Author: admin

More about my horrible Mother

(Should start by reading the previous post so you can get things in order.)

So, when I left off, Mother had put my brother and me on a Greyhound bus from Hollywood to Santa Barbara to live with our father and his new wife, Charmaine.  Charmaine already had a daughter, Vivian, who was our step-sister, a year or two younger than me.

I don’t know when Dad and Char were married or when they bought their house.  Mother learned she was pregnant in the spring of 1962, and her baby was born October 22, 1962.  But this was all revealed to me several years later, only mentioned here to somehow understand why Mother suddenly shipped my brother and me away.

So, there we are trying to make a blended family with our dad’s new wife and her daughter.  Mostly, it was pretty good, and Charmaine was actively trying to be a good mom.  She had a friend, Ann, whose son was in my grade and his younger sister.  And Char also had other friends and relatives in the area so it seemed there was often something to do.

And Charmaine was also pregnant and was probably pregnant before my brother and I arrived.  Sometime during that summer, Charmaine moved out.   She later told me (after my own divorce) that she had to move out because she didn’t like the way Dad treated me and my brother, and she didn’t want her child to be raised that way.

So, she moved out and had her baby in August of 1962, my younger half-brother, Christopher Patrick.  I only got to see him a few times as a baby. I think Charmaine did most of the heavy lifting when it came to helping us try to get to know Chris.

My Dad managed to arrange after school care for me and my brother by having us go to classmates’ homes after school.  I went to Mike’s house, and I forget where Scott went.   This was easily arranged because my mother’s mother (my Grandma Wilfley) was the school secretary at Monroe Elementary and she knew everybody.

Mike’s mother, Pat, had been one of my mother’s close friends in school so it worked out well that I went to Mike’s house.  I liked that because Mike always had fun things to do and he had other friends in the area to play with and we usually all played in Mike’s back yard.

I was in third grade now, in the fall of 1962.  I don’t recall having any contact with Mother since she put us on the bus.   My birthday was in late November, and one of my classmates (Mark) had a birthday around the same time.  His mother contacted my dad to arrange a joint birthday party.  It was fun, and between his invites and mine, pretty much our whole class was invited.  Since it was at Mark’s house and his mom did much of the arranging and organizing, I remember my dad mostly standing around “helping.”   But I was just turning 8 and somewhat oblivious to grown-up stuff so it’s possible my dad had a bigger hand than I recognized.

There are other details about the party that don’t matter.  What I do remember is that this was the only birthday party I had as a kid that I can remember, that I had a good time with it, that my dad was there and my mother was not.

So this as late November 1962.   Sometime after my birthday, but before Christmas, we found out Mother was back in town.  She had herself a very small apartment off of De La Vina Street. I remember one time Scott and I went to her place for dinner, and she was complaining about the tiny refrigerator freezing her carton of milk. That’s the only clear memory that I have from that.

I don’t remember if we had any Christmas with her, but shortly after that it was decided Mother and Dad were getting back together and she was moving into the house.  It is mostly a blur, but I remember she was acting strangely sometimes.

She’d become addicted to her tranquilizers and vodka, which seriously messed up her head.  Doctors would sometimes come to the house after Dad went to work and would give her some sort of shot.  She started hallucinating around this time.  One time I wanted to go outside to play and she told me I can’t go outside because there’s an axe outside the door and if I go out the door the axe would fall and cut off my head.

Another time she would hallucinate having a little girl and was leading her hallucination around by the hand.  Obviously I couldn’t see her imagined little girl, but one night at bedtime I was getting ready for bed and she brought her little girl in for a good night kiss.  I was sitting on my bed and Mother told me to give the little girl a kiss so I leaned in Mother’s general direction and kissed empty air.  Mother Blew Up at me, telling me to kiss her girl “for real” because her little girl was over in the corner.  Hell, I was only 8 and confused as hell about kissing a girl I couldn’t even see.

