And a Day Later, It's November!

Halloween. Last year I had thought I bought enough candy for the kids but as usual, I ate it. Then I went out again to buy some more swearing to All that was Holy that I wouldn't. I succeeded but I hadn't bought enough. It's tricky in this neighborhood as you can never tell how many kids might stop by. There have been ones where I may have had ten kids, others forty. All you can do is hope to shut the light off before the next batch arrives, lest you let them down.

Last year, I sat on the front steps dolling out the goods. I ran out and saw a gaggle of kids coming down the sidewalk. Damn, my light is still on and they can see me sitting there, what do I give them? I ran inside to get this bowl I throw my keys in, my spare change and pocket lint.

I come back out and start dumping coins into the kid's bags. One of them, a seven year oldish boy then yells down the street, “Hey! This guy's giving out MONEY!” That was like ringing the dinner bell. They all came, the ones who heard at least.

Of course, the fourteen year olds show up looking for goodies. I'll give it but I also have this smirk on my face as I do. I can't really blame them as I did the exact same thing when I was their age. But Halloween is for the little ones and it's them I reserve the Snickers for. The teens get those “A Buck a Bag o' Lollipops.” from Job Lot.

My memories from then are good and bad. Bad in that we met certain neighbors who were just jerks, but it wasn't really surprising. We would go to their house, ring the bell in hopes the holiday might have softened them up. Not with Mr Gross (his real name). Mr Gross lived on Hamlet in a small ranch and was a grizzled ex-cop. This guy had a permanent sneer on his face and Halloween didn't change that. We went there, rang his bell and could see him sitting on his couch watching TV. He growls, “Go Away! I don't have any candy!!!” My Mom rolls her eyes and led us kids away.

Then there were the O'Keefes. They had a gaggle of kids and the Dad would decorate the house, living room in ghoulish curtains and play that Horror Film music on his stereo. We approached the house one Halloween to see the Spectre of Death standing on the porch. It wasn't moving at all, just a tall black shrouded thingy holding a scythe. We walked right by it to ring the door bell as it was just a mannequin dressed up, in our opinion.

Helen, the youngest of us, dressed as a fairy, felt the scythe come around her neck and we all turned when she let out this plate glass breaking shriek only little girls can give. The rest of us didn't really turn to far to see what was going on as our little Helen's warning system was enough to make us all run.

Poor Mr O'Keefe can running down the street at us, apparently trying to get us to come back. It wasn't till he pulled back the hood did we notice it wasn't some freak trying to kill us. We had been warned about razors in apples, poisoned candy and the like so our radar was up a bit too. Helen was the last to climb that porch, even with her Mom's assurances that it was THE Mr O'Keefe.

Remember when you would dump the loot on you living room floor and then Mom or Dad would act like Homeland Security to analyze what you had been given? I do. After that, I'd portion all the candy into best to least liked. I'd always pawn off the Necco Wafers on my Dad as I hated licorice and he didn't.

Then there was the defense of my little treasure against the Big Brother Ken, who would try to snatch Reese's away from it. Defend at all costs rang out in my head and we fought some, though he was just doing because he knew I'd react to any attempted theft.

Now, all grown up, that holiday just zips by. As a kid, you'd count down the days to something like that. I wish I could still be that enthusiastic about something like that again.

From Twisted Sister to Mozart

The only real classical music I know of is the stuff I learned from watching Bugs Bunny and Merry Melody cartoons, like the rest of my generation did. Of course, those works of art were bastardized in order to fit with Bug's smashing Elmer Fudd in the face with a brick, usually that's accompanied by a cymbal crash. As I became the owner of a radio and stepped up to even more complex electronics, I'd fly right past those NPR stations that played Classical to 94 HJY to hear van Halen banging on his guitar.

Occasionally I'd stop on a classical station but there's no real rhythm nor easy do-wop, do-wop to get ahold of. It jumps around some predictable moments but they soon disappear. There's no 4/4 in Classical like there is in rock, or perhaps there is and I'm too uncouth, too ignorant, too 'tupid to know it. Weird time signatures I like in rock music but for some reason I don't quite “get it” in Classical.

Since I've rebuilt that antenna on the roof and am pulling in stations on the New Hampshire border well enough, I came across 99.5 WCRB which is nothing but Classical 24/7. 99% of the music they play I do not know at all. I do remember anything that may have been included in with Porky Pig dancing with Petunia pig though. That I can recognize.

I have been leaving that station on as background music and found out when it's the best played, at night time. You want to calm down? Want to decompress? Then leave it on at quiet level and don't try to listen to it too closely. I find that it also helps to knock me out when I get into bed. It's not creating boredom but something else is going on. Natural L-tryptophan I'd guess.

It's also nice to have that playing low at 3 AM when I limp to the bathroom to take a pee and while I look out of the window into the weird light the moon sprays the backyard with. In some ways, the music acts like an acoustical night light to me.

I'm an Internet junkie. I read everything that catches my eye. I used to one of those kids who could leaf through an encyclopedia as entertainment, looking at ghastly woodcuts from the 1500's depicting the slaughter of thousands of French Protestants. When you're eight and you see a grainy picture of this, you tend to stop and read the story behind it. Weirdly enough, the stuff finds it's way into my brain and some of it stuck. Other things would pop onto my eye and I read about that too. The things that actually did happen in history are far more bizarre than most of today's entertainment.

I finally Googled classical music and my God, you need to set aside a few hours to read up on it. It's that vast. Baroque? I thought that was a painting/architectural style. I found out it was the precursor to the stuff we think is classical music today. Bassoons (what a great name for an instrument, only superseded by the Didgeridoo), violas, violins (male and female!) and “woodwinds” are all there to hear. I suppose if I really wanted to learn it, I'd read it all, but even I have a “My God is this getting dull” threshold. It's enough just to scan it.

