Monday, August 3, 2015

My Most Serious Phobia (Public Restrooms) and the Reason For It

What looks harmless to some is a source of major anxiety to others.
IMPORTANT DISTINCTION; This blog entry describes an event  that happened to me. It does not, nor did it ever, define who I am. It was merely a day out of my life -- one that cause a bit of fallout, but still just one day, nonetheless. A victim is not who I choose to be.

Before moving on to my more serious phobia, I should report that everything is fine on Catalina to the best of my knowledge. Chances are that somewhere on the island someone is drinking himself or herself ill, or someone is quarreling with a significant other, but since it's happening in neither room sharing a wall with my hotel room, I'm blissfully unaware of it.

Furthermore, the babies are doing fine in our absence. If  one of them misses any one of us, no one is sharing that information with us. Baby Camille is up to four pounds, fourteen ounces.  As soon as she gains six more ounces, her interval between onset of feedings can be increased from its present one hour to ninety minutes.

Now I'll move onto my most serious phobia. It's long and convoluted, but I cannot make it otherwise. Sorry.I cannot enter a public restroom by myself without someone checking it out to make sure that no one is hiding in there, just waiting to harm me. If I'm  by myself when i really must use the restroom, I wait until someone else who looks safe goes in, and I follow that person. i take the stall nearest the door. If wash my hands as quickly as possible. I carry germicide gel in my purse that I can use once I'm outside of the restroom to more fully decontaminate my hands. I know that stuff  [germicidal gel, soap, or other products] is bad for the world of bacteria and should ideally be reserved for use in hospitals and other clinical medical settings. Its widespread use i contributing to the development of bacteria that are more resilient to germicides and antibiotics. Still, I use it in such occasions because I feel as though I have no choice.

 I have no issue with private restrooms which have locks on their doors. Furthermore, I'm not like my dizzy brother, who until he was almost five thought he would be sucked down a toilet if  It was not a random attack. he stood too near it when it was flushed. I wish I could say my fear was based on something so irrational.

When I was fifteen and in my final year of high school, I was assaulted in a school restroom. The attack was not random. Another student had stolen a paper I had turned in two years earlier. The teacher to whom I had turned it in had a practice of keeping photocopies of all   "A" compositions so that if one appeared again, or if large chunks of one appeared again, he had proof that the paper, when turned in for the second time, was not original work. (There are websites that will catch most college and university plagiarism or use of purchased papers from organized sites, but high school teachers are usually on their own to catch low-tech thieves.)

It's a very long story concerning the person who helped himself to my paper. I'll borrow from an earlier blog that tells the account in part. 

The whole incident, as I didn't learn until after hours of sitting in the principal's outer office under the watchful eye of the Rottweiler-turned-secretary, centered on a paper I had authored in my sophomore year of high school for my required U. S. History course, for which I took the Advanced Placement option in order to earn college credits. The title of the paper was, "The Cold War, McCarthyism, and Accusations of Communism Infiltration." As my compositions go, it was somewhat unremarkable. It was technically and factually sound, and met the requirements for an Advanced Placement-calibre paper, but wasn't one of my more creative efforts. Considering the topic, it probably shouldn't have been one of my more creative efforts, anyway.

The instructor for my course had a policy of photocopying all "A" papers, filing them by topic, and keeping them for at least ten years so that in the event that a paper seemed familiar as he was grading it, he could consult his file to see if the paper had been recycled from a previous author and submission. The file cabinet in which the papers were kept was usually locked, but there were occasions in which it wasn't secured. The student seated across from me in the office had been my U. S. history's teacher's assistant for a Freshman Studies course the next year. At some point the file cabinet containing "A" papers was apparently unsecured and unsupervised for just long enough for him to go through the cabinet and purloin my paper.

The moron was so lazy that he didn't even bother re-typing the paper in its entirety. He merely retyped the title page, then whited out and retyped the header on each page, ignoring the differences in formats required. Because I wrote the paper for a social science course, the APA format was used. English courses almost exclusively require MLA formatted papers. The essence of this was lost on my peer.

The plagiarism would have gone undetected -- and I really wish it had --  except that my plagiarist's English teacher was so incredibly impressed by her student's work, as it was far beyond anything he had ever done, that she submitted it for a writing award. She retyped the paper for the thug into the MLA format, which is standard for English department papers. (The thug who stole and submitted my paper probably couldn't tell the difference between the APA and MLA formats and whatever format it is that graffiti artists use when sharing their gangs' messages with the world at large. The committee charged with deciding upon the winner of this award happened to consist of both the English teacher who submitted the student's paper and my U. S. History teacher, who had originally received the paper two years earlier. My teacher immediately recognized it as having been turned in by one of his students immediately. The English teacher disagreed vehemently and accused me of being the plagiarist even though, once my U.S. history teacher realized the original source of the paper, knew that it had been turned in to him two years previously. The English teacher, who offers proof positive that not all English teachers are of even average intellect, offered as evidence the plagiarist's originally submitted paper, with the title page and headings not even in the same font as the body of the paper, then showed how she had helped him to retype the composition into the correct format.

The argument between the two faculty member of the panel charged with choosing a recipient for a particular writing-across-curriculum  award,   soon made its way into the principal's office, where it immediately became a disciplinary matter. The principal was unimpressed by either the lack of match in font of the title page and page headers of the body of the paper to the overall lack of pertinence of the topic of McCarthyism and communism to American literature.  (A skilled arguer and writer could have bridged the disparity between the topic and the course's subject matter, but this plagiarist made no attempt to do so, presumably for reasons both that he saw no need to do so [both the course title and the composition's title contained the word American; that alone, in his mind would have been more than sufficient commonality between the content of the composition and the subject matter of the course and, by extension, the topic for the specific composition as assigned by the teacher] and that he lacked the skill to create such a bridge or segue of sorts  had he known one was needed.)

Parents were soon involved in the dispute. The plagiarist's father, a prominent local banker, argued that even if his son had plagiarized the paper from me, I, too, must have plagiarized it from some other source, as the paper could not have been authored by any high school student. My former social science teacher asked that my English teacher send in samples from my English portfolio to refute the plagiarists' father's assertion. My mother pointed out that my SAT writing score had been a perfect 800. The banker didn't understand that. His son hadn't taken the SAT, and the writing portion did not yet exist in the olden days when he himself took the test. The principal seemed to be swallowing some of the plagiarists' father's arguments. The plagiarist's mother was oblivious to the significance of all that was occurring. When asked a specific question concerning when she might have observed her son working on the composition,as he claimed to have written it entirely at home, his mother smiled and uttered, even though her answer didn't come close to addressing the question she was asked, "I can hardly believe my son was nominated for a writing award. I'm just so proud of him." 'Thank God the superintendent took over.

