Yes; Here I am again, with another blog for all of you. I have no clue how many readers I ever get, or how many of you ever read any of them, let alone all of them... However, keeping-up with the comments left on all of them (which I do my human best with) shows me that even those of you who have pretended to my face to care about me for my entire life, right on down to those of you who've only known me since I was 18 (if that long) &, despite lack of a criminal record, continue to decide I don't deserve to be treated like a human, let alone an adult... Anyway, seems you love these blogs, as it gives you a chance to comment. (Sorry; I passed Latin in high school, but was unaware :"comment" was from the older-language word-origin for "rip the author to shreds like you were running a cheese-grater on his face".)
Sorry; That was there for all of you to see, but actually directed at the vast minority of you. (No need to name them, or write further things I considered posting that would've been rather personal; They know who they are.) Instead, let me get past that, & refer to what this blog is meant to be about... Let me mention what happened on September 11th.
Now, I'm not going to mention what happened on September 11th some 13 years ago; Yes, I was alive, & very-much recall it. However, if you don't, odds are you're trying not to, or you're too young to know. (In that case, I will treat you like my nephews, who have never heard a word on a list of them my sister instructed me not to use around "my kids".) I'm referring to what happened on the 11th of this month this year.
I woke up relatively-early. (I had no appointments, but I had some things I wanted to accomplish over much of last week.) The show I started watching first bored me, but being my father's son (which may mean nothing to anyone in 49 states), I turned-on "Mike & Mike" on one of the ESPN channels. They were both there, as was a third man I thought might have been one of the channel's "NFL analysts". Therefore, I was all set to hear them talk about the upcoming/recently-passed Steelers-Ravens game.
Instead, however, the camera did a close-up on "Greenie" (what Golic often calls Greenberg). As I alluded to earlier in this blog, I literally grew up around sporting venues, so I was prepared to hear him talk about any sport (even some we don't play in the States). Instead, he went into a long, spoken piece about the events of that day over a dozen years ago.
Needless to say, this upset me. I now don't care to relive any of the Ravens-Steelers game, & would bet any fellow Steelers fan would agree. I also don't care to relive much of the year 2001 (the year I graduated high school & was diagnosed Diabetic, & some connection to Kubrick that I've never read/heard/seen), & I feel safe to bet nobody would disagree with me on that one, especially when it comes to that specific day.
It got to the point that the camera went wide again, showing all 3 men. I recalled the old movie “Airheads”, most of which happens in a radio station while the DJ is on the air, & kept waiting for someone to enter the room or speak into his headset, telling Mike G. nobody was in the mood to talk-or-hear about this… I won’t say it never happened, but I will say that if it did, I never saw it.
Instead, I sat there, jaw literally dropped, wondering why Greenberg (who I’ve honestly felt was the smarter of the 2) would decide to talk about that for as long as he did, continuing to make that choice each time he paused. I furthermore wondered why everyone in/on that staff would choose to allow him. (Dad’s done a lot on radio & TV, so I know they have “powers that be” telling them if-&-when they can/can’t say things.)
Finally, I mentally corrected myself… I’m not aware of anyone I knew through “Six Degrees Of” anyone or anything that was killed or even hurt that day. But what if I had been?! What if I was related to the guy once famous for his “Let’s roll” line that I once saw plastered on hats after that day? Wouldn’t I want to know that he wasn’t forgotten since then? For every bit what the ESPN guy said upset me, it may have made someone in his family feel better.
Eventually deciding I didn’t want to think about that day, or even anything connected to it (again using the famous “Six Degrees…” bit), I thought about something else, something I think about a ton: “When is the next one?” I don’t have a clue when the next strike by a terrorist “cell” or anything is (nor do I want to), & I know my next doctor’s appointment isn’t for another two weeks (even if you’re counting it as Monday now, it’s 2 weeks from tomorrow).
But I wasn’t thinking about either of those; I wondered when the next big, national anniversary is.
