Pyrian on 28/4/2019 at 05:59
I read that. I shudder to think what I might've done to someone who killed an animal I was caring for.
Tocky on 28/4/2019 at 07:24
I was ten and he eighteen. He had gone back to Memphis and I wouldn't see him till his mom's funeral when I was in my late teens. I let it go. I couldn't quite forgive him but I tried to be adult about things. People change sometimes and I hoped he had. I'm not sure that we should but we tend to give a greater leeway to family. I took it hard that day. I might have tried to beat him if he were around then. As it was I had to let it go. But you don't really do you? Some resentment lingers. Some watchfulness over a callous disregard for life as well. It was a damned strange thing to do.
PigLick on 28/4/2019 at 10:12
"left the entertaining to his wife while he drank alone in his garage"
for some reason I found this quite profound and I'm not sure why.
Tocky on 20/5/2019 at 04:39
It's like he was bi polar and at a certain point tried to erase himself. I forgive him. I know it doesn't sound like it but what else can I do? But you think about what they did and how it made you who you are. For instance I've always been ashamed I flunked algebra in college. But the thing is I went wonky on math early on. I was good at it at first. I wasn't the best but I was up there. Then came sixth grade. It's the grade I made the core of my lifelong friends in. It's also the one where I developed my math hiccup. I look at a problem and panic. Even simple ones. It doesn't matter that I really know the theorem or rule, I still can't see it until I can calm myself. The only thing I can liken it to is my claustrophobia. I know the roof of a cave won't fall in but I can't tell my brain that. I don't know where my claustrophobia came from, childbirth I suppose, but I know where my math hiccup came from. Ms Reid.
She was a natural born mean person. Loved to inflict pain. And she was good at it. Best I've ever seen. I've had my share of paddlings, sort of a connoisseur, and I know. Never one to exactly follow the rules, I've had belt lashings, paddlings with those hole filled ones, and peach tree limbs. Nobody could hold a candle to Ms Reid. Nobody.
I had been lucky until that morning I was the only one to get a problem right. I kept my head down, never volunteer, never raise a hand, but your turn comes. Oh I had seen her find some excuse to beat kids and figured I knew how to avoid it by being meek. It's the tall grass that gets mowed. You couldn't make yourself small enough for her though. I slipped up without even knowing I had. I had such a fear of public speaking. We were sent three at a time to write our homework problems on the board and wouldn't you know I got the hard one. I had done it and correctly and faithfully chalked my numbers on the board. I was the only one who had gotten it. I sat back down and heaved a sigh. It was done and I made it. But no. She called on me, just me, to go to the board and explain to the rest of the class my reasoning. Oh god. Just me before the class. I sat and explained it from my seat. Not good enough. Somehow I stood and walked to the board and explained in detail every step. I made it. I overcame my fear and spoke by just concentrating on each step. I went and sat back down after she had said I could. Thank god that was over. I was even proud of myself for a fleeting moment.
Go wait in the hall. Huh? Was she talking to me? Go wait in the hall. Why? What did I do? You know. No I don't. What did I do? You rolled your eyes when you got up to speak to the class. Oh Jesus. She was right. I had. Like a horse upon glimpsing a snake, I had rolled my eyes in fear. She thought it was in some defiance. But I didn't mean to. You did. Go wait in the hall. There was only one thing that meant. There was only one thing to do. Go wait in the hall. My turn. She never accepted explanations no matter how valid. I could only hope it wouldn't be bad. I had seen the tears in the eyes of those who had come back after those loud licks. I was tough. Tougher than the others. She wouldn't get that out of me. I would show her. I had done good. I had no reason for punishment and I would be damned if there would be tears in my eyes when I came back in class. I went to wait in the hall.
I was a determined little bastard. I knew there was nothing for this but to live through it. I was not going to cry out as I had heard others do. No matter how bad I would stay silent. That would be my way of defeating her. I would come back into class dry eyed never having made a sound. All the others had come back with wet cheeks but not me. She took forever to come into the hall.
