Which Reminds Me

The various MAPS teams who came through El Salvador were always a source of fresh humor. There was, for example, the guy who fancied himself as fluent in the Spanish language by virtue of tacking an "o" onto the end of every word English or Spanish. Sometimes this works: el carr-o, el perr-o. But other times the results are not so fortunate. As the team was leaving the country he was heard to say that he was going "home-o." This story was retold various times obviously.

Which Puzzles Me

I wonder why so many people were expecting me to "do" something. There was nothing to "do." How would you like it if someone dumped fifty tons of "Other People's Garbage" on your front lawn and just expected you to "take it." Wouldn't you also be calling around telling everyone to get "it" yourself. I just have no idea. Some of these voices I might be able to put names to and others are completely unknown to me. I cannot be expected to know what their problem is when obviously I have problems of my own, like, for example, paying the rent. If I tried to cash in all these Omartian discards I would likely land in a mental hospital. I am sure I could dream up some trash to throw around. But mine is not the address of "Mr. Trashman," referred to in the song from Michael and Stormie Omartian's "The Builder" album. I always did like their music and still own this album but "Mr. Trashman" is not me. Perhaps you could try the Yellow Pages under "Shrink." That might be a good place to start your search.

Which Reminds Me

One of the biggest turnoffs about the Popineau's was their odd fascination with Jimmy Swaggart. Of course that was before everyone knew the truth of that. But really my Christianity is not defined by televangelists. It is nice that people get saved and healed through their ministry but I do not share this fascination with televangelists. Years earlier one day we were watching television and my mother was ironing clothes and Jimmy Swaggart was on the television foaming and frothing at the mouth talking about what girls should and should not wear. My mother said that he probably has a problem or he would not get so worked up into a lather talking about that. Now we know the truth about the crude and vulgar Swaggart camp and all of their pathetically stupid hangers-on. My Christian faith is not based on anything those TV guys say and that is the way it should be. The truth of God witnesses of itself. So it is nice that the TV people also witness of the truth of God but anyway we must have salt in ourselves, is one way the old-timers might have put it. Louisiana is nothing to me. So I was explaining this to Alana Hays but she was too weird to understand what I was saying probably because everything bounced back later all turned around whacky, as if I ever met those people, as if I were that streetwalker who...  Never! How utterly rude and insulting of the Popineau's to suggest such a bald-faced lie. Unbelievable!

Which Reminds Me

Shortly before leaving South Florida I recall that I did attend the Bible study held by Norm and Terra Young at their house. I think it was on Saturdays. It was not endorsed by the church so it was just Norm and Terra's thing. Maybe I did make some comments during the Bible study because questions were invited and Norm was talking about such strictly Reformed/Presbyterian issues which surprised me because while we believe that we also accept other theological ideas that these rigidly Reformed people never thought of. If Norm and Terra are so Reformed they really should not be pretending to be AG in my opinion. So anyway it was nice that there were so many people there, lots of guys. It could have been a good place to meet someone but unfortunately I was being followed by that little creep Randy Gay from Louisiana and that really was getting on my nerves. So anyway I only went there a handful of times before I moved away. I don't remember any of those people now. I probably did not miss anything important anyway. It was just a bunch of not very interesting people, sort of boring as usual for this area.

Which Reminds Me

Recently in reading the diaries of great-grandmother we learned that my Dad's Uncle Ben lived in South Carolina at some time in about 1960. She was traveling through the U.S. visiting relatives and mentions stopping in South Carolina to visit Ben and his family. Oh, I didn't know that. A few years later she mentions visiting Ben in Northern California so it is not clear how long they lived in South Carolina or what they were doing there. One just gets the picture of them being in South Carolina at some time. Oh, I had not been aware of any relatives of ours ever living in such a Deep South state. Of course how we would know that without having read the diaries? Obviously I had not a clue on that point. All these strange mutterings about the Civil War really get on my nerves. Just because Linda Crawley's creepy first husband was from North Carolina, that does not mean that I ever met him or would be invited to the wedding of a nasty rich girl from Canada/Michigan or something like that, as if Linda's "rough" first marriage, a truly civil war of the marital variety, was my fault only because I remember hearing her talk about this. And was Sue also there at the time to hear that? I don't quite remember. What is Michigan's problem anyway? Michigan is nothing to me. I don't even know anyone from Michigan and I really don't care.

Which Reminds Me

I wasn't planning to pick a fight with anyone but when Carolina Gonzalez was having such an obnoxious attitude and insisting that nobody touch her stuff and making special deals with Beth, the main editor, and trumpeting loudly the fact that she was elected by the ninth grade class to be their spokesperson on the newspaper and how dare anyone fix her wording whenever that did happen, and perhaps we did get heavy-handed sometimes in that regard, and then Kathy suggested that we edit Carol's last column of the year also, even though Carol had made angry speeches about her writing untouched and also Beth had given special instructions to just leave her stuff alone, and then I agreed that Carol's attitude was obnoxious and then it was done. Oddly, looking back now at the text of that column, it does not resemble anything that I remember of the original text that was edited for various spelling errors. What is there is something about the musical play that I would be appearing in a week or so and from there some rambling commentary about how my voice is not that good and how I will never amount to anything. So obviously the final text is not even what we corrected wrongly without Beth's permission. Kathy obviously had other plans in mind when staging the original corrections, having substituted some other nonsense authored by herself, something about their CIA mission orders to trash me and exalt my Sister-From-Hell, perhaps with some input from the nasty Wilson girls. Because all of these people only remember one thing about me, which is that comment that I made at age 10 about someday being famous and writing my autobiography. To them everything about me is just a cartoon caricature of that one event. So obviously if everyone has already planned my ultimate failure and humiliation in their eyes, there would be no reason for me to pretend to be a friend to them. Years ago I used to agonize in my diary about how everybody hates me but now I realize that it isn't all about me. Now I realize there is more to their rotten attitudes than just me.

Which Reminds Me

Another person listening to Bonnie's loud ponderations might have been the Puerto Rican Eva, who was sitting at the desk directly to my right. Eva was fired a couple of months or so after I started working there. Kathy, her editor, said later that Eva had not yet mastered the arts of spelling and grammar which makes it somewhat hard to succeed in any occupation necessitating written communication of any sort. Not that Kathy did not have her own lack of ethical standards in other ways. Still, despite Kathy's faults, I cannot say that Kathy should have to put up with Eva indefinitely. If the editor has to practically structure and rewrite the entire story then just being an ethnic voice who goes to city hall and brings back a raw notebook was apparently not enough justification for retaining Eva's services. I am just saying what I heard.