The only time I've attended a symphony was when I was in third grade. I guess the Pawtucket School system thought nice if we were exposed to High Brow art. I sat there, in the auditorium, with about 1,000 other kids from other schools, watching from the nose bleed seats while the RI Philharmonic played. Since there really was no movement on the stage, the lighting subdued...there wasn't much to grab my eight year old mind with. I did watch as Mrs Keough threaten to smack Billy N. upside the head for not shutting up and staying in his seat. That movement caught my attention more so than the orchestra that was 300 feet away.

After that we all piled onto the bus, being thusly inoculated with the Musical Arts. I felt no change in me whatsoever. I suppose that day, when I did flick on my radio, I hopped around trying to catch the latest Three Dog Night songs instead of stopping by one of the NPR stations.

I still love deep, bassy, hard, raw-amperage guitar. I like the trippy sounds and songs of Pink Floyd. I even like some country, but there's not much room for Classical in my head. Perhaps that'll change.

Don't get me started on Jazz music, that's more incomprehensible than Classical. I'll devote a few pages on that mysterious stuff later, if I feel that much confused by it to tell you all. I'm not talking about that chippy, California Lite-Jazz that came out during the 70's either. I'm talking about that stuff that makes NO sense but to only another jazz musician. Or, perhaps I'm that dense...and jazz has a real hard time finding it's way into my brain. It's probably a bit of both.

Now, for your entertainment, I expose you to some High Brow art of a period of history that did happen. Rome and the shit they pulled. Here Emperor Augustus finds out his daughter Julia is a total slut. He did really banish her for her being such a pig. This clip gets rough to watch.

 

 

 

 

Pardon Me While I Look Down Upon You.

I was raised accustomed middle class and still am. I have the faith the middle class has in prudence, long term goals and self-restraint. I also can share in the middle america's utter disgust with white trash.

Quiet revulsion. It's something you really cannot hide even when you try. The target of your loathing can't help but notice it.

Q: “You think you're better than me!”

A: “You can read minds? I'll tell you what I'm thinking, it's not that I feel so much above you, it's just that you're revolting.”

They'll also know you're not “one of them” by the fact you can handle the native English language well. Irony, metaphor, allusion, all these nifty tricks unmask you as hoity-toity.

An aside.

I watched the Phil Donahue program a zillion years ago as he interviewed William F Buckley, a highly educated conservative author and editor of the National Review magazine. He was known to drop “big words” and speak in a snotty Hampton, Long Island accent, just to make sure you knew your place, which was way below his.

A black woman in the audience had gotten up to say this to Buckley and I'm paraphrasing.

“You think your so high and mighty with them long sentences and words you use. Why don't you speak English so the rest of us can understand it?”

He replies.

“Madame, I am using English and I find no fault in using it correctly. I wouldn't be proud of myself at all being able to use just 10% of the one million known words in the English language.”

Anyway, back to the story....

Growing up in my neck of the woods, the easiest factor in labeling some family as white trash, to us anyway, was that if you boldly aired your family arguments for all the neighborhood to hear. It didn't matter what the content was, just that you SHOUTED it. A Dad screaming over a burnt roast is not really disturbing at all, like secreted alcoholism could be, but shouting makes sure it lets the whole neighborhood knows. Add to that a clutch of kids where all the boys seem like proto-criminals and none of your daughters knows how to act like a girl. If the kids barely managed a C- in school overall, that helps too. A grossly overweight or an anorexic, harsh looking, pinched faced bitch of a Mom is needed as well. Preferably she'll be wearing a housecoat with a constant cigarette dangling on her lips.

It really is fascinating how we harshly judge those who acted and lived like gypsies around here back then. Our parents warned us of a life of misery if we adopted the lifestyle and manners of “them.” Do those things and you won't have a pot to piss in when you grow up. The fear of the middle class is to end up on that “street.” Once there, you'll have to adopt the tactics of those people. Everything is short term because there isn't enough money to think longer. You have to grab it now, pay the rent for this month and worrying about the next is waayyy too far off to contemplate. You slyly eye your friends on how you can profit off of them and occasionally sink a knife into their backs. That's the Law of the Street. Middle class life is like living at the Astoria Hotel in comparison. Calmer middle class life can afford luxuries like etiquette. When faced with daily pressures that threaten your next meal or the roof over your head, etiquette is a waste of time and it gets you nothing anyway as none of your peers respond to it. In that world, etiquette is a sign of weakness. So family scream-a-thons where the neighbors can hear is no problem and the occasional screwing over of your own friends is OK too.

Today I saw an old clip of Robert Mitchum in “The Friends of Eddie Coyle” and I felt that revulsion creep up in me. In no way did I want to associate with these people for more then five minutes. Cree-py. I like how movies, the arts can evoke those emotions, even if they're ugly ones.

In Pawtucket, there's a place called John St that's off of Broadway. John St at the time was that Last Chance Before Skid Row. It was populated with three decker apartements, older model cars with some rust and parents who worked unskilled jobs at factories. The kids there were mostly underachievers whose best prospects were working at one of the then many mills, renting a three decker apartment and having too many kids themselves one day.

I wanted fireworks when I was 12 and had found a contact by the name of Jack, a kid younger than me who lived on...ugh...John St. The ugliness of having to venture there was alleviated by my greed for salutes, M80s and Roman Candles. So Jim and I rode our bikes there with our pockets stuffed with what we thought was a fortune then, $30. We discussed how we should just buy the stuff and get the hell out of there or what we should do if we were ripped off on the spot.

I met Jack, on a dirt patch in front of a house whose siding was roofing shingles. The builders were too cheap to put wooden clapboards on the house so the sheathed the entire thing in tar shingles. The hot sun that day made those shingles give off an evil tar smell, adding to my derisive judgement. The yard was a dump with broken bicycles, busted toys and a shed was full of beer bottle empties and moldy clothing. I had known not to puke on sight when I looked at it all, lest I give myself away.

I looked at Jack and figured him out fairly quickly. The best way to make an enemy a friend is to make him your friend and that's where flattery comes in. Look, I'm not a better person at all, I use manipulation on people as well to get what I want. If your target is unaware of what you're doing, all the better.

