Better Out than In?

    In this post, I have taken Raymond Chandler's advice to "Throw up in your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon." I just picked another time of day.  This is appropriately in a blog, even though it started as a Facebook post. It is that long and that narcissistic, so here's fair warning: if you read on, it's going to be a real bummer. Also, if you continue to read, I want you to understand that this contains highly charged emotional and political statements. I won’t say it’s a manifesto because I have a lot more to say than what I will write here. I certainly will not unfriend you if we disagree. I hope I can expect the same from you. Surely, the point of our trying to establish a society in which we can live peacefully is that we can disagree and still continue to respect the other person’s point of view and continue to work together to solve problems. 
      I have always considered myself one of the American middle class:  college education, stable job, well-insured, guaranteed pension, and although my income taxes, insurance premiums and social security took a gouge, I was repaid by the safety of my neighborhood, the quality of the schools, clean food and water, the protection of police, fire, and emergency services, decent roads, reasonable laws, quality health care and guaranteed income in my retirement years through my pension, Medicare, and Social Security. I am a sole head of household, so the few shekels that were left at the end of the month went into a tax-sheltered annuity, with the idea that the money wouldn't be taxed until I retired and was in a lower tax bracket. That was my world and I was five years away from full retirement. 

      One day, whatever part of my brain that controls good judgment and decision making short-circuited, and I resigned my very nice job at a very nice school and got a job at a small school in a small community and a much smaller salary. I thought it was charming. My new principal was often confrontational and irritable, but I put it down to an "act" that he thought would give the semblance of power and control. You all know the story by now of how I had the best scores and evaluations of the 8th grade teachers but, because I was "untenured," had no job security. Yep, that principal with a total of seven years in education (four of them in elementary) was able to take away not only my job, but my insurance, my contribution to the TN Retirement System that will cost me $1500 a month for the rest of my life, and left a black mark on a resumé that had taken 25 years to build, and is otherwise pristine, if I say so myself. For the rest of my life, I will have to mark "yes" to the question, "Have you ever failed to have a contract renewed or been released from any contract?"  And he didn’t have to give one damn reason why. 

      Those of you who have kept up with this drama know all this and you know how I have worked so hard all summer to apply for teaching positions in public and private schools in five counties in three states. Thank you for all your support. It has meant the world. I have applied while I was watching news stories of school employees who were cheaters, liars, thieves, and even pederasts. Surely, the schools could use someone with my credentials and my spotless record!  Hah. They are advertising nationally for economics teachers! I'm a shoe in! Hah. These days, I am teaching myself Excel so that I might get lucky and hired as a front desk receptionist somewhere. It's okay - I understand that despite my cum laude B.A. from Rhodes, my Kappa Delta Pi honors for my M.A.T. from the University of Memphis, my self-taught use of personal and professional technology, fifteen years of conducting teacher professional development sessions, and the same fifteen years of writing school improvement plans, and chairing state accreditation reports that I am not considered qualified for today’s job market in technical writing or staff training. I don’t understand how writing a technical report on how to apply hemorrhoid ointment needs 5-7 years’ experience before I can be considered competent for hiring, but, hey the employer wants what the employer wants.  I have been searching job sites in both the public and private sector for weeks and weeks, and there literally are thousands of jobs going begging – particularly for health care workers for the Veterans’ Administration. Who is the person; where is the place; when will the time come that will link so many of us who are unemployed with these idiot employers who don’t understand that two weeks of on the job training costs less than going without a position’s being filled for months and months? 

     Did I mention that I had to dissolve my tax shelter retirement fund to pay for catastrophic water damage to my house that occurred when I was the sole caretaker for my  mother and living at her house? Funny thing about insurances. They don’t pay out when the house is unoccupied. I had to pay 20% of the total as a penalty for early withdrawal and pay another 10% in income taxes, and the pittance I have left is all I have to live on until and unless I get a job. If I run out of that money, my house and all of its contents will sit on the street corner until the bank comes to get it, may they all die from some grim lung disorder that ends in “-osis.” 

     God must have decided it is too much for me to get one little ray of sunshine in my life after letting me get a job interview scheduled today.  He let me schedule a doctor’s appointment. “Oops,” they said,” Blue Cross is denying you.” “Yes,” I whispered. “I am on COBRA now and I have paid the first of my $508 a month premiums so that I can have continuous coverage.” “Well,” they said nicely, “You go on and have your appointment and we will figure it out.”  Later today, I went to Walgreens to pick up a prescription that I have to take as a cancer preventative. It has to be taken ON SCHEDULE every three months. “Sorry, you are no longer covered,” said the bubble gum popping flibbertigibbet at the window.  I explained again about the whole COBRA thing, including the fact that even without COBRA, Blue Cross is supposed to extend my coverage an additional 60 days after the contract ends. “Sorry.”  So, off I drove, feeling those little cancer cells fornicating in my innards and preparing for a population explosion. It's not just the cancer zygotes that had an explosion. I hit a virtual brick wall just as devastating as a real one could ever be. That's it. Like Van Morrison says, "I don't have nothing, except no more."

