I remember it vividly. One of my earliest “best” friends, or at least in the top three, came up to me with a couple of other guys by his side. He looked at me with a face that I’ll never forget and said, “You’re a fag.” To this day, I don’t know why. I just know that as a junior high student, this devastated me.
You’ve been there; you know how formative those years are. It’s kind of odd that I remember almost nothing of junior high, but I remember this and several other times I was bullied. That’s the thing about bullying; you just can’t shake some of it off. What’s more; the effects don’t go away.
The story doesn’t end there though. I got some payback – or so I thought. We were in gym playing softball – playing ball was about the only sport I was any good at. My friend (or ex-friend) came up to the plate. I knew where he would hit the ball because he always hit it in the same place. He did; the ball sailed out to left field and I went after it. Unfortunately, another kid was there, but the ball bounced off his shoulder and I recovered to make a truly great catch.
I remember having a really good game that day. Afterward, in the locker room, the gym teacher who didn’t really say much to us, said, “Boys, Cross came to play ball today.” I was ecstatic because someone recognized that I could actually do something well. Then, one of the popular kids said, “Don’t let your head swell so you can’t get it out the door.”
My head never swelled because I considered myself a loser and never thought I did anything to be proud of. My moment disappeared in a poof of depression. One sentence ruined it.
People who bully need to be aware of something. The bullied victims sometimes feel so low about themselves they try really hard to do something great, but when they get bullied again, they often give up. Others don’t try at all. Some withdraw; some kill themselves.
It’s easy to kick someone down, but it takes a real jerk to kick someone when they’re already down, and a real ass to kick someone when they’re trying to get back up again.
I still remember the multiple times I was bullied, and I’m still trying to prove myself 50 years later. Don’t tell me and other people who’ve been bullied to just get over it. It’s not that easy.
Anyway, because of the bullying I still vividly remember and because I suffer from a mental illness, I wrote Drowning. It isn’t autobiographical, but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t any part of me in it.
If you want to, purchase my book. If not, don’t.
However, I do wish you would think twice before you bully someone because you could be marking them for life. If you’ve been bullied, it may not feel like it, but you’re a great person who does great things. Remember that.
I’m an emotional eater. Since I am also bipolar, you can imagine the havoc that wreaks on my weight management efforts. Oatmeal brings up incredibly mixed emotions including love, hate, fear, shame, and determination. Yes, oatmeal.
For most of my adult life, I have not eaten oatmeal. Occasionally, I bought the instant kind with fruit flavors like peach cream, brown sugar cinnamon, etc. but I didn’t really love them. It was more of a “well, I have to eat some kind of food for breakfast,” and instant oatmeal kept me from getting bored with the usual breakfast fare.
When we went to the United Kingdom, however, I decided to embrace my heritage by eating “porridge” nearly every day as it was a staple of the English breakfast much as eggs are for Americans. (I couldn’t bring myself to eat haggis which was also ever present.) The porridge was pretty plain, but if you doctored it up with butter and sugar, it didn’t taste too bad.
To my point. The reason why I hadn’t eaten much oatmeal in my adult life was because of the emotional attachments I had and still have with it.
We were very poor when I was growing up. (I’m grateful because we always had enough, but usually there was no extra.) Oatmeal, however, was always around, and as I grew older it came to represent for me in some warped way the symbol of our poverty.
I ate oatmeal enough when I was a kid, so, dammit, I didn’t have to eat it as an adult. I can remember my mom even feeding it to our dog because we didn’t have enough money to buy extra dog food. He turned his nose up at it just as I did.
Here is where the shame comes in. I remember one time when I was hungry. (I was always hungry – in more ways than in the need for food.) I told mom I wanted something to eat. She said that she could fix me oatmeal. I remember telling her that I was sick and tired of oatmeal, and I wanted something different.
My mom started crying.
It wasn’t until years later that I realized that my mom offered to fix me oatmeal because it was about the only thing left in the house to eat.
This time of year, all kinds of memories of my mom pop up because she died the weekend before Thanksgiving eight years ago.
One of them is how instead of being thankful that my mom was willing to fix me oatmeal, I made her cry. I’m ashamed of that now.
Mostly though, the great memories of my mom come up. And yes, a lot of them are associated with food. One of the things I think about is how creative she was with the little bit we had. I don’t know how many of you ever ate pie crust with cinnamon and sugar, but I can tell you that when we were kids, the nectar of the gods couldn’t have been more delicious.
This morning, I fixed myself oatmeal that I doctored up with a brown-sugar, stevia mix; some cinnamon, some butter, and a cinnamon Fiber one bar. It was scrumptious, and as I ate it, I thought about my mom and how blessed I was to have her.
My YA contemporary novel about mental illness and bullying is now available for pre-order. You can get it from Amazon for 99 cents. This is the ebook version. The paperback version will be coming soon.
I thank you in advance. I'd appreciate it if you passed this along.
My blog is entitled The Common Joe because I've always considered myself to be pretty ordinary really. I don't know how I've managed to forget that some of the greatest joys to be found are in the most common parts of life. I could write on this for a long time, but I'm not going to. I just want to talk about my day.
This morning I got to sleep in a little bit. First thing I did was feed Bella, the Yorkie that just happened to wander into our yard on Valentine's day last year. Bella has brought so much love to our family that we can't stay down for very long because she won't let us. And then there's that first cup of coffee every morning. Mine was a light roast that was very tasty. For breakfast, I fell back into my childhood by eating Pop-Tarts -- fudge flavored.
I spend a lot of the day grading papers, but why don't we just skip that part?
It's one of those early fall days today, a day that started out chilly but gradually warmed up into the high 60s. This afternoon, after I finished my schoolwork, I went out onto our deck, cold (adult) beverage in hand, and sat in the sun. My wife joined me and so did Bella. We (my wife and I) engaged in small talk and just enjoyed the warm temperatures. Bella enjoyed jumping from one lap to the other and demanding attention.
