"T": Three Views of One Incident

     This is a series of three views of one event in my childhood, the first draft of which was written in 2009, when I was attending BMCC.  The assignment, in Shaindel Beers' WR 242 class, inspired me to write the same story in first, second, and third person.  I found this intriguing, and it was the first time I ever wrote anything in second person.  I did not like writing that viewpoint, because it felt like I was telling the reader what they had to do, so I have not done second person stories since.  I discovered that I immensely enjoyed writing from the viewpoint of an animal, though, specifically a dog.  The dog's joy filled me, the minute I slipped into its skin to look at the world.
     This event, which happened around my 7th year of age, was monumental for me at that time.  It was the first time I remember actually seeing something, the way it looked from someone else's eyes.  It was a powerful moment in my development, because it cemented in me what my father had been trying to burn into my brain the first years of my life:  no one was going to believe anything I might say, even though what I wanted to say was the truth.  The frustration of knowing nobody was going to believe the truth was horrible for me.  Years later, when I watched the movie "Nineteen Eighty-Four," the "2+2=5" scene (See video link at the end of this post) made me feel the exact frustration I felt back when I was seven, while this event occurred. 
     This incident also began my deep, lifelong yearning to have a chance to explain to someone else how wrong their perception of my behavior truly was.  If I had physically been able to escape my father's presence at that moment when I was seven, and had the wherewithal and verbal capability to go down and explain to my neighbors what had actually occurred, I do believe their perception of me, and of my father, might have changed.  This desire to explain myself has followed me doggedly since that day, and is finally manifesting itself in this blog, and in all of the writing I am now making public.  My need to explain myself is, in my opinion, a basic human need that drives so much of what humanity inhumanely does to itself.  I wish society would not discourage the desire people have to explain themselves.  I allowed myself to believe there was something wrong with me because I felt this need, but there is nothing wrong with feeling this way.  Now, that I am finally explaining the reasons for things I have done, reasons that have been so mislabeled and misunderstood by others, I feel a great sense of relief.  Sure, there are folks who will still choose to disbelieve or discredit me, but that is not my issue.  If they must see me as a bad person, that is their problem, not mine.  Those who do decide to listen to my words, and try to see my life from my viewpoint, those people are the folks I appreciate, and whom I want to have in my daily existence.  They are the ones I want to reciprocate for, and will listen to when they take the time to explain their viewpoint to me.  When humans are allowed to explain themselves, it gives them a chance to see who loves them enough to listen, who cares about them enough to change a misperception once they have more information. 
     One caveat:  The disparaging comments I make in this story regarding the vegan diet are the viewpoints of a hungry child, and are not how I feel about the vegans I know now.



