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Under the Bus


Gabe-birthday-part

Image via Wikipedia

Late in the day yesterday I flipped through my calendar of events for the upcoming week and realized that today was Will’s birthday.

Not “is”.

The dead don’t have birthdays and I have struggled to incorporate his deadness into the scheme of holidays and birthdays for the last five years.

Last night I decided to throw it all under the bus.

For some reason I will never know probably, Dee decided that her late father needed a cake last year. Her older sisters’ deceased mother gets cake and picnics, and she was feeling decidedly left out of the frivolity. Which is how she views it. Fun times. Cake and picnics are jolly events to a child. Buying balloons and pin-wheels to put on graves is the whole point of having dead family in the first place. Because she’s a child.

When I was a child, I thought cemeteries were part of the family history experience. I totally looked forward to Memorial Weekend, bouncing in the back seat of the station wagon as we tooled through the countryside from one graveyard to the next. It was fascinating and filled with interesting stories about people my parents and grandmother actually knew. The whole “dead” thing barely penetrated my consciousness.

“I just remembered that tomorrow is Will’s birthday,” I told Rob as we sat in the office last night.

“I know, ” he said with a tone and look that implied that he had been waiting to see whether I’d bring it up or not. Not is usually my go-to because I forget. The anniversary of my dad’s death was just before Halloween and if my mom hadn’t mentioned her plans for the day to me a few days before – I wouldn’t have remembered at all.

“Dee hasn’t brought it up, ” I said, “and I am kinda thinking of letting the whole thing pass, but what if she asks in a week or so? Should I pretend I forgot? I mean, I almost did, but she isn’t all that interested in him again.  Shouldn’t I just follow her lead?

“She had said that the whole thing makes her too sad, ” he said. “She doesn’t want to talk about him.  She changes the subject when his name comes up.”

“Or just gives you that look that says ‘what does he have to do with anything?’,” I replied.

And really, what does he have to do with anything?

She didn’t know him. That he was her father, doesn’t make him any more known or immediate to her. It doesn’t give him standing or influence. She’s decided that Rob is her father and it’s her right to do so.

And I remember Will telling me about his childhood. His dad died when he was seven and his mother never let him forget the guy.

“She was always telling me how I reminded her of him,” he told me. “I hated it.”

With good reason. His dad was a rat, fucking bastard.  Alcoholic.  Child and wife beater. Adulterer.

Seriously, why rub your little boy’s face in any resemblances?

He would be okay with Dee putting him into proper perspective in the scheme of her life. Because it is her life.

Someday, she will want to know Will – or at least have more spontaneous interest, but for now, birthdays for the (un)dead are over.

That is all.

Having Siblings Ruins Your Life


Sibling Rivalry (Family Guy)

Image via Wikipedia

One of the longest and wide-ranging studies ever conducted on the relationship of personal satisfaction and siblings has concluded that you aren’t imagining it when you believe that had your parents practiced safer sex, you might be happier today.

Apparently, the quality of childhood (and some would argue this extends into adulthood as well) is greatly influenced by the number of siblings you have.

For each sibling added to a family mix, the level of satisfaction for the others diminishes. I would venture to add that the quality of the new sibling’s personality is also a factor and that your parents child-rearing/interacting interest and skill set probably is key as well.

Speaking only from the perspective of an oldest child, I can attest unequivocally to the fact that a mess of younger siblings did nothing to improve my life on the whole. Aside from my next in command sister, DNOS, I could have easily been an extremely happy only child. I have all the requisite qualities. I was low maintenance (which admittedly made it easier for my parents to foist their fantasies of a large family on me), able to entertain myself and not disturbed at all by solitude and silence.

My singular qualities, in fact, made the additions of siblings difficult for someone who preferred a more Garbo like existence.

I know people who adore their large families. Count their siblings as best friends and couldn’t imagine being an onlie.

Dee is less than enamoured with “onlie-ness”. She laments that her older sisters aren’t closer than a decade and more to her in age. Though, I would venture a guess that they have both pondered the implications of being singletons with a bit of longing.

DNOS and I frequently have conversations that center around the lament of the younger two existing.

Oh, stop. It’s not that gruesome. We are all adopted and had they not been our siblings they’d be some other unfortunate family’s burden to bear.

But fond as I am of DNOS now that we are well into adulthood, I can’t say that I wouldn’t have thrown her under a bus to be an only child when I was a child … even a teenager.

She would protest, but the truth is that she benefited as much from following me as the younger two did in terms of my parents aiming all their strictness at me. I was practically a shield for the rest of them in terms of unrealistic expectations and experiments in parenthood.

I will admit, however, to appreciating my younger siblings as we all hit our pre-teen and teenage years. Being an “easy” child to raise meant that when they began acting up as teens, I was pretty much ignored. A small boon but one well deserved given how much of their care was foisted upon me when we were all small.

My folks were farm-bred Depression babies. Old schoolers who still totally believe that you have more kids so the older ones will learn to be responsible. And that’s actually an interesting stance given that the fact that they were the youngest in their families.

Dad actually wanted a very large family. In excess even of his own experience being one of six children. I have no idea at all why Mom married him given that expectation because there is no one less suited to being the mother of a horde than she.

My most vivid childhood recollections of my mother was of a very angry woman who clearly did not enjoy housework, cooking or minding more than one child at a time.

By the age of five, I was the oldest of four. Wherever we went it was Mom and four wee children, consequently, we did not get out much unless Dad was along. Even then, I can’t recall a single outing that didn’t end with someone being yelled at, hauled off the ground to dangle by a tiny little elbow or smacked on the bottom.

