Thought That Came Unbidden

Does anyone besides me wonder if Jack Tripper was paying more rent than Janet and Chrissy? I mean, he did have his own room.

Well, no one ever promised that the thoughts that come unbidden would produce a cure for cancer <grin>

Every now and again one of the spam bots that troll blogs randomly dropping links comes up with something I have to look twice at:

A small country has fewer people.
Though there are machines that can work ten to a hundred times faster
than man, they are not needed.
The people take death seriously and do not travel far.
Though they have boats and carriages, no one uses them.
Though they have armor and weapons, no one displays them.
Men return to the knotting of rope in place of writing.
Their food is plain and good, their clothes fine but simple, their
homes secure;
They are happy in their ways.
Though they live within sight of their neighbors,
And crowing cocks and barking dogs are heard across the way,
Yet they leave each other in peace while they grow old and die.

There’s a certain bizarre meaning here.

I’m a late bloomer.

This isn’t a shock given that I come from a family full of late bloomers. The Boy, my only male first-cousin, didn’t start drinking until he was 28. The Princess, another of my cousins, moved back home at 32 years old, unwilling after a rent increase to look for a job that would pay her enough to continue to live on her own or even with a roommate. The only way The Bug, The Boy’s sister, will ever have a romantic relationship is if Prince Charming breaks into her parents’ house, where she and The Boy still live in the rooms in which they grew up. The only one of my generation who seems to be progressing according to society’s yardsticks is The Kite who has the husband, the house, and the baby on the way in her late-20s (in an odd coincidence, about the same age my Mom was when she had me). Perhaps that’s because she’s the only one who left home to go to college.

Whatever the case may be, not only are we a family of late bloomers, taking our time to find our way in the world, we’re also a family of nerds and quasi-nerds, doing what interests us regardless of whether or not it’s “cool” or hip. I never thought of this trait as being particularly unique or brave. By my own estimation I was the boring kid in high school and college. I didn’t fit in with the delinquents because I didn’t smoke or drink. I didn’t fit in with the popular crowd because they were all thin and blonde and rabidly heterosexual and I was none of those things. And I didn’t fit in with the go-go overachievers who pushed and pushed and pushed in that fashion that was so common in the late-1980s because, even though I was, and still am, incredibly bright and not at all shy about it, I didn’t see any reason to kill myself for advanced placement credits when I could do the minimum and still get As and Bs on my report card. So, I did my homework, answered questions in class, read a lot, wrote some, and did things like join the year book because I wanted to take pictures, and I cultivated friends like me, people who were interested in similar things, people who didn’t quite fit into the structure that is the institutionalized torture of high school. In many ways, though, it was camouflage because I knew I was inherently different from all the other hormone-soaked adolescents I was required to interact with every day at school. I never thought of my mechanisms for protecting myself from all the things I wasn’t ready to deal with as a desirable way of being in adolescence until very recently.

The Graphic Designer at my new job had the adolescence that I’ve often longed for: she ran with the fast crowd, she broke the rules, drank and smoked, and had sex I’m sure though we didn’t specifically talk about it, all the things that we’re told by our television and cinema that the “cool kids” do as teenagers. About six years older than me with an eight year-old son and a not quite six year-old daughter, she remarked in the middle of a rambling conversation over lunch that she wishes should could have had the high school experience I did, that she could have been less worried about what the cool kids thought, less worried about fitting in, and done more things she was interested in while she had the time to explore her own interests. It was an epiphany for me that someone could find my life enviable and it’s made me take another look at how I’ve been going about things recently.

Coming up hard on my mid-30s I find myself with a lot of regret, increasingly aware of how fast time is passing and of all the experiences I feel like I’ve missed and will never have the opportunity to add to my collection. I have certain advantages, chiefly that I won’t be having kids so my life will remain my own until its end, that give me broader range of opportunities than many people my age see laid before them. My Grandfather is said to have remarked upon my Grandmother’s concerns about my uncle and how little he was like his age-group peers thusly: he just needs to find his place and get in it.

Perhaps my approach has been wrong of late, that it’s not me that needs to bend and change to fit but that I need to find the spot meant for me, or find a spot that I can carve and shape to fit my needs.

Perhaps being me isn’t such a bad thing after all.

Even though I’ve come into his speech in the middle, and even though I’m listening to it on the radio rather than watching it on TV, John Kerry is sounding pretty damn good.

He’s hitting all the right notes: populist, recognizing that the American people foot the bill, that the rich have been getting a free ride the past four years, recognizing that America is now weak and complacent and that’s wrong, recognizing that we are divided and we can’t accomplish anything as a nation divided.

Here is hoping to God that the Democrats’ work on this convention, on shaping John Kerry, on going positive instead of reacting to Bush’s attacks.

Here is hoping it is enough, because if it isn’t, we’re all fairthewell fucked.

Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me

Takes me right back to childhood, that phrase. I heard it enough on the playground, and even said it enough myself, that I’ve had a lot of time to contemplate what it means. The implication is that words have no power. Anyone who has ever been teased or had an argument with a lover knows that words have the power to push you nearly to death. There’s one particular word that has been interesting me lately: should.
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