There was no point trying to explain to her. I knew that. It wasn't explanation she wanted. The only words she said were bend over and grab your ankles. She drew out that first lick. She knew all the tricks, both psychological and physical. She was practiced and in retrospect I can admire the expertise of it. The first lick had to be a surprise both in timing and in shocking violence. Your mind is still looking for an out and hoping it won't be as bad as you imagine. Just when I was thinking she must be occupied in something else the lick landed. Like a musical note that had waited a beat and a half too long it was unexpected. It knocked me forward so quickly and with such force I had to catch myself to keep from landing on my face. I was in push up position. To add insult to injury she said "oh come on, I didn't hit you that hard". She had. I had never felt anything so painful in my life. Every nerve in my ass was on fire. I've never felt anything as painful since either.
Ah but she had a new trick I had not heard her do before. She would tap me five or six times between each hard lick to keep my nerve endings burning just on the edge of unbearable before each hard lick that made me stumble. Each lick I thought could not be worse and yet it was. There really isn't any point in describing it. Nothing would come close. Maybe I should have cried out. Maybe if she thought she had broken me the following licks wouldn't have been so hard. She went the full five and gave me a surprise sixth. I survived.
She told me to take a moment to get my self together and then come back and take my seat. That felt like an insult too. It's true I had to tuck my shirt back into my pants and fight the pain down but it was a humiliation too. I was going to be tough. I didn't know. I hadn't made a sound, true enough, but my eyes were welling with tears and there was nothing I could do about it. I tried as hard as I could. I hated her for that most of all. They would see my eyes wet and red. They would see the pain and humiliation in them. They would know she had bested me. Even Karen who had a crush on me. I sat right behind her. Those eyes full of pity and me unable to even fake a decent smile. Even the sitting was a thousand bees stinging me.
When I saw blood on my underwear I checked myself in the mirror the next day and discovered I had blood blisters and bruises on a wide swath of my ass. I knew that wasn't normal but I kept quiet about it. I threw those underwear away. It was over. I even forgot about it so much later that month that my mom caught sight of them when I was changing one morning. They had long since scabbed over and were healing but I suppose they looked pretty bad still. I tried to get them to just let it go. I had. I thought. But no, they had to go to the school and raise a fuss. Nobody else had made a fuss. One thing a kid doesn't want is to be singled out. I found out years later that dad had even called her a drunk. Apparently he knew some dirt on her. I was so afraid others would think I had told. I needn't have worried. She was as worried as me that others would find out.
She treated me with a snide contempt the rest of the year as if I were some sort of weakling. She said things like "take your time" and "we wouldn't want you upset" and even made a show of paying students to give them a lick with her paddle as if she hit them as hard as she did me. She didn't but she was sick enough to hit them hard- normal hard- and nobody took her up on a second lick. I didn't take her up on those licks. I didn't trust her. Just the thought of her made me sick to my stomach. She ruined math for me. My grades suffered. They picked up the next year but I don't think I ever averaged more than a B again. It took me twice as long to take tests after that. I would get this awful trepidation.
I might have squeaked by with a passing grade in Algebra 101 if I had made that last test. If I had gotten a seat near the front so I could hear half the things said that would have been good too. It's true I was still heart sick over Laurie. It's true I had a first time student teacher. It's true I partied too much and didn't give it my all because I knew I could cram and make A's and B's like I had in high school. But you can't skate math. Those page long problems don't solve themselves. Nothing rote about it. Aside from theorems there is nothing to memorize. But I blame Reid too. Maybe I wouldn't have panicked and blew off that last test and lost my scholarship otherwise. I knew it was a third of my grade and couldn't bring myself to go to class that morning. But I wouldn't have met my wife and had the family I do either. I wouldn't change that for any grade.
I failed though. I let her defeat me. I let math defeat me. I thought for a time I would pick up a book and learn it all backwards and forwards just for myself but I must have been well and truly whipped. I never have.
