with one very daunting obstacle everyday. Highway 11. Our town was bifurcated by a US highway that everyone used to travel back and forth to the nearest city, Hattiesburg. Unfortunately for me, my house sat on one side of the highway, while the rest of the town sat on the opposite side. This pretty much required me, at a young age, to cross a major highway many times a day.
On this one day, I prepared to cross the highway while cars were stopped at a traffic light in between a Sonic and a gas station. In true prisoner to imagination, Jamey-like, fashion I couldn't simply go in between cars while surveying oncoming traffic from the opposite lane and cross safely. Instead, I was transported to the Olympics, where I became the U.S.'s only hope at gold in the 100 meter sprint. I lined up, set my feet in the "blocks" of the gravel parking lot, and waited for the starting gun. The starting gun in this race, was represented by the car directly in front of me moving forward to create the gap between it and the jeep on it's bumper. I put one hand on the ground and stared up at my right. Just then I was given the green light, as the car shifted forward. My legs sprang in to action and I burst from them blocks.
One problem. The car hadn't shifted forward quite as much as I thought. Just as I raised my head to really hit my stride, my left cheek was rudely met by the rear quarter panel of a mid-eighties Oldsmobile. As my body bounced like a ping pong ball off the car, tumbling head over heels back in to the parking lot, I realized the gravity of my miscalculation. I just assaulted a 4000 pound car with an eighty-four pound human body. I lost.
My assault led to much concern from the drivers of the Oldsmobile and the Jeep. I can only imagine the scene they'd just witnessed. For no apparent reason, a four and a half foot tall kid just lined up for a race and headbutted a damn tank. They then witnessed my little body bouncing backward in defeat. Surely, I must've been "hopped up" on something. But in true tweaker fashion, just as they reached me to survey the damage, I jumped up like a terrified deer, muttered a terrified grunt, and sprinted across the highway. I don't think I stopped once until I reached home. I guess I thought I was in trouble, like I would be arrested for damaging that man's poor defenseless car. My embarrassments amaze even me.
Maybe that's the issue with my boys. Maybe they got a little too much of dad's tweaked out deer DNA. Hopefully, they are able to survive the bumps and bruises that my unfortunate influence has bestowed upon them. I know one thing; thank God Oldsmobile went out of business. At least they won't have to deal with that!
Friday, September 16, 2011
The Switch Bush and the Damage Done
I haven't written about my mom very often. This is not because she falls short in the funny/crazy stories department. It's because I'm not sure just how well she would take the jokes. She's not really much of a yuckster, but tends to giggle at my insanity so I'll give it a shot. Hopefully, I still get invited to Thanksgiving.
I don't really spank my kids. It's not that I'm against it on a moral level, it's that it makes me feel horrible. If my kids have done something spanking-worthy odds are I'm already pretty heated, so why would I want to add to my own negative mood. Plus, there's a time and a place, from a developmental perspective, where spanking is quite effective and necessary. However, I find that to be a very small time period. I can usually get more effective behavior correction out of forcing my oldest to stand in one spot, completely still, while we discuss what he did wrong and how to correct it. Honestly, if I had to listen to me go on and on about appropriate behavior, I'd do anything to avoid future conferences too. Jackson's the same way. My long-winded lessons are torture. For him, mind games and control have worked much better than physical punishment.
My mom, on the other hand, was a strong proponent for spankings. Of course, as wild as I was who can blame her. I imagine her and my dad having traumatic conversations, after I went to bed, about whether or not I would live to see adulthood.
Mom: Dale, what are we going to do?
Dad: I have no idea. Hell, some nights I'm afraid to go to sleep. I have these reoccurring nightmares where he sets the house on fire by shoving stuff in the light sockets.
Mom: I know. If we can just make it till he turns 18 we'll be alright. But, I do feel awful about turning him loose on society.
Dad: Well, do you have a plan on how to make it that far?
Mom: I think we're just going to have to use a combination of fear and pain.
Dad: Probably so....
Before I go any further let me clear up one thing, my parents were in no way abusive. It probably wouldn't have hurt if they were, but they weren't. In fact, I can count, on one hand, how many times my dad spanked me. For mom, I'd need a few hundred more hands. But it was much more than the spankings. In reality, they didn't really work that well anyway. By the time I knew what was going on, I'd weighed out the risk and decided that the prize was probably worth a spanking anyway.
What bothered me more was the fear. It was incredibly effective. Let me be a little more descriptive.