The U. S. History teacher left to consult his file, but found my paper to be missing, even though it was indexed. He came to the outer office to ask if I still had a copy of the paper. I keep hard copies of all of my papers, in addition to copies in backup files of computer and on an external Q-file device. I told my mother exactly where she could find it in my room. I told her that even though the paper had been typed originally on the desktop in our home library, it was on my laptop in my room as well. I told her where to find the hard copy in my file cabinet, where to find the external Q-file device, and where I had put away my laptop. She was back twenty minutes later with my laptop containing the composition, and with a copy of the original paper, complete with title page and date, which matched the index maintained by my history teacher. The text and font matched the plagiarist's copy of the body of the original document before his teacher retyped it (which was, incidentally, against the rules for papers submitted for the particular honor). Furthermore, the topic was well-matched to my assigned topic of mid 1900's politics, as opposed to the plagiarist's course topic of American literature. (I believe his actual assignment for the paper had something to do with using both a poem and a work of prose, each written by an American author or poet -- ether the same or a different author from the same time period would have been acceptable - to capture and illustrate an aspect of the popular culture of the time. My paper in no way met the requirements of this assignment, as works of American literature were not featured prominently and only appeared incidentally in the few literary allusions included in the paper.

The plagiarist's father remained unconvinced of any guilt on the part of his son, or at least pretended to believe such was the case . The mother continued to beam with pride and to make inane comments such as, "I always knew [thug] was bright, but I didn't realize writing ability was part of his giftedness," to no one in particular, as no one was either talking or listening to her.. The superintendent told [thug's] father that it didn't really require his assent to decide in my favor, but, just to prove the point, each of us would be called into the inner office to answer questions about the composition's content. Following that, we would each be assigned a five-paragraph essay on a given topic, which would need to be completed in the inner office in the presence of parents and administrators, after which the essays would be analyzed for writing style. The superintendent even conceded that the topic would be one about which the plagiarist should have presumably more background information than I.

I answered each question asked, in each case, elaborating beyond what was presumably expected. (Senator Joseph McCarthy and his "anti-communism" platform had long held my fascination. My parents owned several non-fiction texts including biographies by actors who were black-listed and lost work as a result of appearing on McCarthy's lists of actual communists or sympathizers. The movie and subsequent motion picture, The Way We Were were based on the chilling effects of McCarthyism on Hollywood and on specific actors .The plagiarist apparently had no answer for most of the questions. He had no idea who Joseph McCarthy had been and any of the significance of political work. eventually he made some connection with General Douglas MacArthur and went off on a brief tangent concerning General Patton, citing scenes he remembered from a movie about general Patton's life. I didn't see any of this, as we were questioned separately, but my social science/ U.s. history teacher said, as wrong as what the thug did was, he was almost beginning to feel sorry for him except that the thug was so utterly witless than he though his answers were on the mark and were helping to establish his case. The boy''s father said, "So [thug] is confusing a few generals with a senator. That hardly proves he stole the paper."

The original plan for the essays was that they would be written by hand, but the plagiarist's father complained that his son had problems with spelling and would be at a disadvantage if computer use were not allowed. A couple of non-networked laptops were brought in for use to use. We were given a seventy-five minute limit for our essays. The topic announced. The topic was "Advantages and Disadvantages of the BCS System in Determining the NCAA Football Championship." I'm far from an expert on this topic, but I evidently have more knowledge of the system than does my plagiarist. I focused upon the lack of objectivity in determining who gets into the major bowl games in the first place, the disadvantage created by an early loss by an otherwise superior team, and the lack of a playoff system in determining who makes it into the actual bowl game that is determined to be the championship game. I conceded that the BCS system is clearly superior to the old poll system with sports writers and coaches determining the national champions (sometimes without consensus between the two voting bodies) but insisted that the current system was in need of major overhaul before it can be deemed acceptable. My plagiarist didn't even complete a single paragraph.

So I spent almost an entire day helping adults who should have known better to decide that I did not plagiarize a composition. Most of the day was wasted, although, since part of the day was spent writing, that portion could not be considered a total waste of time. The next half hour was devoted to an argument concerning whether my plagiarist and I would be required, or even allowed, to make up the work that was missed. In an extremely rare show of support for me, my mother said that if the district wanted me to continue enrollment in the district, I would be given full credit for any daily assignments missed in the day's classes. Any portions of the classes that were devoted to projects, she said, should be my responsibility to make up. The plagiarist's father insisted that his son be granted the same privilege. The superintendent told him that his son's privileges and consequences would be discussed in private shortly. At that point, the school day was over.

The head varsity football coach had heard of the situation and had made his way to the office, demanding to know what was happening. The superintendent dismissed him and told him he would be notified as soon as any decision that affected his team had been made, still, he lurked in the outer office, waiting to here of the resolution to this issue, as it impacted likely would his starting lineup for Friday's game.\

Note: I'm adding this to the original text. It can be found in greater detail in a subsequent retelling of the assault in a later blog (though even then, some details were omitted because I felt too humiliated to share them. I'm no longer humiliated by any of the details. The humiliation should and now does belong to my attackers,. but at the point this blog was originally written, and even in a later post when I shared more details, I was not yet up to full disclosure of the assault. I now have little problem talking about it.

This should have been the end of the whole matter, but it wasn't. I had been stuck in an office all day with no food or bathroom privileges. Although I was hungry, I was even more in need of a bathroom visit. I hurried as fast as my crutches would allow me to a bathroom just down the hall from the principal's office before heading home. I heard the outer bathroom door open as I was in the stall, but thought nothing of it. When I emerged from the stall to wash my hands, I saw two girls standing idly. Girls sometimes stand idly in bathrooms, so I still thought little of it. Then one of them said to me, "Just what the fu@&amp did you think you were doing?" I recognized her as the plagiarist's latest hook-up.

"Using the bathroom," I answered.

She slapped my face with sufficient force that I fell against the wall. Fortunately I was using the sink located against the far wall, so I fell against the wall instead of onto the floor.

The other girl said, "That's not what she meant, and you know it, [female dog]."