Tocky on 5/8/2019 at 05:09
All of the following is just rambling thought but it bumps the thread up and maybe next time it will be a coherent story.
I went to my fortieth high school reunion recently. I wanted to see Steve. He was always a better friend to me than I was him. He laughed at all the stupid shit I did and said. We shared each others science fiction books and talked of the plots. A book club of two. If he was in a class I sat next to him. But honestly I found him a shade too boring. I liked the excitement of the stoners, the bikers, the girls. So many areas we just did not overlap. We didn't hang out much after school. About the only time we had was when I was in football and we killed time at a burger shop before a game. Then my knee started to act funny. There was this exercise where you lay on your back in full pads on the ground and at a whistle you got up as quick as you could because there was a guy running at you full speed and you had to bring him down or be run over. Pretty brutal but kind of fun. My left knee would give way when I was hit. I digress. I quit in my sophomore year. My knee got better for thirty years. Then it started wanting to drop me again. I collect canes. One day I may use them.
But I like Steve. It's always fun to catch up with him at these things. Unlike me he made a career of the Air Force. Avionics technician. He has been all over including Colorado Springs which we had just come back from. I made him laugh with all my stories of why I'm no longer in the Air Force. He made me laugh with his stories of squeaking by in it. Bill Murray was right. Service stories are great stories. But I noticed Karen didn't come sit with us like she had done at other reunions. We were all sort of grouped together alphabetically in school and were friends. She usually came over.
But Mary Lou came over. I braced myself for another horror story of Laurie which thankfully didn't come. Instead she talked of her mothers passing. I hadn't seen it in the papers until she was buried. I would have gone. I liked her mother. I saw her eyes tear up as she spoke of her so I told her something nobody knew. Not long after Laurie and I had broken up I called and talked to her mom, going over my feelings and everything I had done wrong. I was lost as to how to break my feelings off and she helped. We both made fun of my treacly deep forever teen love and she got me to laugh at myself but in a sweet and sentimental way. Mary Lou was grateful for my revelation. She then told me Laurie and her had not spoken since the funeral. Why? She had blamed her for everything that had gone wrong in her life. I didn't understand but wasn't sure I wanted to so I just said that no, only one person is responsible for that and it isn't you. I saw gratitude again but damn it she had made me wonder about Laurie again. How was her son doing after Afghanistan? He was a spook at Langley now. Whoa. In a weird way that made sense. A truth seeker. What is hard to get becomes obsession. I figure it was hard to get truth out of his mother. Perhaps. I mean, what the hell do I know?
Later my wife, who had also noted Karen's distance, pulled me aside and filled me in. She had talked to Steve's wife on the sly. Turns out Steve had been corresponding with Karen on the computer. All friendly stuff until it started getting too friendly. He was caught at it and turned his computer over to his wife. Something similar had happened to me. One of my wife's friends had been coming on to me, telling me what she was doing to herself in the tub over the phone, a torture some like to do to married guys, so I turned the phone over to my wife. Ended that right quick. But Steve's wife pretended to be Steve to see how far Karen would take it. All the way. So a bit of a schism in the old gang. Ouch. I felt badly for Karen and surprised at Steve. He was less the fuddy dud than I thought. Things you would never imagine happen. They happen all the time, even at our age. At least it wasn't me this time. I haven't the testosterone for that crap anymore. Not that I have ever been the sort. Nooooo Mr. feelings here.
Talking to Mary Lou got me to wondering what Laurie's son looked like. I occasionally wondered what our children would have, provided she didn't ditch me every other month, and I could prove they were mine. But hell, people do change, small adjustments anyway, and there is always Facebook these days. I had already let several of my classmates friend me so surely some of them were her friend and I could check out her page. Originally I only let my best friends and family on my page but hell, it got to be I felt like an ass not friending back. Anyway I found her page. Not much of interest there. Just pictures of her mostly, no family, no friends. She was still pretty, damn her. It confirmed to me my worst instincts about her self-centeredness. She bragged on her Mercedes and her business trips but little of human interaction... except for one guy she was seeing. To me it seemed grooming behavior but there was one saving grace. In a shot of him smiling she had written "love that happy smile". Hmmm maybe she has grown and does care how others feel. Maybe. Maybe he won't just be for awhile like all the rest. I hope she finds real love and learns to give it after all.
