Tag: bullying
Protected: Elementary School Memories Courtesy of Facebook and a Guy Named ‘Green’
Princess Rubenesque’s Adventures Downtown
(Started Apr 12, bothered to finish today. Yay, I’m caught up!)
I intended on going to the parade Saturday morning, but awoke flustered and despairing of getting there on time, so I fell back on the couch and watched the thing on TV. I was angry at myself for not going…I always go. It was so cool that our local hero was the parade marshal. Such a small, normal looking woman and God only knows how many people she saved when she took that guy down. She once was a police officer at a local beach where nothing happens and now look at her…people around the world know what she did. I bet she wishes it never happened though since she can only walk a bit now. I will reiterate though she is mega cool.
Saturday evening my mother and I went downtown to see the fireworks. We walked 6 blocks to the river, but it was a lovely evening and a pleasant walk in the historic district. At night sometimes one can see inside their lovely homes, the painted or wallpapered rooms with their pretentious chandeliers and antique furnishings. The other joy is all the people observing one can get in, like the actively hallucinating guy who walked past us giving consolation to someone we couldn’t see. With the advent of bluetooth technology it can be difficult to tell if someone is nuts, but this guy’s jerky movements made insanity a certainty. “He wouldn’t give us any money,” he told his invisible friend, then said, “Don’t worry about him though, man.”
The fireworks were beautiful and I think we had the best view we ever had, sitting in our fold-out chairs in clear view of where they were shot off. Then we went to the Chinese take-out for some soup. This joint gave birth to the term “seedy.” There’s always interesting people there. Someone opened the door to yell to a patron that their mutual pal is in jail, but she already knew and was cross but seemed to not view it as being as newsworthy as her friends did.
Soup is a rather ritual-oriented meal, especially the robust hot and sour they serve at Seedy China. The soup is spicy hot and would not do for the average Anglo to gulp down, but it is the best I’ve ever tasted. In case you aren’t fortunate enough to know how to eat a pint of soup the proper way, allow me to school you on the perfect and essential way. You can thank me later for this vital skill.
Please recall, gentle reader, we did not grow up in a sty and must act accordingly. Unfold your napkin and set it in your lap (if you are lucky like me your stomach is one large flap and if utilized properly, can act as a ‘paperweight’ for the napkin in your lap). Take your spoon and begin. Begin from the left and take sips until you’ve taken a sip by dipping your spoon, working vertically until you’re at the right side of the bowl. Then put a few of those crisp noodles, at least 3 of them since you really prefer things in 3’s. Eat the noodles in your soup. Now repeat the entire ritual until you’re done, and if you’re good at it, people won’t even realize you have a ‘strategy’ for eating.
Downtown’s most prevalent establishments open at night are bars, bars, and then bars. You have to be careful down there because girls have got into trouble, but if you aren’t alone you’re pretty safe, especially if it isn’t really late at night. So when the drunk chaps rolled up to the red light, two cars of them, I wasn’t worried for my physical safety.
“HEY BITCH! LOOK HERE! YOU’RE FAT!”
Oh. How. Original. I’m sensible enough not to reply or look at them. As they drive away, to preserve my dignity, I mutter, “Fucking assholes.” But I seriously felt very little. I wasn’t aware of being angry or sad. But then I had one of my bad thoughts, the kind that are very disturbing to someone with OCD. My mind conjured an image of those guys in an awful car crash, the kind with glass everywhere and the cars crushed like soda cans. Which immediately upset me because I didn’t want the little bastards to die or be injured and I hoped they got home okay. Then I started to worry. A thought is just a thought, but I don’t like the thought at all. I started worrying as though the thought of them being killed would come true, though I knew I was being stupid.
What if the thought means you want them to crash? I asked myself. No, and you know you don’t want any harm worse than a hangover tomorrow to happen to them, Lisa, I replied in my mind. But the awful thought of those guys dying lodged into my mind, and I sought reassurance from my mom.
“I wish you could worry about something. No, you don’t want them to crash or die,” Mom said. I really exasperate her sometimes, but I eventually realized she was right. If I really wanted something to happen to them, I would not be worried about it or if I wished it I would know I wished it. Fair enough.
And far as I know, the two cars of drunken idiots made it home safe and sound that night. All’s well that ends well.
Lisa vs. Ms. Pinkpig
“Amazing part is someone Like Steven Hawking does not let his Disability limit him yet Book let’s her fake disability limit her to live a complete and full life. Go figure(she makes excuses) and on that note, I’m off to bed.”
Recall, gentle reader, that I have frequented a chatroom for 4 years or more, so we chatters know each other in some capacity, and during all that time I have known Ms. Pinkpig. I will call her Ms. Pinkpig because to say her screen name or real name would be rude. Ms. Pinkpig has a rotten disposition, a disposition worthy of a sow or some other barnyard animal, and the Pepto Bismal color of her font mirrors the sweetness of her words. The above quote was directed at me tonight by her (people often call me “Book” in there, the beginning of my screen name).