I remember 1996 or 1997, I was a Freshman in high school. Columbus Day was approaching, & we were all in “Homeroom”. My Homeroom teacher was a great guy named Mr. Andrews. He was never my Science teacher, but he had taught my best friend & my sister. That day, he taught me something my alma mater may not want you to know about: We were (at the time) supposed to get a day off each for Columbus Day & the upcoming “Teacher In-Service”, but the school District was being sneaky & giving us “1 as 2”…
Anyway, I tried to remember when the next big holiday is. I thought of a bunch of them in no special order, but it made me think of something else. (I keep wishing my neuro- guys could tell me why/how my brain does things like this.) Non-specific, I know we have some holidays we celebrate on a famous person’s birthday. Others, we celebrate on the day they died, or the day they made their first big contribution to “the world at large”. Others, we celebrate/remember the day they died. (In the words of Billy Joel, “JFK. Blown away…”.) Then there’s those 2 Presidents in February, neither of whom get their own individual day, & the day they share is within 2 weeks of a day set aside for groundhogs!!! [If you ask me, that’s just not ferret!! :)]
Briefly mentioning the people/stuff I wrote about at the start of this (about the things others wrote at the end of the last one), I’ve written it a million times, & said it to the other 3 members of my oft-referred-to “family of 4”: You’ll find no bigger defender of one’s right to their opinion than me. The only requirements I have are you have to admit that’s all it is, & return the favor by giving me the same rights/freedoms.
With that, I’m off until if/when I feel like writing again… Remember, on- or offline, I have the (“right”? or “freedom”? Call it both) to be silent any time I want.
Sunday, September 14, 2014
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
”Try To Remember”
I'm admittedly embarrassed how regular this is becoming for me, but I feel the need to start this blog with some confessions.
1] I wrote the beginning of the last blog (about the "30 days..." & all that) thinking it was this month. The truth is I have trouble remembering when August ends, which I think itself is proven in the fact I didn't know at the time it hadn't ended yet. (My sister's birthday is in August, & her eldest son's in September, which I think is the work of her, some deity, or both, to just continue to mess with me for an undetermined number of future years.)
2] I have problems with my hearing aid.
It is Number 2 that I admit was not in the original draft of this blog, but which I instead feel the need to concentrate a bit on now...
The first problem is that it is indeed a "hearing aid" in both the good & bad meanings of the phrase... Yes, I heard everything my sister said to me at my nephew's soccer game yesterday, but I also heard whistles being blown due to the events of a half-dozen neighboring games; I took my camera along in my pocket, hoping to perhaps get an "action shot" of my nephew, but found no time to do so, as it seems a bit ironic his best action moments were often when I'd put my camera back in my pocket due to thinking the game paused after a whistle-blow (which I learned had actually happened in another game).
The second problem is that I was given (& took) the option of having one with a volume-control on it. However, when you increase the volume of nearby relatives, you also increase the volume of everyone else at the game/at the burger joint/in the county. (It also has the noise-eliminator switch; But I can never remember if that's in the "On" or "Off" position, & attempting to correct hitting it by mistake resets both of these functions, making it a pain in my ear & my rear simultaneously.)
Regardless, one final admission for this blog, one to be included today because it only happened about 4 hours ago: I remove the aid from my ear... I do this when I hear TV & other people fine, when I prefer to lay on my bed/couch while watching TV, or when I just don't want to hear what you have to say.
It is the last one that happened most-recently. I initially regretted asking my audiologist for the volume-control on my aid, realizing that most of my family talks either incessantly or not at all. (We all have cell phones & wireless "mice", I think each largely due to this knowledge about ourselves.) This meant that by the time I decided if what someone was saying was something I wished to hear or not, it would've reached a point of "Might as well just get this over with now." (Honestly the same attitude I had partway through my MRI a week ago, during which I wore no hearing aid or headphones, meaning it caused the 2 simultaneous pains I mentioned earlier.)
Anyhow, today I slowly (so my elder parent & neurologist could/would notice) removed the aid from my ear & the battery from the aid, before placing both in my back pocket. While I considered it (honestly) more times than I can recall/could count, I never went through with the step of exiting the "exam room" while my Mom & the "doctor" (I have voiced to the former my doubts that the latter even graduated high school) talked.
"WHY?!”, you may ask. I did the Math (literally) in the time it took me to exhale, & the answer goes back about half-my-life ago. Both parents came with me to a doctor's appointment. Being that it was my first (&, as I recall now, only ever) appointment with that person, it didn't bother me at all when the first bunch of questions went to my parents, as they were literally about my first year-or-so of life.