I still had my baby cell phone, which my parents had traded for my original cell phone because I had exceeded our the minutes or numbers or whatever of texts covered by our plan in an outrageously expensive manner because I had been under the mistaken impression that our plan included unlimited texting. It ended up being one of the few times if not the only time that, after the fact, both my parents and I were unbelievably grateful for the action that led to seizure of my real cell phone and what had seemed at the time like a rather draconian punishment my parents had handed out and they were grateful that I had run up the huge bill, motivating them to take my real cell phone away and replace it with a kiddy cell phone. The kiddy cell phone had the capacity to dial my home, my parents' cell phones, my mom's work numbers, my Uncle Steve's and Aunt Heather's phones and home, and 911.


A quick mental survey of the circumstances told me that 911 would be my best bet, especially since it was the top button on the phone. The phone was in the pocket of my jacket, which I had been wearing all day because the principal's thermostat was set at about 65 degrees. I talked loudly and made liberal, virtually non sequitur references to my precise location, hoping that the 911 operator could get information about my whereabouts from my end of the conversation, and also hoping my voice would cover up that of the 911 operator. It's possible that knowing 911 had been called might have caused the girls to abort their operation, but then again, they might not have known about the GPS on my phone, and furthermore, I didn't really know how quickly law enforvememnt could determine my location from the GPS-tracking device,

I still don't know if I made things worse or better by hiding the fact that 9-1-1 had been dialed. It's possible the girls would have run out as soon as they learned of it, or it's possible they would have bashed me over the head with my own cell phone, then continued to beat up on me, confident that law enforcement would have no way of knowing where to find any of us. I didn't know it, but my kiddy phone also had a GPS-like device on it, so the 911 operator was able to locate me. I decided that the best thing was to keep the girls talking as much as possible. I lied to them about how I had tried to take the blame but that the superintendent wasn't buying it. I told them that I deliberately blew my essay, but that the plagiarist had blown it worse. When it became plain that they weren't buying any of my lines, I tried pleading to their senses of dignity, asking them if they really felt right about two relatively tall and normal-sized girls double-teaming someone who weighs 77. (I still hadn't gained back all the weight since I was hurt and sick.) Eventually the talking ceased to stop them; one of them pushed me to the floor, The other one crawled on top of me and put her hands around my neck. The one not on top of me kicked me in the mid-right portion of my rib care, then stepped onto my leg, more or less directly on the portion of my leg that sustained the worst of the fractures. I lost consciousness.  

When I regained consciousness, the male who had plagiarized my paper had joined the girls and me in the bathroom. He directed the girls to undress me from the waist down, He unzipped his zipper and removed his male appendage. from the direction he seemed to be headed, It appeared that my mouth was his first intended target. I vomited, which appeared to have the effect of causing him to lose the ability to perform the function he had intended to perform on me. He kicked the side of my head hard my head so that it would be forced into the vomitus. He then kicked my side, kicked my leg in the approximate area of the original injury, and delivered an especially vicious and bruising kick to my vaginal area.

At that point, a security officer entered the restroom, followed closely by another security officer, the school football coach, the superintendent, add the principal. (My mother had been sent to a meeting in place of the superintendent, who had assured my mother that he would see to it that I arrived home safely. The girls tried to run out, but were stopped by a teacher and and by approaching law enforcement personnel, who had been dispatched to the scene.. The perps were carted off. I don't know if they were transported to the police station or to holding facilities. At least one of the two perps was already eighteen and a legal adult as such. Another of the three, as it turned out, was also above the legal age of majority, but I don't believe any of that had been sorted out by then. In any event, they were all released to their parents on their own recognizance with preliminqary charges pending. The attorney my parents later hired to represent my interests said that it was wrong to release any of them prior to sorting out charges.

The football coach, who lived around the corner from my family's home, suggested that someone should put my pants back onto me. The officer in charged said that photos of the crime scene needed to be take first. The coach told them to hurry it up with the pictures, and took off his shirt and covered me with it as the officers were organizing the photo shoot.

The fall itself didn't hurt me, nor, in any significant way, did the initial slap, but the various kicks and the step upon the area of my leg that was healing from the earlier serious compact fracture, as well as kicks to my rib cage, head, and groin area were all considered signnificant injuries. An ambulance was summonned, and I was transported to the university hospital in an adjacent city, where I spent the night.

The attack on me in the school restroom was not random, while any future attack in a public restroom would likely be random and is, furthermore, highly unlikely to occur. Still, I can't just walk into a public restyroom and take care of what needs to be done, without first going through certain steps to preserve my safety as well as I can. Will I live the rest of my life this way? I have no way of knowing. I've sought professional help to deal with PTSD steeming from this situation. Perhaps some sort of "public restroom therapy'" should have been part of my treatment,  

My chief therapist, Dr. Jeff, says there are some things you have to live with the best you can and compensate in any way you can.  I consider myself lucky that, for the most part, I can function as a more-or-less normal  adult. I may have to leave things as they presently stand. I tried just forcing myself to go into a restroom by myself once, and I ended up waking up with a nightmare followed by an hour of almost continuous vomiting.  It may be that having someone check out public restrooms, much as the way royalty and importnt politicians have to have someone taste their food before they're allowed to eat it. 

It's my phobia, and I'll deal with it as I please. Anyone who refuses to check a restroom out before I enter for me it is not my friend. Period.

Again, it's an event that happened in my life, and is not representative of who I am as a person even though it did have it's effect on me to some degree.

Sorry for the extra-long post, but I had no easy way to cut to the chase. I also have a fear of smoky rooms or buildings, but I susect anyone who has every been traped inside one deals with issues related to it, so I don't even consider it a phobia.







 


30 comments:

  1. I think many people have their phobias. For me, it's dealing with doctors. ;) I don't blame you for not liking public restrooms, though, especially after what happened.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You're not alone in being phbic in dealing with doctors. Not all doctors are as humane as they need to be. And you're dealing with a health issue that worries you at the same time you're dealing with them, or you wouldn't be there in ther first place. It's a loaded situation, and almost always on their turf.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have not read the above yet but read the phobia (just re-treated the above). I had a girlfriend that had graduated 2nd in her class in high school. She lived 15 minutes away from me and then moved into the apartment above mine. She would have me enter her apartment before she would be dropped off there. The reason is because a good friend of hers was raped by a guy that broke into her apartment and waited for her. Here is my saying about the above. It is better safe than sorry!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I read all the above and it was extremely upsetting to me. I feel like I had been traumatized ("subject to lasting shock as a result of an emotionally disturbing experience or physical injury.") So I will wait until another time to respond to the above. I can't say that a certain day was the worst day of my life. Would you say that this was the worst day of your life?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Chuck, it's a tie. At the end of my junior year, right when I was 15, maybe 3 1/2 months before the infamous restroom incident. my aunt was "taking care" of me a few after i had been critically injured in a track and field accident. i had a seriously mangled leg and a broken collarbone, which left me unable to walk even with crutches. I had developed a nasty kidney infection, and the kidney infection itself, in combination with the antibiotics, had given me a pretty bad intestinal situation. My mom was very ill with a kidney stone that wouldn't move in eeither direction and wasn't in a safe place to be blasted or retrtieved, so she was in the hospital herself. my dad had missed tons of work because mf my injury and just coudn't stay home with me because of the amount of time he'd already taken off plus there was some critical research for which he needed to be present, along with really imortant meetings. (I don't blame my dad or my mom at all for this; my dad had qorked roughly half-time for over a month because of my injury, and my mom was too sick to do anything about it. if anyone, responsible aunts and uncles included, had possessed a crystal ball and had known just how bad it was going to be, several of them would have found a way to come to our home to take care of me, or my dad would have let the meetings go rregardless of how much in funding of research it might have cost him or no matter what it involved, but hindsight is always 20/20.)

