Campfyre Stories

So after writing that Facebook thing post, I decided to dig out my old yearbooks and refresh my memory and try to figure out some of these mysterious figures who know me from high school.

What a mistake that was.

See, I had forgotten just how bad high school was for me and reading the comments and signatures in the yearbooks really brought it all back, and in a rather intense way.

You have to understand that I was considered incredibly weird in high school (I know, *gasp*, right?).  I wasn’t from the area, and most of the kids I went to school with had grown up together.  Not only that, but the life I had led up to that point was unique.  Most of the people from that are had no idea what an alternative school was, few people could understand having essentially lived in a VW bus for long stretches of time, the only type of kid they were familiar with who moved as much as I had were Army brats and I certainly was not one of them.  I also wasn’t sheltered from reality.  Granted, my perception of reality was fringey and underground, but I think that was part of it.  Seeing the seedier side of life from time to time and being raised by radical activist musicians didn’t really qualify me for "normal" in the suburban-rural area that encompassed my school district.

I was also pretty self-assured, had a wide range of interests, wasn’t interested in things like makeup and social structures and fashion and I had been raised, when I was little, mostly around adults.  I always related better to people who were significantly older than me than to people my own age.

I gave middle school a go out there and couldn’t function in that social environment, so I went back to the Free School for the last half of 7th grade and all of 8th.  The end of my 8th grade year I also met the Dragonmaker, so upon entering high school, I wasn’t really interested in dating other boys.

To exacerbate what was already a difficult situation, I was put in a gym class with Juniors and Seniors and my one elective had entirely Juniors and Seniors in it.  I didn’t really mind, since I had an easier time talking to people who were about to go out into the real world - a world where I had lived my entire life.  At some point, though, probably near the end of Freshman year, it hit me…  all of these people weren’t coming back…  and I was.

My peers at the time…  I don’t even know how to put it into words.  To say I was "picked on" would be a vast understatement.  I was thrust into the category of undesirable.  The few friends I had made in the area abandoned me for people deemed "cool" by Freshman standards.  I was left to choose from the "dregs", most of whom were very nice people, but fundamentally not all that different from the rest of the school population.  Certainly nowhere near as different as I was.

I suppose that changed in my Sophomore year.  Now my electives had my peers in them.  The people I was thrust into spending time with were actually my age and if they weren’t accepting of me, they at least didn’t completely shun me.  Early into the school year, I ran for Sophomore Class President and, stunningly, shockingly, won.  I was actually qualified, having gone to a democratic school for most of my elementary and some of my middle school education, and I served on the board of directors for the National Coalition of Alternative Community Schools.  I was a good public speaker and I guess they decided to go with substance over style.

I need to be honest about this, even though I know that some hearts changed…  well, one did at least.

The other officers were pretty upset.  Some of the most popular kids in my class were running for the offices, and they won VP and Treasurer.  I, however, had beaten one of their number, and the idea that this close-knit trio wasn’t going to be able to share in this activity started my presidency with bad feelings.

But the thing was, having heard me speak, having heard me talk about a select few of the unique experiences I’d had (and at only 15), people started looking at me less like a pariah and more like a person of intrigue.  I think a large part of it was that people were starting to figure out who they were and come into their own.  The hippies and the stoners wanted to hear about the Dead concerts I had been attending since I was 6 months old and wanted to hear about my travels back and forth across the country.  The burnouts and metalheads wanted to know more about being raised by rock musicials.  The socially conscious wanted to know more about my experience protesting and the radical activists I knew.  The elite popular kids, I guess, figured there must be something worthwhile about me if I beat out Amy for the Class Presidency.

Not all of them.  Not by any means.  It was one or two here and there who made the effort and s-l-o-w-l-y I let my guard down with some of them.

But here’s the thing…  and the reason I started writing this in the first place.

I was reading the comments in my old yearbooks, and so many of them said "I’m sorry I didn’t give you a chance."  "I’m sorry I made fun of you at the beginning of the year."  "You’re a really cool person, I’m glad I *finally* had the chance to find that out."

It still hurts, actually.  I had just forgotten.

Not that I EVER had that "best years of your life" feeling about high school, but I had truly forgotten just how bad it really was.  I was hurt over and over and over again.  I was emotionally cut on a regular basis by people who assumed things about me, who were probably threatened by my self-confidence or world-experience or just plain difference.  I was belittled and tormented by the desirables and I was lauded and praised by the bullies. 