                                                            THREE VIEWS


                                                                 HUNGRY
     I got in trouble for throwing rocks at a dog. I was seven years-old, and we were living in some apartments in Hillsboro, Oregon.  A man lived in a house across the driveway from our complex. He had a fence around his yard, tall, with snug-fitting slats of wood.  Inside that fence, he kept a dog. It was a Basenji, which is a dog that does not bark like most dogs.  Instead, a Basenji howls and yelps and makes other weird noises. They are very athletic dogs, and enjoy jumping and running around. I knew it was a Basenji, because I heard my mom call it one.  But I did not know about Basenji behavior. When it yelped, I thought it was hungry. When it jumped up high, I thought it wanted out to get food.  This was because I was hungry, and I wanted out to get food.
     My father would not let me eat. My mother fed me, which is how I remained upright, but she worked many hours a week as a registered O. R. nurse who was on-call a lot, so my father watched me often.  He would not feed me. He would eat, staring at me while he did so, but I could not eat.  I could not ask for food or he would make me sorry. If he caught me sneaking food, he made me sorry.
     When my mother was home, we did not have any meat or sugar, or anything that tasted good to me.  My parents were strict Adventists, and worse, they were into a totally fat-free, vegan diet at that time.  I spent my days dizzy, my nights in horrible stomach pain, hearing the blood whoosh in my ears.  My hands often shook, and my father laughed at me because I had dark circles under my eyes.
     My father never let me leave our apartment when my mom was gone, but I could go into the small garage attached to our place. On a shelf in the garage, against the wall, in a plastic bucket, was the food for our cat. I couldn't eat a lot of it, because if my dad thought the cat was eating too much food, he might get rid of it, and I loved that cat. I had to be real careful not to get caught eating that food.  My dad was sneaky.  He loved to catch me doing something bad, like eating, and then he would smile before making me sorry. One time, I was so startled when he caught me sneaking something from the fridge door late one night, I threw up the food, which I had been shoving into my mouth, all over the floor.  My father was very mad. I never did that again.
     Whenever I went into the garage, I would sneak a handful of cat food, squat in the far corner so I could see the door to the kitchen, the door to the back alley, and the big door for the car, and I would eat the cat food, one piece at a time.  If my father came in, I dropped the food behind me into an old coffee can full of nuts and bolts.
     When I heard that Basenji yelping, I just knew its stomach must hurt like mine did. One day, while I was nibbling on cat food, I decided to share with the hungry dog.  I put the rest of the handful of cat food into my pocket, and waited until my mom came home and my father left for work.  I went outside, and slowly crossed the driveway. I got close to the fence, and the dog started yelping. There were no holes in the fence to push the food through. The wood went all the way to the ground, so I couldn't put it underneath, either. I stepped back, and threw a piece of cat food as high as I could. It went over the fence. The dog went silent, and I could hear him crunching. Then he jumped against the fence and yelped, so I threw another piece. This continued until my pocket was empty. I told the dog I would come back with more food soon.  And I did. For the next few days, I fed the hungry dog.

     One afternoon, my father came in the front door and glared at me. He yelled for my mother.  She came. He said the nice couple down the complex had asked him in to tell him something.  The man had seen me doing something bad. He had seen me throwing rocks at the neighbor's dog.  This nice couple was very disappointed in me, and never wanted me around their place again. I opened my mouth to speak, to tell the truth, and suddenly, in my mind, I saw what my neighbor had seen:  a girl throwing rocks at a dog.  Nobody would believe me if I spoke up.  And if my father did decide to believe me, he would realize I was getting into the cat food, and he would get rid of the cat.  I shut my mouth.
     My father tried to make me sorry for throwing rocks.  But I was never sorry I fed that dog.

                                                                TROUBLED

     You are happy when the new family moves in and you find out they are churchgoing folks, with a well-behaved little girl. They do not throw wild parties or play the TV too loud. In fact, the one time your wife visits them, to drop off some homemade banana bread, she doesn't see a TV at all.
     One day, around Halloween, you notice the little girl and her mother walking to the mailbox, and you tell the little girl to be sure and come by your place to trick-or-treat. She has a kind of dull look about her, and does not seem to understand your words. Her mother thanks you, then says that they do not celebrate Halloween or eat sweets.  "Oh," you say, and watch the little girl's face as it dawns on her that a chance for candy has just slipped by.  So you offer to give her some carrot sticks or an apple, instead of candy. The mother says "Thank you," and nudges the little girl, who thanks you, too.  Early Halloween afternoon, the father brings the daughter down to your place, and lets her have one carrot stick. He tells her to go home, and she does. He stays and talks for awhile, and seems like a friendly, charming man. You and your wife tell him to stop by anytime.
     After a few weeks, you start to notice some strange things about the little girl. She appears to be anti-social, never playing with other kids. She is always acting like she is hiding something, sneaking behind walls, crouching behind garbage cans, jumping like she has been caught with her hand in the cookie jar when you approach her. You can't prove anything, but you know that she is up to no good.
     Then one day, you look out the front window, and you see her throwing rocks over the fence at the neighbor's dog.  You know right then that she is going to be trouble.  Animal cruelty is a danger signal.  When you tell her father, he nods, and says he is sorry.  He tells you that his daughter lies and steals, and now this.  He asks if you will let him know if you ever see her doing anything else, and you say yes, of course, that's what neighbors are for.  He promises to keep her out of your hair.  As you watch him go, you worry about the baby your wife recently found out she will be having.  If a decent, churchgoing man like that has such a troubled child, it can happen to anyone.