    Usually my Aunt heather would have taken care of me in such a situation, and she had been taking care of me, but she had scheduled months on advance to fill in for her husband's nurse practitioner in his pedatrics practice for a three-week vacation. the regular nurse practitioner's yunger sister was getting married in Hawaii, and she had planned the 3-week vacation a year n advance. My Aunt Heather doesn't work regularly, and so she has often been the person who took care of me when I was sick on weekdays and my parents were unable to stay home. She had taken care of me the previous week. My uncle Steve was scheduled to be at a convention for the week. He was one of the key presenters. They both say they wuld have shut down the practice for a week, or try to bring in anotherr doctor, or even canceled Uncle Steve's participation in the clinic, but no one knew how serious the situation was going to get Again, hindsight is great.

    I'll stop now and start a new post before this response gets too large to post.

    TO BE CONTINUED

    ReplyDelete
  6. It sounds like you are going to be telling about a critical situation. If you have already written about it, you can direct me to where to go to read it. Wait, I remember some back posts and read how a girl came to visit you in the hospital when you were loaded with medications due to the above injury. She told you how your date for the prom was going to be taking her instead and it caused you to cry.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. i have written about it somewhere, but i'df have to loo for it. i think i actually remember it more clearly as the time passes and trauma diminishes. i/f i remember something differently than i recounted it closer to the time it happened, most likely my current memory of the incident is more accurate.

      Delete
  7. My dad is the oldest of ten surviving offspring. A sister maybe two or three siblings younger than he was having severe financial dificulties. Her husband was and is a doctor, but they had two sonson missions, a daugher in college, another about to enter college, and six children besides those four. I'm still not quite sure the nature of their financial problems, as with what most doctors bring in, their circujmstances might have stretched things a bit, but they shouldn't have been in the dire financial straits they claimed to have been in, but in many instances we're not all privy to the inner financial workings of a family. Who knows what in their private financial issues might have caused major difficulty? I couldn't even hazard a guess.

    My aunt heard of my parents' dilemma with care for me, and her and her husband's services to care for me for the going rate for nursing care. Ordinarily transportation might have been an issue, but they lived not terribly far from reno, so Uncle Steve could taake maybe a nonety-minute detrou to drop me off on Sunday night and could stop back by on Friday evening to pick me up on his return trip;

    i won't name this particular aunt and uncle because the end result cause a major family feud tat will robably never be smoothed over, and I don't want cousins coming out of th woodwork again to post obnoxious comments here. In any event, the aunt was and is a registered nurse, and her husband, my uncle by marriage, was and is a family practice physician. Even though my aunt was busy with seven children still at home ranging in age from sen=venteen to five months, it should have been within her scope of ability to care for me for five days.

    my uncle Steve carried me to their doorstepon the designated Sunday evening. he offered to carry me to whatever bed my aunt and uncle planned to use for me. my aunt insisted that he just deposit me on their sofa. he brought in my clothing and medical supplies, which included syringes so that I could be injected with antibiotics for my kidney infection twice daily. he also brough IV supplies in the event my condition worsened, so that i might be hydrated intraveinously and administered medication (also included) intraveinously if my condition worsened. he asked where in the refrigerator he should put my medicatons, and my aunt showed him, my uncle was at some stake presidency meeting for the LDS churhc. My Uncle Steve said he really wanted to peak to my aunt's husband, the mD, about the precariousness of my condition and what he should be watching for, but it was getting lte, adn he still hadn't gotten home.

    The other children were complaining that I was taking up all the couch space.condition. Uncle Steve agin offered to move me to my bed, which he assumed was upstairs. My aunt was adamant that I was just fine on the sof until her husband got home. my Uncle Steve waited another half-hour for the uncle to come home form the church meeting, but he (my Uncle Steve0 still had roughly another ninety minutes to make it to his hotel. Eventually he gave up.
    TO bE cONTINUED

    ReplyDelete
  8. My dad is the oldest of ten surviving offspring. A sister maybe two or three siblings younger than he was having severe financial dificulties. Her husband was and is a doctor, but they had two sonson missions, a daugher in college, another about to enter college, and six children besides those four. I'm still not quite sure the nature of their financial problems, as with what most doctors bring in, their circujmstances might have stretched things a bit, but they shouldn't have been in the dire financial straits they claimed to have been in, but in many instances we're not all privy to the inner financial workings of a family. Who knows what in their private financial issues might have caused major difficulty? I couldn't even hazard a guess.

    My aunt heard of my parents' dilemma with care for me, and her and her husband's services to care for me for the going rate for nursing care. Ordinarily transportation might have been an issue, but they lived not terribly far from reno, so Uncle Steve could taake maybe a nonety-minute detrou to drop me off on Sunday night and could stop back by on Friday evening to pick me up on his return trip;

    i won't name this particular aunt and uncle because the end result cause a major family feud tat will robably never be smoothed over, and I don't want cousins coming out of th woodwork again to post obnoxious comments here. In any event, the aunt was and is a registered nurse, and her husband, my uncle by marriage, was and is a family practice physician. Even though my aunt was busy with seven children still at home ranging in age from sen=venteen to five months, it should have been within her scope of ability to care for me for five days.

    my uncle Steve carried me to their doorstepon the designated Sunday evening. he offered to carry me to whatever bed my aunt and uncle planned to use for me. my aunt insisted that he just deposit me on their sofa. he brought in my clothing and medical supplies, which included syringes so that I could be injected with antibiotics for my kidney infection twice daily. he also brough IV supplies in the event my condition worsened, so that i might be hydrated intraveinously and administered medication (also included) intraveinously if my condition worsened. he asked where in the refrigerator he should put my medicatons, and my aunt showed him, my uncle was at some stake presidency meeting for the LDS churhc. My Uncle Steve said he really wanted to peak to my aunt's husband, the mD, about the precariousness of my condition and what he should be watching for, but it was getting lte, adn he still hadn't gotten home.

