Sometimes it is the smallest things. You're beaten, you're down, you're alone, you don't know where to go or what to do.
Then a door cracks open and out spills just a sliver of light and suddenly you can see and you just KNOW that you can reach over and jerk that sucker open and walk through that doorway, out of the darkness and into a new place, a place that is, at the very least, different from where you are.
I don't know why songs are so often the thing that pops the door open. Something in music connects right up to Control Central right down there in the middle without having to travel through the buzzing wiring in our brains. It just gets in there and does what it does and we end up laughing or sobbing or gasping or standing up and shaking parts that we didn't even know we could shake anymore.
So there I was a while ago, driving around. I lived with someone who hated me and who was perpetually unhappy, both about my existence and about everything else in general. I had felt FAIL for so long that I couldn't even imagine what WIN was anymore.
I was getting on the freeway, heading home, feeling like crap. And then "Jump" by Van Halen came on the classic rock station.
I KNOW. Can anything be more silly or ridiculous? It's not great music. It's not gonna be on anyone's top 100 list. But that day, in that place, it GOT me.
Even though I was hearing it on the radio, the thousand times I had seen the video rushed back to life in my head and I was driving along seeing that nutty video play in my head and singing and laughing.
"Might as well jump." Damn right.
Suddenly I knew to the marrow of my bones that I was going to be ok. No matter how much anyone tried to keep me down, I was going to get up, to jump, and the jump was NOT going to be off a building.
I was going to leap through life with goofy, goony joy, the same kind of crazy life force that caused Diamond Dave to put on that wack red net corset-y outfit and parade around the stage like a low-rent Mick Jagger with bigass hair, the same joy that kept Eddie smiling his little elf smile while wearing possibly the most unattractive yellow tiger-striped jacket ever made.
"Might as well jump." From then on, when I was getting looked down upon, I had that song in my head and Eddie's sweet smile in my heart. On the outside, I put on my best blasé face and went through the motions and did what I had to do so I could put my escape plan into motion. But inside, I knew who I was. I was someone who could always jump.
I'm so thankful for that song. It gave me something, you know? Tell me about a song that saved you.
Showing posts with label My Life History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label My Life History. Show all posts
25 December 2009
01 December 2009
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!
*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!
21 August 2009
Getting it right, getting it wrong
The comments section of my local newspaper's online edition is filled with the most retrograde, racist, xenophobic goobers to ever type a sentence. I hesitate to even log in because I always end up feeling so downcast about the state of humanity after reading what they say.
Any time an article mentions someone with a Latino last name or a subject even tangentially related to homosexuality, the chunderheads go into full zoom-zoom crazyhead mode. Illegals! Gays!
Hundreds of comments. I mean, look. Enough said.
Anyway, when they aren't flipping out about "the illegals" or "the gays," the rabblerific comments section is full of entries about how the newspaper can't get anything right.
I have been working my way through "The Wire," the greatest TV show ever (period, end of story). Season 5 is all about journalism. Oh, it is good. It also gives me the most painful pangs of nostalgia for the newsroom. I can barely stand it.
In one scene, the city editor wakes out of a dead sleep and goes and calls the copy desk to ask about some facts he inserted in a story. He is panting, thinking for sure he got the numbers reversed. Some little minor thing about the tonnage of shipments at the port last month, but he is losing his mind over it.
It reminded me so much of my life when I reported every day. I did that ALL THE TIME. And I asked people at my workplace - I work with a bunch of former news people - if that had happened to them, and they all had stories. Lots of stories.
We had all awakened wildly, thinking for sure we had pooched a fact, something that no one else would notice, but that we would know.
I remember one night when I lay there, tossing and turning until I couldn't stand it anymore. I woke up the exMrStapler, who was an attorney.
"If someone is being held for questioning, are they 'in custody'?" I asked.
I was freaking out because I had said "in custody" and I wasn't sure that was precise enough. ExMrS thought for a bit.
"Was he free to go?" he said.
"No."
"Then you could say he was in custody," ruled ExMrS.
I had awakened sweating because I cared. I didn't care because I would get in trouble or because we would have to run a correction (though that was horrible, too). I cared because I believed all that crap about writing "the first draft of history." I cared because facts are facts, and they are supposed to be right. I cared because I was part of a long tradition of reporting the news, of separating out the true from the false. I really, really cared in a way I never cared about anything before or since.
Those goons in the comment section honestly believe that journalists don't give a hoot, that they screw up and blithely go about their day. Maybe there are some who do. But I have just never met one, and I never was one. I can only hope that they, some day, somehow, care about something as much as I cared about getting the news right.