I had told Jack he was a guy “to be trusted” (which,in fact, he wasn't) and his eye lit up, his self esteem rose and he happily invited Jim and I into his bedroom. On his bed, floor and tables were piles and piles of fireworks. We picked out what we want as he tallied the price on a brown paper bag. We paid him and I told him, as a ruse, I may want to come back and buy $20 more. This got his greed showing.

As we left the house, which I found surprisingly neat and clean on the inside, we walked into a throng of local punks. They surrounded us and a few of them started to descend on our bags full of goodies. Shit! We're being robbed I thought. That's when Jack, with his criminal heart softened with flattery by me, stepped up and threatened to bash the face of any who molested us. Repeat business is good and having your customers mugged outside your store ain't good for business.

Jim and I hopped on our bikes and sped away with our fireworks when I mentioned to him that I was “never going back.”

Had I grown up on John St, it would all be normal as the sun, but I hadn't.

By the way, the wealthy of Barrington would look down upon me as scum. I would evoke that very same feeling I had about John St.

“What? ”You're from Pawtucket?” I can hear the Barrignton-nite say, as they puke a little in their mouths.

Here's a little synopsis of the Eddie Coyle movie.

I Don't Want You So Bad

In the news yesterday:

AP: For the first time, more than half of Americans think that marijuana usage should be made legal, according to a Gallup poll released Tuesday.

Fifty-eight percent of Americans now back legalizing marijuana. That represents an 8-point increase from the previous record of 50 percent in 2011, and a 10-point increase from November 2012, just after Colorado and Washington voted for legalization.

*****

It's about time. Once you near 60% in polls, it's pretty much a done deal. They should also lift all the restrictions on Cuba as well. Those old Cold War attitudes no longer have a use in 2013, regarding pot or that island nation. Hell, Cuba can grow pot, sugar and plant thousands of casinos there like they had in 1959. It'll be a tourist mecca!

Want to know how much pot I bought in my life? One bag. That's it. Most the pot I ever smoked was handed to me via a joint. When I began, I'd pinch my brother's stash. It wasn't because I was a cheap bastard. I did like it occasionally but never felt the need to have it on hand, all the time. Add to that it took a few puffs on it to push me past Pluto for a few hours. I didn't need much. I've known people from my teen years who are daily smokers to this day, at their age of 50.

My teen years was when I smoked it the most, again pilfered from my brother or passed to me by friends. Most times would I smoke it, alone in my room and put the headphones on and play music. I did that till I was 17 when it all came to a complete halt.

The Beatles Abbey Road has the song “I Want You (She's So Heavy).” I was listening to that on a Saturday morning stoned to my gills, in my rocking chair. The last half of the song is just repetitive guitar chords with the addition of the sound of wind, which increases in volume. It's hypnotic even if you're straight. The song finally shocks you as it lulls you into that mesmerizing guitar chant, then stops without warning. Lennon, after recording it, told the engineer just to cut the song...here.  It can jolt you the first time you hear it and only that one time. The next time you listen to it you're expecting the surprising end.

So I'm rocking away, spacing out to the song when I was hit with a realization out of nowhere. It was enough to make me stop rocking and pull off the headphones. From somewhere in the back of my head this thought arose.

“You can't keep doing this.”

“Can't keep doing this” wasn't a warning about getting high, it was a warning about having to finally grow up. I couldn't cocoon myself in childhood for much longer as I was nearing graduation and college was on the horizon. Time to grow up.

After that revelation I could never smoke without becoming utterly paranoid. The two instances, having to grow up and the pot paranoia don't seem connected but perhaps they are. Maybe I tied the two together in my head?

Anyway, I could never smoke the stuff again without it becoming a miserable experience for me. Odd huh? Most people find it enjoyable, I don't.

I don't care what people do with their lives as long as they don't dump in my backyard. I don't see pot as a dangerous substance as beer. Pot doesn't make you want to slide your car into a school bus nor beat your wife as alcohol can. If you tallied up the social damage alcohol has done vs pot, the argument for it's legalization is right there.

So, suck on a bong till it's opaque with white smoke, inhale it and click the pic below to hear the song. I won't stand in your way.

 

 

 

Cat and Mouse

A case an attorney friend once told me about reminded him of his 20's. The client had the bad luck of being good and drunk, crossing over the road median and slammed head on into an oncoming car. The other driver was killed and the client arrested for DWI and vehicular homicide.

As all attorneys do, they get the “story” from their client, including their life in general. The lawyer can form an opinion on just who they are representing and use that when bargaining with the AG's office. “Look, my client screwed up, but he's not Hitler.” That sort of thing.

The guy he represented was your average Joe, in his 20's, out for a good time on a Saturday night. He, through bad decisions and bad luck, ended another life. Tim, the lawyer, told me there were many times he himself drove home from parties, or flying up 95 to Boston lit and somehow managing to “make it.”

He says, “Ronnie, it's amazing. You and I both, your brother and others we knew did the same thing as my client has done when we were his age, except the win the Bad Luck Lottery and kill someone.  I swear it's plain luck we didn't.”

He goes on, “I had to do a ton of leg work to get my client down to four years! He'll do about ¾ of it. The guy's an emotional wreck now too.”

I ask, “What about the guy he killed? He's in worse shape.”

Tim answers, “Ronnie, I make no apologies for being a defense attorney. It's why I am here. Had I not accepted the case, someone else would. Without a doubt...without a doubt. And you, I and many others have done what this guy did too, driving nearly wasted...even the head of the RI Republican party, Bob Watson was busted...Wait, wasn't he your attorney you used at times? Don't get all moral on me now!”

I have to admit that Tim was right. This is the way things are.

I tell him I have done it too, when younger. My probably worst sin on that count was when my friend and I used to hit Misquamicut beach early in the morning, start drinking before noon and do so all day in the summer sun, which makes you stupider. Then at night, switch over to nightclub mode and drink till 1AM. Then I'd have to get him and myself home without attracting too much attention.