    The other children were complaining that I was taking up all the couch space.condition. Uncle Steve agin offered to move me to my bed, which he assumed was upstairs. My aunt was adamant that I was just fine on the sof until her husband got home. my Uncle Steve waited another half-hour for the uncle to come home form the church meeting, but he (my Uncle Steve0 still had roughly another ninety minutes to make it to his hotel. Eventually he gave up.
    TO bE cONTINUED

    ReplyDelete
  9. I just lost the next post, but I want to knock this all off in one evening, so I shall persevere.

    My uncle eventually showed up. He looked briefly at the detailed note my Uncle Steve had typed listing instructions for my care and medicatons. He somewhat dissmissively tossed them aside. I told him Uncle steve had alread given my thaat night'ws injection. 'Good," he said somewht absently.

    My aunt suggested he should carry me upstairs to my bed so that they culd have family prayer and get the younger children to bed. 'finr, " he muttered. He picked me up and headed toward the stairs. "I need my duffel bag1" I called out as he carried me past it.

    "Not really,' my aunt answered," but one of my older female cousins Picked itup and hung the strap on my good arm. As her mother glared at her, she said somewhat snarkily, 'It seems like the very lest we can do for her. let her hve her little suitcase.'

    My uncle carried me upstairs past what I thought would have been my bed, which was a short window seat at one end of the upstairs hall. it wouldn't have been terrible soft, and it was sshorten than my just-over 5'1" frame, but, as it turned out, it would have been a 4 1/-star hotel accommodation compared to my actual bed for the better part of the week. My uncle pulled on a string, which brought down a contraption more closely rembling a ladder than a a set of stairs. The uncle threw me over his shoulder as he held onto one side of the ladder and propelled himself and me into the attic of the house. It waas an unfinished attic -- the kind with boards across beams to keep a person from steeping theough the ceiling of the room below and falling all the way to th floor.

    On the maakeshift floor was a cot, with a sleeping bag and small pillow. I remember feeling lucky that it was early June, as the unfinished attic likely would have been colder Antarctica five-and-a-half months of the year and hotter than hell another five-and-a-haalf months. I at least managed tobe there in the one month that I would die niether of heat stroke or of hypothermia. there was still no guaraantee I wouldn't die before my Uncle Steve showed up on Friday to retrieve me, but it probably wouldn't have been from weather-related causes.

    My uncle dropped me onto the cot. Next to the cot was a 2-liter Barq's rootbeer bottle 3/4 full of wht appeared to be water. Next to that was a bag of store-brand bread, maybe half full, alog with a jar maybe 1/4 full of peanut butter. (I found out later it was actually almond butter, though I'm not sure it mattered all that much. Next to the peanut butter/almost butter jar were five tiny plastic seingle-serving containers of Spaghettios. Then most curious of all, was a 16-pack of toddler size 4 diapers, along with a plastic package of baby wipes. next to them was a recloseable plastic trash bag.

    'How do Iget to the bathroom from here?" I asked my aunt, as her husband had already left the attic.

    You don't" she answered. "That's what the Pampers are for. You'll need to ration carefully. That package will have to last you the whole week.' This would be a task more easily said than actually accomplished for a person with a really serious kidney infection and a significant case of diarrhea as a result both of the kidney infection and as a side effect of the medications given to me to kill the raagin bacteriaa that had overtken all function in my kidneys.

    She left. I wouldn't see or hear from her again for nearly two days.

    TO BE CONTINUED

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Are you kidding me?

      "You cannot be serious!" --- John McEnroe
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekQ_Ja02gTY

      Delete
    2. that's probably the most bizarre oart of all. she had daipers large enough to fit me because she had a chubby 4-year-old who still wasn't potty trained. i assume that foster care got him potty-traaained. h3 was one of the ones in foster care for almost a year. the youngest two still weren't reuinted with the arents the lst time i heard, but i don't hear much from or about these people, as I choose to have no contact with them whatsoever. if they're attending a family event, I don't attend, along with my family. If it's really important to my grandma, sometimes just my dad will go, but my grandma understands why I cannot be in the same house or restaurant as these people.. Usually my Uncle Steve and his family don't attend, either.

      Delete
  10. I soon lost track of time. From the one window-like structure in the attic, I was able to see whether it was dark or light.

    Initially I was happy not to be receiving the twice-daily injections, as I was not fond of injections, but as I grew sicker, the realization dawned upon me that the injections had been keeping the bad bacteria in my kidneys from taking over my whole body.

    I hollered down to my aunt one day that I needed my injections. she told me to be quiet before the nighbors started complining, but said she would bring up my injection when she got around to it. Awhile later -- maybe an hour, or maybe two or three hours -- she came up with a medication-filled syringe. She didn't bring one of those antiseptic wipes - just the syringe itself. "Spencer missed the GATE bus again,' she whined. 'I hate to have him miss a day of GATE when he only has it once a week just because he misses the bus. The school needs to have a late bus for the kids who miss the first bus," she went on as though I should possibly care. (If Spencer waas so lacking in functioning skills that he consistently managed to miss the bus transporting students from their regular schools and classrooms to the building that housed the program serving Gifted And Talented Children, perhaps either he wasn't quite so gifted and talented as his mother thought he was, or he deserved to sit out a session when he forgot (despite the fact that an intercom announcement that the bus had arrived happened each week when the GATE shuttle was there to transport the "gifted' children, and that the three other "gifted' children from his classroom consistently made it onto the shuttle) and to do the 'boring' work his less gifted and talented peers were stuck doing. The truth of the matter was that he almost always left the classroom with his 'gifted" peers, but usually somehow managed to get lost between the classroom and the bus, and after the shuttle driver waited an extra five minutes for him, despite the honks that distrubed the entire school. Then ten minutes or so later, he would turn up at the office and ask to call his mother because he had missed the GATE bus again.

    'I'm not going to have hm sitting in that boring classroom all day long just because THEY'RE stupid,' she muttered. "Now Alexis, I need you to listen for the baby. I'm not going to wake him up. he'll probably sleep until I'm back, but if he waakes up, you'll need to check on him.'

