Games

I wonder when these people will get a clue that I am really not interested in playing their silly Bering Strait game. I am just sitting here trying to have a life and they are standing around me with daggers poised waiting for a chance to slaughter me because I have better English spelling skills than they do. I think this game is rigged from the get-go and I am not going to be playing by their rules, thanks anyway. I would rather commit suicide than cave in to this contrived reality. You should know, however, that if you do play by their rules that their rules will become everybody's rules and that reality will be changed, eventually. Perish the thought. I would rather just not have a life if I have to play the Bering Strait game. It is legal to play in self-defense but when I am greatly outnumbered the odds are against me.

Quiet

I am a quiet person and it is better this way. I vaguely remember in college Cori and maybe others complaining about me never talking very much. I might have said that I don't usually talk very much when I don't know people very well and don't trust them. Even now I see no reason to talk very much. There never was any reason for me to trust Cori with any personal information, now less more so than ever. I don't remember what I was thinking.

Candyland Game

I don't think that we ever actually owned this game, Candyland, and I only vaguely remember playing it when visiting other people's houses and playing with other people's children. I don't think I need this game in my house. The spelling would really bug me, for one thing. It would only perpetuate the confused notion of these naughty children who imagine the name Candy has something to do with me when obviously my name ends with an "i" and not a "y." And besides, it would perpetuate my sister's misperception that success in life means beating on me at every opportunity and taking every chance to humiliate me in the eyes of everyone who I formerly imagined might be my friends. I am tired of fighting about this but just copping this Mom act and reminding me to clean the bathroom is not going to gain you any peer respect from me. I know better. This is all just another game to humiliate me and so it doesn't really have very much to do with the reality that God loves me and has a plan for my life, a plan for good and not for evil, that is if the Bible can be believed and applied to me just the same as everybody else on the planet.

Misery

There is no forgiveness for three-year-olds like me and so it would be pointless for me to try to do anything more. Of one thing I can be sure, that all my relationships will be taken from me, that all my achievements will be taken from me, that anything good will be taken from me and I will be given only bad, so obviously prayer is pointless. Why should I give the putridly wicked enemy Hoskins anymore presents? God hates me, obviously, so no remedy is available to thrust stupid swine Rob into a bottomless pit. Besides, they needed a substitute Mao to bash and I was available to represent my generation in a life of misery inflicted by the U.S. Army for whatever mysterious reason. That was so mean and nasty what they did to Mao, I have to agree. However, it is not supposed to be my problem. Does Mao really think that she alone of all women on the planet was cast aside with utter contempt and disdain to make room for the U.S.-favored Madame Chiang Chai-Shek? Hardly. It happens all the time but it becomes just so much more political when these generals and captains are poking their noses in places where they don't belong.