Weaving up lonely country roads on my way to Coventry isn't easy when you're not used to it. They're unlit and twist and turn and dip down into ground fog banks that develop on ponds and streams. Your headlights do a great job illuminating them and blind you in the process. Add to that, I'm driving in hick towns staffed with a few cops on patrol from 11-7, who are bored and will take keen interest in any car traveling at 2 AM.

By all rights, I should've been arrested on nights like that, though never happened. Pure chance didn't work against my favor. Ah, I have to add that the attitude toward drunk driving then were far more lax, but I still was aware of the threat.

I've known several people in my life who have been busted. It's not the moral implications but the attendant bullshit that comes from paying fines, losing your license and it's reinstatement that worries me. I just said the moral implications didn't bother me...God, I've become more jaded as I've grown older. That's another subject I can write about. “How my belief in innocence, fair play and do-gooder-ism was ruined by experience!” I'll entitle it, “How Being Truthful isn't Profitable Anymore...Depending on Who You're Dealing With.” And another subject I can write about is justice, God, religion and Does Any of This Matter?

One girl I knew was hit twice on a DWI charges. It took her Dad $12,000 to work the charges in both cases down to a reasonable level. A nice high price to party hardy on a Saturday nights. He loved his daughter and what do you expect? He'd defend his daughter on murder charges if it came to that. Others I have known were hit similarly with the same crap to overcome. The costs associated with this spook all people.

Nowadays, I can't drink like I used to. Beer turns into Ambien for me after a few and all I want to do eventually is crawl into bed. Perhaps that's a good thing and I leave the party before I get soused. My blood alcohol level won't register shockingly on some breathalyzer. Even so, I'm still paranoid as hell about driving on two beers. I have developed route home where the likelihood of my running into police is lessened. I have in my wallet, my attorney's number and I know the 5^th Amendment. Yep, I'm scared shitless about this.

There's a phrase I've stolen from an old butcher I knew long ago. His daughter claimed he was too protective of his only grandson by purchasing him all sorts of safety equipment for his new bike. “Dad, you're older now, you're afraid of everything!”

He replies, “And I have good reason to be! I've lived long enough to know that shit can hit you from any direction! I'm going to make sure my grandson is safe!”

I still go to Irish pubs, I still attend parties and I still might drink in the summer sun at a beach. But I'm afraid of everything now too, especially of sliding my car into a State-y

Toys

The above picture is porn to me. This is the inside of my B&K amplifier. Every now and then I dust the inside of it to keep it happy. Those blue capacitors are nearly the size of Coke cans and the heat sink rails on either side get a might too hot at times. That donut thing is a toroidal magnet that weighs about 20lbs.   You'd think with all the care I give my stereo equipment and how I adore music I'd be able to play an instrument as well. I can't.

I tried to learn to play at one time. I watched my brother learn the guitar and play it for years before I approached him for a favor. Teach me! He was up for it and we sat down and he started right off to teach me a riff.

Smoke On the Water by Deep Purple has one of the most recognizable riffs in it's beginning. It's also silly easy to learn on the guitar as well. All you have to do is pick the a couple of strings twelve times and move your fingers just a bit on the fret board. I was surprised when I did it it actually came out like the beginning of the song.

“Great, now stop looking where you place your fingers and do it again.” He advises.

“Well, how the hell can I play it without knowing where to put my fingers?” I tell him in protest.

“You can't learn this by eye, you have to have 'ear memory' in order to learn this.” He finally says.

I went from being all encouraged to frustrated as hell once I realized Smoke on the Water isn't as easy to play from just hearing memory.

I kept at the guitar, oh I'd say for two weeks when I gave it up. You have to be absolutely in love with an instrument in order to learn it well. Or have over-bearing parents who lock you in a room with a clarinet to learn three hours a day. That must be torture!

I was not going to give up on music though. I had a penchant for toying around with the electronics of the stereo equipment I had here plus all that band equipment that was in our cellar. Some of it is there still, huge cabinets with Marshall stacks. I have no idea what to do with them. So there they sit.

My first “stereo” was a Sony shirt pocket 9-volt radio I got for Christmas when I was seven. That did it in a way. I could control what I wanted to listen to and no matter if the fidelity sucked. As I grew older and had access to my own money, I'd trade up and up to better equipment. I finally went as far as building my own speakers for the system I have now. That's what I love about the internet, you can download programs that spit out all the parameters of building a speaker correctly. The other thing is that you have to blow bucks on buying the parts.

Also the internet is great for finding sellers of esoteric equipment that's been rated as A+ by God himself. So I slowly began building a component system with the best parts I could afford. I couldn't afford a Krell amplifier as they cost as nearly as much as $12,000. So I had to pick and choose wisely.

With internet radio available I still listen to FM. I found a Maranzt tuner to do just the job. The problem was that it's signal hungry and wanted a NASA style antenna on my roof in order to pull in every station I could get. I nearly break my neck for this little hobby.

Here's the inside of the Maranzt, after being cleaned and dusted. It doesn't look like much but it's ONLY job is to process an FM signal and nothing else.
 

God, I hope I don't go deaf as I age. That might bite the Big One.

What are YOU Doing Here?

Bear with the looonnng definition please.

Halo Effect or Halo Error:

Dion and Berscheid (1972) conducted a study on the relationship between attractiveness and the halo effect.[3] Sixty students from University of Minnesota took part in the experiment, half being male and half being female. Each subject was given three different photos to examine: one of an attractive individual, one of an individual of average attractiveness, and one of an unattractive individual.

The participants judged the photos’ subjects along 27 different personality traits (including altruism, conventionality, self-assertiveness, stability, emotionality, trustworthiness, extraversion, kindness, and sexual promiscuity). Participants were then asked to predict the overall happiness the photos' subjects would feel for the rest of their lives, including marital happiness (least likely to get divorced), parental happiness (most likely to be a good parent), social and professional happiness (most likely to experience life fulfillment), and overall happiness. Finally, participants were asked if the subjects would hold a job of high status, medium status, or low status.