As I've stated before, if the church doors were open, we were there. We attended FBC Purvis, MS. Our tiny town had a TON of baptist churches, but FBC was definitely the largest of the bunch. On a normal Sunday morning, we'd probably have between 300-350 people in service. This made me very excited because I would have the chance to talk to each and every one of them. I was a chatty Kathy, so a large gathering of people suited me just fine. The young people would congregate in the first six rows right smack-dab in the middle of the sanctuary. As you can expect, I was a perfect angel during the music portion of the service. However, I struggled mightily during the sermon. Once the pastor started using words like "self-righteous" and "condemnation" I would zone out. I was more worried about what it would take to get some type of positive response out of anything wearing a skirt. This always led to trouble.
Mom sang soprano in the church choir. They would stay in the choir loft, behind the preacher, for the entire service. This gave her a front row view of my misdeeds. But somehow my hormones would take over and I would completely forget that she existed, or that my chattering and joking around would aggravate her. But when I crossed the line, when I'd simply gone too far, it didn't take long for me to realize the error of my ways. It was then that she would break out the glare. Now I know what you're saying. "Is he really writing a blog about how scary his mom's glare was? He must be running out of ideas!" Do me a favor and tell your inner-monologue to shut it's mouth. You have NO idea what you're talking about. Your feeble attempts at imagining this glare without the appropriate level of imagery from me is embarrassing. When I say it was a look that would kill, I'm not kidding. To illustrate my point I'll simply say that it was rare that I noticed the look without being alerted to it by someone sitting around me. By that time, the damage was done. Her eyebrows would come to a sharp point, the temperature dropped twenty degrees, and her lips pursed together as a marker that she was angrily grinding her teeth.
Invariably someone would tap me on the shoulder and point toward the choir loft. That's when I saw it. But, it wasn't the glare that really made my knees knock. It was the frantic look of concern that those around her gave me. Their knowing eyes were screaming "for God's sake Jamey, please shut up. Don't you see her? Don't you know what that look means?" I did, and so did everyone else. That's why the glare was so effective. It meant something. It had something behind it. It meant that there was no question about whether or not I was visiting the switch bush as soon as we got home. And once the look was given, there was no turning back. The die was cast. I would now have to pretend to listen to the rest of the sermon in an effort to turn this ship around. But alas, I would fail.
Once service ended, I knew to just go to the car and wait. Conversation on the ride home was sparse. It would be an exercise in futility to try and change her mind, so why try.
The switch was mom's weapon of choice. But just like everything else, there would need to be a big production to the spanking. We would wait until after lunch. She would take a seat in the living room and instruct me to venture to the bush and retrieve my own switch. This was no small task. Identifying which switch took great skill. If I chose one too small, I would have to repeat the entire evolution. Too big, and she would shave it down in front of me with a small paring knife. The whole thing was very dramatic and tension-filled. Then came the deed. It was over in seconds and rarely painful. The key was the anticipation. But in my hard-headed fashion, the next week would no doubt be a repeat of the last. Another glare, more terrified looks from my fellow baptists, and another switch.
As an adult, I can only imagine how my mom felt. For her, she was pulling out the biggest guns in her arsenal, but I just kept on coming. How frustrating. That's really been the script for most of my life. I seemingly enjoy using my forehead to open doors rather than simply turning the door knob. C.S. Lewis once described experience as "that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn." It has taken years of teachable moments for me to change some of my more childish ways. Therefore, I would like to apologize to my mom for the countless glares and switches that seemingly had no effect. But mostly I would like to apologize to all those who were inadvertently affected by the glare. Poor, poor innocent bystanders....
I don't really spank my kids. It's not that I'm against it on a moral level, it's that it makes me feel horrible. If my kids have done something spanking-worthy odds are I'm already pretty heated, so why would I want to add to my own negative mood. Plus, there's a time and a place, from a developmental perspective, where spanking is quite effective and necessary. However, I find that to be a very small time period. I can usually get more effective behavior correction out of forcing my oldest to stand in one spot, completely still, while we discuss what he did wrong and how to correct it. Honestly, if I had to listen to me go on and on about appropriate behavior, I'd do anything to avoid future conferences too. Jackson's the same way. My long-winded lessons are torture. For him, mind games and control have worked much better than physical punishment.
My mom, on the other hand, was a strong proponent for spankings. Of course, as wild as I was who can blame her. I imagine her and my dad having traumatic conversations, after I went to bed, about whether or not I would live to see adulthood.
Mom: Dale, what are we going to do?
Dad: I have no idea. Hell, some nights I'm afraid to go to sleep. I have these reoccurring nightmares where he sets the house on fire by shoving stuff in the light sockets.
Mom: I know. If we can just make it till he turns 18 we'll be alright. But, I do feel awful about turning him loose on society.
Dad: Well, do you have a plan on how to make it that far?
Mom: I think we're just going to have to use a combination of fear and pain.