I cried, no…  I sobbed so many afternoons after school, so many nights before I went to sleep in preparation for school the next day.  No matter what I did or didn’t do, I couldn’t win.  What friends I had were a comfort, but most of them remained a grade or two ahead of me, and the torment of my classmates was brutal.  I was isolated or labeled or scorned or mocked or whatever struck their fancy that particular day…

And I had completely forgotten.

And I wonder if they all forgot, too.  I wonder if there’s any remorse, not for having treated me the way they did, but for having lost out on a chance to get to know me when they had the chance.  I wonder if they forgive themselves for having been that person some 15+ years ago.  I wonder if they’re still like that.

I wonder if they had the same experience when they went to college, or took their first "real" job.  I wonder if they ever felt the isolation, loneliness and derision that they inflicted on me.

And then I remember that I don’t actually care.  What happened stays happened, and it all served to make me who I am today…  and for the most part, I like who I am.

But it didn’t stop me from feeling like I had been punched in the stomach just for allowing those memories to come back…  for having sought them out.

You know, for the most part, the people who have added me as a "friend" aren’t people who made me a target.  Even if they were, I can forgive.  That was a long time ago and I’m unwilling to revisit things that can’t be changed and happened before by adult life began.

I know, though, that inside and at my core, I’m pretty close to the same person I was in high school.  If that’s typical of people in general, then probably my best stance on the whole thing is pity.  It’s pretty sad to have to live a life where the only way you can feel good about yourself is at the expense of other people.

One year ago was about as horrible as things can get.  My father had just been diagnosed with lung cancer and from there it all went so fast that it really was a complete blur.  For the past few days I’ve been kind of trying to make sense of some of it and just to slow down the blur of memory and trauma that I currently have.

The beginning of 2007 was saying good bye and grieving, but it was also reconnecting with people who were lost or forgotten.  Seeing the love directed toward another person, unabashed, out in the open, without the restrictions that we (and sometimes society) places on us.  It was remembering to not take for granted the people who I love and the people who are there to support me when I am about to fall down.

What I find interesting, though, is that in some ways you would expect that to be indicative of what my year would bring, but it didn’t.  Instead of an increased amount of time with friends and family, I found that it was actually less.  I allowed people to drift away in a natural progression and turned to more of an internal growth.  I believe this had a lot to do with the grief process.

So I fixed the problems that had developed in my career and I worked hard to have a better relationship with my kid and to teach him responsibility.  I turned to making my apartment a home and trying to expand my social circle, to some degree successfully.

I know that I could go back through my blog and find all of the petty annoyances that I’ve dealt with (like warring with UPS and CDTA), but the truth is that after the heart wrenching start to my year and adjusting to having lost my father, everything else really does fall into the category of petty.

I’ve had some victories, though.  Not the least of which is to have been employed for the full calendar year.  It’s one of those things that oughtn’t be a victory, but after the run that I’ve had for longer than I’m willing to count, it’s certainly a nice change of pace.  And a very welcome one.

The one thing, though, that makes me exceptionally sad about this year has been the loss…  the lack of humor.  My father always had a bad joke…  one of the worst you’d ever heard…  and I don’t hear those anymore, from anyone.  It really hit me a few weeks ago when I was riding with one of the cabbies who knew my dad and he asked if I had any bad jokes to share.  It was at that point that I realized how little jokes were told…  at least that I heard; how few people have the ability to turn it into an art without it also being a stage act.  No one tells me jokes anymore…  certainly not the ones that are in exceptionally poor taste or are simply such bad puns that they probably shouldn’t have been told at all.  It takes a special kind of person to do that…  and the only one I know, maybe have ever known is gone.

So I move on.  This year with a little less laughter, a little more stability, a lot more clarity in where I want to go from here.  I move on because what other choice do we have?  I move on, away from the accomplishments and disappointments in the hopes of maybe getting a slightly better balance in the year to come.

Two resolutions for 2008:

1) Be a better ninja to the point where people acknowledge it.  Possibly make IT Ninja an accepted term.

2) Figure out how to reclaim the butterfly mojo and meet new people.