    Before I could even inquire as to how i should check on him when I couldn't get to him, she was heading down the stairs. 'Just give yourself the shot. I'm sure you've seen it done hundreds of times. It's not rocket science." And with that, she was gone.








    ReplyDelete
  11. I soon lost track of time. From the one window-like structure in the attic, I was able to see whether it was dark or light.

    Initially I was happy not to be receiving the twice-daily injections, as I was not fond of injections, but as I grew sicker, the realization dawned upon me that the injections had been keeping the bad bacteria in my kidneys from taking over my whole body.

    I hollered down to my aunt one day that I needed my injections. she told me to be quiet before the nighbors started complining, but said she would bring up my injection when she got around to it. Awhile later -- maybe an hour, or maybe two or three hours -- she came up with a medication-filled syringe. She didn't bring one of those antiseptic wipes - just the syringe itself. "Spencer missed the GATE bus again,' she whined. 'I hate to have him miss a day of GATE when he only has it once a week just because he misses the bus. The school needs to have a late bus for the kids who miss the first bus," she went on as though I should possibly care. (If Spencer waas so lacking in functioning skills that he consistently managed to miss the bus transporting students from their regular schools and classrooms to the building that housed the program serving Gifted And Talented Children, perhaps either he wasn't quite so gifted and talented as his mother thought he was, or he deserved to sit out a session when he forgot (despite the fact that an intercom announcement that the bus had arrived happened each week when the GATE shuttle was there to transport the "gifted' children, and that the three other "gifted' children from his classroom consistently made it onto the shuttle) and to do the 'boring' work his less gifted and talented peers were stuck doing. The truth of the matter was that he almost always left the classroom with his 'gifted" peers, but usually somehow managed to get lost between the classroom and the bus, and after the shuttle driver waited an extra five minutes for him, despite the honks that distrubed the entire school. Then ten minutes or so later, he would turn up at the office and ask to call his mother because he had missed the GATE bus again.

    'I'm not going to have hm sitting in that boring classroom all day long just because THEY'RE stupid,' she muttered. "Now Alexis, I need you to listen for the baby. I'm not going to wake him up. he'll probably sleep until I'm back, but if he waakes up, you'll need to check on him.'

    Before I could even inquire as to how i should check on him when I couldn't get to him, she was heading down the stairs. 'Just give yourself the shot. I'm sure you've seen it done hundreds of times. It's not rocket science." And with that, she was gone.








    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Were the parents of this aunt and uncle, brothers and sisters. Is inbreeding common among LDS people?

      Delete
    2. the aunt -- my dad's sisterv -- and the uncle were not blaad relatives. it's common among FLDS but not LDS, and even with fLDS, it's not usually as close a relationship as brothers and sisters who are married, although it's not unheard of for someone to be married to a half-sibling.

      Delete
    3. Thanks but it was kind of a joke. I found this on internet: "Today, the FLDS is run by a notorious prophet by the name of Warren Jeffs who is on trial right now in Texas for having sex with two underage girls whom he married by revelation of their god. UPDATE: Jeffs was found guilty and is serving life + 20 yrs for his conviction of selling girls into pre-arranged marriages and child endangerment."

      Delete
  12. I looked at the syringe, trying to determine the least germy method of getting th mediction into me. i considered shooting the medication into my mouth and swallowing it, but I knew the medication wasn't designed to be delivered that way and that, furthermore, at the rate my gastric system was moving, the medicine would go right through me before it could possibly benefit my body in any way. In my duffel bag, I had some antibactrial gel. I decided thaat was probably the closest thing to an antiseptic wipe as I would find. I wiped my hands as clean as I could get them using antibacterial gel, then reached into the package of baby wipes to find one that probably had not been touched. I used it to rub a decent-sized portion of the antibacterial solution into a place in my lower thing that seemed to have at least a bit of fat. I then removed the cap from the syringe, stuck the needle in my thigh, and pressed the medication into my body. Compared to the pain I was feeling elsewhere in my body, the pain of the injection didn't even merit a bleep on the radar. I had the sense that the medication I had injected was too little and too late, but it was worth a try. I dozed off. if the baby woke, I never heard him. eventually i head the clutter of my aunt in the kitchen,, so I knew my babysitting stint had ended without incident.

    By what I think was Wednesday night, I could tell that my fever was raging. i had been given (by myself) a total of one of the six injections of antibiotics I should have been given by that point. I was precariously close to running out of diapers and was having to ration, which was causing me to develop a rather intense diaper rash. I had developed a method of dressing commando under my nightgown and using diapers multiple times as toilets - one for bowel function and one for bladder function. It would have been easy had I the full use of all hour limbs, or at leat both arms, but was a bit tricky with just my non-dominant arm to manage all of this.

    On Wednesday night, as I felt my fever grow out of control, with convulsing shivers. I hollered again until my aunt sent her teen-aged daughter upstairs to tell me to be quiet. I told her I needed another balnket and more water. She could tell probably just by looking at me that I was in a world of trouble. She didn't tell me to be quiet. She left and came back with several bottles of actual bottled water along with a blanket, and she loosened the caps on all the water bottles because she said they were hard ones to open and I might not be able to open them if she didn't open them first. She said she woud send one of her parents up.

    I had lost all concept of time by then, but at some point my aunt came up. I told her i needed something, like maybe to go to the hospital. She laughed and said, "It's Wednesday night already. I don't think you'll dier before steve picks you up on Friday night."

    I wasn'tt so sure about it as my aunt was.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I was increasingly disoriented. I remember seeing light come through the window-like structure. Then I remember smelling a putrefying smell.

    Putrefying smells were not unusual in that home. My aunt was famous among the family for her terrible cooking. She would throw together some casserole or other concoction. My uncle would take one bite of it (most of the time; sometimes it smelled so bad that even he was not brave enough to taste what she had thrown together) and declare the food unfit for consumption by any vertebrate. The food would be tossed in the outdoor trash receptacle, sometimes along with it the pan or dish in which it was cooked. (My mom always said their finincial problems -whatever they were -- would be substantially reduced if they wuld just stop buying food to be cooked and ruined, and would go for takeout or fast food in the firsst place.) My uncle would pick up pizza, chicken, burgers, Chinese food, or whatever sounded good. It was a nightly ocurrence.

    The putrefying smell grew stronger, and was eventually accompanied by smoke, which rose to the upper level of the structure of their home. Soon the smoke alarms sounded. That, by itself, was not altogether unusual. Usually, however, somoeone would take whatever was in the over out to the trash, open the windows, and turn on fans to blow the smoke out.