It wasn’t long after this that mother was taken away in an ambulance and didn’t return.  Apparently she’d been taken to a local hospital in the psychiatric ward, and after a court hearing (where both her mother and her father had to appear) it was decided she needed to go to the state mental hospital at Camarillo.

I have no idea exactly how long she was there but it was a good month and a half, maybe two months …. maybe?  I don’t remember the time span, and I don’t recall what we did after school while Mother was in the hospital.

I do somewhat remember not doing well in school that spring in third grade because my mother was sick.  I guess somehow I was supposed to just get on with things and not try to figure it out.

But Mother did eventually come home and there seemed to be relative peace for a while.  The school year ended and summer 1963 had started.  I was still just 8 and Scott had turned 10 that February (we’re 21 months apart). Then one Saturday Scott and I got up in the morning and both Mother and Dad were gone.   I don’t remember if there was a note, or maybe Mother had called and Scott answered the phone …. whatever, we simply learned that Mother and Dad had gone to Santa Monica and would be back later or the next day.  No idea why or anything.

We later learned that Mother and Dad had gone to get quickie-remarried and had a one-night “honeymoon.”  So apparently Charmaine had divorced Dad sometime along the way.  Once Mother was back in the picture we had no contact with Christopher, although Charmaine did come over occasionally to talk to Dad.  She was always nice to us kids.  Scott and I were always sent to our rooms, but that was no surprise as we spent most of our time there anyway.  The living room was for grown-ups, apparently.  Mother loved her television and heaven help the kid who interrupted whatever she was watching.

That’s all for now.

 

Why Was Your Mother So Horrible?

A long-time friend and former co-worker asked, “Why was your mother so horrible?”

She wasn’t always horrible, and had some good qualities.  But she was not a good mother, and not always even a good person.

She was born in 1933 to a father who didn’t want her and ultimately left when she was three years old.  Her mother had such a bad pregnancy that she was sterilized either when Mother was born or shortly thereafter.  So from the start, Mother would always be an only child.  And when her father left, it was just my mother and her mother struggling to survive as the nation recovered from the Great Depression.  I don’t know if it was deliberate or even conscious, but I have no doubt my mother grew up knowing (or feeling) somehow responsible for her mother’s life being hard.  And there would be no siblings for Mother to confer with and see if they were really the problem or maybe Grandma was living out her own frustrations onto her child.

After I got divorced I was talking with my grandmother (Mother’s mother) about my kids and I mentioned something about paying child support, and my grandmother asked, “Why do you have to pay any money? The children are her property now.” So, I’m guessing that when she and Grandpa Mac were divorced, she was not awarded child support, but that’s only a guess.  I don’t know what laws were in place or how well any laws were enforced.

So with a young child to raise, my grandmother went back to school and got her teaching credentials.  There weren’t many opportunities for women back then, and even fewer for divorced single mothers.  But she managed.  I don’t know when she met her second husband, but they were both working in the Santa Barbara school district.  He was a math teacher at Santa Barbara Junior High, and she was a Home Ec teacher either at one of the junior high schools or maybe Santa Barbara High School.

Anyway, they met and married, so Mother finally had a stepfather, and at some point she started  using his last name, as that was how she was listed in her high school yearbook.  What I do not know is when Grandma met Grandpa Walt, and when they actually married.  From what Mother told me, they lived across the street from the high school while Mother was attending there, but at some point Grandma and Grandpa bought their land and built their home up on Calle Boca del Cañon.  That’s where they lived when Mother finished high school.

Side note:  Grandma and Grandpa’s house on Boca del Cañon was up a slightly winding very steep street, facing downtown and all of Santa Barbara.  Grandma told me that while they were building the house and planning the foundation and floors, she had them put up a ladder where the kitchen would be.  She climbed up the ladder to where she could one day look out the window as she washed dishes and have a full view of the harbor.  From their big plate glass windows in the living room and dining room they had a full panorama of all the city lights and up into the foothills.  I truly loved that house and would live in it even today if I could.