Results showed that participants overwhelmingly believed more attractive subjects have more socially desirable personality traits than either averagely attractive or unattractive subjects. Participants also believed that attractive individuals would lead happier lives in general, have happier marriages, be better parents, and have more career success than the others. Also, results showed that attractive people were believed to be more likely to hold secure, prestigious jobs compared to unattractive individuals

*****

Several years ago, there was a car accident in Jamestown where a young, pretty 18 year old lost control of her Dad's Mercedes and slammed into an oak tree, killing her. The only specifics I remember were that it wasn't alcohol related nor were any cell phones in use. It was purely accidental. I don't remember her name, her next of kin or anything else of that nature. But here's what did stick with me.

The ProJo ran this story for a few days even though she was pubically of no note. This was atypical as most vehicular accidents involving a fatality of the driver are mentioned, and that's it. The story was kept alive by reporters who interviewed neighbors, friends and anyone else that knew her and what they thought. The theme that emerged became the story, not the deceased girl.

“It's not supposed to happen to people like her!” is a sentence I might have read in the articles. People who are born rich, pretty and with every door opened for their future aren't supposed to be cut off. Only good things were supposed to occur to people who are born winners. It's always happily ever after. This is what many people lamented, her social standing, her rank and the seemingly promising future.

Had this been a story about an over-weight Hispanic girl run over on Westminster street? It would've garnered a two inch paragraph in the local section of the ProJo, morning edition only, had they been printing a second evening edition still.

The myth is that when you are born into a winning status, life's crap isn't supposed to touch you. It's taken as a given and not questioned. Your status has a magical quality to it that prevents life's ugliness from finding you. If you take the reverse of the myth it holds up still. People born into perpetual loser-dom are supposed to suffer fate's misery, either deserved or not. It's a given and very natural.

“Nobody liked him anyway!” is another phrase I heard quoted in the news by teen bullies who find themselves under investigation by the police after the target of their hate jumps off a bridge. The phrase acts as a “go ahead” to heap derision on this person. It's said not as an excuse but as a cogent, perfect reason.

Outlaw. Do you know where this word really comes from? It's not from the Wild West. Being declared an outlaw was a punitive sentence handed down by a Medieval English court. If you were declared an outlaw, it meant that you were “placed outside the protection” of the law and anything that happened to you, by luck or design, committed by people or nature, was accepted. If you were an outlaw and were assaulted to the point where you could never walk again, no English court would prosecute those who injured you, ever.

That Jamestown girl certainly was no outlaw, given the effusion displayed for her loss of status. The suicides of bullies, up until the moment they ended their lives, were. Each both are cut down to a one dimensional parable whose character is easier to understand by the simple minded.

*****

We learn of social status early. I swear by kindergarten when we're thrown into a group of our peers. The pecking to achieve the order is started right there and then. The strongest boy, the prettiest girl. The cry baby and the ugly girl. All get to know their places and they had better keep them if they know what's good for them. Above it all, the kindergarten teacher who unconsciously, or consciously, nods approvingly to the kid's judgments. From here on out, the rewards and punishments for your particular status are given. They are real and can effect what kind of person you will become.

I once barely dated this girl who was forever a social climber, or tried to be. She was one of those women who was born with that perfect body but less, really less than perfect face. She was also blessed with a social skill set that would allow her to interject herself into any situation, deftly make herself the star of the moment and command it. We were out one night and I couldn't help but notice her scanning the crowd for something “better.” It was annoying but I resigned myself to the fact that she would never stay “put” had we developed anything further. Later on, after our brief dating was over, I'd see her here and there, flitting from guy to guy, clawing up the ladder in hopes of bagging the buck with the largest antlers.

She struggled. She always struggled from what I could tell and she never gave up it seems. After being dumped time and again by high quality men, who used her for a lay, she kept coming back to the killing floor to try to score a better one.

A few years ago I ran into her and she mentioned she was getting married, at 32 which is two years over the limit for some women. She still had that model's body and that odd face.

I then met the prospective husband. He was about as homely as she was. After briefly talking with him, I found out he worked as a auto parts warehouse overseer. It was an occupation nonetheless but it wasn't a Golden Boy career either.

After all the attempts, the scraping by, the deal making, the trial and error, she had married a man who was on her social level.

It's rare that any of us should make great leaps up the ladder. If it's deemed by the higher placed crowd that you “don't belong,” your trip down that ladder will be faster than your climb up.

Maybe I'm a man

Maybe you're the only woman

Who could ever help me

Baby, won't you help me to understand?

-Paul McCartney-

 

I've heard this song a trillion times since 1970. As a kid it was a sappy love song. As I got older I'd hum and sing along to it w/o bothering to really listen to the lyrics. I do that with a lot of songs. There are songs I've heard that I've never bothered to learn the lyrics to and most times that's because I can't understand what they're singing.

Today, “Maybe I'm Amazed” came on WCIB and w/o thinking about it, I listened.

I thought to myself, “God...remember when you thought a girl would 'Save you?'”

In my 20's, I, we all had, deficits we knew intimately. None of us is perfect. Also I'd think that if I met the right girl, if we hit it off the right way, this would somehow fill the gaps in my life that I had a hard time filling myself. The “Perfect Love” that was somewhere out there, I just had not found it yet.

I'm wasn't alone in these hopes. Everyone I knew back then thought similarly but would never dare divulge that information.

Yeah well...you come to find out people are messy, imperfect as hell and they can't “save you.”

What I did come to learn was a little better than that fantasy.

If I was in a healthy relationship, where it was easy to be open and completely myself, the girl would allow me to bring forward the best in myself. The holes in me remain unfilled but I brought forth the best I owned already with abundance. That is growth. Someone I knew called that “blooming.”

