Uh oh

I'm in trouble now!

Reading through blog and substack posts, twitter feeds and all that, I realize that not only do I have nothing in common with many of these people, I don't understand them or their lives at all.  They seem very class and status conscious, which to me is fundamentally anti-American.  I guess I am naive. 

As I've written, I have lived most of my life overseas as a service brat or in the service myself, so there's that:  America is, in many ways, a foreign country to me, as are Americans. Sure, lifer navy pukes are Americans, after a fashion, but a very distinct subset with little in common with your average slacker landlubber.

Then there is the fact that I don't drink. I don't like the taste of alcohol and if I take more than a few sips at one time, I get sick.  Otherwise it just makes me sluggish.  So I've never been drunk. And I am not impressed by Chateau Snooty Pants wine or 50-year-old single-malt rot gut. Take the alcohol out of that stuff and who would drink it? So admit it, guys, all you want to do is get hammered and all that la-de-dah talk is just cover.  

So, not being a drinker, I've never gone into a bar voluntarily; I mean, like, walking down the street go, hey, there's a bar, I think I'll stop by for a shot of rye.  I've gone in with other people to be sociable, but that's about it.  I've never gone into a bar to meet men.  Oh, no, no, no.  Like Mickey Spillane, of all people, said, the only kind of people you meet in bars are people who like to hang out in bars.  Pass. Oh, I've never been "picked up" either. Not on  your life.  Like I've said before, I talk the talk but I do not walk the walk.  Forget it. 

I've never taken drugs, never snorted cocaine, never smoked a joint or eaten a marijuana brownie. So I've never been "high," and don't understand the attraction. The results of addiction are so obvious and appalling that it baffles me why anyone would ever touch the stuff.  Anyway, my research specialty was the brain, so I'm well aware of the damage, down to the neuron level, that drugs do to the brain.  If you've taken drugs, you're brain damaged and not the way you were before you indulged.  That is fact.  Cold, hard fact.

Oh, I don't smoke cigarettes, either.  I had an aunt who smoked a lot, but she died before I was born. Neither of my parents smoked. Well, at least not since I've known them, so to speak.  I learned not long ago that my dad smoked when he was a young man.  I did smoke now and then in Afghanistan because, well, you can imagine.  Putting out a cigarette once saved my life there.  Yeah.  Chance rules all.  I wonder if my mother smoked when she was in Viet Nam. I've never thought to ask her. Considering cigarettes were included in C rations in those days, she very well might have. That was the era of coffee and a cigarette.

I'm not a big fan of coffee, although the navy lives on it. Coffee's okay, but I'd rather have tea or hot chocolate. These days, I use plain cocoa powder to whip up my hot chocolate, adding a dash of vanilla and homemade simple syrup along with the milk. When I make it for my kids I add little marshmallows.  Hubby wants coffee, strong and black.

I'm not really interested in politics and don't follow it.  When I read about it, I very often don't recognize the names of the politicians and don't know if they are Republicans or Democrats or what they are promoting or opposing. I've tried to be more informed about it in recent years, things being as dire as they are, but everybody involved seems to be so hostile and nasty, even wanting to kill those they are against.  Psychopaths.  I can't influence anything that's happening, so I just avoid it.

As far as movies and TV go, I generally don't know the names of the stars let alone the directors and all that.  Most of the movies and TV series people talk about I've never seen, often never even heard of. I haven't watched any television at all since 2016.  I never did watch much. Why did I stop watching TV in 2016? I was looking for a nice Christmas show and came across The Simpsons and Krusty the Klown jumping out of a manger laughing, and I thought, all right, that's enough of that.  No more.  Forever.  And so it has been.

It's pretty much the same with popular music.  Oh, sure I "consume" it; quite a bit actually, everything from Annette Hanshaw to Hey Monday, and like it. And I'm always discovering more that I like.  But I tend to like music nobody else cares for anymore.  So I will groove on performers like jazz singer Nancy Wilson or Jay and the Americans, not necessarily the current idol. There's no particular reason for that. There's just such an enormous warehouse of popular music that I get lost wandering down forgotten corridors and discovering tunes I like. So I'll say to a friend that I love some song by, say, the Spaniels and they will say "Who?" and I respond, "No, not the Who, the Spaniels," and from there it goes into an Abbott and Costello routine.

On none of these subjects could I hold a conversation, nor would I want to.  I don't care enough about them to be interested.  That doesn't mean that I think I am superior to those who do care and can talk or write about them with knowledge and enthusiasm. Not at all. I often read with interest such writing or listen to someone talking about these things and enjoy doing so.  It just means that I'm not dining at their restaurant, if you fetch my meaning.

