11 years ago (and some change), the family was out to dinner for the evening at Dinosaur BBQ in Syracuse, New York. Our dear friend Scott is now living Minneapolis-St. Paul and we miss seeing him. Perhaps circumstance will bring him to the desert soon.
This day off from work doesn’t really make sense to me, this day after Independence Day. It’s a work holiday and I suppose I should be relaxing and enjoying the time off but in actuality I’m just kind of sitting around waiting for the work week to start tomorrow.
Perhaps I need to learn how to relax.
The fireworks were yesterday. The parades were yesterday. The barbecues and the adult beverages and the little worry of getting enough sleep because it’s all holiday: all yesterday.
I’m a little surprised folks didn’t want to have the long weekend Friday to Sunday instead of Saturday to Monday. I mentioned this to my husband; he indicated having Monday off gave us a day to recover in preparation for the work week. I suppose. He doesn’t need to worry about recovering, he’s retired.
I guess it’s nice to have the time off today. Perhaps I should just focus on the here and now and not concern myself with the upcoming work week.
“Mr. Wing, do you know what a homosexual is”?
The 10th grade biology teacher’s voice boomed through the room with this question posed to me; it was his way of gathering control of the class for the next 41 minutes of 6th period and since we were apparently to talk about the importance of the prefix “homo” in the scientific world, the disheveled man apparently thought it humorous to fixate on me and ask this question that carefully treaded a line. The girl to my right, we’ll call her Jeannine, laughed at me. I’m not surprised. She wasn’t known for being an exceptionally nice person. To be fair, it was a nice change of pace to hear her laugh because usually she was crying about something or barking out with a special amount of bitchiness one can find amongst high school sophomores in the 1980s. To my left, my table mate, we’ll call her Lori, whispered “asshole” under her breath, just loud enough for me to hear her word of support. I turned beet red, stammered more than usual trying to formulate something, anything to come out of my mouth, and feverishly wished for the kid at the table in front of me to have a seizure or something. The rest of the class laughed, the word faggot was shared once or twice and I was asked that very same question by various members of that class for the rest of the week. This is the stuff sophomores live for. The teacher had control of the class, I did not, and I was humiliated.
I do not forget these things. It rings as loud in my head in 2021 as it did in late 1983. I imagine most gay men, especially those of us of a certain age, have not forgotten instances like these. This is what we grew up with. Welcome to growing up gay in the Gen X set.
“Well let’s face it, John will have a hard time being gainfully employed”.
Another nugget of wisdom, this time from a fellow classmates in Ethics class, which was in the latter half of my junior year of high school. This time it was 4th period and I really just wanted to go to lunch at 11:04.
“Why not?”, queried the teacher, who, at the beginning of class, had instructed us to arrange our desks in a circle so we could debate things like whether or not a functional homosexual like I apparently was destined to be (calm down Mom, I wasn’t a ‘functional’ homosexual at the time) was a good or bad thing for society. Would our gayness cause the fall of the United States. (Spoiler alert, it did not).
“His mannerisms and way of speaking are going to prevent serious employers from hiring him”, was the response.
I don’t know what happened to that classmate after high school and I don’t really care to Google him to find out. Why waste the bits? Who knows and who cares. In the moment I looked for support from another classmate, we’ll call him Mike, that I really knew “to be on the team” (he is and we actually shared a kiss a couple of years later) but he turned on me with the rest of them, laughed, and made detrimental comments. That was probably the first time in my life that I wondered if I was going to be anything at all and if I wasn’t going to be anything, why continue the charade? Was my life worth anything?
The teacher of that class had to dash off at 11:04 to do some Vice Principal duties, but he checked in with me at the end of class and asked if I was OK. When he saw tears building in my eyes, after the longest 41 minutes I’ve probably endured in my life, he told me I was a good guy and asked another teacher to have a chat with me in his office to get me grounded again. He knew I was mentally not well. I can safely say I probably owe my life to that other teacher. Her name is Karen O’Brien. She taught Special Ed, but through talking with her she helped me find my worth again that day and honestly probably doesn’t even know the depth of the impact she had on me that day. She talked me off a psychological ledge. Years prior to this she had put as her caption under her photo in the yearbook, “People – they fascinate me. I haven’t met one yet that didn’t impress me”. Words to live by. I think of her often. I should probably send her a thank you note someday.
Why do I share this? There’s a number of reasons. First of all, what we say matters. Whether we say it out loud, in print, or anywhere on the Internet, our words are making an impact, whether positive or negative. We might not know it. We don’t know the state of mind of every person that is going to read what we type or listen to what we say. We should never lose sight of this. The two incidents I talk about are from decades ago, yet I remember all of these things as if it took place yesterday. My frame of mind is better about all of this, but I still feel the sting. These things, and countless others during my school years, have made a permanent impact on my life experience. Am I better for it? Over 35 years, I can probably say yes, but it took a lot of soul searching, and that very important talk with teacher Karen O’Brien, to keep me going.
When I hear members of Congress calling one another “Communists” or spouting out provable falsehoods just to rile up a crowd I can’t help but think how much negative impact those words are having on the country. When I see people touting things like “Straight Pride” or all the bad things that will allegedly happen to gay people because of who they are, I worry about those that don’t have a Karen O’Brien talking them off a psychological ledge.
I share these things because the distance of time and the subsequent experience of life has safely moved me beyond these negative events in my life. Weirdly, I’m probably a better and stronger person because of them.
Let’s use the right words. Let’s send positive energy into the world. Let’s not use negativity to command a room. Let’s be one of those people that impress others.
Impress each other in a good way.
Truman has never been one to cuddle. He’ll sleep on the foot of the bed or he’ll situate himself nearby, but unlike other cats I’ve had over the years, he’s not one to get all cuddly with his hooman.
