March 1, 2010

Sometimes the Internet Just Sucks

I got my first babysitting gig when I was 13. It was for the kids across the street, the oldest of whom was my little sister's age, 9. Michael, Suzanne and Alison.

That first gig went beautifully until I was putting them to bed and then it turned into an unmitigated disaster.

You see, while we had a dog when I was growing up, she was banished to the backyard. If I played tug with her or ran around with her too much, Mom would insist that I was "going to make her mean." So I didn't have a whole lot of experience with dogs.

The last thing the parents said before they left was to be careful around Honey-Dog the dachshund. The big, fat, cranky dachshund.

To my overprotective and inexperienced mind, this meant I had to protect the children FROM Honey-Dog, not that Honey-Dog would be attempting to protect the children from me. So, we'd all gotten along swimmingly that evening and I went to put the kids to bed. Michael wanted Honey-Dog to come to bed with him and I thought if anyone should pick up the dog, it should be me.

Inexperienced.

With no warning (even in retrospect, there was no clear warning), she leapt at my face and bonked my nose, making it bleed. I shoved an ever-present Kleenex at my face, finished putting the kids to bed and went into the bathroom to figure out why the heck this bloody nose wasn't really slowing down.

Yeah. Umm.

There were a couple of claw marks or possibly very slight punctures on my nose, but Honey-Dog had actually managed to open my upper lip, nearly all the way through. Well crap.

All I could think was that I'd failed. I'd messed up. I'd done it wrong. My first babysitting gig and I royally screwed up.

I called home and told Mom, "I think Honey-Dog got me."

She came over with a band-aid and some Neosporin ... since I was not particularly specific. When she saw my face, she did a good job of not totally flipping out, but she was obviously taken by surprise. She called Dad, made him come over with my little sister to watch the kids and then she took me to the E.R. - my only E.R. experience of childhood. I got one stitch and the doctor was ridiculously nervous about getting it just right since it was on my face. I was not all that concerned. I mean, I didn't want a huge white scar, but whatever.

We got back to the house, I made Mom and Dad go home and I waited for the Wortmans to return. I 'fessed up that the dog had bit me, got my whopping $6 and walked across the street, expecting never to be asked back.

As it turns out, I babysat for them a lot over the years. Michael, in a lot of ways, became like a little brother to me. So much so, that I often felt guilty for the fact that I wasn't as close to the girls. I would try hard to make an effort to do what they wanted some days and I was pretty sure they appreciated that, but it was obvious that Michael and I simply clicked. We had a lot of the same interests, whereas the girls and I didn't have quite as much in common.

It got to the point where Michael begged and begged and begged me to come over and run a Dungeons & Dragons campaign for him and a couple of his buddies. And he was crushed when one of the boys (I think they were about 13 by then) thought he'd "game" the girl. Michael pleaded with the boy to "behave."

You can't "game" a DungeonMaster. I mean, come on. After letting him get away with a little bit of bullshit, I confirmed that he moved through a doorway before the rest of the group. Of course, he was mr. leader-boy.

I rolled a die. Came up the way I'd hoped. "Before the others can go through, you are whisked away into a jungle. The doorway through which you came is nowhere to be seen. And men dressed in green, carrying strange metallic sticks are approaching you."

Yeah. I threw him in the middle of the Viet Nam war. (What? Every doorway in that campaign was a portal to somewhere else rather than a regular doorway. I just tweaked the campaign a little ....)

Then there was the day Michael wanted to race me on my bike. He'd gotten a 10 speed from somewhere and it was far too big for him, but he insisted he could beat me to the end of the block.

I turned around in time to see him go skidding down the street on his chin. I felt horrible. I tried to warn him that the bike was too big for him, that he was going to fall ... but geez. He was trying so hard at first not to cry, but it was a hell of a fall and a lot of road rash. But I think the real pain was he was crushed to have done that in front of me. And in front of his dad. He always tried to be such the macho man for his dad. And don't get me wrong, he was a tough kid ... but he was also sensitive, kind, caring. He wanted to please everybody.

When I moved out of the house, I didn't really go back to that house again. There was so much going on in my life at that time, I just wasn't thinking. And, to be honest, Michael was starting high school ... he was hanging out with his friends more and more, as it should be.