                                                                     GAME
     The small female human is back!  He can sense her outside the fence.  Soon, little bits of yummy food will drop down.  He wiggles in anticipation, then leaps against the fence.  He hears a piece of food drop, sniffs it out, and scarfs it down.  Another one falls, and he dashes over to eat it.  The little nibblets taste like the food his adult male human gives to the furry female feline who lives with them.  His human won't let him have anything but the food in his dish when he is in the house, but out here, the presence of this small human makes furry feline food fall from the sky!  She is leaving, now, but hopefully she will come back and make it rain yummy bits again.

Orwell 1984: 2+2=4
Inch Worm: Two and Two are Four.  

"R": Recalling, and Writing, the Funny Stuff

I started writing when I was around 8 or 9 years-old.  Poetry is the form most of my first words took, and short stories/essays/journals ran a close second.  Most everything I wrote was tinged with sadness, but as I got older, I longed to write comedy.  Listening to my Grandad tell funny stories, reading Erma Bombeck, remembering moments that made me laugh, those were things I loved to do, and I longed to put humor on paper.  Alas, it was never an easy task for me.

While in college a few years back, during a writing course, I decided to write about a funny incident I once experienced, but it was laborious work, and even my writing instructor knew it was not one of my better creations.  I edited and rewrote that story many times over the next couple of years, but it never felt right.  My daughter, who has a gift for the comedic, did me a great favor by editing the first part of the story (mostly slash and burn of the extraneous verbiage), and then telling me to reread some Vonnegut, to remind myself how good comedy flows.
 
I am going to copy the finally-finished draft of that story, entitled "Ink," here today.  All those years of revisions have culminated in an acceptable story for me.  As I finish this year's A-Z Blog Challenge on April 30th, I am about to embark on the task of taking an oft-told family tale and making it into a humorous short story.  "The BB Gun Incident" is by far the funniest thing I ever saw, and I want to do it proper justice.  I hope my muse will gear up for some humor.

In honor of the moments that make us laugh, here is "Ink":

                                                                       Ink
                                                                        by
                                                                 Judy S. Lentz