     So that is the story of why I am writing this overlong and overly personal vomitous harangue. I am a regular person and for whatever reason, karma has decided to test my endurance. So far, the only things missing are the boils.

As I listen to all the nattering nabobs (look it up) in this election season, I have the overwhelming desire to let fly:

• Gays have nothing to do with your health, education, and welfare and that of your family. Let it go. If you use the words “Biblical tradition” to contradict me, let me remind you that slavery, taint of blood, women as chattel, strict dietary laws, and forbidding wearing blended fabrics were traditions, too. Not all Biblical traditions are right and you know it. That has about as much justification as Muslims today who want to institute Sharia law. So put that on your ham and cheese sammich and eat it.
• Abortion has nothing to do with your health, education, and welfare and that of your family. Let it go. If a man could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
• Before you even use the words “Socialism” or “Communism” again, you better go look them up and compare them to the word “Fascism.” If you are using those words improperly because you are parroting the taking heads, shame on you. If  you ever have had to or plan to draw Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, workman's compensation, or unemployment, double shame on you.
• Speaking of talking heads: if Al Franken offered to double Rush Limbaugh’s salary to “go to the dark side,” Rush would do it in a second. These guys are entertainers and radio personalities, not educated policy makers who can explain both sides of a difficult issue. Their entire reason for existence is to rile up listeners who will bring in more listeners. 
• So many people have gotten disillusioned by government and politics that they have opted out. You know who that leaves? FUCKTARDS WHO THINK THAT WOMEN CAN REABSORB BABIES CONCEIVED BY RAPE.  It used to be that we knew that all politicians are crooks. Now, they not only are crooks, they are Darwin Award candidates as well. To quote Mark Twain, “He is an idiot of the 33rd degree; he is the scion from a line of ancestors tracing back to the Missing Link.” These extremists not only are off target about the issues that affect Americans, they are damn idiots, too. What other policies are being made by people who are so incompetent and uneducated they think they are qualified to run for Vice-President without knowing the effect of the Versailles Treaty on the politics of the 20th century?  These people literally have been voted into office as judges, senators, and other high ranking members in state and national office. These are no longer the “wing nuts.” These are the regular members of the Republican party now. Mitt Romney is considered too “moderate” for any former Republican candidate to even show up to his nomination. How sick is that? Since when is being a MODERATE a bad thing? The signal I’m getting here is not “Yay, Romney,” but “No, Obama.” Is this a case where someone could nominate the corpse of Ronald Reagan and it would be elected just so Obama would not be?  Please tell me when delegates for a presidential nominee thought it was a good idea to start throwing peanuts at black people, saying, “This is how  we feed your kind?” Of course they were thrown out of the convention and there were apologies galore from the RNC. Nevertheless, they were people who were representing YOU and a candidate for president.  Are you okay with that? I swear, if Richard Nixon were to run for president, I truly think I would vote for him.
• If your number one reason for choosing a candidate has to do with “inherent qualities”  - between the sensation-seeking, arrogant opportunist (you know who that is) and the out-of-touch, blithering idiot who has the visceral fortitude of Gumby and cannot answer a question without a script (you know who that is, too), which one would you choose? Really? Or does it have more to do with the fact that Paul Ryan makes your libido go into overdrive? If you do not believe your candidate will uphold Harry Truman’s dictum, “The Buck Stops Here,” FIND ANOTHER CANDIDATE. Never, never, never vote against a candidate. Only FOR a candidate. It is better to abstain than to choose the "anybody but" candidate. We found out how that worked in Germany in 1933.
• This is the crux of the political question, and Obama said it in his nomination acceptance speech: “Who do you trust  – government or private industry?” The answer to that guides every single political stance you have.  I’ve said it before but I love saying it again, I trust government regulation of my health care ten thousand times more than I do than that of private businesses that make a financial gain in denying my health care. The same is true of voucher schools, which receive $5300 per child in Tennessee for enrollment, but so far have not had to produce any accountability in order to keep their contracts.  Guess what? Nation-wide, K12.com has a 30% drop out rate and a 70% failure rate. If this were a public school, the state would have taken over long ago. Instead, the state continues to give them tax dollars that do NOT go to the public school systems and the legislators say it is worth it because it gives families more choices. In the meantime, I will proudly wear my pink Eugene V. Debs for President t-shirt until it wears out.                         
• Have you ever heard of the Fairness Doctrine?  It used to be that radio and TV broadcasters would have to broadcast equally on opposing points of view. In 1987, the FCC decided that with the proliferation of the internet, cable TV, radio, and social media, people would be exposed to many, many points of view, so the Fairness Doctrine was abolished. Now, your information is determined by the formula, "How much Doctrine can we afford to smother you with?" No fairness there. 
• Forget the internet as your forum for political statements. Call, write, picket, whatever it takes to look your candidates in the eyes and tell them what you think. Also, signing your name at the bottom of an email and forwarding it to ten people is not a legal petition. Sucker. Also, don't let this week's Entertainment Weekly star give you political advice. Nicki Minaj should not be the voice of the vote for you. I think she is pretty clueless about ____ (fill in the blank with anything you can think of and it will be right).