Anyway, Mother resented her father leaving.  I don’t know how often he saw her when she was little, but as I got older he only came around once or twice a year and usually on his way to take his mother from Tucson, AZ up to Mt. Shasta for the summer.  Mother and Grandpa Mac didn’t have a close relationship, very superficial.   His second and third wives resented Mother because Mother grew up as a troubled kid and only reached out to her father when she was in trouble or needed money or something.  Grandma Lucy (Grandpa Mac’s third wife) actively disliked my mother.

By the time Grandpa Mac retired he’d been the head of Martin-Marietta before it was bought and became Lockheed-Martin.  From what my brother told me, Grandpa Mac got a very sweet retirement deal.  And Grandma Lucy had been an executive at CBS.  So they were very well off, proper, social, and so forth.  His wayward daughter didn’t fit their lifestyle.

After high school Mother tried to go to college and ended up at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ.  She lasted maybe a semester, maybe two.  I have no idea why that didn’t pan out well for her but I suspect she got in trouble for drinking and smoking and generally not meeting expectations for a young woman in university.

So she went back home to Santa Barbara and ended up working at a civil engineering firm called Penfield & Smith.  I’m not sure her initial role, but she ended up running the blue-print machine.  That’s where she met my father, who was already a well-seasoned civil engineer.

My father was born in 1923 in Santa Barbara, had grown up and finished school there, then started college at Berkeley, CA until he got drafted into World War II.  He took civil engineering training and did that while in the Army.  When the war ended he came back home and found work with Penfield & Smith, where he was a rising star.  He got called back into service for the Korean War, although I don’t know for how long.  When he came home again, his job at P&S had been held for him.  Then he met Mother.

The way Mother told it, they had their first date parked in his car at Ledbetter Beach.  When Grandmother asked her the next morning how the date went, Mother said, “It was fine, we’re getting married in two weeks.”  Or something like that.  Whatever he offered in his back seat, or whatever she thought she found, she was bound and determined to latch onto that and latch on fast.

She was 19, he was 29, if my head math works right — my brother was born February 25, 1953, so they were married in June of 1952.  Yes, Mother always swore Scott was “two months premature.”   Yeah, okay.  Whatever.   They honeymooned in San Francisco, and because she was now a “grown-up married woman” she wasted no time drinking whenever she could.

Now, my dad was the youngest child of four.  With three older sisters and a domineering mother, dad learned to keep to himself and out of the way.  His father was some sort of lay minister, and both his parents were quite devout in their Christian faith.  I think one or two of Dad’s sisters took up smoking, but Dad was a smoker and a drinker.  A family of dark-haired non-drinking religious people had to quickly get used to the fact that their youngest child and only son was quite suddenly marrying some blue-eyed blonde smoking and drinking sinner.  <*gasp*>   

So, you remember Mother was an only child. She really got excited that when she married, she would have three older sisters to look up to. Yeah, well, that didn’t work out so well.  With the sharp contrast in lifestyles, Mother was not welcomed with open arms.  Dad’s oldest sister Mary already had some kids and some “life experience” of her own, so it seemed Mary and Mother got along well enough.

Mother was NOT a good financial manager, didn’t seem to have a lick of sense about where money came from or how to use it wisely.  I think that comes from being bailed out of her shenanigans by both her mother and her father.

Early on in their marriage, Dad was doing well.  I sense he’d grown up somewhat lower-income, but during my parents first marriage he owned a large lemon grove in Hope Ranch and was doing well.  But whatever money Dad made, Mother seemed to drink much of it away.  Part of their divorce settlement included selling off the lemon grove, which pissed Dad off enormously. It would have been worth a lot even back then.

So they got divorced when I was 3 or 4 years old. Mother took us to Hollywood where we lived in at least three different apartments that I can remember.  I don’t remember her having any work during that time, so I’m assuming either my Dad was paying her some alimony and/or child support, or perhaps her parents were supporting her.