I was in my first "real" relationship (whatever that means - in my case it meant 10 years together). I was in my second year of college and had started working full time. I barely had time to breathe, much less check up on the boy across the street.

It was my loss.

I was running a web search for a family member only to discover an article about Michael. Well, not exactly an article. More accurately, his obituary. He was just 37 years old. The obituary says nothing about what happened. I know nothing about his life after I moved.

It's my loss.

Sometimes the amount of information available on the internet just sucks.

Posted by Red Monkey at 1:04 PM | Comments (2) | Struggles | Stumble

February 27, 2010

The Narcissist

There once was a girl with a curl in the middle of her fore'ead.
And when she was good, she was very, very good.
But when she was bad, she was horrid.

Her backyard was a thing of wonderment. The patio was covered by a metal roof bent to and fro like a piece of corrugated cardboard. The far ends of the roof were supported by pieces of what looked to me like wrought iron metal. Standing underneath it during a storm, I would completely lose myself in the sounds the rain made on that patio roof.

Staring out at the yard from the patio and the right side of the yard was bounded by a typical chain link fence. The left was a tall, tall privacy fence with slender boards with practically sharp points - it reminded me of an old west fort. The back fence was the same as the left, but only as tall as the chain link fence. I'd never seen a wooden fence so short before.

But the best part was the old willow trees. The one practically in front of the patio was okay, but a bit sparse. The one off to the left, though ... I played jungle in the branches hanging down every time I went out back. It was interesting how the yard was exotic and somewhat forbidding on the far side - by the tall privacy fence, but open and clear near the chain link side.

The interior of the house excited my imagination just as much - the floor in the den was a wood parquet that I was always dying to take apart. After all, it looked like a floor made out of thin wooden blocks. I always wondered what other designs I could make with the floor if I could just be left alone for a few hours ....

The hallway back to the bedrooms was always dark. The carpet was old and red and had a path worn down the center. I was fascinated by this and would try to walk against the wall, where there was still loads of cushy padding, just to be different. Even the walls were odd. A bit of molding created a frame every so often on the wall. And inside that was some red wallpaper. Maybe some day I'll find a picture of that or try to draw it from memory ... but the pattern of the wallpaper was raised and flocked ... and apparently I was not supposed to pet it.

The front room of the house was a combination living room/sitting room and dining room. The carpet was white. There was a HUGE blue velvet couch underneath a large painting of little boats on a European beachfront. The end tables and coffee tables had magazines carefully arranged, a few tasteful knicknacks and a couple of candy dishes with lids. My first foray into learning to be quiet was trying to remove the glass lid from the blue candy dish to have one piece of hard candy. It was a game I played with myself even when I had asked and been given permission to have a piece of candy.

It really wasn't about the candy ... it was about the challenge.

Everything in that house was a challenge to me of some sort. An exploration of new things. I would crawl underneath the dining room table - a gorgeous Heywood-Wakefield piece with legs curved like the rib bones of a dinosaur - and be lost in my own adventures for hours. Sometimes I was in a submarine, a rocketship or a dinosaur's belly. Sometimes it was a cave.

In retrospect, I was often so overwhelmed by the experience of my grandparents' house in Oklahoma, that I was rather lost in my own little world when there.

This mostly kept me out of trouble.

And like most little kids, I thought Grandma was perfect.

In retrospect that was a combination of a couple of factors. As a child, I largely wanted to be left alone to my own devices. That's not to say that I didn't fall into the tedious "I'm bored" trap, because I did. I did want some attention from adults. But for the most part, if you gave me a project I was interested in, I was pretty self-sufficient and content to be left alone for hours.

Grandma was good at that. We'd go shopping for a few toys or books and then she'd expect me to entertain myself thereafter. She'd give me toys that she felt my aunt didn't want any more (while most of the time she was correct about that ... she also screwed up rather royally more often than I'd like to admit). She gave me my aunt's Mego Batman and Robin and then took me to the store to get some vehicles (and maybe a bad guy - I'm a little fuzzy on that now). These were things my mom considered "boy toys" and Mom would never let me have them. Frankly, I wasn't sure how they were truly different from the Barbie dolls she handed down to me from her childhood, but there it was.

Of course, the stereotype of the grandma in the U.S. is that grandmas spoil grandkids. So naturally she got me special things.