Women have great perception. I can remember years ago, when I was 19, sitting on the front steps of M's house with his girlfriend when were just talking. We really didn't know one another well enough to give one another eye opening revelations to one another. Well, I didn't have any to give to her, I was a guy, and by definition, dense as a brick.

“”Ron, you are so ready to bloom now. I can see it. You ought to just move out on your own and it'll come.”

I was quietly shocked and I kept that reaction to myself. How the hell did she know what was eating at me? I never told anyone. Women and their X ray eyes....she knew.

I too, could bring out the best in others.

I remember C. She came off as a dumb blonde but wasn't really. It was a role that seemed to bring her the things she needed in life. One time at Scarborough, as we sat on the benches watching the surf, she pointed to the horizon and said those cumulonimbus clouds out there were headed our way.

“Cumulonimbus?” I thought to myself. I had no idea she understood weather nor had any use for Latin prefixes and suffixes. There was a side to this girl I never knew about and I turned to her and smiled and asked how the hell she knew that. She said she learned it from being a Girl Scout long ago. This side her actually made her more pretty in my eyes. I figured she felt comfortable enough with to drop the duh-duh blonde routine and let her real self come out for a bit.

It was simply feeling comfortable with one another and that's huge.

At my age now, I still own some of those old deficits in my personality. I may own them still if I reach 94 years of age. But, those things are like holes in the road, you fill them in as you can and sometimes it takes forever. The only person who can do that is you and not your loved one.

I was struck by a few lines in the Lincoln movie that came out last year. In one scene, he's arguing with his wife, Mary, about letting their oldest son join the Union Army. Mary would have no part of it since she lost one son already. She threatens Abe with Holy Hell if he dies.   After being berated by Mary, Lincoln says;

“I must make my decisions and Bob (their son) must make his, you yours. And bear what we must. Hold and carry what we must.

What I carry within me, you must allow me to do it.

Alone, as I must. And you alone, Mary, you alone may lighten your burden or render it intolerable. As you choose.”

Our lives are our own and that dream of being saved, fixed when I was in my 20's was a nice dream.

And “Maybe I'm Amazed” is still a good song.

AH HA!

I am a fresh air addict and I am still refusing to close my windows at night despite the low early morning temperatures. In order to close them, I'd have to admit that summer and the best of autumn have been defeated. I will have to resign myself to it one day as I always do, but I don't like it.

There is another reason to shut your windows but it's a rare one. Skunks.

I awoke around 4 am this morning to a horrible stench that was so bad IT probably was the reason I woke up. I lay there, knowing exactly what that foul odor was and figured the neighborhood skunk had ambled across my backyard, leaving a trail of perfume, or had sprayed something nearby. I tried to go back to sleep but that burnt garlic odor kept rousing me. So I use a trick I learned as a kid when we drove past pig farms in Seekonk, I breathed through my mouth. That does the trick!

There used to be a joke shop in Downtown Pawtucket. I never went to it being so far away and too young to go alone. My older brother and his friends did however. My brother's friend, nicknamed Burnsy, bought a bottle of Skunk Perfume. It was some sort of sulfurous compound that spread through the air like perfume does. The point was to open it up stealthily and let the liquid vaporize off and stink up a room, car or whatnot. You then can accuse anyone with you of not showering or what have you. The stuff really did reek as Burnsy managed to sucker me into taking a good whiff of the stuff when I was five. Ugh!

What he had done with it, I thought pretty creative and cruel. After leaving the joke shop, they went to a diner on Main St to get some burgers. After they were done eating, Burnsy quietly opens the bottle and lets the vapors drift off down the line of patrons seated at the diner's “bar.” He and my brother told me several of the customers started coughing and gagging to the stench. One got up and left w/o paying his bill.

What a nasty thing to do! While people are eating, you gas them with man-made skunk. When I was told of this, being five, I roared with laughter, as did Burnsy and others. I had to ask if anyone puked as that would've made the joke even funnier. These things are humorous to boys who are under twelve you know.

Burnsy then decided to use the rest of it by pouring some if it in one of those old plastic squirt guns, mixed with water. Without saying anything, he pumped the thing about six times into the chest of Rachel M. who was standing with us. She nearly puked herself from the odor. His chosen targets were any of the girls in neighborhood, since they were most likely to be completely disgusted. He managed to get three of the girls who couldn't run away in time.

We all had a good laugh until two of the girl's mothers came walking down the street. We all became pretty quiet when they both walked up to Burnsy's house and disappeared inside. About 90 seconds later we heard, “ROBERT!!!!! YOU COME HOME RIGHT NOW!”

Burnsy was cooked. His Mom had been informed of his misdeeds.

I could tell you of the many 'stink bombs' some kids lit off in Goff Jr High near the end of the school year, but that happened on such a regular basis it became dull.

I saw this and it was gross, but funny. Boys are notorious for doing anything particularly low to one another for comedy.

We had a kid on this street, Kevin who was a year or two younger than my cohort, and six years younger than the guys in my brother's group. Kevin was needy, loud, annoying and always tagging along wanting to be included. Our group included him but my brother's friends just tortured the poor thing.

Chubsy, my brother’s friend, was drinking a Coke when little Kevin asked if he could have some. Chubsy, then with a compassionate lilt in his voice said, “Sure!”

He says to Kevin.

“Open your mouth and close your eyes I'm gonna give you a big surprise.”

Now since Kevin was much younger, naïve and in desperate need for some liquid candy, did exactly as Chubsy told him too.

Then I saw this.

Chubsy, from deep down in his throat, hacks up a glob of very thick mucous and spits, literally fires the thing into Kevin's mouth.

Kevin didn't quite know just what he had received until he saw the rest of us either laugh or stand there in open-mouthed in amazement. Chubsy couldn't stop from laughing.

Poor Kevin, his little child like mind finally figured it out and he spit out Chubsy's spit. Once more, Kevin runs crying home.