However, while I admit to the fact/idea that I "live improv" (to the point my aforementioned nephew sometimes says it at the same time I do), Mom is what was once termed a "creature of habit" (to the point you could cryogenically freeze her in the middle of making her Breakfast tomorrow, & when you thaw her in 50 years, she'll continue making that same bowl of Cheerios as if the only time that passed was her waiting for someone to finish leaving a message on the answering machine).
PLEASE, don't get me wrong; I've known both/each of these "statii" a while. (I remain unaware of the proper plural.) What I'd failed to recognize was the ability it/they had to make me pay later...
You see, while my tendency to "improv(ise)" seems to often find me with a memory well-stocked with past experiences & more-school-based knowledge (both of which the tendency would by definition view as useless/pointless), Mom's "present-based-on-past" way of living seems to leave little-if-any room for new knowledge. What I mean by this is she seems to often remember things that (in the case of me , anyway) happened decades ago as if they were yesterday, & also remember things that happened the prior day or week in ways they never actually happened.
That wouldn’t bother me at all, except that I once again find myself relying on her in many situations, ones that I’m hypothetically betting will prove important somewhat-later in my life. As I believe I mentioned in a recent blog, I’m not feeling all that great overall, so I’m basically aiming to live…Well that’s honestly it; To coin the phrase once made famous by The Script &/or Kris Allen, “Live without dying”. For example, yesterday, I grabbed 2 cans of “Beanee Weenees” off the shelf at the Dollar General Market, & while putting them in my cart, said (admittedly right out loud), “SCORE!!” (This is also the reason I’m trying to see as much of as many of my nephew’s soccer games as I can, though the fields seem to have maintained the ability to “mud up” that they had when my best friend played there almost a quarter-century.)
Yesterday was a meeting with a representative from my new-this-year insurance, & today was a meeting with my most-recent neurologist, brother of my never-operated-on-me neurosurgeon. [I feel it needs noting the latter sent me to the former previously, who then put me at different times on 2 different anti-seizure medications, each of which literally reached my house, at which time we saw they had warnings related to not taking them if you had medical issues I had… Needless to say, the “-surgeon” put me on a different one, saying he wouldn’t ever operate on me unless I took it; I have for a year, & still no operation, which I personally feel (as the person living through each day’s problems) is an inevitable necessity.]
Anyhow, not only am I trying to have as many positive experiences as I can control, but I am (to be blunt) purposefully forgetting many of the seizures & other oft-occurring problems of each week… Which is why I take Mom into the rooms with me, hoping she’ll recall them… But it is ironically only this action that leads me to learn she is recalling them incorrectly. (The fact is, legal adult & first-person experience-er or not, I can shake my head all I want, but since I admittedly have little-if-any recall of how a specific instance did happen, any attempt at correction or talking over her would only leave me in a potentially-worse situation.)
1] I wrote the beginning of the last blog (about the "30 days..." & all that) thinking it was this month. The truth is I have trouble remembering when August ends, which I think itself is proven in the fact I didn't know at the time it hadn't ended yet. (My sister's birthday is in August, & her eldest son's in September, which I think is the work of her, some deity, or both, to just continue to mess with me for an undetermined number of future years.)
2] I have problems with my hearing aid.
It is Number 2 that I admit was not in the original draft of this blog, but which I instead feel the need to concentrate a bit on now...
The first problem is that it is indeed a "hearing aid" in both the good & bad meanings of the phrase... Yes, I heard everything my sister said to me at my nephew's soccer game yesterday, but I also heard whistles being blown due to the events of a half-dozen neighboring games; I took my camera along in my pocket, hoping to perhaps get an "action shot" of my nephew, but found no time to do so, as it seems a bit ironic his best action moments were often when I'd put my camera back in my pocket due to thinking the game paused after a whistle-blow (which I learned had actually happened in another game).
The second problem is that I was given (& took) the option of having one with a volume-control on it. However, when you increase the volume of nearby relatives, you also increase the volume of everyone else at the game/at the burger joint/in the county. (It also has the noise-eliminator switch; But I can never remember if that's in the "On" or "Off" position, & attempting to correct hitting it by mistake resets both of these functions, making it a pain in my ear & my rear simultaneously.)
