The Boys

That was sort of strange that Sylvia was living in the Buenos' house with a bunch of guys. I would never think of living that way. What a nightmare that would have been! There might have been a joke about that in college because in the classroom we can't help but overhear every mundane or humorous detail of Terry's strange life with the guys, sort of, so we almost feel like we live there but not really, just a joke. Really, life is complicated enough without compounding the confusion by living with a bunch of MK guys who can never keep their facts straight and can't really stand to have a girl tell them anything, as if girls don't have anything intelligent to say. Ha! Maybe they will grow up someday but it won't be my problem. I will never find the fountain of youth in Florida so I will just grow old along with everybody else, obviously. There is nothing magical about the sandy state. It's just a very big sandbar, nothing more.

Anyway, the main reason why it might have seemed weird is that there is the appearance of evil if a girl lives in a house with a bunch of guys who are not related to her. Danuta got fired after her book revealed she had longtime boyfriend who was black, so if he had been white would her career have survived? No, probably not because it was not the color that was the problem in this situation. I vaguely remember the roommate from North Carolina saying something about Danuta and her book which I picked up somewhere cheap at a used bookstore. I must have gotten rid of that book becuase I don't seem to have it anymore. Still, if I ever wrote an autobiography it would be nothing like Danuta's. Of that you can be sure.

Isaiah 5:20: "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter."

Romans 14:16: "Let not then your good be evil spoken of."

Ok, so years ago when I was living in California I remember talking to Sylvia Brooke and I remember her talking about how shocked she was when she came to the United States after living most of her life in Costa Rica and heard people using that colloquial expression, "Bad!" in reference to something good, in substitution for words like "Wow!" and "Cool!" That is so unbiblical and wrong to call something good bad or something bad good. I do agree with Sylvia on that point although I am not sure what to do about that. It happens all the time in English and also in Spanish, actually, in case she forgot or never studied Salvadoran literature perhaps, like for example that drama we were assigned, "Black Light," in which two disembodied heads carry on about whatever, as if there were something illuminating about consulting the dead. Wrong! This is a sin sick planet in which we live. On that point I do agree with Sylvia.

Working Days

I vaguely remember discussing with my mother the fact that we sort of feel guilty about not doing very much in terms of direct evangelism and Sunday School work when we were in El Salvador. When compared to some other missionary families in other countries, we did not do very much nor were we asked or expected to do anything. In contrast, in Costa Rica Sylvia Brooke and her mother Hope were known to be very active in planning Sunday School activities. In El Salvador I personally was not asked to do very much of anything and I did not initiate anything either. The local work was much more developed in El Salvador and there was not really any need of MKs to tell those people anything. They think they can do everything all by themselves and don't need any know-it-all America missionary kids to tell them anything so there was no reason for me to intrude into places where I was not welcome. Costa Rica, on the other hand, is a country with very few churches, much less developed, a place where the local people were content to let the missionaries pretty much run the show so there was a very different thing going on down there. I can't really imagine doing that in El Salvador. It just wouldn't be necessary.

Triplett Triteness

I am also trying to understand why I should care about the Tripletts? What have the Tripletts ever done for me other than make my life miserable in a very literalistic and legalistic sense? Nicaragua is far away and has nothing of interest to teach me about anything. I know all I need to know about Spanish culture and history without any help from Don, Mark, and Tim, thank you very much. I know everything I need to know about China without any help from Mark's wife Jeanette, who was an MK somewhere in Asia although I don't remember exactly which country. Ok, so I'll just say that I am not unaware and may have overheard somewhere that some people are very disturbed by the Tripletts' manorial obsessions and castle crazes of the feudal variety. They imagine themselves the lords of the manor commissioned for the purpose of beating pitiful serfs, in which class they have imagined myself included, into a state of cowering submission. All of that sour grapes about rules and regulations imposed by the bigwigs up there, do they really imagine that was all just an imaginary script? That the benevolent lords-a-leaping ever cared for a second about the hours of inconvenience, all the blood, sweat, and tears they imposed on the workers in the fields? No, they don't really care about us in any kind of personal way. It's just a business, after all, an international exchange of lifestyle commodities. Our ideas and thoughts will not even be considered. No, the ideas that matter come from themselves and benefit mainly themselves. So what if the middle gets squeezed out? It just doesn't matter in a feudal society. In a feudal society the Tripletts are sequestered in their baronial estate while the hoi polloi cough and wheeze and succumb to the pestiferous plague. So, like, why should I care about castles? If I had the money to travel, there is no shortage of ruined castles in Europe waiting to be photographed. But it's not really about them. So I'm just saying.

Blue Angels

Oops! Correction. I never saw any U.S. military personnel "boots on the ground" during high school but I do remember the Blue Angels flying overhead, piloted no doubt by U.S. military personnel of some sort, probably Air Force I would imagine although the other branches also have aircraft so actually I am not so sure. I really don't remember much about that.

Joseph

Oh, did I ever mention that I never know of the existence of General Joseph Stilwell until very recently? I must admit that I was never a student of the politics and history of China and never had a clue about who all those military people were in World War II nor did ever have much interest. It is not like Chinese culture ever interested me in the slightest with all their shrieky weird fingernails-on-a-blackboard music and strangeness. I only know that my great-grandparents were there for a while but not as military people. If their missionary experience was anything like ours, they probably never saw a U.S. military person their entire time overseas and never thought about that very much. There is not much connection between missionary and military. We might sing that song, "Onward Christian Soldiers," but the only purpose that mattered to us was the Great Commission. Military is a whole different matter and not something with which we should concern ourselves, as the military so often is fond of reminding us.

Marine Corp

Yes, that's so nice that Uncle Art served in the Marines some time back in the 1950s. It is so nice that the U.S. government takes care of the veterans who served in the armed services and who were willing to risk life and limb to protect the nation. The U.S. government gives them educational funding and medical care and all kinds of other benefits too numerous to mention. Yes, that is so nice although Uncle Art never served in China, a war that was never resolved in the most ideal way as far as America was concerned but at least we had Taiwan and its little toehold on China. Don't you know that "Semper fidelis" (Always Faithful) applies only to U.S. Marines in case we forgot? The Marines are faithful to themselves and to the U.S. in a general and collective sense but they have their own families to take care of and we cannot expect the Marines to be faithful to us or to care about what happens to us in the future in any kind of personal way. We cannot be expected to keep track of the U.S. Marines when we almost never see them and almost never hear from them anyway. Those military people watch out for each other and that's nice for them. It is nice to know that the U.S. Marines are there to do whatever they do but we cannot expect them to ever do us any favors or to ever say anything good about us because obviously they don't really care in any kind of personal way. Sometimes we have to find our own way in life because obviously they just don't care.