     So, I bought a printer. A combination deal, with copy and scan capabilities. I had never heard of the brand before, but it was on sale and I was proud of myself for finding such a steal. I got home, took the printer out of the box, and successfully hooked it up to my computer, without needing any help from my offspring. I was happy.
      Two weeks later, a window popped up on my computer screen, warning me that the black ink was low.
      “What the hell?” I muttered, as I opened the printer and looked inside to see if the cartridge was leaking. It was not. I had only used it five or six times since I bought it, so I went in search of someone to blame. I figured one of my kids had printed out the complete works of Kurt Vonnegut, or detailed instructions on how to build a backyard skate park. One of them had used it, once, for a two-page report. I decided the internal thing that gauges ink usage must be misfiring, and closed the warning box.
      The next time I printed something out, I noticed that a couple of lines were lighter than normal. I opened the printer, took out the black ink cartridge, shook it a few times, and put it back. A box popped up, asking me if I had replaced the old cartridge with a new one. I clicked “yes.” When I tried to print out a new page, another box popped up saying the black ink was empty, and the last half of the page did not show up at all. I changed the font color to red, reprinted the page, and a third box popped up, warning me that the color ink was low. I swore, and my cats looked up from their various napping spots. I grabbed my purse and headed for the store to buy more ink. On the way, I came to the conclusion that this printer must have been packaged for sale ages ago, then stored in a hot location, so most of the ink had evaporated.
      I found the electronics department and pinpointed the cartridges I needed, but they had been stocked in the wrong section. The price underneath them could not possibly be correct. It was almost twice the price of the printer.
      Oh. I get it.
      I reluctantly purchased the ink and drove home. As I put the cartridges into the printer, and wasted precious ink on three pages of alignment, I could feel my blood pressure rise.
      My kids decided to do all of their homework over the next couple of weeks, and I used the printer a few times myself, so I was not too surprised when the “Ink low” box popped up again. I was one step ahead of that box, though. While shopping for food at the dollar store (last month’s grocery budget went to ink), I discovered an ink refill kit. I am from a long line of hard-headed people who have made their own necessities (mostly grain alcohol) for many generations. I can certainly refill a little plastic ink cartridge.
      The instructions were vague, but I understood the basics: poke a hole in the cartridge with a heavy duty needle (not included in package), squeeze the ink from a palm-sized plastic bulb through a long, tiny tube into the cartridge, remove tube, cover the hole with a little black sticker (included), and voila, brand new ink cartridge!
      The hole was harder to make than I anticipated, and once I was done, there was a crack running about a half-an-inch from the hole, up the side of the cartridge. I figured I could use the extra stickers provided to patch that up.
      I attached the long, tiny tube to the bulb of ink, as directed, and inserted the tube into the cartridge. I started applying gentle pressure to the bulb. It did not seem to be expelling any ink, so I pulled it out of the cartridge and held it over the instructions. I gave the bulb a gentle squeeze, and nothing came out. I put the tube up to my eye to see if it was obstructed. It looked clear. I held the bulb over the instructions again, and squeezed harder. A black drop of ink, the size of a poppy seed, formed on the end of the tube. Okay, so I just needed to apply more pressure.
      I reinserted the tube into the cartridge, and started pressing harder. I steadied the cartridge between my knees, and used both hands to squeeze the bulb. A few minutes went by, and the bulb had only given up a fraction of a dram. I needed to think of a better way to apply pressure to the bulb. Then it hit me. An “Aha” moment.
      The cats in the room jumped up and left. They, along with my kids, have an uncanny ability to sense my “Aha” moments. They do not appreciate these moments for the flashes of brilliance they can be. I guess this is not totally unwarranted. After all, there was the limb-trimming incident. And the electrical-outlet-fixing incident. The sliding-van-door-repair incident. Oh, and the burner-cleaning incident (“Stop, drop and roll” works). But my cats were wrong this time, I just knew it.
      I placed the ink bulb in my mouth (after all, aren’t jaw muscles the strongest muscles in the body?), brought the cartridge up to the tube, and held the cartridge steady in my hands. I clamped down on the bulb with my mouth, and felt the ink start to flow into the cartridge. HA! Up yours, printer people!
      In the microsecond it took for the bulb seams to split, two thoughts flashed through my mind: First, I imagined my smile resembling Heath Ledger’s smile in “The Patriot,” after his girlfriend spiked his tea with ink. Second, for the first time in my life I wondered what ink was made out of, and how soon it would kill me.
      My mouth instinctively dropped open, the flayed bulb and bitter ink spilling down the front of my shirt, my pants, my shoes, the chair, the carpet. I sputtered and wretched, trying to get the potentially life-threatening substance out of my mouth as fast as possible. Ink sprayed on the computer screen, the desk, the wall, the chair one of my cats had just vacated. The sputtering sounds I made brought my son rushing from his room. He looked at me, he looked at the mess, he doubled over in hysterics. As he stumbled back to his room, leaving me to my fate, a cat peered around a corner. I imagined I could hear it giggling, too. Go ahead and laugh, you little ingrates, you'll all starve when I die of ink poisoning.
      It is two weeks later now. Most of the ink is gone from my belongings, and my teeth are almost white again. (I resisted the initial urge to gargle with bleach.) My breath smelled like blackboard cleaner for three straight days. I did not smile for the first week after the incident, whether to hide my teeth, or simply because I was pissed, I do not know. My tongue got back to normal first. My gums and enamel, not so much. The only other side effect I suffered was some discoloration that would have made a lab tech do a double-take at a UA.
      I went back to the store and bought a single cartridge of black ink, which was cheaper than the “money saving” combo pack that includes color. We now print everything in grayscale. In eight or nine months, I should have enough money saved to buy a printer that costs more, but is made by a company that has been around longer than the lifespan of a fruit fly. The ink for that printer is cheaper. I checked.