Looking back with adult eyes, though, it was more than that. She would purposely buy the things that Mom most wanted me to not have. A six-shooter. A drum (she'd been very specifically told NO DRUMS on multiple occasions). Various "boy toys" by Mom's definition. All things that made Grandma look good ... and Mom look like an ogre. And it wasn't so much about making me happy ... although she did enjoy making me happy ... but it was often about the adulation and attention she got by gifting me with these things. As well as the opportunity to make Mom feel bad - or make me feel like Mom was in the wrong.

For years, I saw her as my protector. Where Mom seemed arbitrary and overly controlling, Grandma was sure to let me march to the beat of my own drum (that she gave me, of course). Where Mom always seemed to interrupt my playtime (or project time) with an arbitrary chore that for some reason had to be done RIGHT NOW OR THE UNIVERSE WILL IMPLODE, Grandma had no chore agenda for me.

And as her grandchild, that was exactly what I needed.

Posted by Red Monkey at 4:24 AM | Comments (2) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Struggles | Stumble

January 9, 2010

Apparatus

If you ever get bleach in your eye, rinse it out with room temperature water for 5-10 minutes. Then, go to the doctor or urgent care or ER, where they will evaluate your eye and continue the irrigation with a bag of saline. They give you some antibiotic drops and possibly a tetanus shot and send you home.

How do they irrigate your eye? I'm glad you asked. One end of a tube is attached to the IV saline. Then they slip this "contact" lens onto the eyeball:

It was an exciting Saturday.

Particularly after we finally got home and then had to dig and then push the truck out of a snowbank because someone wasn't paying attention to that either.

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:04 PM | Comments (5) | Blog | Struggles | Stumble

December 19, 2009

Life happens when you least expect it

When I was four, I regularly woke up before my mom. Most of the time, I watched Scooby Doo on the black and white tv. A few times I came across an really interesting show. It was kind of like church, but the man in charge spoke very differently than any priest I'd ever heard before. I knew that Mommy was concerned about my asthma and allergies, so when the man said he could cure anything, I put my head up against the screen like he said ... but nothing changed.

And one morning, I got it into my head that all little kids run away from home and I had not yet done this. I couldn't have been more than five at the time, but I already felt like I was behind the curve.

But where do you go when you run away? I mean there's all these pesky details about it. You need to have somewhere to sleep, you have to find food ... and how is a little kid supposed to do these things alone, for Pete's sake?

So, I decided to go next door. To Megan's house.

I walked out into the winter morning ... and left the sidewalk! Oh the blasphemy of it all.

I knocked on Megan's door. Her mom answered ... pointed out that Megan was still sleeping and that perhaps, just perhaps, I should go back home. Not having any clue where else I could safely go, I returned home. On my way back in the house, I snagged the morning paper and put it on the kitchen table for Mommy.

She never knew I'd been out of the house.

Know this - my mother was ANAL about keeping track of me and my little sister. Most of the time, our every second was accounted for. This was long before the internet. My mother was not so involved in tv as most stay-at-home moms. Her job, as far as she was concerned, was watching our every move.

But a mother has to sleep. In fact, if we're really honest about it, there are many things that we adults must do every day that take our attention away from the things ... or people ... that are most important to us. Ultimately, it's just impossible to watch anything, even our children, for every second of every day. We blink. We sleep. We answer the phone while they wander off into the other room.

No matter how diligent you are.

Life happens when you least expect it.

My sister and I were adept at getting up in the middle of the night. My sister went for the cheese - I went for Mom's Dr. Pepper. We were all lucky. Neither of us was determined to leave the house and wreak havoc. The toddler across the street, on the other hand, was notorious for escaping her stay-at-home Mom, big sister and big brother, running out into the front yard and throwing off all her clothes.

Now, most toddlers go through a "nakkies" phase when they just don't see the point of clothing ... or diapers. Still, it's startling to see a naked toddler in the front yard, running around like a mad thing, enjoying her freedom. Depending on time, we'd either step back in the house and call over to the Koskas' and let them know she'd escaped again or head over and try to corral the errant toddler and walk her back in the house. It's not that the Koskas' were negligent, but there's laundry to do, dinner to make, life to live. And it's simply physically and emotionally impossible to eyeball a child every second of the day.

