Best Blog Challenge

The lovely Gwen Bell has issued a challenge about a challenge: write about something that challenged you this year and how you overcame it and why it was a good challenge.

Ok.
Ok.
Here I go.
No really.
I'm doing it any minute.
Hm.

I don't like to think about challenges. I just want them to go away tra la. I am lazy like that.

I don't know if I have overcome this one yet or not.

Ok, I haven't. It is my continuing challenge, one that I deal with every single day.

I am challenged by not having my parents' precipitous decline into old age taint my world view. The pain and suffering and helplessness they face every day as their bodies and minds wear our are almost more than I can bear at times.

Their existential crisis has become my existential crisis. What's it all about, Alfie?

I try to keep my eyes wide open. To be helpful and kind and to not minimize or ignore their suffering because I hate seeing it so much.

Sometimes I pass and on many days I fail. I forget that they aren't who they used to be.

I snap at them, I'm sarcastic, I'm impatient, I run out of there just to get away for a while.

The temptation is to put up a wall - not against them so much but against feeling what is happening to them and letting the full horror wash over me. Because it is horrifying, it is scary, it is painful.

It is only when I can gather my inner strength, my hidden Toltec warrior, and just be there that it is all ok. If I can just breathe through it, remember to be right there, right then - that's when I can feel all the feelings and let the power of love tie us together instead of let the misunderstandings, pains and fear tear us apart.

So. That's not the most cheerful challenge on earth, but there it is. There is no tidy ending, no Oprah-episode "Aha" moment. Just life. I hope that's enough.

My most embarrassing life

My Most Embarrassing Moment by Suebob, Mrs. Flinger's Period 3 English*

*Explanation at bottom of post

Most embarrassing moments are usually just that: a moment, a brief time of realization and blushing, followed by the blissful softening of time's passing.

But what happens when your embarrassing moment happens and you don't even know about it until long after everyone else has heard about it, when, years later, the realization comes crashing down on you like an emotional pile of bricks?

That's what happened to me.

When I was in my junior year of high school, I awoke one day with terrible back pain. I was in ballet at the time, so I thought I had strained a muscle.

I iced, I used a heating pad, but nothing helped. My mom took me over to the chiropractor and I almost passed out from the pain.

I remember standing at the counter and having my vision disappear down to pinpoints and the noises around me get farther and farther away until someone grabbed me just as I collapsed.

Someone took my temperature and found I had a 104 degree fever. My doctor ordered me admitted to the hospital. Our family doctor at the time was this harsh skinny old guy with a thick German accent. I always suspected that he was a retired Nazi but I'm sure that is just speculation...mmmmaybe.

They put me on the pediatrics ward at the hospital. The doctor came to visit me there and took me into a broom closet and did my first, and by far the worst, pelvic exam of my life.

Between the pain and the fever and the broom closet and a strange man rooting around in my privates with the grace of a ham-handed plumber, I was a mess. During the exam, Dr. Mengele asked me "Are you sexually emancipated?"

This was 1977 and I had no idea what he was talking about. I assumed he was asking me if I was a feminist. After all, the debate over the Equal Rights Amendment was raging at the time. So I said yes.

After that, things get a little fuzzy. My fever went up even higher and I ended up spending six weeks on that peds ward, receiving massive doses of erythromycin for a staph infection that had settled in the bones of my lower spine. Except for developing a permanent hatred for runny food served on plastic plates, I recovered fully.

Fast forward 25 years. My sister Laura and I were talking about the time I had spent in the hospital. She said, laughing, "And that old German doctor told mom and dad you had gonorrhea."

"WHAT?" I yelled.

"You didn't know? He said he had asked you if you were having sex with a lot of people and, with your symptoms, he suspected gonorrhea."

"Doctor Mengele told mom and dad I was having sex with a lot of people and had gonorrhea?? That isn't what he asked me. He said 'sexually emancipated.' I thought he meant if I approved of women being firefighters and judges!"

So my most embarrassing moment lasted 25 years, the years when my parents thought I was a total slut.

**********
Explanation:
Mrs. Flinger has a new project: trying to help bloggers become better writers. Thank God. Somebody has to!

The idea is that we will do weekly writing assignments and give each other gentle and helpful criticism. Week one's topic: My Most Embarrassing Moment. Ok!

How we treat each other

Some fans from the parade yesterday. Couldn't we all use a cheering section?

I've been thinking about the effects people have on each other lately. How different energies make us feel.

This line of thought was inspired by some of the coolest people on the internet: Jen Lemen, Tracey Clark, and Andrea Scher.

Even though I don't know these women well, I see their influence everywhere in the blog world. It is like ripples in a pond. The people who come closest to them become more creative, braver, more filled with life.

And then there are other people. The opposites. Those who suck your life energy, who drag you down, who leave the world a little darker each day. They aren't necessarily evil. In most cases, it just seems like they can't help themselves.

Imagine this: you are given an award. Some random award from work or an organization you belong to. You are probably going to tell people you know. There are those you can't wait to tell, because they say things like:

• That is great! You so deserve it!
  
• I know you have worked hard and I love seeing you get rewarded
  
• This is just the beginning of good things for you
  

Their eyes shine, they hug you, they want to make you do more.

There are others who you don't feel so good about telling. You hope that they will share your happiness, that they will, for once, be able to be there for you, to cheer you on. But once again you are disappointed as you hear them say:

• Oh, I bet they give lots of those awards
  
• That's what they give you instead of money
  
• Awards don't really mean much
  

The black cloud descends. Your energy level sinks. It's like they can't wait for you to climb up a little so they can knock you back down. Like they take your happiness and feed the endless black hole they have inside themselves.

If you call the dark people out about their negativity, they counter with something like "I'm just being realistic," meaning it is YOU who is wrong, not them.

I don't know what it is in me that gets me so pulled in to the darkness and so dismissive of the light. But I am going to work on believing the supportive people and in keeping away from the others.

I have already come a long way. I have had to work like hell to climb out of some of the holes I have let myself be pushed down into - places where I doubted my purpose, my talents, my very reason for existing. I have been there and I'm not going back.

Anyone want to join me in jumping up toward the light?