Dad ended up marrying Charmaine during time.  As it turned out Charmaine was also the blueprint operator at Penfield & Smith.  I have no idea if she was there when Mother was there, or when Charmaine came on board, but that’s where Dad met her.   Charmaine was already divorced and had a daughter about a year younger than me.

At some point, Mother has casually dating now and then.  I met one or two of the men she dated, but I don’t really remember any of them.  At one point, probably around February or March of 1962, she got pregnant.

We didn’t know about the pregnancy at the time of course, but one day seemingly out of the blue, Mother packed us up with some clothes and told us we were going to go live with our Dad– he’d just gotten married and they’d bought a nice new house and things would be better for us.

She got a cab and took us to the Greyhound bus station, bought us two one-way tickets from Hollywood to Santa Barbara.  Mind you, I was 7 and Scott was just barely 9.  Travelling alone, not really understanding about time and distance.  But we got on the bus and I vaguely remember waving good-bye at Mother as the bus pulled out.

Next thing I remember we were off the bus and waiting toward the back of the bus station in Santa Barbara, wondering if Dad was going to come or not.  They did finally show up, Dad and Charmaine, and neither looked particularly pleased, although of course they were glad we were okay.

Mother had made sure we got on the bus.  Great.  Then she went back to the apartment on Las Palmas, probably had a drink or two, and then (only THEN) called Dad to announce our impending arrival.  There had been no plans, no arrangements, no preparations.  Mother just put us on a bus and then told Dad we were already on the way.

This is already far longer than I had expected, and I have other things to do, so I’ll continue this another day soon.

 

 

No Such Thing As Sin

Sin is defined as a transgression or violation of divine law.

We have all sorts of problems in this world and people hurting each other all the time, sometimes intentionally and sometimes accidentally.  Civil rights are violated with regularity as well.  But there is no ‘divine law.’  That is a religious construct without anything to back it up.

Nineteen Years Post-Katrina

It’s been 19 years since Hurricane Katrina permanently altered my life.

It was early in Monday morning when Katrina came on shore just east of New Orleans.  The Friday before that I was unaware a storm was coming, and only caught wind of it over the weekend.  Everyone I knew was either hunkering down or evacuating.  I didn’t have a car, but I had a big dog, Hazel.  She was a Labrador/Chow-Chow mix, big and beautiful and plenty furry.  I had only gotten her that spring when my friend Jackie Smythe moved back to New York to work at Lion Brand Yarn Co.  She was a big heavy dog, but was dwarfed next to the big elephant ears growing in the back yard.

Anyway, one of the neighbors offered to let me ride along as they evacuated, but nobody was willing to let a big dog ride along, so I had little choice but to just stay put with Hazel.

I had woken up and gotten a pot of coffee made when the power went out as the storm moved in.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but Hazel and I hunkered down underneath a table, listening to the wind whipping trees against the house.  It was terrifying, and contributed to my storm-related PTSD which rears its ugly head every time we get a big storm even now.

When I finally dared open the front door, either later that day or maybe Tuesday morning, there was silence all around and evidence that something terrible had happened.  The streets were basically void of traffic, although I did see some kids trying to break into the little gas station down on Magazine Street.  One of them yelled, “It’s the end of the world! Take what you can.”   I left them to their own pursuits.

On Wednesday, as I was walking up Constantinople St., I met some other people who had also stayed to weather the storm.  I ended up staying with them as we heard rumors of the levees breaking and the city flooding.  The flooding came up as far as St. Charles Avenue, just another block or two from where we were.

In a day or two, the National Guarded started driving through to check on people and bring MREs and potable water.  Military helicopters were flying a grid pattern overhead all night long, almost every night, looking for people trapped on rooves or needing rescuing.  We were in the very narrow part of New Orleans that didn’t flood, so mostly the National Guard would just come around to check on us but mostly left us alone.