Regardless, one final admission for this blog, one to be included today because it only happened about 4 hours ago: I remove the aid from my ear... I do this when I hear TV & other people fine, when I prefer to lay on my bed/couch while watching TV, or when I just don't want to hear what you have to say.
It is the last one that happened most-recently. I initially regretted asking my audiologist for the volume-control on my aid, realizing that most of my family talks either incessantly or not at all. (We all have cell phones & wireless "mice", I think each largely due to this knowledge about ourselves.) This meant that by the time I decided if what someone was saying was something I wished to hear or not, it would've reached a point of "Might as well just get this over with now." (Honestly the same attitude I had partway through my MRI a week ago, during which I wore no hearing aid or headphones, meaning it caused the 2 simultaneous pains I mentioned earlier.)
Anyhow, today I slowly (so my elder parent & neurologist could/would notice) removed the aid from my ear & the battery from the aid, before placing both in my back pocket. While I considered it (honestly) more times than I can recall/could count, I never went through with the step of exiting the "exam room" while my Mom & the "doctor" (I have voiced to the former my doubts that the latter even graduated high school) talked.
"WHY?!”, you may ask. I did the Math (literally) in the time it took me to exhale, & the answer goes back about half-my-life ago. Both parents came with me to a doctor's appointment. Being that it was my first (&, as I recall now, only ever) appointment with that person, it didn't bother me at all when the first bunch of questions went to my parents, as they were literally about my first year-or-so of life.
However, while I admit to the fact/idea that I "live improv" (to the point my aforementioned nephew sometimes says it at the same time I do), Mom is what was once termed a "creature of habit" (to the point you could cryogenically freeze her in the middle of making her Breakfast tomorrow, & when you thaw her in 50 years, she'll continue making that same bowl of Cheerios as if the only time that passed was her waiting for someone to finish leaving a message on the answering machine).
PLEASE, don't get me wrong; I've known both/each of these "statii" a while. (I remain unaware of the proper plural.) What I'd failed to recognize was the ability it/they had to make me pay later...
You see, while my tendency to "improv(ise)" seems to often find me with a memory well-stocked with past experiences & more-school-based knowledge (both of which the tendency would by definition view as useless/pointless), Mom's "present-based-on-past" way of living seems to leave little-if-any room for new knowledge. What I mean by this is she seems to often remember things that (in the case of me , anyway) happened decades ago as if they were yesterday, & also remember things that happened the prior day or week in ways they never actually happened.
That wouldn’t bother me at all, except that I once again find myself relying on her in many situations, ones that I’m hypothetically betting will prove important somewhat-later in my life. As I believe I mentioned in a recent blog, I’m not feeling all that great overall, so I’m basically aiming to live…Well that’s honestly it; To coin the phrase once made famous by The Script &/or Kris Allen, “Live without dying”. For example, yesterday, I grabbed 2 cans of “Beanee Weenees” off the shelf at the Dollar General Market, & while putting them in my cart, said (admittedly right out loud), “SCORE!!” (This is also the reason I’m trying to see as much of as many of my nephew’s soccer games as I can, though the fields seem to have maintained the ability to “mud up” that they had when my best friend played there almost a quarter-century.)
Yesterday was a meeting with a representative from my new-this-year insurance, & today was a meeting with my most-recent neurologist, brother of my never-operated-on-me neurosurgeon. [I feel it needs noting the latter sent me to the former previously, who then put me at different times on 2 different anti-seizure medications, each of which literally reached my house, at which time we saw they had warnings related to not taking them if you had medical issues I had… Needless to say, the “-surgeon” put me on a different one, saying he wouldn’t ever operate on me unless I took it; I have for a year, & still no operation, which I personally feel (as the person living through each day’s problems) is an inevitable necessity.]
Anyhow, not only am I trying to have as many positive experiences as I can control, but I am (to be blunt) purposefully forgetting many of the seizures & other oft-occurring problems of each week… Which is why I take Mom into the rooms with me, hoping she’ll recall them… But it is ironically only this action that leads me to learn she is recalling them incorrectly. (The fact is, legal adult & first-person experience-er or not, I can shake my head all I want, but since I admittedly have little-if-any recall of how a specific instance did happen, any attempt at correction or talking over her would only leave me in a potentially-worse situation.)
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