    No one appeared to be doing any such thing, In fact, there was no evidence that anyone other than I was in the home. The attic grew smokier by the minute. I knew I needed to get out, and it didn't seem that anyone was likely to help me.

    I used the toilet diaper one last time beforre making my attempted escape, hoping that would lst until I reached an actual bathroom. I pt on the last clean diaper from the package of Pampers because I couldn't take the time to try to find underwear in my duffle bag.

    I lowered myself in my sleeping bag down from the cot to the makeshift attic floor, scooting across the boards, glad that i had the sleeping bag to protect me from splinters.I reached theladder and fiddled with it until I was able to make it lower. I slid from step to step, with each descending step seeming to hurt every bone in my body, though in reality only the broken bones probably actually felt pain.

    As I reached the floor of the upstairs hall, it occurred to me that my aunt might again have left the baby in his crib with just me to tgake care of him. I scotted along the flor of the hall in my sleeping bag, moving with more difficulty without graviry as a aid. Eventually i reached baby Gregory's room. With much difficulty, I propelled myself up to reach his doorknob. I opened it, dragged myself to his crib, and felt around. No baby. While I was irritated by the time and energy wasted, I knew that the logistics of getting the baby safely down the stairs and out of the huse would have made things tough. I now had only myself to worry about.

    I propelled myself back down the hall to the stairs. I went through the painful descent of each stair step -- painful, yet easier to manage because of gravity being in my favor. It scooted myself across the final landing to the last two steps. I slid across the hardwood entryway to the front door.

    With much difficulty, I pulled myself high enough to reach the doorknob, There was a higher obstacle, though. A deadbolt had been placed high enough that the youngest children could not escape theough the front door. I had to pull myself to fully standing position to reach the deadbolt and release it, which I did, though I fell after releasing the deadbolt. i pulled myself up again to the nob, then opened the door.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I slipped out of th4e sleeping bag and out the front door. The door slammed behind me. I probably could have med it away from the house more easily with the sleeping bag, but it was locked inside the house. I sat on the steps and watched smoke seep from various compromised segments of the house's sealing. Not knoing the cause of the smoke, I decided that remaining close to it was probably unwise.

    I scooted down the lightly sloped lawn toward the curb. I was shivering and extremely weak. K toyed with the ide of tying to cross the street, but was unsure ass to what would be accomplished by doing that, and was worried I might be run over. then it occurred to me that bsolutely no cars were passing. This was a quiet neighborhood during school housrm ad vrtually everyone (except my aunt) worked during normal business hours,
    Still, I knew someone would eventually drive y. My hope was that whoever that somone might ne would drive by before my aunt returned from wherever t was that she had gone. I thought it was probably Thiursday, which meant i had roughly a day and a half before my Uncle Steve would be back to pick me up.; I wasn't at all sure I would last that long with just the care provided by my aunt and uncle.

    I leaned against the post supporting the mail box, but then moved away when I heard an approaching car, hoping the driver would notice me. All I needed was for some good Samaritan to summon the authorities.

    As the car approached, I pulled myself to a full standing position, then took a step toward the street. I managed to fall just as the car reached me.

    A woman got out of the car. She first dialed 9-1-1 on her cell phone She aksed who I was and what I was doing outside. I explained my situation and that i was afraid my aunt would come back before. the responders got there. She relayed my words to the 911 operator.

    ReplyDelete
  15. The 911 operator told the woman she could take me into her house if I could be safely moved. the lady said I needed to stand up on my own power, and that she would then help me into her car. Highly motivated, I pulled myself up using the mailbox post. The woman helped me to the front passsenger seat of her car. 'You're on fire!" she exclaimed. A small girl -- maybe three or so -- sat in a child's car seat behind me.

    We pulled into the woman's garage. across the street and about two houses down from my aunt's house. The woman took her daughter out of her car seat. The little girl went onto the house. The woman then helped me out of the car and into the house. She sat me in a kitchn chair and spread a comforter on her sofa, then helped me to it, then covered me with a blanket. Her little girl stood and stared at me.

    Soon sounds of sirens approached, Fire engines parked outide my aunt's house. The women flagged the paramedics, whoo cme into the house. The paramedics asked questions of me as they examined me. My memories of this point are fuzzy, but I remeber someone saying my temperature was over 105 degrees. when they noticed I was wearing a diaper and asked about it, The paramedics the called in a police officer, who asked questions about why I had been at my aunt's huse and what my aunt and uncle had done to take care of me.

    From my vantage point on the sofa, i could see that my aunt drove up with Baby Gregory and her next two youngest in her car. She saw her front door bashed in and firemen in full gear carrying hoses out, and she sort of lost it. 'Alexis, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!" she shrieked.

    A fireman just standing by said, "Alexis didn't do anything except get herself out of that smopky mess before she was asphyxiated. Exactly what were you trying to cook, anywya. It doesn't smeel like it wuld have been edible before it was burned to a crisp and practically took the whol house with it!"

    Seeing the activity and the ambulance at the neighbor's door, my aunt assumed I must be there. Leaving her three kids in her parked car, she approached the door and said, 'alexis, come out here right now!"


    "Alexis can't walk," one of the paramedics reminded her.

    "You need to give her back to me, my aunt demanded of the paramedic. 'Her parents left her in my care."

    'Ma'am, Alexis is going to the hospital," the paramedic told her.

    i don't remember much after that. Somehow I was able to give them my uncle steve's cell phone number. He apparently made waht should have been a nnnety-minute drive in under an hour. i was arir-lifted forst to a hospital in Reno, and then to the university hospital near my home. My kidneys had brefly ceased all functioning. i was on dialysis for a week until my kidney function resumed.

    My aunt and uncle initially lost custoday of all their children. they gradually regained custody of all but the two youngest, both of whom are in the care of another aunt and uncle. They are allowed supervised visitation with their parents.

    My aunt and uncle continue to blame me for the set of circumstances that caused them to lost custody of their children.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Alexis, first I must thank you for writing this as a response to my question as to the worst day of your life. But this is an incredible story. It could not have been any better if it were a fictional story! You need to write it again as a single post, not a bunch of comments. Also when you write it again, take the time to edit it and make it as if it were to be published in Time Magazine or the New York Times.

    I am surprised that you had not written this story before. Are you saving all your best stuff for later. I know this time, that it is not just me. This is a great story! It can even be made into a movie. In fact we have talked about how you used to look like Shirley Temple. In one popular movie, she lived in the attic of a house and she waited on all her step-sisters in the house.