Any time an article mentions someone with a Latino last name or a subject even tangentially related to homosexuality, the chunderheads go into full zoom-zoom crazyhead mode. Illegals! Gays!
Hundreds of comments. I mean, look. Enough said.
Anyway, when they aren't flipping out about "the illegals" or "the gays," the rabblerific comments section is full of entries about how the newspaper can't get anything right.
I have been working my way through "The Wire," the greatest TV show ever (period, end of story). Season 5 is all about journalism. Oh, it is good. It also gives me the most painful pangs of nostalgia for the newsroom. I can barely stand it.
In one scene, the city editor wakes out of a dead sleep and goes and calls the copy desk to ask about some facts he inserted in a story. He is panting, thinking for sure he got the numbers reversed. Some little minor thing about the tonnage of shipments at the port last month, but he is losing his mind over it.
It reminded me so much of my life when I reported every day. I did that ALL THE TIME. And I asked people at my workplace - I work with a bunch of former news people - if that had happened to them, and they all had stories. Lots of stories.
We had all awakened wildly, thinking for sure we had pooched a fact, something that no one else would notice, but that we would know.
I remember one night when I lay there, tossing and turning until I couldn't stand it anymore. I woke up the exMrStapler, who was an attorney.
"If someone is being held for questioning, are they 'in custody'?" I asked.
I was freaking out because I had said "in custody" and I wasn't sure that was precise enough. ExMrS thought for a bit.
"Was he free to go?" he said.
"No."
"Then you could say he was in custody," ruled ExMrS.
I had awakened sweating because I cared. I didn't care because I would get in trouble or because we would have to run a correction (though that was horrible, too). I cared because I believed all that crap about writing "the first draft of history." I cared because facts are facts, and they are supposed to be right. I cared because I was part of a long tradition of reporting the news, of separating out the true from the false. I really, really cared in a way I never cared about anything before or since.
Those goons in the comment section honestly believe that journalists don't give a hoot, that they screw up and blithely go about their day. Maybe there are some who do. But I have just never met one, and I never was one. I can only hope that they, some day, somehow, care about something as much as I cared about getting the news right.
19 February 2007
I am not complaining
I am in the midst of a wacky church project. We are on a "complaint diet." We are trying to give up all complaining for 21 days straight.
At first, I didn't think it would be that hard. Then I found out that gossiping counted as complaining. Whoops.
To remind ourselves of this commitment, we are wearing blue rubber wristbands. If I want to complain, I have to move the wristband to my other arm to bring my attention to the fact that I am going to complain.
You know what this means, don't you? A knife through the heart of my blog.
First I decide I can't write about work. Then I determine that I should keep the family and friends talk to a minimum to avoid embarrassing anyone. I'm too shy to talk about sex. And now complaining is banned.
Aren't kittens wonderful? Aren't bunnies cute?
THIS IS KILLING ME.
I guess I will talk about memories for the next 3 weeks. Name a year after, oh, say 1968 and I will hit you with something from the Fascinating Life of Sueb0b.
Here's one: 1989 (I think).
My sister Laura and I are sitting in the front yard in downtown San Luis Obispo on a beautiful sunny day.
Two teen boys walk by, deep in conversation.
Boy 1: (fervently) "There was NO flying. There was NO hidden treasure."
Laura and I looked at each other.
And that, my friends, is one of my most cherished memories. To this day, when my sis and I ask each other how an event was, if it was less than fabulous, the other will say, "Well, there was no flying, there was no hidden treasure."
At first, I didn't think it would be that hard. Then I found out that gossiping counted as complaining. Whoops.
To remind ourselves of this commitment, we are wearing blue rubber wristbands. If I want to complain, I have to move the wristband to my other arm to bring my attention to the fact that I am going to complain.
You know what this means, don't you? A knife through the heart of my blog.
First I decide I can't write about work. Then I determine that I should keep the family and friends talk to a minimum to avoid embarrassing anyone. I'm too shy to talk about sex. And now complaining is banned.
Aren't kittens wonderful? Aren't bunnies cute?
THIS IS KILLING ME.
I guess I will talk about memories for the next 3 weeks. Name a year after, oh, say 1968 and I will hit you with something from the Fascinating Life of Sueb0b.
Here's one: 1989 (I think).
My sister Laura and I are sitting in the front yard in downtown San Luis Obispo on a beautiful sunny day.
Two teen boys walk by, deep in conversation.
Boy 1: (fervently) "There was NO flying. There was NO hidden treasure."
Laura and I looked at each other.
And that, my friends, is one of my most cherished memories. To this day, when my sis and I ask each other how an event was, if it was less than fabulous, the other will say, "Well, there was no flying, there was no hidden treasure."
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