The birds were out and the squirrels, all getting ready for fall I guess. We watched the clouds float by, and in one I saw an eagle. I thought of my mom who died almost 8 years ago. On the day of her death, two eagles drifted and soared over her house. At that time, I thought of the scripture in Isaiah, I think, that mentions mounting up on eagles' wings.
After Jean went in, I sat by myself and just closed my eyes. It's easy to let the busyness of life keep us from stopping, sitting and resting. I just listened. Of course, there were cars running here and there, but underneath that noise, were birds whistling, insects chirping, squirrels jumping from limb to limb, nuts falling from the trees and striking the ground and nearby buildings. A cool breeze whispered through the leaves and blew across my face.
I stayed in the moment for a moment and tried to let complications slide off me. I recommend it. And if you get some extra time, just lie down on the grass like you used to do when you were a kid, and let the clouds drift by.
The novel is a contemporary YA about a teen with a mental illness. That's bad enough but he is also a victim of bullies almost every day. Join Dean Knight on his journey. Will he make it out alive or will his illness, the bullying, and the secrets of his family drown him in a swirling pool of darkness.
This is a link to a video that describes a technique for organizing any kind of presentation you might have to make that I developed over my 30+ years of teaching. It actually works and it's easy too.
One of the advantages of my being retired is the things I get to do. I don't have to work. I don't have to do anything. Another advantage of being retired is that I can appreciate simple things.
Take today for instance. If someone had filmed my day expecting to come up with a blockbuster hit they would have been sorely disappointed. Some would call my day boring. I would call it "awesome."
I didn't do anything special -- at least what other people would consider special.
I did, however, play with my granddaughter in the water. We usually set up her small pool -- as pictured above. (She's wearing her sun hat). Today, we simplified even farther. We played in the sprinkler. I can remember playing in the sprinkler a lot when I was a kid.
Pool and sprinkler days are almost over in the Midwest. Fall is around the corner and then winter. When I was a child, the seven people in my family lived in a two-bedroom house with a utility room being the bedroom for my brother and me. This room wasn't heated and it was right next to the garage. It would get so cold in there in the winter that there would be frost on the inside of the walls. My brother and I slept with a fan and buried ourselves under five or six quilts. When my face got cold, I just buried it under the blankets and stayed there until I had to come out to breathe. The sleep I had in that room was the deepest I ever had.
Little Bit, my granddaughter, and I played in the back yard for part of the day. She likes to play sink or float by putting items in the birdbath. Her favorite, a definite floater, is the acorn. We also play hide and seek around the tree.
Today, I got an old softball that had been lying around the house and had her throw some. I have dreamed that she would be a girls' softball pitcher. For a just-turned three-year-old, she has a pretty good arm. I held her Teddy Bear, constant companion, and handed her the ball. Almost every time, without prodding from me, she threw the ball with her left hand. A southpaw softball pitcher. I don't know how common they are.
I teach online now instead of face to face like I did for over 30 years. I added a couple assignments for my classes to do, and I spent some time writing on a book that I'm working on. Right now, I'm reminiscing. Later, I'm going to write some more and read.
I don't know if you can see this very well, but it is an image of just one of my playlists based on a country-rock group's song Heart of the Night by Poco. Generally, I like classic rock though I'm not opposed to listening to anything once. If I don't like it, I don't criticize someone else's viewpoint. We're just different. On Instagram recently, I saw a video clip of Miley Cyrus doing a Led Zeppelin song. When I heard it, it just blew me away. Miley has an unbelievable set of pipes.
I think she would do the world -- well, at least old guys like me who don't think much good music came out any later than the '70s -- a huge favor by doing an album of covers of great rock songs. After listening to her do Zep, I'd like to hear her do Black Sabbath, Cream, the Doors, Kiss, Lynyrd Skynyrd and groups like that. I'd buy the CD -- well, I guess nowadays, I'd buy the digital download.
Music has been an important part of my life since -- well, I was born. My parents listened to classic country music when I was growing up. I'm talking Merle Haggard, classic. This is what I grew up with. My mom and my sisters loved Johnny Rivers. My dad also loved a rock instrumentalist group called the Ventures. You maybe have heard the song "Wipe Out."
My family was always musical too. My Grandpa Penberthy could make anything with strings scorch. Most of my uncles played guitar though one did drums instead. I had cousins who did a rock band, but it wasn't really until I was 16 or so that I gave up my KMOX in St. Louis station for more AOR stations. KMOX was talk, news, but most important to me, Cardinals ballgames. KSHE was my favorite rock station. They did a program called the 7th day where they played 7 albums. I would be ready with my cassette stereo to record them right off the air.
When I think of music, I could list a dozen right off the top of my head that held special meaning for me, including Freebird, anything by Bachman Turner Overdrive, Bob Seger, and a really weird one called The Halls of Karma by Black Oak Arkansas. That song was a trip. One of my all-time favorite songs for a variety of reasons was Cool Changes by Little River Band. Whenever I went through a restless phase -- which was pretty frequent since I am bipolar -- I played this song. I still pause and sing along every time I hear it which sadly isn't much anymore.
Music has influenced and shaped me in so many ways. It is so important to me. (I have even used Bob Dylan music to teach poetry -- look at a Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall if you want to see some poetry. Hell, I even did my master's thesis on one of my favorite singers. The only problem with that was that I listened to his songs so many times that I got sick of it, and it's only been 40 years later that I can listen to him again.
I know it's hard for parents to understand their kids' tastes in music these days, but I'm here to tell you that for most of us music is vital to our growth and development, and if you try to take it away, I believe you do emotional damage.
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