We had broken into someone’s private yard and discovered an above-ground pool, which became a source of toilet-flushing water as well as a place to somewhat bathe.  And the National Guard team went and approved it as an above-ground pool.  They rejected in-ground pools, but we were okay to use this one pool.

Finally, the next Thursday (if I remember correctly), the National Guard was coming around with huge ‘people-mover’ type open top trucks, into which we were all suppose to board, for them to carry us out of the city.  There was a phone at the place I was staying, and I had made some calls to arrange a different escape.

Hazel would go with someone else to a big property somewhere between Covington and Baton Rouge, since they had enough property and animals that she would be cared for.  I snagged a ride with a stranger who carried me to Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center in Baton Rouge, where I would be met by another co-worker who took me to her place on Opelousas, and then my son-in-law drove there to bring me to Houston.

Because of my work as the administrator for the Louisiana Cancer and Lung Trust Fund Board, I knew the CEO at Mary Bird Perkins and he said I could come there as a stop and meeting place for Jesse to pick me up.  I’m sure I was a sight — unbathed and unshaved for a week and a half, walking into a sterile prim and proper cancer center with my granny cart of essentials like clothes, a pillow, and other things.

Why did I have my granny cart?  Before discovering other people in the neighborhood, I had intended to load up some essentials, including dog food, and Hazel and I would walk the bike path along the river until I got into Jefferson Parish or whatever else I could find for me and Hazel.  It wasn’t a well-thought-out plan, but being alone I couldn’t see another choice.

The people who carried me to Mary Bird Perkins turned out to be some well-known judge from a parish up north, who had driven in on his official credentials to check on one of his relatives who lived on that street just a block away from us.  I told him I needed to get to the cancer center and I let him assume I was a patient and not a state employee.  Whatever.

I ended up staying with my daughter and son-in-law until October 15, when I got the all-clear that my neighborhood had water and lights again.

On August 29, 2006, I officially moved back to Houston to stay.   There’s a lot more I could say about it all, but for now, it’s just a day to remember how my life was permanently changed.

Oh!  As for Hazel, she stayed on the property for a while with the people who had taken her.  At one point during my stay in Houston, they called to let me know Hazel was doing okay and was learning to bark in French.  It was a heavily Cajun family there.  She moved on to live her best life on a big property in Alabama, if I remember correctly.  I never did see her again.

How to Clean My Hat

Long, long ago, like around 20 or 25 years ago, I bought myself a cool hat made of a sort of twill or denim fabric.  It’s been in my closet since I moved here 18 years ago, and I just pulled it out this past week.  I used to wear it semi-often when I lived in New Orleans.

It looks really bad.  Dusty and dirty.  I am amazed it has mostly kept its shape, which gives me a little hope.  What I need to know, however, is how to properly clean it without destroying it.

My baseball caps can go into the washing machine and survive.  There’s no way in hell I would put this hat into the washing machine.  I need to get a proper hat brush and get most of the dust off, of course, but it really does need a deep clean as well, but I don’t want to get it soaking wet.

So….. what do you recommend?  Feel free to leave your comments and suggestions in the comment space below.

I didn’t go deaf

Many people know that I spent almost 13 months with my Mother in Denver, apart from my siblings who were still in Santa Barbara with our father.  How that happened is a story for another time.

Close-up picture of my right ear.
Nope, not deaf!

And many people know it was a horrendous time during which I saw things no young teen needs to be aware of.  Hardly any teen of any age wants to be conscious of their parents’ sex lives; certainly teens approaching puberty are curious about sex in general, but shudder at the thought of their own parents doing it.

While in Denver, we lived almost entirely in one-room locations, most often in transient hotels downtown.  These were the type of hotels where you have a room with a bed, a dresser, maybe some other furniture, and a little sink in the corner.  A couple of locations had actual bathrooms connected to our room.