This wasn't a practical joke but it displays the real boorish behavior that was fairly endemic with our group so long ago.

Supanic (and I use his real last name!) and my brother are driving down Hamlet St when, up ahead, they see a little girl on her bike take an awful spill on the sidewalk. My brother told me she perfectly went SPLAT onto the concrete.

Supanic, who was driving, pulls over into the opposite lane to get real close to the girl and then points at her from his open window and let's go some riotous laughter.

“AH HA HA HA HA! AH HA HA HA!”

The poor girl, crying from smacking the sidewalk now has to put up with a 17 year old's sense of humor.

When told of this, I too laughed at the gall it took to do this. Then in the same thought, the poor kid and how she grew up waay too fast that afternoon, learning about callous teens.

*****

Ya know, growing up in my neighborhood and the schools I attended gave rise to a few thoughts in me. I would witness things, like cruelties and how teachers in our classes would spend a quarter of the time telling us to SHUT UP. I began to think there was something not quite right with my generation. Or at least far too many examples of weird behavior. I don't know. I have no idea if the kids of today are just as bad, perhaps they are.

The Other Good Use for a Lunch Bag

Time heals all wounds they say. I guess so. I can look back on some embarrassing moments and not feel uncomfortable about them. Actually, some of them seem humorous now. Here's a small sampling of when I blew it.

Before three girls, one of whom I really liked, they handed me a pull-out car radio that wasn't working properly in the hopes I could fix it. So, I kept toying with it and felt a sneeze coming on. I thought I could sense it felt like one of those dry sneezes. The ones that feel like Alka-Seltzer has gone off inside your nose when you do it. No problems. I let the sneeze fly.

Out of my nose, came this shooting rope of snot that must've pitched and veered like one of those rope swings kids have over the local pond. I felt it finally land across my lips and could see the rest bobbing below my chin. I have to admit the girls did their best to “not notice” but c'mon! I turned my head away, wiped off the goo and just could not think of a witty comeback to prove I hadn't done this on purpose. Christ. It's amazing how situations will arise that give the perception that you're a pig.

I swear, I really did think it was going to be a dry sneeze.

I handed the radio back to the girls with the un-snotted hand and walked away. I had blown it and it was too late.

I like looking back on my life as everyone else does. You see things in a different light after you have packed on the years. When I look back at being fourteen, I realized how much childishness I still had in me and the self-centered attitude that comes with it.

June 25^th 1978 was my Mom's 48^th birthday. My brother and I had just finished dinner and we got up, plunked our plates in the sink and headed to the living room to watch the old Star Trek series. As I sat there, watching another Red Shirt get phasered to death in the first four minutes of the show, a creeping realization came over me.

“Ken...I think we forgot Mom's birthday!” I quietly whispered to him.

He then had this look of astonishment and then became red faced. We both sat there, not knowing what to do as any birthday in this house was celebrated immediately after dinner and we both had left the kitchen as if were just another day. My brother then got up, went out the front door and left in his car. I just sat there feeling if I admitted anything to her, it would only make the situation worse.

My brother came back after a twenty minutes with a Cherry & Webb $25 gift coin. He motioned to me to come up into his room to sign a card and hoped we could come back down, greet Mom in the kitchen with the one hour belated gift.

“Happy Birthday Mom!” my brother said. I was probably holding the worst poker face, all ridden with guilt as he handed it to her.

“Oh...thanks.” Mom said. As she place both items on the table and took another sip of tea.

We blew it.

You know, as I write this, I still feel a bit bad about that.

I had told you about the time I vomited in a restaurant, so I'll skip that one.

You want the truth out of me? Then pour vodka in to my mouth. That works each time.

My parents were not on easy terms with every neighbor and the DiMeo's were enemies to be hated. Since I was the son, I aped my Dad's views on them as well. I have written about this a long while back so I won't go into the battles fought.

When I was a teen, major snowstorms on weekday nights were great because I was assured that school would be canceled the next day. It would be for all of us and that meant it was a party night! We'd find a runner to get us some cheap Popov vodka and we hung out, in the near blizzard getting soused. We roamed from friend's house to friend's house, getting thrown out of most, trying to have some fun. We finally made it to Gails' house when we saw Gail and this other girl standing out in the driveway, watching the storm. Gail's house was across from the DiMeo's.

Now the two girls were bundled up like Eskimos but only Gail was talking. I could recognize her from her face and the voice. I didn't recognize the other girl as she was silent and wrapped up in hats, scarves and what not.

I then turned around and saw the DiMeo's house and launched into a drunken tirade against the parents there. I laid it on pretty heavily when Gail, asked me if I knew who was the girl standing next to her.

I didn't.

“Ron! That's Charlene!”

“Oh...Shit.” I thought to myself. I know exactly who this is. There was only ONE Charlene I knew at all and it was Charlene DiMeo, the only daughter of the Evil Parents my Dad disliked.

Yeah, I tried to take back all I said with my best self effacing ways. It's of no use when you're gooned on cheap booze and you over act your part as most drunks do.

As Jimmy pulled me away to go to his house, I could overhear Gail and Charlene say, “Asshole...Yeah, ain't he though?” As walked further away there was a louder, “Fuck YOU!” aimed at me and it wasn't Gail's voice. I could recognize the other one clearly now.

In all fairness, I had nothing against Charlene at all as she had NEVER wronged me in any way.

I blew it again.

This next one is very intimate and personal. Well, screw it, I'm a roll...I'll just come out and say it.

I was fucking Pamela (obviously not her real name) when she asked me something. I really didn't hear her and I responded with a, “Huh? What?” She never repeated her question. The next morning, I remembered she had asked me something so I asked her what it was.

She said dryly, “I had asked you if you loved me.”

Deep inside my brain a loud alarm went off with an , “UH-OH!”

I said nothing. What could I say to correct a faux pas like that?

Well, I now have to defend my half of the race. Girls, NO conversations please! We boys don't want to think. We can't think as we are so incredibly wrapped up in the totality of sex. It's overwhelming to us. Our entire focus is absorbed by it and having Q&A sessions will not work!