    This was her best movie ever, The Little Princess (1939). At the end of the movie she talks to the queen of England. You should see it, if you have not already. By writing this as comments instead of a post, it is like you are saying to me that I am more important to you than your entire blog and your fame as a writer. If that is the case, I love you too.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Your father is right that medical doctors make the money. There are too many starving writers. But how many famous medical doctors throughout history can you name? Now how many famous writers can you name? Have you studied the teachings of famous doctors from the 1500s? Have you studied the writings of Shakespeare from the 1500s?

    I am not suggesting changing your career. But how many people have adored Shakespeare because of his writings, that are so great, that some say that he did not really exist? I am just defending myself to show that I am not crazy for adoring you. If you are worshipped as one of the greatest writers ever, after you die, it will not help you now or in this life. So I want you to know NOW that you are one of the greatest writers ever and that is why you love to write.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Alexis, once your your father told you, that if you have to write about someone that made a difference in history, he told you who to write about. That person was not a doctor. He was a writer and discovered electricity. If you visit center city Philadelphia, you can see Ben Franklin walking around. They pay an actor to do this full time.

    Note that some of the most popular writers of this time are known as musicians like The Beatles! You are a musician.

    Charles Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities. It has as the first paragraph the way to describe history and our lives at any time.

    "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Chuck, I do think my dad is all about being multi-faceted as an individual himslef, and would wish the same thing for his offspring.. While one primary focus may put the food on one's table and pay the rent or mortgage, other avocations may further enrich one's life in both literal and in emotional/psychoogical senses. My father worked his way through medical school, incurring few debts along the was, as a musician whenever he had a break long enough to get a traveling gig. I've been asked not to identify the artists with whom my father toured or recorded, but they were well-known and accomlished musicians. My dad didn't have to "sell out" so to speak, or to compromise his musical principles in order to earn the money he needed to support himself and pay medical school tuition.

      My mother, as an educator and as a psychologist - both clinical and educational -- in addition to being a musicicologist, holds doctorates in piano and vocal performance and enough on-paper background and practical ability in theory and musicology to teach upper division courses in both at the university level. She was furthermore sufficiently skilled at violin to the degree that she could teach me well enough that I could obtain an undergrad degree in violin performance, She also recognizes the point of being multi-facted in one's approach to a career and to life in general.

      Both of my parents recognize that writing is a gift for me. It is for my dad to some degree as well. He doesn't use it as much as I plan to, though he publishes more prolifically than do most research physicians at his stature in the profession, and does more of the writing himself than do most of his peers, most of whom rely on fellows and other underlings to do their heavy writing. My father's fellows are often disappointed at the lightness of the writing load placed upon them. Most research physicians of my father's stature consider writing to be a part of the job that is somewhat beneath them and not a task they particularly enjoy. My father considers it a perk of the job, A trademark somewhat characteristic of my father's journal articles is that they contain humor in places humor would not typically be found. (In part, this is due to the final draft usually being written after a couple Guinnesses or glassesof wine have been downed, but his wit is evident even if not under the influence.

      Delete
  19. My dad "gets" my need to write. I think he just feels that writing will be both easier and more fun for me if I'm not anxiously waiting for envelopes, feeling the thickness before opening them in hope that they contain contracts and checks, so that I don't have to hit my parents up for one more loan in order to pay my bills. Additionally, my dad believes that one is most inspired to write when one's mind is actively engaged and one's life is filled with cognitively challenging work He doesn't believe that the slow, contemplative life lends iself to the highest quality of writing for most who wish to write.

    My father's viewpoint is in diametric opposition to the early premise of A ROOM WITH A VIEW ( it vexes me that I can neither italicise nor edit in reponses) that it is the right of every young woman to be provided with a room with a view so that she can contemplate and write without the necessity of such mundane matters as how to sustain herself while she does so. My father believes that not only has this sort of attitude -- that of a right of a daughter to be "kept" with no responsibility toward her own livelihood -- has contributed to the setting back of the women's movement for generations longer than needed to be the case societally, in addition to setting women as individuals back in terms of their inspiration for whatever art form they cared to pursue. While there is a season for everything, including watching and contemplating, true inspiration more often comes from being an active participant in the world around one, and not merely an observer. Furthermore, this idea of a woman's right to be provided with a livelihood of any sort, be it a room with a view, lodging in a more cloistered setting, or plane tickets and paid hotel rooms to jet-set arund the worl living a life akin to thos of the kardashian offspring or Paris Hilton and her sister Nicki***, my dad feels, perpetuates the idea that, at least among women, the right to participate in the creation of art is a privilege of the wealthy -- an idea he detests. Many of us detest that idea when it comes right down to it.

    My dad recognizes that I will probaby always need to write, and that it is not beyond possibility that at some point either writing or music could overtake medicine as a career for me. Still, he felt that not taking advantage of the ease with which the mastery of mathematical and scientific concepts come to me, compounded by the medical scholarships literally falling into my lap, which is not the case for most med school students, it would have been foolish for me not to study medicine if only as a way to provide inspiration and to finance a fledgling writing career.

    We are a family of multi-dimensional people. My parents respect my skill as a writer. They just think, as I do, that a degree in English composition isn't, in and of itself, the most useful degree on the planet, though there's an abundance of time for me to go back and earn one if I truly believe it will help me to achieve my goals. I took more electives in the English domain than were required. Those, combined with what I had already learned and what comes naturally to me, have probably provided me with what I need in order to spring-board a writing career if I so choose it. Furthermore, among professors under whom I studied while completing undergraduate studies, at least one of a few I would choose would likely be willing to serve as a mentor to me as a fledgling writer.

    P.S. This response will appear in blog form.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Thanks! I learned more about your parents in this post than in all the previous posts that I have read. Your parents are incredibly wise!

    ReplyDelete
  21. So, what happened to the perps?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. one 9two, actually, because fourth idiot joined them to propel a beick through my bedroom window that night) got off on probabtion, one served about six months in a juvenile detention center 9wqs supposed to serve longer but they ran out of room0, and one who was eighteen served 364 days. i think their parole and/or probation ends this year, though my attorney is tryig to extend the restraining order. I stay as far away from the whole matter as possible.

      Delete
    2. one 9two, actually, because fourth idiot joined them to propel a beick through my bedroom window that night) got off on probabtion, one served about six months in a juvenile detention center 9wqs supposed to serve longer but they ran out of room0, and one who was eighteen served 364 days. i think their parole and/or probation ends this year, though my attorney is tryig to extend the restraining order. I stay as far away from the whole matter as possible.

      Delete