Inscribed, on My Doorpost and in My Heart

    

     This is my front doorpost.  To some, this might appear unsightly, something that needs to be repaired.  To me, this is a very precious part of my home.
     Since I moved into this house 23 years ago, there have been many cats who have called my place home.  The first two were kittens that came from the last litter born at my Grandad's place while he was alive.  A couple more were cats that we chose to have as pets.  The rest were a mix of dumpees, strays, and feral cats, who found their way to my place.  I have also fostered a number of kittens over the years, and had a few retirees spend their twilight season with me.  Seven of my eight current cats are rescues (two of those are foster fails, whom I could not bear to part with), and the eighth cat is my daughter's 16 year-old gatita, Baby Moo.  Each cat was, and is, precious to me, from the foster kittens I bottle-fed and sang lullabies to as they curled up under my chin, to the ferals whom I never touched, but who would sit near me on the front porch and share eye-blinks with me.  There are also cats in the neighborhood that have a special place in my heart, and come over to visit me and my gato herd often.  All gatos are welcome at my home.
     One thing almost all of these cats have in common is my front door post.  Most every cat to have entered my life here at my home these last 23 years has stopped to stretch their back and sharpen their claws at that spot on my door frame.  The sound of claws on that wood is like hearing a favorite tune.  Whenever I walk over my threshold, looking at that spot brings warmth to my heart.  It holds deep meaning, almost like a mezuzah, inscribed by creatures who have inhabited my home and my hillside, many of whom now watch over me from beyond.  Sometimes, I reach out and run my hand over the roughened wood, and if a splinter pierces my finger, I imagine it is one of my gatos at the Rainbow Bridge, giving me a scratch from heaven.
     I love this spot on my door frame.  I love every cat who helped inscribe it for me.

Elias Disney

                                                                   Elias Disney
     I finally watched "Saving Mr. Banks."  I did it reluctantly.
     Disneyland was a part of my childhood.  I was born in Southern California, and spent the first handful of my childhood years living close enough to Anaheim to visit Disneyland on a number of occasions.  We also went there whenever we returned to see family, or when I had hip procedures done at Orthopedic Hospital.  Two of the Disneyland trips that stand out for me were the visits before my first and third hip surgeries, at two and six years-of-age.  I remember seeing the character Eeyore, interacting with Pooh and other Disney characters, on Main Street during one of those visits.  I saw the pin that held Eeyore's tail in place, and I decided he had been operated on at Orthopedic Hospital in Los Angeles by Dr. Craig, just like me.  I thought Dr. Craig looked like Walt Disney, and Dr. Craig had put pins in my hip.  Before one of my surgeries, while I was being led down the hospital corridors, the tail came off of my favorite stuffed animal, Ratty, and Dr. Craig performed a tail-reattachment procedure, which in my mind, confirmed my beliefs about Eeyore and Dr. Craig.
     My mom sang Mary Poppins' songs to my sister and I when we were tots.  I read a children's book about Walt Disney when I was about ten, and he grew mythically for me.  For many years, I carried the secret belief that Walt had not died when I was a year old, he had simply gone undercover as an orthopedic surgeon. 
     My last visit to Disneyland was in my teens, and the magic was still there for me, even though I no longer thought I believed in magic.  My mom and sister later took my three children to Disneyland over Christmas break in '98, and they had a great time, too.  It is, after all, the Magic Kingdom.
     When I first heard about "Saving Mr. Banks," I thought it was one of those movies that might expose the illusions I had built around Disneyland, and Mary Poppins, and Walt Disney.  I was reluctant to let go of those illusions.  So I did not watch the movie.  But my mom recently told me I should see it, and some of my favorite actors are in it, so I broke down and watched the movie. 
     I was not prepared for how it would make me feel, but it did not destroy any of my old illusions.  Instead, it matured them.  The next time I watch Mary Poppins, the character of Mr. Banks will mean more to me.  If I ever visit Disneyland again, when I look up toward Elias Disney's office window, that place will also mean more.
     All parents, at one time or another, break their children's hearts.  It is inevitable.  The damage can create waves of pain that echo for generations.  But sometimes magic happens.  Elias Disney probably believed he was raising his sons the way kids should be raised.  It is apparent that Walt and Roy experienced a lot of pain, though.  But out of that pain, Disneyland was born.  Elias Disney was an integral part of creating the Happiest Place on Earth.
     That, is magic.