Festive

When I was about, oh, four years old, I accompanied my family to a family reunion. I don't know who's, but it was a heck of a shin dig. There were 'bout two dozen kids and they pumped us full of food and sugar and sat back, partied, and watched us bounce around the area. I remember sitting on a staircase with eight other little kids, big hunks of chocolate cake studiously disappearing; when a naked lady walked out of the upstairs bathroom, got a towel, and turned and saw 16 solemn little eyes looking at her. She screamed, quite educational.

We had a big old picnic and I got in trouble for telling a lady I didn't want any of her macaroni salad cause it tasted like shit. I had an aversion to macaroni salad for twenty years after that whuppin'.

Or maybe it was linked to the memory of leaving. We were getting in the car, a '56 Cadillac, when a kid I had been playing with, earlier, suddenly took off running with an older person after him. Oh boy, one last game, I was off like a rocket joining in the race, my Dad tried to stop me and I was like a broken field runner.

I caught them on the other side of the house and the older person was viciously beating the shit out of my friend. He had a belt in his hand, but that was just collateral damage, he was beating a little five year old boy like a punching bag. I had a flower pot in my hands and had gone about three steps while thinking furiously. Why was no one stopping this? Click. People had tried to stop me, including my father. What would they do after I invalidated this big older person? I wasn't going to get away with stopping this, and none of those balless pukes had followed me. No posse was coming. I surrendered the battle field and retreated. I walked around the house, still holding a flower pot, to complete silence. I glared fury at every man there, and nobody would meet my gaze. I looked at my father and he dropped his head. I put down the flower pot and climbed in the car. I was emotionally distraught that this could and would be allowed to happen. We rode home in silence, the festival atmosphere destroyed.

I was probably a difficult child. A gimp leg, which modern medicine corrected with casts in my first year. I remember riding home from the Doctor's office after yet another cast change, and my Mother explaining to me why she was crying -- seeing the other children there that were so much worse than me. I finally understood quiet crying, that's what i did as I came around that house and got in the car.

I also liked to sit in the corner of my toy box and make 'my sound' for hours on end, I tell you the spirits liked it. My OCD was actually encouraged, to keep me in a routine and connected. That was no more, I had been face planted in reality, and I quit going out that bridge.

I probably didn't say a dozen words between the reunion and Christmas. I was furious at reality and other beings that would allow such brutalization. I ended up 'tongue-tied' and had trouble with annunciation and elocution up 'til 'bout the fourth grade.

From that day forward I was watched. If I saw any act of bullying or dominance, I would mess somebody up, preferring death from above. I wasn't allowed to play football. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got a gimp leg, right. I shoulda found rugby, but i didn't.

To this day, I still deal with repressed anger and can flair into a rage due to injustices that I perceive. It scares me how enjoyable a rumble is once it's started. If someone gets my dander up, they're foolish if they think I'm abackin'.

But don't worry, I take my meds, and sometimes I rock and hum my sound. I am more complacent and reasonable. It's like killing flies, they'll always be there and sooner or later you get tired of it.

We never went back to see those people, again.

Feeding my Grandson

Ah, that reminds me of kindergarten. We were all sitting around a table eating our stale graham crackers and drinking our gaggly milk when the kid directly across from me quietly threw up in his lap. We're talking about 20 four and five year olds, and I was the only one who saw him do this. Then he sits there and looks at ME miserably with sewage all down the front of his shirt.

My stomach lurched. My stomach lurched, again. I refused to throw up. I kept my mouth firmly shut. I refused to throw up. My stomach lurched, yet again, and I was sorta like Mt. St. Helen's. Puke, just like lava and electricity, will follow the path of least resistance. I kept my mouth firmly shut, and two streams of vomit spewed down my front, out of my nostrils.

There was a 60% casualty rate. At least a dozen four and five year olds spontaneously erupted. It was chaos. And the only thing for sure was everybody crying and pointing at me. I smelt sour milk for a month.

There was a dance later. Let's say that I learned many lessons about rejection.

And ejection.

Sigh, I threw up on a Shore Patrol in Olongapo one fine night, too.

My father was black

Ed & Ruth

My Dad was riding down the street on his Indian one day, bout '40 '41. WHAM! He gets nailed in the head with a shoe and it damn near took him off the Bike. He went back and aked Mom what the HELL she did that for. She replied that it was the only way to get him to stop.

Being practical they decided to have two children, a boy in 1945, and a girl in 1948. They lived in domestic bliss, my Dad being an electrician and my mother flakier than a croissant.

Round bout 1953 Dad was driving tanker truck and making good money. One day he was unloading when a coupling, which he had down-checked for safety and been told to use until the replacement came in, broke and sprayed him with sulfuric acid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfuric_acid

Dad raced to the emergency shower at the steel plant he was delivering at, and several people followed him in fully clothed to aim nozzles at him. His clothes washed off with the water. He rinsed and screamed until the ambulance got there. The eye reflex literally saved his vision. Quick action and emergency equipment curtailed the severity of his burns and the 80% coverage left only a meridian around the back of his torso, head, legs, and upper arms. He was home within two weeks with minimal physical therapy, but he was burned, hurt, and bummed.

He was stuck at home, and Mom bless her heart, nursed him back to health.

I was born in 1954. Great year.

Even if his melanin was scrooched, he had another son.

I was spoiled.

Women are wise.

They make sure you keep one foot on the ground.

Damn it I hate it when I do this.

Mom died 38 years ago.

Dad gave up.

Damn it

Immigration

No, this ain't going where you think. I promise.

Back in the 1930s, when Nazi racism and thuggery was festering and encouraging like-minded cretins, Getting out of Germany, getting out of Europe became all the rage. Especially if you were Jewish, Jehovah Witness, or gay. Visa's were hard to get, and there were a million and one excuses all over the globe for not allowing more immigrants. Yada yada yada.

Flash forward a hundred years, or less, and the song remains the same. We [b]have[/b] to become a haven and sanctuary for Christians as they flee Europe and England over the next decades.

This needs to be a broad based and Church supported movement.

A legend in my own mind

Tis a fine thing I have done. Course, I've been taking my meds, I would say that. When you read my posts here, they are just images from the landscape of my mind and dreams. I'm not dangerous, I have to be careful not to hurt myself. I like using pencils instead of crayons.