Dad: Probably so....
Before I go any further let me clear up one thing, my parents were in no way abusive. It probably wouldn't have hurt if they were, but they weren't. In fact, I can count, on one hand, how many times my dad spanked me. For mom, I'd need a few hundred more hands. But it was much more than the spankings. In reality, they didn't really work that well anyway. By the time I knew what was going on, I'd weighed out the risk and decided that the prize was probably worth a spanking anyway.
What bothered me more was the fear. It was incredibly effective. Let me be a little more descriptive.
As I've stated before, if the church doors were open, we were there. We attended FBC Purvis, MS. Our tiny town had a TON of baptist churches, but FBC was definitely the largest of the bunch. On a normal Sunday morning, we'd probably have between 300-350 people in service. This made me very excited because I would have the chance to talk to each and every one of them. I was a chatty Kathy, so a large gathering of people suited me just fine. The young people would congregate in the first six rows right smack-dab in the middle of the sanctuary. As you can expect, I was a perfect angel during the music portion of the service. However, I struggled mightily during the sermon. Once the pastor started using words like "self-righteous" and "condemnation" I would zone out. I was more worried about what it would take to get some type of positive response out of anything wearing a skirt. This always led to trouble.
Mom sang soprano in the church choir. They would stay in the choir loft, behind the preacher, for the entire service. This gave her a front row view of my misdeeds. But somehow my hormones would take over and I would completely forget that she existed, or that my chattering and joking around would aggravate her. But when I crossed the line, when I'd simply gone too far, it didn't take long for me to realize the error of my ways. It was then that she would break out the glare. Now I know what you're saying. "Is he really writing a blog about how scary his mom's glare was? He must be running out of ideas!" Do me a favor and tell your inner-monologue to shut it's mouth. You have NO idea what you're talking about. Your feeble attempts at imagining this glare without the appropriate level of imagery from me is embarrassing. When I say it was a look that would kill, I'm not kidding. To illustrate my point I'll simply say that it was rare that I noticed the look without being alerted to it by someone sitting around me. By that time, the damage was done. Her eyebrows would come to a sharp point, the temperature dropped twenty degrees, and her lips pursed together as a marker that she was angrily grinding her teeth.
Invariably someone would tap me on the shoulder and point toward the choir loft. That's when I saw it. But, it wasn't the glare that really made my knees knock. It was the frantic look of concern that those around her gave me. Their knowing eyes were screaming "for God's sake Jamey, please shut up. Don't you see her? Don't you know what that look means?" I did, and so did everyone else. That's why the glare was so effective. It meant something. It had something behind it. It meant that there was no question about whether or not I was visiting the switch bush as soon as we got home. And once the look was given, there was no turning back. The die was cast. I would now have to pretend to listen to the rest of the sermon in an effort to turn this ship around. But alas, I would fail.
Once service ended, I knew to just go to the car and wait. Conversation on the ride home was sparse. It would be an exercise in futility to try and change her mind, so why try.
The switch was mom's weapon of choice. But just like everything else, there would need to be a big production to the spanking. We would wait until after lunch. She would take a seat in the living room and instruct me to venture to the bush and retrieve my own switch. This was no small task. Identifying which switch took great skill. If I chose one too small, I would have to repeat the entire evolution. Too big, and she would shave it down in front of me with a small paring knife. The whole thing was very dramatic and tension-filled. Then came the deed. It was over in seconds and rarely painful. The key was the anticipation. But in my hard-headed fashion, the next week would no doubt be a repeat of the last. Another glare, more terrified looks from my fellow baptists, and another switch.
As an adult, I can only imagine how my mom felt. For her, she was pulling out the biggest guns in her arsenal, but I just kept on coming. How frustrating. That's really been the script for most of my life. I seemingly enjoy using my forehead to open doors rather than simply turning the door knob. C.S. Lewis once described experience as "that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn." It has taken years of teachable moments for me to change some of my more childish ways. Therefore, I would like to apologize to my mom for the countless glares and switches that seemingly had no effect. But mostly I would like to apologize to all those who were inadvertently affected by the glare. Poor, poor innocent bystanders....
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Aunt Katie (Socks Are Never Optional)
My Dad was raised by his Aunt and Uncle, Virgil and Katie Robertson. The reasons were many, and very personal, but he moved in with them in his tween years. They were loggers. Hard people, who never had children of their own, but obliged to take in a young nephew when it required. These were uneducated, but very hard working people. Harder work than I'm sure I'll ever know. They lived in a simple three room house in rural Jones County, MS. We visited once, maybe twice a year. Most of the time, these visits were brief and to the point. I don't remember either party being awfully bothered by the brevity of our stay. It wasn't that they were cold and distant, more like they knew that life had taken my dad in a different direction. One they didn't quite understand. He married, had four kids, and worked a corporate job; this was far too foreign from the path they'd chosen. Uncle Virgil died when I was in my early teens. He was in his early eighties, but the years were much harder on him that any older man I'd ever known. He was extremely fragile and barely "with it" for most of my life. His death was in no way a surprise. In all honesty, to live the life he did, a WWII veteran who made his living logging in rural Mississippi, that he made it that long is somewhat surprising.