I was writing out some birthday cards to friends out of state this weekend and it got me thinking about how much I really miss writing letters to people.  When I was younger, I had many a pen pal and even held most of my long-distance relationship with my (now ex-) husband via letters, cards and packages.

These days, with friends all over the country, I still send more mail than most, usually in the form of small, strange packages to friends who may need a pick-me-up, but living in the age of email, blogs and social networking, few people respond to such outreaches.

I know I’ve spoken in the past about my love for postcards and how I ask everyone I know who goes on a trip to send me a postcard, but even that is so much less than a well-written (or even just well-meant) letter.  It’s easy to breeze off a few lines of update and say "this is what’s going on", but a real letter takes the time to convey more, I think.  It takes that extra effort and a little bit of care, but few people do it these days.

I stopped, several years ago, sending out holiday cards.  Mostly because my list became unmanageable. I think I make up for it in sending mail to people throughout the year, but a lot of people get missed because I don’t have their address or because they never actually return the favor.  Even Thank You cards have become something that few, if any, really think about anymore, except for the protocol of traditional weddings.

It truly is a lost art, and this couldn’t have been made more clear to me than when I asked Spawn to send a letter or card to his grandmother, who is currently living out of state, while working on a degree.  He didn’t even know how to send or format a personal letter and, despite my attempts to explain it to him, he simply became more reluctant to do it and less receptive to understand it.  He did wind up sending her a birthday card, and writing a thank you note for a birthday gift he received from an out of state family member, both of which were received with surprise and pleasure.

I get excited whenever I get an unexpected card, postcard, package or letter.  I’ve always been exceptionally fond of receiving postal mail, but it seems like it comes less often and farther between.

Why does it have to be an either/or situation, a replacement of something that is meaningful for something that is often careless and not thought out?  I don’t believe that the $.41 is that much of a barrier and, with mailboxes readily available, it’s really not all that difficult to mail a letter.

The immediacy that we demand of our communications, whether it’s free long-distance from our cell phones or an instantaneous email has really lowered the quality of the information that we share with others.  You can’t send stickers in an email, and rarely do we freely poeticize our words on the phone.

I may be old-fashioned in this, but to me, mail is something to be treasured.  I only wish more people would participate in something that is so meaningful that you really have to think about, and hold in your hand before it goes into the recycle bin.

The radio station that I listen to doesn’t do a lot of talk, which is why I listen to it in the morning…  Especially mornings like today.  I don’t want to listen to yelling or callers or even controversy before I’ve had my first cup of coffee.

So I rode into work, dozing in the back of the bus, listening to radio.  I know what day it is and, honestly, I don’t know that I’m ready to write about what happened 6 years ago.  I don’t want to get controversial and political because, for me, 9/11 marked a forced growing up for my son.  And those memories, I’m not ready to share yet.

The DJ didn’t say anything about it being 9/11, he just played the music…  and then he played Tears in Heaven with spliced-in sound bites from the day of the attacks.  It was chilling.  Newscasters, witnesses, family members all spliced in with this heartbreaking song about the worst kind of love and loss.  The last line was George W. Bush stating that we were going to go out there and get the ones who did this to us.

And then he played Peace Train.

And I nearly cried.  And I still mist up a little writing about it.  I think it was possibly the most fitting 9/11 tribute I have ever heard, and no one had to say a word…

After hearing about Princess finding and helping out a stray cat in her building, I started thinking about an old friend of mine who is no longer a part of my life.  However, he has, probably, one of the best stories of any animal that I have ever known.

It was 10 years ago, almost to the day (I remember because the story started about 3 days before my birthday).  A pure black cat, half-Siamese*, wearing a flea collar showed up on our porch and wanted to come in.  He was very friendly and affectionate and one of the most beautiful cats I had ever seen.

We didn’t want to feed him because if you feed a stray, they’ll never leave you alone, so we put out some fresh water for him.  After he showed up for three days straight and we had asked around the neighborhood, no one knew who he belonged to, so we decided to take him in and start the process for finding his family.  He must have had one, since he was wearing a flea collar.  We didn’t want to name him and confuse the poor thing, so we just called him Mr. X (the name stuck).

We put up fliers.  We put an ad in the paper, but no one claimed him.  He was ours, and let me tell you, our tortoiseshell was PISSED, as X was a very presumptuous cat and took over the entire house.  We took him to the vet, got him his shots and took him into our family.