That once was enough stalking for me though. There hasn't been any drastic change. I'm sure she hasn't thought of me a half dozen times in all these years anyway. That's just the way that works. The dumpers never think about the dumped. Thank heavens things happened exactly as they did though. Life has been a lovely trip. I doubt I could say that had we stayed together. I sometimes think it would be fun to find out every little detail of her life and tell her every little detail of mine since we parted but I'm certain she wouldn't be interested. Too bad because there was some funny stuff in mine and I'm sure there would be things in hers I would find interesting but then people are more of my kind of thing. I love them. They are what make life for me. Even you reading this now. I love you for your uniqueness. I want to hear what makes you the way you are.
Recently I had a birthday. I'm 58 now. Every day I look in the mirror and think how did I get so damned ugly. They gave me a party and most gave typical gifts but not my daughter. She is the heart of my heart. She gave me a medieval helm and low "The Search for the Holy Grail" references were on. The black knight never loses! Come back! I'll bite your kneecaps off! The next day she took me out for Japanese hibachi and we joked with the cook about vegetables all the way from the far east... of town exotic Kroger. A cutup cutup cook he was. Then she took me for ice cream the way I had her as a girl and reminded me of our times together. We finished with a stop at Square Books where I took her as a youngster and we always discussed ideas and authors. We still do. Everything from the space program to southern authors making a living from just being southern. All the wonderful authors we've met there from Larry Brown to Charles Frazier. And one named Chico Harris who I had read all through my life from articles in The Daily Mississippian to a weekly rag called Oxford Town till the one he puts out now called The Local Voice. I could not believe they did not have his book "Dear Tonda" at Square Books. I've given him rides when he was hitching, I've written him about various articles he and Jim Dees have done, I've supported his arguments on Facebook, I've met him at my daughters art shows, but not yet gotten his book somehow and they did not have it at Square Books. Sacrilege. So after this disappointment we went to take pictures of the new mural in Oxford. My daughters mural in Houston had just been written up beautifully in Mud and Magnolias magazine. My heart soars for and with this girl, my Knot-head.
I had forgotten the book "Dear Tonda" when I get a call to come by. My daughter has picked it up signed personal by Chico. What in hell would I do in life without my girl? Things could have gone so different and yet I lucked out like I deserved it or something. As the redneck song writer Garth Brooks said, thank God for unanswered prayers. Thank God Laurie and I did not stay together any longer than we did. I am the luckiest bastard who ever lived.
Gray on 9/8/2019 at 20:01
Quote Posted by Tocky
In fifty years we will be so mixed the racist crap will be gone.
That was always my hope, and I'm looking forward to it.
Quote Posted by Tocky
Of course then everyone will hate blondes so you are still screwed.
HEY! Just because I shave my head it doesn't make me not blonde. On behalf of this much ridiculed minority, I'd like to extend to you the most sincere "screw up". Wait, is that how it goes? Hang on... :erm:
Mr.Duck on 11/8/2019 at 05:15
I thought the screwed Caucasian minority were redheads.
:3
Derp, derp.
Tocky on 12/8/2019 at 04:25
Well I'm sure they get their share.
Screw up has always worked for me. Here then is some screw ups on the Buffalo river.
The Buffalo is a swift running river that cuts through rocky canyons it has carved itself over no telling how many thousands of years in middle Tennessee near the town of Waynesboro. You rent a canoe and leisurely glide down it if the water is low or fight for your life if it is high just after a rain. Picture the river in the movie Deliverance and you have a good idea. Hell, it even has the same name as that one in Arkansas. There is a spot to camp and head out early in the morn so you get time to see and do everything before the pickup point far downriver. There are waterfalls and rope swings and points to cliff dive and lots and lots of bends.