The Facts Of Life

My mother explained to me the facts of life when I was about 11 years old. She gave a very thorough and excellent explanation and also gave me a small book, "Almost Eleven," which includes all the essential information helpful for an 11-year-old, including pictures of the component parts necessary for human reproduction. Thus I have no further need of any other mother to explain the facts of life to me. I am assuming that all mothers give the same valuable instructions to all of their daughters and there is no need for me to explain the facts of life to anyone else on the planet in the future, certainly not my own sister, only my own daughter should I ever have one. I cannot imagine why anyone would think otherwise. Obviously, literature class has absolutely nothing to do with it. As far as I am concerned, the books assigned to us in literature class are mostly written by tortured individuals who have a lot of problems that I cannot possibly imagine and mostly would profer not to try to imagine. Literature reflects the sinful condition of people who mess up very badly and I do feel sorry for them but that is not my problem. My mother did mention on a later occasion about having read Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" which is obviously the big "A" but that conversation was not in connection with or by way of explaining the facts of life. That was a whole different conversation at a later and different time about the problem of literature and how sometimes we have to read these books for homework assignments even if they are very unpleasant or boring or weird because they do say something about reality or the culture in which we happen to live and must function, not because we would want to take those people home with us and live in their sick realities and absorb their warped and twisted worldviews as our own. I can say pretty much the same about all books and magazines. My knowledge of these matters might have expanded through the years in terms of reading but still there is no reentry law requiring me to explain the birds and the bees in order to resume my duties as a citizen of the United States upon returning from Latin America. There is no reason, no law on earth, requiring me to discuss these very personal matters with the Pentagon. What would those stupid stuffed-shirt bigwigs know about girl stuff? Nothing obviously. To this day, I fail to understand Cori's fascination with asking stupid questions about these subject matters. Why should I care about whatever Cori said about her mother? I really don't care. I don't even remember those people and Cori was never my boss except in her own sick and twisted mind. There is no need for me to prove anything to anyone about what I think about these matters and no reason for me to accept a slave position in regards to Cori. I can't have these trashy rich bitches getting accustomed to thinking of themselves as my boss or master. How ridiculous. It is necessary for poor girls like me to tell rich bitches like Cori what I will do and what I will not do and that's just the way it is. Cori has no power to fire me or to tell me anything else. I don't need her garbage. If I want to quit and I can certainly quit any time I want to. There is no law requiring me to do Mrs. Nipper's dirty work. And anyway, it's not a matter of being right in terms of intellect and understanding. It is about finding the Mr. Right but if he never made an appearance in my life there is just nothing else I can do about it. Statistically there are just not enough men to go around, too many single women left over who just are never going to make it to the altar through no fault of their own. That is just a fact of life. There is no reason to self-flagellate and beat myself up because the odds are against me. Yes, if I only I had attended the Foursquare even church I might have perhaps had a slim chance of sighting Lisa Welchel from the TV show, "The Facts of Life." But as it is, the odds are against me.

Beall

In her diaries, my great-grandmother often speaks of her friend Anna Beall from Pasadena, Calif. Anna and her husband, Granville 'Grant' Edsell Beall, seem to have moved to California from Ohio at about the same time that my great-grandparents did, perhaps even earlier. However, according to military records it appears that in 1898 Mr. "Grant" Beall was a 21-year-old private fighting in the Spanish-American War. A quick Google shows that Mr. "Grant" Beall was actually white, not black, and he was also not the only Beall soldier fighting in that war. Beyond that I really can't say much about that. I have not studied the Spanish-American War very much and am only vaguely aware of it. It seems that Grant Beall, originally from Greene County in Ohio, also spent some time in Tahiti in the 1920s, according to ship passenger records of him having sailed at least twice to and from Tahiti and San Francisco. What was Grant doing in Tahiti? The answer is not clear. I have no other clue so don't ask me. And why was Grant Beall admitted to a mental hospital in 1926, at age 50, with a diagnosis of manic depressive and psychosis? I just have no clue about that either. He died in 1944 at age 68 so obviously we never met. I never knew this person existed and anyway he is not even related to us, just the husband of a friend of my great-grandparents, so I can't say much about it. There is no real connection there. We have no idea what happened to their daughter Miriam and her family after they moved to Northern California. Life is too short to keep track of all these people.

Literature

Literature does not tell us how to survive. Literature only tells us about the hopelessly sinful human condition and often what not to do. From high school's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" we learn that your decision to flout the rules of Nurse Ratched at the mental hospital could result in your lobotomization. They will literally have your brain disabled so that you really won't know what happened to you or even care anymore. That's the problem with insane asylums. The people are just drugged all the time so barely functional and there is no privacy, no way to avoid rubbing elbows with the inmates. There is no real "asylum" for the insane, an oxymoron of terminology. Tht is what happens if you do not play by the rules, a scary prospect indeed. And from "To Kill A Mockingbird" we learn that the Deep South is a very weird place to be and not my choice of permanent residence. I was never one of those tortured people and hopefully will never have to go there.