So a mom and two of her boys were out back the other day. Mom was working with the animals and the older boy was helping. She tweeted from a mobile device a couple of times about her animals and the chores. The toddler was "helping" her and his brother as toddlers are wont to do. Mom sent the older boy to do one last thing and head in while she finished up something else. The toddler had been shadowing big brother. Mom figured both boys were in the house as she headed in.

The youngest wasn't. She ran back outside. The older boy suddenly dove into the pool.

The toddler had fallen in.

Paramedics were called. Arrived. Took the baby to the hospital.

From the chapel where she was panicked and grief-stricken, she posted to Twitter again, the equivalent of "please pray, my baby fell in the pool."

An outpouring of sympathy began. People do tend to be good and sympathetic.

But almost as quickly, came some people recommending caution. After all, how do we know this person is telling the truth? Maybe it's a scam for attention. Maybe it's a scam for donation money. You never know. It's happened before.

Caution where your money is concerned, I understand. But why be so cautious with a word of sympathy?

Unfortunately it only grew worse from there. Someone, probably several someones, took it upon themselves to use this as an opportunity to bitch about how other people parent. All of these mommy-bloggers spend too much time online. They spend too much time not practicing the CONSTANT VIGILANCE that Mad-Eye Moody recommends in his parenting tome, Parenting Without A Magical Eye. Nothing would ever happen to wee little baby children if these mommy-bloggers and tweet-addicted women would just get off-line and pay attention.

And of course, the so-called "mommy-bloggers" grouped together and defended a woman who had only tweeted for prayers. For support. She reached out through Twitter much like a mom in the 50's might have reached out to the church prayer circle. She thought she was reaching out to friends.

The arguments I've heard now are both that she was trivializing her child's death (not long after posting that tweet, she was told he had not made it - so she thought he was still alive when she tweeted) ... and that she was wasting time on the internet when she should have been watching the baby. And, of course, the inevitable tirades about pool safety.

It seems that there are far too many people who would prefer to believe that we are 100% capable of guaranteeing someone's safety.

We live our lives with a thin veneer of fantasy. That we won't be the one to go through a green light and be t-boned by someone running a red light. That we won't be present when our bank is robbed at gunpoint. That we won't be on a bridge when the structure fails and collapses. That our airplane won't fall from the sky. That our building won't collapse and fall.

These things happen to OTHER PEOPLE. Not us.

And it's a necessary fantasy because you cannot live a life ruled so completely by fear of everything that could go wrong. At some point, you have to trust. You have to believe. You have to make a decision and move.

Yes, there are certain measures you can take to be more safe. Yes, you can be aware of your environment and watch for signs that something is off.

But we're human. We are going to get tired, get busy, get caught up in a moment and miss something. If we lead lucky lives, no one gets hurt or at least hurt too badly.

We're discovering more and more that some of the decisions we've made to protect our children are actually harming them. If, for example, they come from lives so clean they're practically sterile, the child is less likely to develop basic immunities. It impairs their immune system and makes them more sickly adults. Of course, a filthy living environment doesn't make them stronger, necessarily.

It's all about a delicate balance. And until something tragic happens, no one really knows where that tipping point of too much/not enough actually is.

Have you seen the movie, Dead Poets Society? The dad in that flick thinks he's building the perfect life for his son. He's going to force him to be a doctor come hell or high water. (Spoiler from hell if you've not seen the flick .....)

The boy tries to lead his own life for a bit, and seeing no way out of the stifling protection his father has created, he kills himself.

(Oddly enough, that actor has grown up to play the doctor Wilson on House, which I find hysterical.)

Our lives are about balance. About doing our best to maintain the balancing act of a thousand different pieces - pieces of history and circumstance that no one else knows anything about. Hell, sometimes we don't even really know what all the pieces are, just that we have to keep them in check, balanced, in order to keep moving forward.

For someone else to judge a mom based on the tiny slice of pieces that her Twitter stream revealed is a ridiculous conceit made by, in my opinion, a narcissistic personality who is sure they know the answers to everyone else's life-puzzle.

And how far this particular story went? Wow. I wish I had the leisure time and then disposable cash to go calling around the country to verify stories I hear on Twitter and Facebook and even on other people's blogs.