My wife and I are not everyone's cup of tea. You have to be able to take a lot of directness and passion about every little thing. We can be loving to an embarrassing degree or angry to the same degree within a period of five minutes. We always overlook the anger and never think about what others think of us. I have no idea how we work but we do. Love I guess. Nevertheless we have many friends that have gone with us to this very place. One of them a couple I worked with once upon a time. We camped and drank and smoked and told stories around the fire and laughed and departed to our separate tents. Being passionate we made love on the air mattress in ours. I say make love like it is some tender thing. No. Imagine monkey's throwing bowling balls and dancing to heavy metal music. We are not real good at control and through the thin skin of a tent I'm sure there is little left to the imagination.
Rena asks "do you reckon they heard us?" after. Well hell yes. We knocked the damn plug out of the air mattress fuck sake. So after that embarrassment she has to go pee. Only the damn street light illuminates our camp spot really well. We have to go between their tent and the woods. There is no other spot out of sight, no camp designated latrine except at the nearby store which is closed, and there are tents all over same as us. We are very drunk. Staggering in fact. I only notice this when I have to hold her hands as she squats. Hurry they may come out for some reason. There is only maybe eight feet between us and the woods and she at first squats nearly on their tent. You can't wet the side of their tent crissakes! They are a young party hard couple like us but there is a limit to even lax decorum. I'm sure they heard us. You know how drunks try to whisper things? Yeah. Like that.
So she goes. I know they hear. Worse, I notice the streetlight across the way makes a shadow of her bare ass on their tent. Jesus I'm amused. Then when she is pulling up her shorts she goes stumbling into one of their tent poles. Oh hey, just in case you missed anything, here is a bell ringing TING as one of her many rings connects with the metal pole. Not that anyone could sleep through our laughter. So we go to bed and sleep like children until dawn. At breakfast we act as if we have done nothing wrong though the other couple is a tad more subdued than previously.
We get out on the river and it is swollen from recent rains. It even sprinkles on us for a time after we push off. My cousin and her husband have driven up to join us and we get into a splash fight with our paddles while my work friends slip farther up stream. I even took pictures of this. The river is so swift we have a hard time paddling to the waterfall which is on a tributary just off the main river. We get there as my work friends are leaving. We do the usual picture posing before going back to narrow channels of whiter water. I want to catch up and keep our group together so I paddle a bit harder.
There are some deadfalls where the bank has given way and a random tree has fallen in that we have to go around. With the river rushing like it is some dodging is difficult. We see other couples hit and tip over. So many lost six packs of beer must tumble along the bottom of that river. I even had one of my buds tell me his canoe went down one time and just never came up so he swam to shore and walked back to get another. You always see somebody turn over. It just can't be helped at times.
Around one particularly sharp bend where the river has eaten out the rock wall there is a dead tree middle of it nearly against the wall. We have seen others ahead tip and fall there. We have also seen couples get out and walk their canoes across a sandy peninsula just before it to keep from having to go around it. I figure as long as we keep to the inside of the flow we will make it around fine. But I can never get my wife to paddle on the right side of the canoe at the right time. I can't even correct her on it most of the time because she takes such offense.
In this curve is a tree at water level skinned white of bark and slick as a beaver chew. It has also been chainsawed into of a section for a gap of about five feet center of the curve. The navigation does not go as planned. As a matter of fact the gap is drawing water so hard it is a suction for anything afloat. It pulls our canoe into it. We sure don't want to go through it and end up against the rock wall because it is eaten out below water level and will tilt our craft down and under and maybe us with it. Our only shot is to push off against the tree itself. I'm already pushing off on the aft section and I tell Rena to push off on the fore section. I'm successful in pushing forward in that way from my end but I glance forward and see that she is leaning out over the gunwale to push. No don't! I lean opposite to counter the shift but too late. She has stretched too far and goes head over right into the rushing water. It's deep there and she can't swim. Scares the shit out of me. Didn't do her any good either.