I had no connection to him. I saw him once a year or so, but my life would soon be inundated with one of the most interesting people I've ever known, his wife Katie. My earliest memories of Aunt Katie consisted of two things, bananas and boats. Every so often, she would make the thirty minute journey from Jones county to Purvis. Her visits always meant that she would be armed with a fresh bunch of bananas. The boat part had to do with her car. It was gigantic. We're talking serious Detroit steel, driven twenty miles an hour below the speed limit with a push button radio. Did I mention it was pale yellow? Sweet ride. As would be expected, she began the downhill slide shortly after his death. She began wasting away without the motivation to provide for her husband. Not long after his death she had a terrible accident where she fell off the front porch of their house, smashing her eye socket on a stepping stone below. This prompted my dad to take her in and nurse her back to health. What started as a try-and-see, ended up lasting eight years. For five of those years she and I saw each other every day and learned a lot from one another.
Once she moved in with us her dementia really kicked in to over drive. The funny thing about dementia is that it happens in brief, but intense spurts. One second she'd be in the middle of a very lucid conversation, the next she would stare out into God knows where unable to remember anyone's name. Another interesting thing is that it was mostly a product of environmental causes. If it was overcast, or raining, there's no telling where her mind would go. She spent a lot of time staring out our front window, seemingly waiting for someone. These were troubling images for me. I'd never seen someone lose their mind before. To me, it was something that happened in movies, but it was much more morose in real life. It resembled the wilting of a flower; something that had once bloomed so boldly, but now faded ever so slowly to a foreseeable end.
Now that I've made it sound about as dark as possible, let's get to the funny stuff. The old girl was freaking hysterical. She provided me with more laughs and insight that anyone I've ever known. A few stories come to mind.
The first revolves around underwear. Since my mom went to work so early in the morning, most every morning was spent with my dad. Just two guys hanging around the house before school. That all changed soon after Aunt Katie came to live with us. One morning my dad came and roused me from bed for breakfast. I popped out of bed in my tightie whities and headed for the kitchen. For some reason I'd completely forgotten that she may be sitting at the kitchen table. She was. There I stood, a thirteen year old Jamey, in nothing but his fruit of the looms, face to face with an 84 year old woman. I quickly dismissed myself to dress fully before returning to my eggs. I learned that she approached my dad later that day in an effort to slip him some money to buy me some decent sleeping clothes. To her, my dad's financial situation had obviously relegated his children to sleeping in whatever the cat dragged in. Wow, this is uncomfortable.
She also felt that socks were mandatory. I sent her in to a tizzy everyday by simply walking around the house barefooted. To her, I was playing a dangerous game. Apparently in the old days barefooted = death. She would fearfully exclaim that my careless actions would cause me to "catch my death of cold." Meanwhile, it was 110 degrees outside.
My next memory of her revolves around sandwiches. Old people are sadistically smarter than you think. The first thing to go when hope is lost is the appetite. Aunt Katie was no different. When she came to live with us she weighed about 85 lbs. She had pretty much starved herself to the grave. Over the next few months she began to gain weight and was feeling much better. But, this was not her plan. She didn't want to feel better, and she definitely didn't want food of substance. My clearest recollection of her disdain for food was when she would fold her napkin in to a perfect square, then take the meat from her sandwiches and stuff it in the pocket created by the fold. That way, when she finished her bread sandwich, the meat would be thrown out with her dirty napkin. Sharp. The weird thing is that she knew I was watching her do it, and would slyly smile at me as if we were teammates on Team Dead Katie. Then she would give me the glare of a traitor for ratting her out.
Despite my traitorous behavior, we quickly became friends. When her mind allowed, I would spend lots of time asking her about the old days. She couldn't tell you what year it was, but could give you graphic detail on the dress she wore to her first day of school. It was mesmerizing. One story in particular really drove home the difference of our generations. Uncle Virgil fought in WWII. Apparently he suffered mightily from PTSD. Of course she had no idea what that was. She only recalled that he was a different man when he came home from the war. He was rigid and harsh. She would describe the haunting scene of him sitting in front of a nice fire, staring at the guns on the mantle, crying like a child. This was not the husband she once knew. She had no way of understanding his pain or why he had become this seemingly two-sided coin. As far as she could tell, she didn't merit a coin of her own. She was no longer important to him. And slowly, the lack of love shared between them became obvious to both.