What did she mean you might ask? Why did the words make me burst into tears? Because her words are true to a point. But only to a point. I have to remind myself that this is the same woman who finds tragedies that befall fellow chat members funny and diverting. I thank God I don’t dislike anyone that much. Once upon a time, she even wrote something poking fun at a fellow member’s son falling out of a second story window and being severely injured. So I’m talking about someone with a few glitches in her personality.
And yet I cried. Not the first time. To be so well cushioned in body, my skin is remarkably thin. Anyway, what she meant is this:
Obsessive-compulsive disorder is not a disability. It is a fake reason to be on disability. My anxiety disorder is just an excuse and I’m just a lazy bum.
First off, OCD is very real and for some people it can be debilitating. My anxiety disorder affects me in all sorts of ways she’ll never know and adding to it my social anxiety, it makes me into quite a mental midget cocktail.
I did try to get a job a few times, went to the unemployment office, and went to vocational rehab. The man at the unemployment office said I needed to seem more confident, make eye contact. This just made me more anxious and made my wish to disappear all the more palatable.
The woman at vocational rehab didn’t care. She wanted me to clean up elderly people for a living and I am really disgusted by bodily functions, though I do love older people. I decided perhaps I could will myself into it and was resigned to my would-be career. But the VR woman was so rude on the phone I ended up crying and never going back.
You may think “excuses, excuses” but I did try.
So I applied for Social Security. The psychologist was very kind who evaluated me, told my mother and I that I would be able to get disability, but might have to try more than once. He was right, but I got approved the second time I submitted the form because a paralegal helped us.
And so here I am, 32 years-old, a virgin with no life. Of course, I have my diversions. I love swimming, walking, reading, writing, drawing, and doing a tiny bit of eBay. But on days like today when someone cuts me to the core, I get to thinking how little my life means. I might as well as taken my Associate in Arts (aka college transfer, aka “Would you like fries with that?”) degree and flushed it down the toilet. Buh-bye!
The last time I saw my therapist, I mentioned Ms. Pinkpig and a couple of the sowish things she said to me. Ms. Pinkpig had managed to type out with her cloven hooves a couple of things I mulled in my head for a while, such a dear swine she is. First, she said my mom wishes she could put me in a group home. Then the worst thing Ms. Pinkpig said was she wouldn’t be sorry if I died, that I would be one less tax payer burden. And I thought and thought and thought.
I wondered why my life was spared when bad things happen everyday to people who might have done something that made a difference. All those people who died too young by accident, sickness, murder, or suicide. I even think back to highschool. There was this beautiful boy, 19 I think, and it was his senior year. From my observations, he seemed happy. He and some of the other guys would sing the theme from The Love Boat when the teacher wasn’t around just to make everyone laugh. Then one day he monoxided himself because his girlfriend was carrying another guy’s baby, from what I heard (I doubt it was just one thing, but no doubt that sure iced the cake).
Then I think about another boy. I didn’t hear about him until a few years after highschool. This girl and I were talking in drawing class. Upon hearing what highschool I went to, she asked me if I knew one of her best friends, So-&-So. “Yes, I knew So-&-So. He was the kid who smiled a lot and turned red when he laughed,” I said.
And he died. I was totally shocked. Somehow he ran into a tractor-trailer. I hope it was an instant death. But man, how unfair is that! He was so happy all the time. Probably would have made something of himself, and if not, it wouldn’t matter much, because he had joi d’vivre. Shit.
Why them? Why wasn’t it me who rammed into a tractor-trailer? Why when I was 7 and we got into that car accident in the Datsun my grandpa was in the passenger seat? If he hadn’t been visiting us I likely would have been in the passenger seat and not in the backseat just shaken. We never wore our seatbelts in those days. The impact of the other car caused my grandpa’s head to go through the windshield, so that there was an indentation out of shattered glass. Imagine if it had been a little girl there. I’d have been dead or mangled.
Before that, I am 4. I crawl around the Florida room and I see a capsule on the step down there. Blue and clear with white pellets inside. I picked it up. “Do you eat the outside?” I thought. I pulled the capsule apart and the contents spilled into my hand. I ate them. It seems to me to taste a tad like mint, not strong.
I don’t remember the rest. I think I just fell asleep or passed out , either way I was none the worse for wear. My mom, years later, thinks it was probably one of my grandpa’s blood thinners and that I’m lucky. I guess I could have died then too, especially since no one knew what I had done.
Maybe I am supposed to be here. Maybe there is a reason for my life and it will one day fall into my lap when I least expect it. As they say, where there’s life there’s hope.
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