She came up gasping and grasping and latched onto the upper part of the tree where several limbs jutted upward. I immediately dropped my paddle and grasped the slick tree with both hands. There were no small limbs on my side, just a trunk as thick as my own trunk. I had to exert maximum effort to keep my hands from slipping. I used my stomach muscles to pull the canoe over to where she was clinging and shouted for her to get in. I shouted again. She is holding on and won't budge. Get in! I can't hold on forever. Do it NOW! No it will tip. No it won't! I'll hold it still. We don't have forever. Get in! I feel my grip slip and bear down. Get in! Please baby just get in. No. Don't shout at me! Please, you don't understand, I can't hold on that long. I could. I did. We argued back and forth as I begged and cajoled and tried from all angles to get her to just step her leg over and hop in. I felt my muscles were going to pop and was scared that they would begin to twitch from the strain and make me lose grip anyway. The trunk was so slick.
We were still arguing when my cousin came gliding in and clamped her hands on both our gunwales. They had seen our predicament and paddled back. Her husband grabbed some of the smaller limbs and steadied the rear of their craft and between the two of them made ours steady with theirs. Rena climbed in. My relief was way more than physical. I had been racking my brain about what to do. If I had let go to drift ahead the canoe might have been sucked into the gap and turned. As it was we were able to make it through the turn with me paddling like hell and pushing off the way I had wanted her to do.
Everyone had gone ahead but Rena wanted to pull over at a sand bar. I tried to argue we might lose everyone but to no avail. It angered her to no end I would even bring it up. Everyone always stopped at a place on the river not far up that we all cliff dived from and that was where I figured we should stop. She was so upset and I finally saw that and felt like a dick. I could have lost my baby and there I was wanting to catch up to the group. We pulled over. It took quite some time for her to recover emotionally and for us to continue on down to the picnic spot where everyone waited. Not my proudest moment.
That would have been our last time there I think had it not been for our daughter wanting to go with her friends and the boy she would later marry. We made it that time without incident to the place where we jump off the cliff. It's a big bend and on the other side of the river from the high cliff is a wide sand bar we always picnic at. The water was really high that day. It always is after weeks of rain. We always swim across after and it's not a hard swim because it is hardly twenty yards or so. I've done it dozens of times. This day the water was rushing harder than I had ever seen it so it was not so easy.
I got to mid stream and found myself struggling. I actually had doubts about making it across. You have to swim against the current at an angle but I was stuck in the middle barely making headway. Finally I broke through and pulled myself onto shore gasping for breath and with muscles twitching trying to recover. I look out and see my daughter in the same spot I had trouble and she is losing ground if anything. I don't think I would have gone back in for my best friend but for her there was no question. I swam to her and pushed on her back. Each push sent her a little ahead and me a little behind to swim harder to catch up and push her again. But it worked. We made it across. As I'm once again gasping, but harder this time, she says "race you to the top old man" and takes off. I start to just let her go but then I think she will just dive off without looking. I try to shout about looking before you leap as I make it to the top but too late as she dives over just as I get there. Right behind her I do look before I go over. She surfaces just as a canoe comes along side. Jesus.
Age makes us look. We know enough now that we don't trust fate. We have drawn the good cards so long we know the wrong ones are bound to turn up. The pack only has so many cards. I had to remind her of the time I pushed her across just a few weeks ago. She didn't remember it at all and she was taking MY GRANDCHILDREN to the river after heavy rains for weeks. I could not dissuade her. She promised they would wear life jackets. Okay. No jumping from the cliff. Okay. Alright but those bends can take a kid under and pin them against a wall that slopes away from the surface. It's dangerous. They went. They did fine. Luck is still holding. My breath was holding until they made it back. Damn her for being so much like me. People drown there. The Tutor kid lost his grip climbing the falls and had to be air lifted out. Then he got better and went to Afghanistan and never made it back. Luck does not hold forever.