Here's where my mind was completely blown. I once asked her why, if they'd stopped truly loving each other, did they stay together for fifty years following the war. She paused, as if I'd asked her the most inanely simple question in the world, and replied "that's just what you do." I've never felt more sadness from any tear jerking movie than I did at that moment. It was surreal to come face to face with a person who'd lived half a life of sorrow and loneliness based off of a prescribed societal norm. Not to mention the mental anguish suffered by both due to a lack of understanding of psychiatric medicine. To me, this was an insurmountable prison sentence. To her, it was life. My life was forever shaped by this conversation. How could a person live their one and only life confined by a rigid standard completely ambiguous to their own true feelings? That's not to say that my direction in life changes with the wind. On the contrary, I would like to think that I now focus every decision made, be it large or small, on the gravity of that conversation of regret.
I had no connection to him. I saw him once a year or so, but my life would soon be inundated with one of the most interesting people I've ever known, his wife Katie. My earliest memories of Aunt Katie consisted of two things, bananas and boats. Every so often, she would make the thirty minute journey from Jones county to Purvis. Her visits always meant that she would be armed with a fresh bunch of bananas. The boat part had to do with her car. It was gigantic. We're talking serious Detroit steel, driven twenty miles an hour below the speed limit with a push button radio. Did I mention it was pale yellow? Sweet ride. As would be expected, she began the downhill slide shortly after his death. She began wasting away without the motivation to provide for her husband. Not long after his death she had a terrible accident where she fell off the front porch of their house, smashing her eye socket on a stepping stone below. This prompted my dad to take her in and nurse her back to health. What started as a try-and-see, ended up lasting eight years. For five of those years she and I saw each other every day and learned a lot from one another.
Once she moved in with us her dementia really kicked in to over drive. The funny thing about dementia is that it happens in brief, but intense spurts. One second she'd be in the middle of a very lucid conversation, the next she would stare out into God knows where unable to remember anyone's name. Another interesting thing is that it was mostly a product of environmental causes. If it was overcast, or raining, there's no telling where her mind would go. She spent a lot of time staring out our front window, seemingly waiting for someone. These were troubling images for me. I'd never seen someone lose their mind before. To me, it was something that happened in movies, but it was much more morose in real life. It resembled the wilting of a flower; something that had once bloomed so boldly, but now faded ever so slowly to a foreseeable end.
Now that I've made it sound about as dark as possible, let's get to the funny stuff. The old girl was freaking hysterical. She provided me with more laughs and insight that anyone I've ever known. A few stories come to mind.
The first revolves around underwear. Since my mom went to work so early in the morning, most every morning was spent with my dad. Just two guys hanging around the house before school. That all changed soon after Aunt Katie came to live with us. One morning my dad came and roused me from bed for breakfast. I popped out of bed in my tightie whities and headed for the kitchen. For some reason I'd completely forgotten that she may be sitting at the kitchen table. She was. There I stood, a thirteen year old Jamey, in nothing but his fruit of the looms, face to face with an 84 year old woman. I quickly dismissed myself to dress fully before returning to my eggs. I learned that she approached my dad later that day in an effort to slip him some money to buy me some decent sleeping clothes. To her, my dad's financial situation had obviously relegated his children to sleeping in whatever the cat dragged in. Wow, this is uncomfortable.
She also felt that socks were mandatory. I sent her in to a tizzy everyday by simply walking around the house barefooted. To her, I was playing a dangerous game. Apparently in the old days barefooted = death. She would fearfully exclaim that my careless actions would cause me to "catch my death of cold." Meanwhile, it was 110 degrees outside.
My next memory of her revolves around sandwiches. Old people are sadistically smarter than you think. The first thing to go when hope is lost is the appetite. Aunt Katie was no different. When she came to live with us she weighed about 85 lbs. She had pretty much starved herself to the grave. Over the next few months she began to gain weight and was feeling much better. But, this was not her plan. She didn't want to feel better, and she definitely didn't want food of substance. My clearest recollection of her disdain for food was when she would fold her napkin in to a perfect square, then take the meat from her sandwiches and stuff it in the pocket created by the fold. That way, when she finished her bread sandwich, the meat would be thrown out with her dirty napkin. Sharp. The weird thing is that she knew I was watching her do it, and would slyly smile at me as if we were teammates on Team Dead Katie. Then she would give me the glare of a traitor for ratting her out.