Mother wasn’t working. And I, being just 13 years old (I turned 14 while there) certainly wasn’t working. Mother would meet a man, most often in a bar, and would end up convincing her prey to let her stay the night, which often meant both of us staying the night in whatever accommodations there were.  Sometimes, the guy would actually get a hotel room.

One guy in particular had a larger Oldsmobile or Buick.  Mother had taken me into a bar, and she got pissed that she was carded.  She was about 35 years old then, but she got her drink and got me a soda of some sort and told me to go sit in a booth while she sat at the bar.  Next thing I know, I’m being told to go sit in this guy’s car.  After a while we went driving around, and then we ended up at a hotel.  This hotel offered a full-size bed for them, and (if I remember correctly) a roll-away cot for me.  Mother and this guy were making so much ‘noise’ I quit trying to go to sleep and ended up taking my pillow into the bathtub so I could sleep with the door closed.  It made sense to me at the time.

Another time, we were at the Shasta Hotel (another transient hotel) with a basic room, with a shared bathroom down the hall.  Mother was out  somewhere for the evening drinking, I was sitting on (again) a roll-away cot.  Mother came in told me to quickly get into bed, that someone else would be coming in shortly.  So I did as I was told, and soon enough a tall man tapped on the door.

I should interject here that the Shasta had a rear emergency exit down a flight of stairs to a door opening on a side street from where the main entrance was.  Mother would go open that side door for someone to come in without being seen at the front desk.  She didn’t know that every time that exit door opened, a bell would ring at the front desk.  I don’t remember if there was actually a closed circuit TV camera or not, but one day the manager told me to tell Mother to stop using that door to let other people in.

Anyway, so this guy comes in, I’m lying on my side facing into the room but pretending to be asleep, and they get busy doing what they’re doing, with the light off but street lights shining in the window were enough to see plenty.  When they were done, Mother put something on and went to the bathroom down the hall, while the man stood there with his manhood proudly swaying, and I’m trying to not be obvious in my observations since I was supposedly asleep.  Mother came back and the guy slipped into his trousers (commando for the time being) and also went to the bathroom down the hall.

For some reason this guy had emptied his pants when he undressed, so when he went to the bathroom, I watched Mother dip into his wallet.  OMG.  I must have coughed or something because she dropped his wallet back down and told me, “Close your eyes, roll over the other way, and go back to sleep.”   So I rolled over.  The guy came back, took his trousers off, got himself redressed, and slipped out into the night, returning down the back steps the same way he’d come in.

Similar events happened over the time I was there in Denver, different men in different locations, especially with Ralph with whom we stayed 6 or 8 months at several locations.  I would usually be sleeping in some ancient smelly overstuffed chair or something similar.  And I could not help but observe, through firmly squinted eyes, whatever was happening in the night.

And more than once I would cough or shift or otherwise accidentally let the adults in the room  remember I existed.  And more than once Mother would say, “Close your eyes, roll over the other way, and go back to sleep.”

And I kept thinking, “Closing my eyes will not make me deaf.”

I heard as much as I saw that year in Denver.

Write a Book?

Portrait of the author in 5th Grade.
School picture of the author in 5th Grade

This is me, my class picture when I was in 5th grade.  Big smile, but this was roughly the time when I was discovering Live wasn’t always fair or nice.  This was also the beginning of troubles that would follow me for decades, not entirely of my own making but largely the impact on me of my parents’ alcoholism (mostly my mother).

Over the years, off and on, I have considered writing a book. My early years were so incredibly fucked up, especially my teen years, that when I share some of the incidents that became part of who I am, people have told me, “Ray, you need to write a book.”  And, other people, when hearing the events of my youth, say “you shouldn’t talk about that.”

Okay, writing a book is a daunting task. What do I have to say? What message do I want to share? Who would benefit from my story?

And then there is another set of questions: Do I start at the beginning and write in mostly chronological order?  Do I pick a topic and follow the thread through overlapping incidents along the way?  Do I try to address all the many issues in my formative years?  Or just a random collection of short essays, each one independent and sufficient to stand alone if necessary?