Starker on 13/8/2019 at 06:49
I've been wondering, how do you break a cycle? It's so easy to get back into bad old habits, fall back to the same old patterns. Willpower can get you through a lot, of course. I would not have been able to quit smoking otherwise. It has carried me a long way. And I've been a witness to someone struggling with alcoholism while everyone around them is trying to get them to quit. But they won't. Because they don't want to. You can't save people from themselves. Or can you?
I was extremely reckless when I was younger and did quite a few things that got me in danger or some other sort of trouble. Part of it was the poverty I grew up in -- rich kids spend more time on piano lessons than climbing trees. Part of it was that I made some bad friends and some bad choices. But I think a not insignificant part of it is also bad blood. You see, it runs in my family, this sort of thing. The graves of my ancestors are littered all over Europe and beyond. Evey major conflict over the last couple of centuries, you can bet my family has been there, often on the front lines. Fighting Napoleon, fighting the Japanese, fighting the Bolsheviks, fighting Hitler, fighting Stalin. That's how my family thrived -- by dealing death. That's how they got their titles, their holdings, their wealth. Fortune favours the brave. Until it doesn't. Easy come easy go.
Needless to say, nearly every man in my direct family line, as far as I know of it, has been in the military at some point in their lives -- my father, my grandfathers, their fathers, their grandfathers... One of my distant cousins who's more into the stuff tracked a line down to the 17th century. And even now some of my relatives take part in this: Afghanistan, Bosnia, Afghanistan again... lots of other wars I can't even bother to remember. But of course these days it's not an opportunity to make a fortune any more. It's just a job like any other, killing some poor bastards far away from home. So it goes. And being reckless doesn't necessarily get you any medals outside of a war, of course. It also gets you in fights. It gets you addicted. It gets you to gamble. It gets you to a point where you sell your family icons for a pittance. That's also a part of our family's history.
So why am I not following what seemed to be the fate of so many in my family, either on the battlefield or outside of it? Part of it is that I didn't want to. Part of it is that I knew not to want to. My father didn't get any glory from his time in the military. He got a bad leg and worse memories. So I was never pressured to join up. But... I've been thinking about it and it kind of boils down to one simple thing -- my father read me fairy tales when I was little. The thing is, my father often worked long hours and I was incredibly bored at home. So my father coming home was something I always looked forward to. Sometimes I would fall asleep while waiting. Other times I'd wait until he had showered and eaten and he would read me stories until I fell asleep. And sometimes, when he was so tired that he just crashed into the bed, I would climb into the bed with a book and he'd read it for me until he fell asleep. And then I'd quietly tuck him in and switch off the light.
This is how I learned that books were magic. This is how I learned to read before I even went to school -- because I wanted to figure out the magic. This is how I read everything in the house, including the encyclopedias. I've never been outstandingly smart. But I've always been book smart. It helped me get through subjects I was struggling with in school, because I'd often already read at least something about it. It helped me do research, because of course I'd know the libraries like the back of my hand. It helped me figure out the internet, and computers in general, because I would browse Usenet, because that's where alt.fan.pratchett was. It helped me learn languages and countless other things. It has helped get my life back on track when it has been about to derail multiple times.
It's more than just the simple thing I made it out to be, of course. It's that my father found time for me no matter how tired he was, without brushing me off. He took me to museums, helped me with homework, and with so many other things. And if something needed doing, he did it without complaint. Because it was the right thing to do. He did tough, menial jobs that were way below his education level (agronomist) just to feed us. If my father didn't have a particular kind of character, things would have turned out very differently.
Anyway, why have I been thinking about all this now? Well, I happened to visit my grandfather's grave the other day. I never knew him. I've only seen him in pictures. Because he did the right thing at the right time. Because it was necessary.
Tocky on 16/8/2019 at 03:06
Genetics are powerful. A bird dog will point at a bird having never seen one before or knowing another dog which has done so. Love is more powerful as your story shows. It breaks the conditioning of centuries. You are a lucky man to have had the father you did. I hope you have or will have children of your own and pass down this new thing, this better thing.