Despite my traitorous behavior, we quickly became friends. When her mind allowed, I would spend lots of time asking her about the old days. She couldn't tell you what year it was, but could give you graphic detail on the dress she wore to her first day of school. It was mesmerizing. One story in particular really drove home the difference of our generations. Uncle Virgil fought in WWII. Apparently he suffered mightily from PTSD. Of course she had no idea what that was. She only recalled that he was a different man when he came home from the war. He was rigid and harsh. She would describe the haunting scene of him sitting in front of a nice fire, staring at the guns on the mantle, crying like a child. This was not the husband she once knew. She had no way of understanding his pain or why he had become this seemingly two-sided coin. As far as she could tell, she didn't merit a coin of her own. She was no longer important to him. And slowly, the lack of love shared between them became obvious to both.
Here's where my mind was completely blown. I once asked her why, if they'd stopped truly loving each other, did they stay together for fifty years following the war. She paused, as if I'd asked her the most inanely simple question in the world, and replied "that's just what you do." I've never felt more sadness from any tear jerking movie than I did at that moment. It was surreal to come face to face with a person who'd lived half a life of sorrow and loneliness based off of a prescribed societal norm. Not to mention the mental anguish suffered by both due to a lack of understanding of psychiatric medicine. To me, this was an insurmountable prison sentence. To her, it was life. My life was forever shaped by this conversation. How could a person live their one and only life confined by a rigid standard completely ambiguous to their own true feelings? That's not to say that my direction in life changes with the wind. On the contrary, I would like to think that I now focus every decision made, be it large or small, on the gravity of that conversation of regret.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Behind the Curtain
Good people come in all shapes and sizes. Deciding what kind of people to allow access to your life is a very important thing. I think of it as subjecting yourself to a marketing campaign aimed at how to live. As sure as a billboard with a blended frosty on it will make you commit three hundred traffic violations in route to the nearest Wendy's, the input of those around you subliminally guide your own reactions. I certainly wouldn't classify my group of friends as waspy frat boys. That was never my group. In fact, I was never really known for fitting in to common social circles. This was never more apparent than when a friend in college referred to me as the whitest, blackest, gayest, straightest, most alpha person he'd ever met. In real life, I'm a short, straight white guy. But my interests in life didn't fit a personality set that he'd ever seen. I sang opera and musical theater, but I also obsessed over college football and mixed martial arts. When I burned a CD, the playlist might contain a combination of southern gospel and gangster rap. It seems that I had become the personification of my a.d.d.
My pet peeve, when it comes to friends, is people with ulterior motives. I like people who are who they are. Now listen, that doesn't mean "I like people who speak their minds." That's something completely different. When I think of a person who's proud of the fact that they speak their mind, I immediately picture some vapid twenty four year old chick talking WAY too loud in public. "WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS? GIIIIRL, I DON'T PUT UP WITH THAT CRAP." Wow, I just shivered a little at the sound of my own inner-monologue. Anyway, my collection of friends has always been a little on the unique side. They're all very different, but share the common thread of being fundamentally good human beings. The best people I know are all weirdos. In honor of that fact, I give you the story of Marge.
Young, enlisted members of the military don't make a ton of money. My housing allowance at my first unit was $750 a month. Had I been stationed in Doodad County, Arkansas I'm sure I could have afforded a palatial mansion. (Why did I just capitalize a fictional place?) However, I was stationed at Oak Island, NC. Oak Island, and nearby Southport, were sleepy little coastal towns that BOOMED in the summer, due to the influx of New Jersians. Therefore, summer rentals dominated the market, and lowly coasties were hung out to dry. For $750 a month Amanda and I moved in to a 600 square foot shotgun house with only one closet. To say it was small would be an insult to small things worldwide. It was damn near a dollhouse. The ceilings were so low that I had to slide in to bed horizontally to avoid being decapitated by the ceiling fan. We have a raised bed, but it was still ridiculous. Thank God I was never startled in the middle of the night. That would been a tough concussion to explain.
Did I mention it was in the bad part of town? It was. Do you know a really good way to make a Father comfortable about where his new son-in-law picked for his daughter to live? Have a cop show up, while you're moving in, to warn you about the crime in the area. That will do it. But any trepidation Amanda's dad had should have been completely soothed by who we met next.