Being the oldest, I quickly learned to lay low and deflect when necessary, but I often wished that I had no siblings at all (when I wasn’t wishing for different parents or a stint as an orphan living with my much more tolerant of me Auntie and Grandmother).

It’s not that we fought much. Aside from my brother, CB, I rarely fought with any of my siblings, but this stems from the fact that at very early ages, we all went our own ways and sought out more like-minded compatriots. We could, and did, clan up in times of trouble, but we mostly had little to do with each other – something that really still defines us today.

I don’t know a lot of people personally for whom family is all, or most even, in terms of close relationships/friendships. Even if friendship preference evolved it tends to be with only one or a couple of siblings within families.

Most people I know have sibling relationships that range all over the “it’s complicated” scale, and even relatively cordial interactions came with middle-age and were possibly even forged by crisis situations.

At my age, I deal with the whole sibling thing only when it rises like Dracula from the tomb, which mercifully isn’t often. We have our own lives filled with significant others, children and chosen companions. Our need for each other – not much to begin with – is reduced to base-touching and keeping an eye on our mother as she dodders into advancing age.

It’s enough. And it’s okay.

But, I still think I would have made an excellent only child.

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A Simple Plan: Nov. 24th is Opt Out of Body Scanning at Airports


Airport Full Body Scan inverted = nude image?

Image by houbi via Flickr

The holiday season is nearly upon us. Thanksgiving is one of the biggest days for air travel in the United States.  Hundreds of thousands of people confronting the newest privacy invasions the TSA can deploy.

Though full body scans are still being phased in throughout the United States’ air travel system, there are airports where they are required for everyone and random scanning is everywhere.

So what?

Well, you might think that, but the safety of the machines is really not known when you consider that most research done to prove radiation level safety is about as well done as the tests that pharmaceutical companies use when they set about trying to coerce the FDA into approving a new drug.

Did you know that a new drug only has to show positive results in 30% of its test groups to garner a go ahead from the FDA? Yep, only 3 out of 10 people need to be “helped” by a medication before your doctor is convinced and prescribes it to you.

So, when the TSA assures you that full body scanners are safe – remember that they don’t have any longer term studies proving this and that recent studies about radiation effects on adults show that it doesn’t take much radiation at all to trigger a mutant cell in your body to go all rogue cancer all over your insides.

One thing the TSA is not advertising is that they cannot force you to go through a full body scanner. You can opt out and be groped and/or molested.

But why would I want to do that?

Because if enough of us opt out – say on the same day, like the busiest air travel day of the year – maybe they’ll give up this asinine and pointless invasion of our liberties.

After all, what’s the point of inspecting passengers down to their birthday suits when the cargo being loaded onto your plane is barely frisked at all and the ground crew who wander about under the plane as it sits for an hour and a half waiting to be cleared to taxi aren’t being watched all that closely either.

America! Wake the fuck up! They are training you. Testing you to see how much crap you’ll take without protest. Remember how well cooperation worked for European Jews in the 1930’s?

Stop being a sheep. Sheep get sheared and sodomized.

How to Raise Hell

  1. Stop flying.
  2. OPT OUT of the scanners. EVERY TIME!
  3. Educate yourself, your family, friends and neighbors.
  4. Organize an educational event at your local airport for National Opt Out Day, Nov 24.
  5. Create a video saying why you won’t fly. And send us a link!
  6. Protest to the airlines.
  7. Make a fuss to the hotels.
  8. Complain to the government.
  9. Report your experience to EPIC.
  10. File a complaint with the ACLU.
  11. File a TSA Civil Rights complaint.
  12. Tell We Won’t Fly your TSA story.
  13. Tweet your feelings with hashtag #wontfly
  14. Like our Facebook page.
  15. Connect with us on Twitter.
  16. Post to Facebook.
  17. Blog or make a video about your feelings and experiences.
  18. Ask local media to cover this story.
  19. Got more ideas? Share them

This year, the day before Thanksgiving Day could be the start of the new American Revolution. The one where the people really start to take back America, starting with their personal dignity.

The Federal government hasn’t offered one shred of proof that herding its citizens though airport “security” is really stopping terrorism. But there is plenty of evidence that it’s turning the American people into a flock of docile, willing to believe anything they are told future cattle car occupants.

Opt out. Do it for your dignity. Do it to prove that you can think for yourself. Do it to stop the madness. Just a dozen or so people would tax the system at every gate in America. The TSA simply doesn’t have the manpower to handle more than a couple of pat-downs at a time. And the video I’ve seen of opt outs show that the TSA employees are clearly uncomfortable  and don’t want to touch passengers, which is why they try to intimidate them into being scanned.

Opt out.

Do it every time.

The Obama administration is the Cheney run Bush White House. They don’t have the balls to go Nazi.

Opt out. Do something really positive for a change. Not like the idiocy of voting the Republicans back into power (which incidentally will change nothing). Take a real step towards change.

Our parents and grandparents made actual sacrifices during the first half of the 20th Century, while most of us haven’t done a thing that has ever mattered in the larger scheme of things. Don’t do it to avoid cancer – though that’s a great reason – or to protest the bait and switch diversion it so obviously is.

Do it because you are guaranteed freedom from search and seizure without cause by the Constitution so many of you gibber about when complaining about unimportant things like being able to pray in a crowded classroom (seriously? you should worry more about the indoctrinating of your child into a consuming  and completely disposable cog).

You are an American. Being strip searched for no reason.  By people you would cross the street to get away from if they were walking through your neighborhood.

Opt Out on November 24th.  Make ’em Molest You.  And then dial 911.

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