There was another, similar scenario this past week.

The headline battered about news services and Twitter was something to the effect of Drunk Four Year Old Steals Christmas Presents.

And of course, everyone starts judging the mother and the father. Without even knowing anything beyond the headline.

The story is heartbreaking, to be sure. But not quite the story you might think from the headline.

The story is generally presented sensationally - drunk four year old breaks into neighbor's home, steals Christmas presents and is found wearing a brown dress, beer in hand.

But a story containing more of the pieces is more sad. Turns out Mommy and Daddy are getting a divorce. Daddy is in jail.

And the four year old wants to be with Daddy.

His four year old's solution was to break the child safety device off a door in his house, escape, snag one of Granddad's beers from a cooler outside and walk in through an unlocked door of a neighbor. There he stole presents, one of which was a brown dress, which he put on, and then wander back out into the night, waiting to get caught and go to jail with Daddy.

Mommy woke up at 1:45 a.m., in a panic, trying to find her little escape artist.

And the comments I've seen people make about this story? Utter bile blaming the mother for not watching him.

I'm sorry, folks, but you have to sleep sometime.

Why do we feel such an intense need to judge others' lives?

There, but for grace, go I. There but for grace, go you and I.

What really kills me ... is the people vomiting forth the most bile, judging the most, vocally lambasting anyone who disagrees with what they've decided are all the pieces and the solution ...

... are the ones most likely to claim that they are fervent Christians.

And as they prepare to celebrate the birth of the Christian messiah who preached love, understanding and cautioned against judging others ... who repeatedly preached on fixing yourself before "fixing" others ... they are spewing some of the most horrific bile.

Honestly, I just don't get it. Rather, I don't think that they get it.

Life happens when we least expect it. Due diligence, preparation, even CONSTANT VIGILANCE ... none of these render anyone safe from harm. Perhaps safer ... but life is as much about luck in circumstance as it is your skill in living it "perfectly."

News Articles:
An article from Florida Today about the toddler who drowned
An article about the four year old who wanted to join Daddy in jail

Remember, if you want to leave a comment here, to enter only the first LETTER of the Turing-Test word. Not the whole word. Just the first letter. :)

Posted by Red Monkey at 7:07 AM | Comments (3) | Struggles | Stumble

November 20, 2009

No Comparisons

Pain.

We all have it at some time or another. But the funny thing about pain, whether it's mental, emotional, physical ... whatever ... it's not something you can compare.

I see people all the time saying things like how much something they're going through hurts and then they stop and say, "Oh but so-and-so has it worse." As if their pain is not as bad or important.

And the problem with this is there is no way to compare pain. You are feeling what you are feeling and it hurts. You are not feeling whatever the other person is feeling. You can be empathetic and imagine what it might be like, but you're not feeling the same thing.

We feel what we feel.

Don't compare your pain to someone else's and minimize your pain. If comparing gives you a new perspective, that's one thing. But don't negate what you're feeling just because you think someone else has it worse. You feel things differently due to the way you are built - genetics and environment. You might be sensitive to papercuts, but not realize you broke a toe for a couple of days.

The same with emotional pain - it's just not something you can compare.

Don't sell your pain short. You don't have to wallow in it, either, but don't minimize it. Learn from it instead.

Posted by Red Monkey at 6:48 PM | Comments (1) | Struggles | Stumble

November 18, 2009

Contemplations

It's been an odd 24 hours. It started when I was going through my iCalendar. Turns out that Monday, November 22, 1999, I was sick and tired of being tired and sick all the time. The doctor I'd been seeing for two years was obviously ineffective and I was beginning to fear that something was really wrong, systemically wrong. The kind of wrong I really didn't much want to think about considering the fact that I had just finished grad school, was working in my field full-time (even though it wasn't officially full-time enough to qualify for little things like health insurance), wasn't quite breaking $20,000 a year.