A half-drunk woman, with weathered and sun-burned skin sauntered over to the porch with a Milwaukee's Best (blue label) in her hand. She had short, cropped hair, a voice like someone mocking a redneck, and the vocabulary of a sailor. She offered to help us unpack our u-haul full of stuff. Amanda's dad quickly rebutted that we were doing fine, and would not require her help. "Don't bother yourself, Marge, we're almost done." To which she replied, "Hell, it's no bother. I ain't got no problems, unless I run out of beer." These were not words of comfort for my very devout Southern Baptist Father-in-law. But what happened next made all of our jaws collectively hit the floor. Marge reached down and, with her one free hand, grabbed a huge Rubbermaid container, that was about five feet long and filled to the brim with books, and slung it up on to her shoulder. It was very smooth. So smooth, in fact, that she didn't even spill her beer. This container probably weighed over 150 lbs., easy, yet she toted it around with one arm like it was filled with cotton balls. As we emptied the u-haul, Amanda's parents bid us farewell and were on there way. As they loaded the car, Marge piped up "Don't you worry a bit, I'll make sure yer kids are safe and sound. If anybody starts any trouble, I'll just get my old shotgun and shoot their ass!" Please Marge. Please stop trying to help.
While Amanda's dad was worried about this situation, my dad saw it as something completely different. He was ecstatic that Marge would be there to stand guard while I was on the boat. He was right. Marge was an amazing person. She had life all figured out. She worked in the cooling tower construction business. Apparently she was very good at her job and made a nice living. However, she only worked during the winter. There was no way she would allow something as trivial as work to get in the way of her real passion, fishing. Marge was unemployed eight months a year so she could fish everyday in her 14 foot flat bottom skiff. Most people would be terrified at the thought of taking a fourteen foot skiff out an inlet and fishing just offshore. Not Marge. She would load up her beer, her dog, and her effeminate boyfriend and fish until sundown.
Also, she was uneducatedly brilliant (yes, I know that's not a real word). She was funny and interesting. A real find. How could I have possibly lived the rest of my life without the knowledge of her existence. She was rough and tough and seemingly invincible. That was until the day she became human. We'd lived next to her for months thinking of her as some sort of novelty. We had not seen all of her. I would've never imagined that Marge could feel pain.
During one of her stints at work, her boyfriend left. He didn't leave a note or a message. He just packed up his stuff and left. In all honesty, he was probably terrified at what she would do to him for leaving her. She knocked on our door with a depressingly puzzled look on her face. She asked us whether we'd seen him or talked to him. We had not. She wasn't simply asking though; she was desperate. The sadness in her eyes had an air of panic to it. This sadness frightened her. She wasn't familiar with vulnerability and weakness. This wasn't in her plan. We sat out there with her for a long time as she talked and cried her way through the obvious stages of grief. "Was it something I did? Did he meet someone else? Maybe if I just called him more, or told him I loved him?" She was angry, hurt, and scared. In fact, she was mostly scared. I was awestruck at how she suddenly seemed so small and fragile. I then began picturing her as a child staring down the first day of school. The pain seemed too big and uncontrollable. In that instant she was nothing more than heartbroken.
To be honest, I was heartbroken for her. She was a good person, who treated us like we were her own kids. This was karmic injustice. But, in true Marge fashion, she picked herself up. The next day, she and the dog piled in to that little skiff and hit the water. No one would've ever believed our story of her fragility. But on that day, we really knew her. She was who she was. She didn't hide her pain or vulnerability. She longed for comfort like everyone else. She was still funny and loud, but we'd seen behind the curtain. We'd seen the great and powerful Marge, and were just as shocked as Dorothy and the Tin Man. That moment taught me a lot about humility and real honesty. Maybe it only exacerbated my preconceived opinions of how to be a real person. Recently, someone referred to me as a real person. That might be the best compliment I've had in a long time. While I don't see myself as completely self-actualized, I am slowly but surely getting more comfortable with the idea of who I am. Hopefully, I'm an amalgamation of the influence of the good people I've met. Hopefully, you are too.
My pet peeve, when it comes to friends, is people with ulterior motives. I like people who are who they are. Now listen, that doesn't mean "I like people who speak their minds." That's something completely different. When I think of a person who's proud of the fact that they speak their mind, I immediately picture some vapid twenty four year old chick talking WAY too loud in public. "WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS? GIIIIRL, I DON'T PUT UP WITH THAT CRAP." Wow, I just shivered a little at the sound of my own inner-monologue. Anyway, my collection of friends has always been a little on the unique side. They're all very different, but share the common thread of being fundamentally good human beings. The best people I know are all weirdos. In honor of that fact, I give you the story of Marge.
Young, enlisted members of the military don't make a ton of money. My housing allowance at my first unit was $750 a month. Had I been stationed in Doodad County, Arkansas I'm sure I could have afforded a palatial mansion. (Why did I just capitalize a fictional place?) However, I was stationed at Oak Island, NC. Oak Island, and nearby Southport, were sleepy little coastal towns that BOOMED in the summer, due to the influx of New Jersians. Therefore, summer rentals dominated the market, and lowly coasties were hung out to dry. For $750 a month Amanda and I moved in to a 600 square foot shotgun house with only one closet. To say it was small would be an insult to small things worldwide. It was damn near a dollhouse. The ceilings were so low that I had to slide in to bed horizontally to avoid being decapitated by the ceiling fan. We have a raised bed, but it was still ridiculous. Thank God I was never startled in the middle of the night. That would been a tough concussion to explain.