“Huh? What?” I have to admit that's the funny now that I look back on it. She may still be miffed by it though.

I still blew it though.

I'm going to end this here as a lot of other examples are cropping up. Jesus...if I can think up this many times I looked the fool, put my foot in my mouth or otherwise tripped over my feet and fell flat on my face...what the hell are you going to think of me?

Ok, one more. And I'm not alone in doing this.

Typing class, 8^th grade in Goff Jr High. We're all typing away to the tapping rhythm of Mr Travese's ruler as he dictated the letters. “G-H-G!” “A-B-C” We'd type out as best as we could and the sound of twenty badly worn Smith Corona typewriters filled the room with a factory like clatter.

When that little exercise was over, it became quiet again. I could feel a fart trying to escape me but I had managed to block the bugger. I had then shifted in my chair when the thing slipped by my defenses and announced it's birth into the classroom rather audibly. Mr Travese then turned his head to me. Of course, I couldn't deny anything as my face went red as a beet. Sandra, a girl sitting in the next row, gave me a look like I had stomped on her pet kitten. Johnny behind me snickered. Our class clown, Mark, grabbed his throat and groaned like he was a WW1 soldier choking to death during a mustard gas attack.

“Aright, Mark...Cut it out!” Mr Travese bellowed.

I sat there, feeling as if every single human being on the Earth was looking at me. Ah well, these things happen.

Ahh, I Can't Think of a Witty Title...

 

I'm nobody! Who are you?
 Are you nobody, too?
 Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
 They'd banish us, you know.

 

 How dreary to be somebody!
 How public, like a frog
 To tell your name the livelong day
 To an admiring bog!

 

-Emily Dickinson-

The world keeps getting smaller. People you knew years ago can show up while you're minding your own business getting the dull, ordinary chores done. What can surprise you from your half-asleep attention are the ends these people from the past came to.


There's a Quickie Mart in Seekonk I always use due to the lower taxes on gasoline across the border. Generally I don't run into many people I know while gassing up. On occasion I'll spot someone I know on the other side of the island and we spark up a quick “What have you been up to?” conversation that ends when the tank's filled. One time I ran across Morris who I hadn't seen since high school.


Morris was easily recognized. Back then, he had straight, flat and what looked like greasy hair that resembled the fur of a sick cat, collapsed and dull. He always had this and would constantly be brushing it from his eyes as it routinely kept falling across. He seemed annoyed by this.


Saint Raphael Academy was typical of your prep schools then. It wasn't Phillips Exeter in New Hampshire where you have to cough up $40,000 a year but there was an exclusionary taste to it, at least with some of the people there who felt they were privileged and made sure you knew it as well. The culture was odd at times too but then again, DeLasallian priests ran it. Those guys are a hair less crazy than the Jesuits.


Our senior year I noticed this. I witnessed some of the Brothers, in hallways, publicly comment on the futures of some of the graduating class. Of course, the ones who came from money, high on the social list or shone in some other way were commented on. One of the kids I saw lionized was Morris.


Morris, in comparison to the rest of us, was a genius. He excelled at pretty much anything academically and it was easy for him. He had a talent which afforded him an ability to work a little and gain great results. Morris on the other hand wasn't a looker and failed sort of miserably on the scratch test when it came to high school social standing. But, he still had an air of superiority about him due to his academic standing, sometimes grating as he served this to you with a quiet, insulting demeanor. It probably was all he had to show and tell and hold high. At times he would betray his inflated rank in the school by following some of us, like a puppy, trying to ingratiate himself with us, out of loneliness and wanting to fit in. He wasn't a bad kid, just another schmuck trying to make his way through high school realities.


The last I saw him, talked to him, he told me he was accepted to CalTech. Apparently his SAT's and recommendations from our school were enough to do it. “Jesus H. Christ” I thought to myself. That is one of the most demanding universities to get into. It's so restrictive that, as a student, you needed an FBI security clearance to work on some of your projects, as CalTech runs the JPL laboratory in Pasadena. JPL is where most of our space probes to the planets are controlled from. If you still don't understand this, think of Carl Sagan, he worked there for decades. If you weren't going to CalTech, you went to MIT or Cornell or nothing at all.


So, we graduate and we scatter to the four winds, each of us building a life and forgetting most of our classmates from high school as they aren't relevant in our lives anymore.


Then comes the day I'm gassing up my car in Seekonk several years later when I recognize the collapsed hair of the guy on the other side of the island.


“Morris...?” I ask.


Yep, it was him.


We talked a bit about the old times in high school of “What happened to this one and that one” when I asked about him and his life. He gave an evasive answer and tried to shift the subject to my life real quick.


Well, that was a mistake. I'm a nosy one and doing that to me brings out the detective in me.


I slyly pressure him into telling the truth, I can be good at that.


He had failed at CalTech and miserably too. He was bounced out nine months into his career there. I had asked if he discovered partying as that is usually a great reason to bomb out of college. But he said it wasn't that at all. I believed him as he wasn't the type in high school either.


He didn't outright say it but I discovered the jist. He was competing against the best the world has to offer when it comes to undergraduate science students. Kids from Korea, Japan, Germany and all over managed to spar against him easily. He wasn't good enough to survive the insane rigors of Caltech and was cut from the team in nine months.  That's quick. He told me he was now living back at home and working, at then popular, Block Buster video.


I was then reminded again, back in Saint Ray's, of how a Brother said somewhat loudly that Morris would excel in life, that his future seemed assured. I wonder how much of a disservice that might have been. Then again, if you are the largest frog in a small pond and then you move to the world's greatest swamp and you get your head handed to you, it should be of no surprise. I can't imagine what it must feel like to have been King of the Little Pond only to be shown, to be proven beyond a doubt, that you were just mediocre.

JPL's a small city unto itself. Cal Tech is HUGE and this is just a small part of it