We adored that cat, but he was a lot to handle.  He insisted on going out, though it was against the rules of our neighborhood for him to do so without a leash or tether (neither of which held him).  He was also incredibly social and was well-known about the area.  I think it was close to a year after we took him in that we realized that we couldn’t keep him anymore.  He was just too much.  He terrorized our tortoiseshell, he destroyed the house and he wouldn’t stay inside.

My mother-in-law, Mother Goose, had fallen in love with him and graciously offered to have him come and live with her.

He was very happy with Mother Goose and family, but their toy poodle, Santa K. Merlie, was not as thrilled at having him around.  Like he had done with our cat, he terrorized the poodle, who was significantly smaller than him.  Mr. X would (for example), see Santa sitting on the sidewalk and RUN down the street and over the dog.  Santa would find himself having been passed under the body of the cat and would just shake.

Mr. X knew EVERYONE.  He belonged to the neighborhood.  All the neighbors knew him and would feed him or pet him.  He was a great fellow and everyone loved him…  except the dogs.

But then Mother Goose moved to a condo.  She brought Mr. X with her, but he would go from yard to yard beating up on dogs that were trapped in their respective yards.  The condo residents were, understandably, not happy with this situation and came to complain.  Eventually, Mother Goose realized that Mr. X had to go.

My father-in-law has a cousin who owns a horse farm a few hours away from where they lived.  He checked in with his cousin, who was happy to take in Mr. X, since he needed a good mouse hunter for the barn.

Shortly after Mr. X was shipped off to the farm, he disappeared.  The cousin was a little sad, but also concerned that he might be trying to go back home to Mother Goose’s condo.  A week or so passed, but he never showed up and everyone wondered if he had found another family, but that was not the case.  He had been locked in a horse stall with one of the horses, and they had bonded. 

As a result, Mr. X found himself with a whole new array of horse friends.  He found them to be his equals, from what I hear and even would, from time to time, sleep on the horses backs and even ride them every now and again.

I haven’t heard about him in some time, but I know that he was a very happy cat, living on a horse farm with many equine friends.  And I take a lot of pleasure from the fact that, as passed around as the mystery cat was, he stayed in the family and remained extremely happy.

*The only pure black cats are half-Siamese…  it’s something genetic.  All other black cats are really either very dark brown, have pink noses/paw pads or stray white hairs.  They may also have very dark and subtle tabby markings that you can see in direct light.

Well, my girls were supposed to come up, but bagged because of the weather.  Spawn made an interesting observation that both of our snowstorms this year have been on (pseudo) holidays, so that’s kind of notworthy, though I could certainly go through the full month of April without having to do this again.

So, I’m not a big drinker and I never have been.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ll go out with the boys (since amazingly few of my girls ever drink) and toss ’em back with the best of them.  I’ll let my hair down and cut loose, no problem, but I don’t do it very often by any stretch of the imagination.

But I am a woman of extremes.  I just don’t do things halfway.  I knew what the party was going to be and knew I would have a good time.  What I didn’t know was that afterward we would be going to a bar.  But, still looking for a good time, I wasn’t going to argue or even not go.

Being a woman of extremes, though, even though I intended to leave earlier than the rest of them, I somewhow found myself wandering back into the bar and staying with those leftover and not finished partying until whatever time they pretty much threw us out of the bar.  Probably it would have been around 4.  Maybe a little later.

I’m a lucky one, though.  Despite (or perhaps because of) rarely drinking, I don’t really get hangovers.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a few and they were horrible, but for the most part I don’t let myself dehydrate and I almost always know ahead of time if I’m going to, so I can eat well enough to absorb most of the negatives.  I can also make sure I have the food in the house that I’m going to crave the next day.  I was useless, but not hungover, and I was capable enough to make dinner, which is more than I expected.

Sunday I mostly dozed all day, drinking lots of water and juice and generally not doing much else.

I often find that memorable things that have been said to me come back at appropriate times.  Winter, especially snowy, icy winter, is when I think of Rufus, a Liberian man I worked with probably around 11 years ago now.

He was a nice enough man with an accent I had not heard before.  A hard worker and a kind soul, but not overly memorable.  There are a lot of people I used to work with, in that same place, whose names I don’t remember or whose faces I can no longer recall, but Rufus is someone who will always stand out from that time for me, simply from uttering a phrase.