This morning he settled in next to me on the breakfast nook bench as I was eating breakfast. After giving my arm a quick nibble to announce his presence, he cleaned himself up and fell asleep next to me. I was surprised to see him this close.
He likes me to be close by but don’t smother him. If he was a human he probably wouldn’t be much of a hugger.
So we went on a long road trip. When all was said and done we drove about 410 miles. The farthest south was the Mexican border at Douglas, Arizona. The farthest east was Lordsburg, New Mexico, and the farthest north was Safford, Arizona.
We covered a lot of roadway that went through a lot of rural desert. It was a hoot and a half.
We started out by following Historic US Route 80, which is Arizona State Route 80. US 80 was replaced by Interstate 10 west of mid-Texas, but there’s still plenty of ways to drive the old roadway. ADOT is kind enough to post the route with Historic US Route signs.
I’ve started a small collection of service station uniform shirts. I occasionally wear them when we are on road trips.
Our travels brought us to the former mining town of Bisbee. The area has been rejuvenated as an “arts town”. We stopped for lunch and walked around the quaint downtown. It was a very pleasant experience.
The restaurant was part of a collection of shops in a multi-purpose Art Deco style building. There were knick knacks and doodads from the era.
Overall we had a lovely time. We are really enjoying exploring the desert.
I ushered in the weekend with a few rounds of popcorn for the family. My mother would be proud, though I didn’t serve it as a side dish with prime rib or anything.
Popcorn is my favorite food. I try to wrap my head around making healthy choices with an air popper and the like but then I end up melting a stick of butter and dumping that on the dry popcorn, so I just stick with a bit of oil and corn popped in a standard popcorn popper.
I am working on keeping added salt to a minimum. Watching foods that can lead to hypertension is a must at my age. Even with the lower salt content popcorn is still my favorite food.
After “Bewitched” ended its run in 1972, Elizabeth Montgomery made no further appearances as nose-twitching witch Samantha Stephens from the popular series. She was ready to move on and didn’t want to be typecast as the character. Lizzie went on to make numerous TV movies and enjoyed a successful career until her passing in the mid 1990s. Though “Bewitched” has been in constant syndication since it ended its original run, she rarely talked about “Bewitched” until fan interest in the show picked up in the late 1980s and early 90s, and books and the like started to appear around the subject. She was pleased with her performances as Samantha, but she didn’t want to be known as just Samantha. In the early 1990s she did agree to appear in a pilot for a reboot of the series. The new version was to be about a witch that lived in London, but the show never came to fruition.
Even though Lizzie was distancing herself from Samantha, she did appear in a run of Japanese commercials for Lotte Mother Biscuits, twitching her nose and doing Samantha-like magic. I guess she figured these Japanese commercials would never make it to the States. But courtesy of the Internet and Youtube, we can see Elizabeth Montgomery doing Samantha like things in the mid 1980s.
As a lifelong “Bewitched” fan, it’s fun to see Elizabeth doing her Samantha like gestures later in her life.
I’m sitting in the gazebo watching an impressive rainstorm make its way toward us from the Northeast. You can’t see it in the photo above, but off to my right it’s a solid wall of rain. The desert smells amazing right now and it’s good to see some rain move in. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stay here on the gazebo, this wall of rain moving our way looks quite impressive, but I must say, no matter where we live in the country, Mother Nature is quite amazing.
I’m still getting used to the fact that we live relatively close to cities that used to be very far away. The drive from our home to San Diego is reasonable. I see us making that trek, perhaps in the fairly near future.
I know a lot of folks that avoid shopping at Walmart. We’re usually amongst their number. It was easy to avoid Walmart when we lived in Chicago; there’s not that many of the stores on the North Side. We were surrounded by these “Urban Target” stores on street corners, but other than a Walmart Neighborhood Market, it was quite the trek to get to one of the large stores.
Here in Tucson it’s a different story.
With our flat tire adventure on Saturday we found the Walmart in Casa Grande to be of considerable assistance with our tire repair dilemma. They squeezed us in between appointments and while the turnaround time was not quick, it was affordable, efficient, and a very friendly experience.
Technology-wise I’ve always been intrigued by Walmart. They were the first major department store chain to adopt UPC scanning in the 1980s. Before that they had stores hooked up to offices via satellite and employed electronic cash register systems long before the other discount department store chains did so. I know their systems have run on Linux for years (always a bonus, as far as I’m concerned) and after spending three hours in the Casa Grande Walmart yesterday, I appreciate the fact they use their technology equipment for as long as they can. Other stores toss out old systems and put in all new equipment on a too frequent basis; Walmart’s front end registers are a blend of technology from the late 1990s intermingled with pieces of equipment from today. It’s probably done for cost effective purposes, but I appreciate keeping technology out of the landfill as long as possible.
While my husband and I made our way around the very large Walmart, waiting for the tire to be repaired, I couldn’t help but notice how well the store was stocked, how clean the store was (too many stores we’ve been to are a mess), and most importantly, how friendly every team member we worked with or overheard engaging with each other or another customer, seemed to be. There was service with a smile everywhere.
I appreciate anyone that works. In my book there’s no job beneath me. If I were to lose my position as a software engineer and have difficulty finding another, I would not hesitate to fill the void with working the electronics department at Walmart or cleaning hotel rooms for that matter. A strong work ethic, coupled with a friendly demeanor is something to be admired.
And this is what I saw at Walmart yesterday.
Is the chain taking away from Mom and Pop stores in village centers? Probably. Should they pay more? Yes. But the folks I saw at Walmart had a smile on their face and I am appreciative of that fact.
Plus, getting a flat tire fixed for $15 is amazing to me.
Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.
Weird? Eccentric!