Did I mention it was in the bad part of town? It was. Do you know a really good way to make a Father comfortable about where his new son-in-law picked for his daughter to live? Have a cop show up, while you're moving in, to warn you about the crime in the area. That will do it. But any trepidation Amanda's dad had should have been completely soothed by who we met next.
A half-drunk woman, with weathered and sun-burned skin sauntered over to the porch with a Milwaukee's Best (blue label) in her hand. She had short, cropped hair, a voice like someone mocking a redneck, and the vocabulary of a sailor. She offered to help us unpack our u-haul full of stuff. Amanda's dad quickly rebutted that we were doing fine, and would not require her help. "Don't bother yourself, Marge, we're almost done." To which she replied, "Hell, it's no bother. I ain't got no problems, unless I run out of beer." These were not words of comfort for my very devout Southern Baptist Father-in-law. But what happened next made all of our jaws collectively hit the floor. Marge reached down and, with her one free hand, grabbed a huge Rubbermaid container, that was about five feet long and filled to the brim with books, and slung it up on to her shoulder. It was very smooth. So smooth, in fact, that she didn't even spill her beer. This container probably weighed over 150 lbs., easy, yet she toted it around with one arm like it was filled with cotton balls. As we emptied the u-haul, Amanda's parents bid us farewell and were on there way. As they loaded the car, Marge piped up "Don't you worry a bit, I'll make sure yer kids are safe and sound. If anybody starts any trouble, I'll just get my old shotgun and shoot their ass!" Please Marge. Please stop trying to help.
While Amanda's dad was worried about this situation, my dad saw it as something completely different. He was ecstatic that Marge would be there to stand guard while I was on the boat. He was right. Marge was an amazing person. She had life all figured out. She worked in the cooling tower construction business. Apparently she was very good at her job and made a nice living. However, she only worked during the winter. There was no way she would allow something as trivial as work to get in the way of her real passion, fishing. Marge was unemployed eight months a year so she could fish everyday in her 14 foot flat bottom skiff. Most people would be terrified at the thought of taking a fourteen foot skiff out an inlet and fishing just offshore. Not Marge. She would load up her beer, her dog, and her effeminate boyfriend and fish until sundown.
Also, she was uneducatedly brilliant (yes, I know that's not a real word). She was funny and interesting. A real find. How could I have possibly lived the rest of my life without the knowledge of her existence. She was rough and tough and seemingly invincible. That was until the day she became human. We'd lived next to her for months thinking of her as some sort of novelty. We had not seen all of her. I would've never imagined that Marge could feel pain.
During one of her stints at work, her boyfriend left. He didn't leave a note or a message. He just packed up his stuff and left. In all honesty, he was probably terrified at what she would do to him for leaving her. She knocked on our door with a depressingly puzzled look on her face. She asked us whether we'd seen him or talked to him. We had not. She wasn't simply asking though; she was desperate. The sadness in her eyes had an air of panic to it. This sadness frightened her. She wasn't familiar with vulnerability and weakness. This wasn't in her plan. We sat out there with her for a long time as she talked and cried her way through the obvious stages of grief. "Was it something I did? Did he meet someone else? Maybe if I just called him more, or told him I loved him?" She was angry, hurt, and scared. In fact, she was mostly scared. I was awestruck at how she suddenly seemed so small and fragile. I then began picturing her as a child staring down the first day of school. The pain seemed too big and uncontrollable. In that instant she was nothing more than heartbroken.
To be honest, I was heartbroken for her. She was a good person, who treated us like we were her own kids. This was karmic injustice. But, in true Marge fashion, she picked herself up. The next day, she and the dog piled in to that little skiff and hit the water. No one would've ever believed our story of her fragility. But on that day, we really knew her. She was who she was. She didn't hide her pain or vulnerability. She longed for comfort like everyone else. She was still funny and loud, but we'd seen behind the curtain. We'd seen the great and powerful Marge, and were just as shocked as Dorothy and the Tin Man. That moment taught me a lot about humility and real honesty. Maybe it only exacerbated my preconceived opinions of how to be a real person. Recently, someone referred to me as a real person. That might be the best compliment I've had in a long time. While I don't see myself as completely self-actualized, I am slowly but surely getting more comfortable with the idea of who I am. Hopefully, I'm an amalgamation of the influence of the good people I've met. Hopefully, you are too.
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