And should it be a real book? Or maybe 500 words a week or every other week?  Or brief 10-12 minute weekly chats on YouTube?  Should I compile it and then present it as a finished volume, or make it subscription or on Patron?

Both of my parents were alcoholics, and they had their own mental health issues as well, which obviously had an impact on me when I was a kid and for some time afterward.  I don’t believe my father’s drinking and other issues put me directly in harm’s way (other than being emotional unavailable), but my mother’s drinking absolutely put me in harms way multiple times.

I’m not a relationship expert by any means, and I have no special advice to give to others who may have gone (or may now being going) through situations similar to mine.

Because resources in my youth were few and far between, mostly I am now a less-messy mess of a person than I was previously. If such things were available when I was in school, I would likely have been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, and possibly somewhere on the autism spectrum.  But because those resources weren’t available back then, I have struggled most of my life and created my own coping strategies and survival techniques.  And I am pretty sure that whatever skills I may have developed on my own, these would not be the recommendations of professional child psychologists and other experts in creating emotionally strong, mentally stable, well-adjusted young adults today.

And, at almost 70 now, I realize I don’t have a lifetime ahead of me to figure it out.  It is weighing on me.

Separation of Religion and Government

Anyone aware of the Constitution recognizes the value of the wall of separation between religion and politics.  It is written into the First Amendment.

Basically, it means that the government established for the good of ALL the people cannot rightly be controlled by the dictates of one or another particular religion. Allowing government to be controlled by one religion sets it up to be controlled by some other religion if a new religion gains popularity.  At the same time, individuals are free to believe as they wish in the affairs in heir personal lives, so long as they aren’t harming others in the process.

I no longer hold to any religion.  I am completely atheist.  “No gods, no masters.”

Having said all that, I think my “religion” and politics are the same:

— Extend the others the same rights I want for myself.

— Do as much good for as many as I can while doing as little harm as possible to others.

It isn’t difficult to do this.

No Comparison

This morning my head was filled with a phrase that has always annoyed me for a reason I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

“If I can do it, anybody can do it.”

And that is just plain bullshit. Stop saying such ignorant and offensive things.

It is often intended on the surface to be self-deprecating, but it is also insulting to others who literally can’t do whatever it is I’ve done.  By putting myself (or my achievement) down, it can make others feel like there is something wrong with them.  That is insulting, because there really is nothing wrong or bad about them or their abilities, and there is no excuse for making others feel bad about not doing the particular thing I’ve done.

It is okay to own your own level of skill at a particular thing, and to be proud of it, but there is no reason to lord it over others because they have their own skills that I cannot do.  Why should it matter than I might be a world-renowned concert pianist if I can’t break down and reassemble an eight-cylinder combustion engine?  (For the record, I can’t do either of those things.)

Certainly, most people could do whatever they want, but that doesn’t mean everyone has the particular talent or temperament for a given skill, or they might simply not have any interest in doing that thing.  There’s no shame in that, either.

Another aspect of this sort of self-deprecation is that it dismisses one’s own accomplishments.

Here Comes Beryl

If you know me, you know I don’t like Big Storms.  Really, really don’t like them.

Tropical Storm Beryl had reached Hurricane status at one point, category 4, but it was projected to hit Mexico just below the Texas border.   Now, however, it was downgraded to tropical storm status, but will be moving into open water over the Gulf and it has taken a turn aiming almost right at Houston.   I’m hoping it remains a tropical storm.

Thankfully, my new phone is able to log in to both this Web site and Knitivity.com, so if shit gets real I will have access to post updates.   AND I recently bought two power banks, each of which will charge my phone at least 2 or 3 times each.  Since I don’t use the phone too much, I expect I will be fine even if power does go out for a day or two.

Frankly, I am more concerned about trees falling on the trailer, but there’s nothing I can do about that now, I suppose.