I went to a local MedPoint, a place that many here in the area call Doc-in-the-Box and give no respect at all. I went that Monday, after I had finished teaching for the day. I could barely stay awake, but drove across town and walked in around four o'clock. The doctor was an older guy, very together, very personable. Pretty obvious this was his semi-retirement because he really enjoyed being a doctor and connecting with people. We talked, I told him what all was going on and he suggested we run a blood test. I said that was fine - I was curious as to how much that might be but also told him that we needed to do it, regardless. I also pointed out that my idiot "regular" doctor had neglected to run one even though I suggested it. Instead, idiot doctor wanted to run an AIDS test. Because, you know, them queers all have AIDS if they're not feeling well. Never mind that I am in the lowest risk group (both then and now) for someone who is not completely abstaining. This MedPoint doc was rather grumpy when I told him that. He pulled a vial or two of blood and left to run the test himself.

Next thing I know, I hear him on the phone with my doctor. I tried to listen at the door but all I could tell was that he was chewing idiot doctor out. This didn't really bode well for me.

When he came back in, he told me I was very anemic and that I needed to make an appointment to see idiot doctor. If I remember correctly, he made me call before I could leave. Again, this did not bode well for me. I called, but he couldn't get me in until the next morning - it was after 4, after all. This doctor was not happy that I'd drive myself in and wasn't happy that I was driving myself home ... but wouldn't really say why. His telling me that my hemoglobin was a 5.8 meant nothing to me.

So I went the next day to idiot doctor who asked me about symptoms, obviously reading from a list. The answer to all of them was yes and, in fact, DUH, I ALREADY TOLD YOU THIS FOR MONTHS AND MONTHS. With each new "yes," the doctor seemed to sweat a little more and grew noticeably more distressed.

He left, made a phone call and came back still distressed. I had an appointment the next day, Wednesday, November 24, 1999, with a specialist. A hematologist. And idiot doctor said two more things that chilled me. 1) He would treat me for free for anything the other doctor wasn't covering and 2) if the specialist said I needed to go to the hospital, I needed to go.

Shitfuckdamn.

I was supposed to teach Wednesday. I don't remember now if I did go to class or not. It was the day before Thanksgiving, so I probably emailed my students and told them to go on home for Thanksgiving.

The specialist looked at the numbers from the bloodwork, ran more bloodwork and then took a bone marrow sample. This was not particularly pleasant, but not the horror story you often hear.

"Which hospital do you want to go to, St. Joe or Memorial?"

What.The.Fuck.

Under $20,000 a year. No health insurance. Debt coming out my ass from putting myself through college and graduate school.

Hospital was the scariest word I could think of at the time.

And yet, supposedly we don't need any kind of national health care system here in the U.S. Because what we have now is NOT a system of health care. It's a series of businesses out to make money, not to make the nation healthier and stronger. (Best post I've ever read on this is here.)

As it turned out, I was in the hospital over Thanksgiving and finally let out Monday afternoon -- too late to actually teach class dammit. I'd been given five units of blood - turns out a hemoglobin of a 5.8 is really bad. Like you can die in the 4 or 5 range, bad. Also had my first chemo treatment, cuz yeah, it was bad. I had cancer, Hodgkin's Disease.

So I've been sitting here thinking how it's been ten years since I first found out. It's been eight years since I had a bone marrow transplant.

And yesterday, as I was debating finally following someone on Twitter whose name I saw come from nearly everyone's Twitter stream, there was a sudden flurry of her name. @AnissaMayhew

All last night and all day today I have found myself caught up in the ... drama seems like the wrong word, even though I mean it in the traditional sense. But this is no internet drama with trolls and the righteously over-indignant wounded party.

No, I witnessed an outpouring of shock, concern, fear and an immense amount of honest-to-goodness love. It turns out that Anissa had a massive stroke yesterday and is working hard on fighting to recover now.

She and her husband have family coming in from out of town, there are the kids to consider. And no matter what her income and insurance situation is - it won't cover all of it. It never does. If you'd like to donate a buck or two to help the family - even just to entertain the kids with a Blockbusters game or something, please consider donating here.

For more information (and so you can see I'm not making this up), you can read her Caring Bridge page. Or, do a Twitter search for #prayersforanissa ... if it wasn't such a sad situation it would be heart-warming to see all of the love and support going out to her.

One more thing, since I gather this is a favourite word of Anissa's and particularly appropriate for me as well:
Monkeyfighter

As a fellow monkeyfighter, I know Anissa will look back in 2019 and think much what I'm thinking now.

Monkeyfighter.

Posted by Red Monkey at 4:51 PM | Comments (2) | Struggles | Stumble