It also means that I don't hold the popular opinions of the day.  Generally, they baffle, bemuse or appall me.  I stick with what I was taught, and growing up in an armed forces family, and attending Department of Defense schools, you can pretty well figure out what those are. Or maybe you can't, being ruled by prejudice and false stereotypes. 

I could tell stories (and have!) about how I was put down by students and teachers at the highly gifted magnet school I finished up high school in because of my accent and military background. Oh, and also because of my race and religion and the fact my family comes from flyover country.  Wypipo, hicks and Christians are so déclassé, don't you know. And military?  Stupid losers.  Just watch Two-and-a-half Men on TV.  TV tells it like it is. 

And being a blonde on top of it just meant I was really stupid.  And sexually promiscuous. So all the call-center Indians, Iranians (or whatever they were) and squinties hit on me. Cue the dry heaves. And if I hear one more dumb blonde joke.... (Somebody told me that actually they are shiksa jokes, Catskill humor, along with dumb Pollack jokes. I had no idea what a shiksa was or what Catskill humor was.  It had to be explained to me.)

"You're racist because you won't go out with me!"  

"Your dad kills People of Color!"

To the first I initially said, "No, I'm not.  I grew up surrounded by all varieties of people.  The American armed forces are the most integrated society in the world.  You live and serve with every race, creed and color." But even my teachers weren't having that.  Military are all stupid, racist losers.  Period.

Okay, fine, I'm a stupid racist. Whatever.

I didn't bother saying that my father retired as a flag officer and I grew up on officers row, often within walking distance of a golf course.

Only losers with no other choices join the military. Yeah, sure.

To the second, at first I would say things like, "Hey, look at South Korea compared to North Korea.  It only exists because the American military fought hard to prevent it being conquered by communists. South Viet Nam would be similar if we had won there.  Look at Japan, how prosperous after we defeated the fascist death cult that had taken over the country, look at...," but they weren't having any of it. 

So, finally, I would say, "Oh, yeah.  Between them, my father, grandfather and uncles have killed thousands of gooks, chinks, slopes and motos.  Torpedoed their ships, sank their submarines, shot their planes out of the skies, rocketed their tanks, blew up their artillery, napalmed and machineguned their troops, burned their cities to the ground. Every time the the zips tried to fight them, they got shredded.  I spring from a race of warriors and conquerors. Unlike you and your loser cultures and countries. You're only here in my country -- my country! -- because the ones your people created are no damn good, and you know it."

Both my mother and father served in the armed forces.

That didn't go over very well, duh, but people left me alone after that. You know why?  Because it was true. I was heir to the mightiest civilization the world has ever seen and they were not. I was aware of that and proud of it because they made me aware of it and proud of it. Their attempts to belittle me had backfired.  

I wasn't a racist before I went to that school, had never even thought about such things.  I'd been taught by the DoDEA schools that the only thing that mattered was that we were all Americans, whatever the color of our skin or our religious beliefs or our politics, male or female.  E pluribus unum and all that. But I was a racist when I graduated. Thank you, civilian educators. Maggots. 

Yokosuka Navy base 3rd grade class. Photo by Tyler Hlavac.

It took me some time to shake that and get back to the original attitudes inculcated in me by Uncle Sam's finest. 

Why did I go to that school if it was so awful for me?  My parents thought it would be good for me to get some exposure to a real American high school, have a chance to participate in extracurricular activities, summer internships and all that.  They also thought that the gifted programs the school offered would be better for me than regular high school.  

That last was true. I was able to take college-level courses so that I was able to get my bachelor's in eight semesters and move right into my Ph.D program.  That, coupled with the fact that I skipped 7th grade, meant that I got my doctorate as a pretty young whippersnapper. And if you bust up your brain in a car crash and the neurosurgeon can fix you up well enough that you know your own name, you can thank the research I was doing before I was old enough to legally drink --  had I wanted to drink. Um ... don't thank me, just send money. 

Were all my teachers at that high school bad or mean to me? No.  Two stand out in memory as especially good and professionally friendly.  Another was an ex-Marine who took a shine to me (in a platonic way!) and gave me good advice.  But that's about it. 

Looking back, I wish I had just finished out high school at my DoDEA campus with all my friends, taken four years or even five to get my BS, then three or four more for my Ph.D.  Taken it slow and enjoyed things more.  What was my hurry?