Our parking lot was gravel and we were in SE Michigan.  When it snowed or iced, the parking lot became downright treacherous, but even worse was the transition from the gravel lot to the smooth, unfinished wooden porch area.  Working the latest shift, we’d often find ourselves leaving work or heading out for lunch in the worst of ground conditions and, because it was the middle of the night, there was no one on site to salt or plow or anything.

Much of the time, people would walk out in pairs, holding onto each other in some hope of stability, but in reality, just taking the other one down with them.  We (all) would find ourselves at various times, just watching people try to get back and forth between the cars and the warehouse.  It was our primary source of winter entertainment while at work.

I never fell, though.  Sure, I slipped and slid, but I never hit the ground in that parking lot.  I took careful, calculated steps and didn’t let anyone hold on to me and pull me down.  People would watch and catcall (all in good fun), but I never did fall on the ice.  (When there wasn’t ice…  or mud…  and the ground was clean and dry…  that’s when I would and still do fall.)  But it wasn’t even that I didn’t fall, it was that I still moved pretty quickly and I didn’t skate across the ice, I picked my feet up off the ground and I walked.

Since I wasn’t any good for slapstick amusement, I became the go-to girl when people forgot something in their car.  I think that part of it was that they were waiting for that moment when I would fall…  that I would finally be "one of them" in that particular aspect. 

One day, Rufus was walking very slowly through the parking lot on his way in.  I had started several rows behind him and was about to pass him.  I slid…  and recovered and kept walking without actually breaking my stride.  He chuckled and said, "You walk like a buffalo."  I, not being from Liberia, was not sure how to take this statement…  was it a compliment, or an insult?  He explained that it meant sure-footed.  That in Liberia to walk like a buffalo is to never lose your balance, to never fall in the mud.  I suppose they don’t get a whole lot of ice in Liberia, but I suppose it translates.

Whenever I walk in icy, slick conditions now I think of Rufus and walking like a buffalo.  And, you know, I rarely fall (when the conditions are slippery).

This week, it’s all about hearts and flowers.  It’s about pink and red and chocolates, but other than the generalized annoyance of the holiday-based inundation of advertising, I’ve been relatively unaffected.

I keep seeing other blog entries about memorable Valentine’s Days and I participate in conversations about plans or the lack thereof, but still, I’m neither in a frenzy nor a funk about it.

There are many holidays that I enjoy thoroughly and actively look forward to (or dread, depending).  Thanksgiving, Hallowe’en, Christmas, Independence Day, but Valentine’s Day is not on my list at all.  I’d even go so far as to say, it’s not really on my radar other than the aforementioned inundations.  In fact, for my part, I think that New Year’s Eve is the most romantic holiday of all of them.  I’ve had some memoriably romantic NYE’s.

It’s not that I actively dislike Valentine’s Day, I’m merely apathetic.  It’s not that I’m not a romantic, either, far from it, but upon reflection, I can’t think of a single memorable Valentine’s Day that I’ve had.  Ever.

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I have mentioned, I’m sure, that lately I’ve felt like certain aspects of my past are catching up with me.  I’m still not entirely sure what that means, exactly, but it keeps happenning.  I can’t think of another time when so many things from years ago came up all at once.

I’ve been seeing people from my old workplace, my first IT job.  I see them all over the place, not always, or even often, in the area where we worked.  Sometimes it’s a happy catching up, other times it’s a little sad to see how things have gone for them.  I haven’t always been able to place them…  out of context is hard sometimes, but they usually remember me first.
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When I was little I had a book called Owl at Home.  It must have been my brother’s book, since I would have been around 7 when it first came out, but it was one of my favorites for a long time - well after I could read past that level and one of my favorite stories was Tearwater Tea. 

If you click the book link above, you’ll be taken to a page that talks a good bit about Tearwater Tea better than anything I could say now, at 4am, but that’s something else entirely.  I often find myself thinking about Owl, oftentimes after crying, but also when the moon follows me home

It never occurs to me to catch my tears in a kettle.  It never occurs to me to catch them in anything, at least not until after I’m done.

Owl said the tea was very salty.  I believe him, but I’d also kind of like to try it for myself.