    All this has been written while big, salty tears have rolled down my face as I sit in the parking lot at Panera Bread to piggyback off their wi-fi. The reason I am typing in the parking lot is that the store is closed and I can’t go home until it cools off because I don’t have any air conditioning. I hope I have a job before it gets cold so the cats don’t freeze.  There is nothing left to take away from me – not my pride, not my job, not my money, not my self-esteem, not my hope, and certainly not my faith. The only thing I fear now is a fire or tornado and I cannot rescue my furballs. I have friends, lots of friends, but, my darlings,I love you all and sympathy and friendship are really nice, but the fact is that I still would be happy to exchange places with a raindrop (it has a purpose – a short one, but a meaningful one). I can’t get to sleep before six in the morning and then I dream about unsuccessful job interviews (usually getting lost in the building and being late to the interview), sneaking through an empty house that used to be mine, my parents always walking away from me while I’m screaming in rage for someone to come back (that one’s not too hard to figure out), taking field trips and getting lost from the students, and, my personal favorite – dying in a car that plunges off a tall bridge into the ocean. I see it coming the whole long way. This is every night. Every night. Every night. I can’t remember ever having a pleasant dream. Is there a trick to it? I have tried playing music while I sleep. Nice music. Calming music. Nope. I have tried having the TV on all night playing a beloved movie over and over – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban or Raiders of the Lost Ark. Nope. Total silence. Other than the tinnitus that makes my head throb, I can’t tell a difference there, either.There is no way I am going to open a bottle of liquor or look into a pill bottle. I know where that road will lead. If I can't stop eating McDonald's french fries, there is no way I am trying anything I know is even more addicting. Nothing helps. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to commit suicide. I want to fight. I want to scream and struggle and curse and find anyone who will listen. I want a job. There it is. I am defined by my job. Teaching is not what I do. It is who I am. My identity has been taken away and I don’t know how to get it back. I am a non-person.
     Every time I walk past the school supplies in Target, I get an anxious feeling. One time, I even bought 2 dozen black pens to put in the Care and Share – just in case. Then there’s the whole part about not having a pot to piss in, too. Whatever anchors were keeping me in place are all gone now, and the challenge is to right myself and hold fast – without an instruction manual, ropes, or chunks of iron. I do not know what to do. There are times when then only reason I go home is because the cats have to be fed. I try to be positive, to get dressed every day, to go out and interact with people, to drive around West Tennessee trying to find anything beautiful in God’s creation that will make me smile. The only one of those that has worked well has been the nature trips.

      God forbid you or anyone in your family have to go through a personal or financial crisis, but if  you are one of the lucky ones who can pay the rent/mortgage, the groceries, insure your property and your loved ones, and have all the “things” you think that make your life meaningful, give thanks, not only to the grace of God, but also to your grandparents and great-grandparents who were willing to walk miles to boycott the buses, to stand in picket lines for days without pay to get decent working conditions and benefits, and who came to this country and were willing to work for pennies and sacrifice whatever it took for the success of their children. We are their legacy, and I wonder if we deserve the sacrifices they made for us?  Is there any person or any thing or any issue you would do that for? For years, I would ask students that question, and to a child, they would all say, “Naw, man.” They were children then. I wonder of that attitude has changed. I also always asked, “What was Dr. King’s dream?” You know, the only person in all these years who could answer it was some little 8th grade boy this past year. “Our teacher made us memorize that whole speech when we were in the 4th grade.”
     If you were at school one famous day in 2006, you heard someone on the intercom say, “If Dr. King were alive today, he would be rolling in his grave.” It was an honest mistake, said during a time of great crisis, but it is true statement nonetheless.  Dr. King, Susan B. Anthony, George Washington Carver, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Theodore Roosevelt have to be spinning right now, or at least trying to cram some more grave dirt in their zombified ears so that they can’t hear what’s going on. Andrew Jackson is probably trying to dig his way up from his spot in hell just to whoop our asses right now. I wish Satan would let him out.  On the other hand, Alexander Hamilton is reclining, enjoying an after-dinner port, reading a good book, and saying, “I told you so.” If you care at all, please look up the people whose politics you don’t know so that you will understand my references.
     Back to Eleanor Roosevelt, whose soul must be one of the greatest ever to grace this earth. She said, “It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.”  Well, Confucius may have said it, too. There are conflicting references. I have cursed, boy have I cursed the darkness, but I am going to try to get my little light to shine. Somewhere there is a corner that is darker than mine.

     This is only the third time since I lost my job that I have come apart at the seams. Thanks to a friend who shared a wonderful letter written by Stephen Fry, I know my mood is like the weather. Sometimes it is sunny and glorious, and sometimes it is rainy and stormy. I will try to carry my umbrella and wait it out, because I know the weather will change. Right now, I’m thinking of a rainy forecast for several days. Just wait it out. Just wait it out.

The self-serving part, the part in which I try to explain my virtues:

     I have never knowingly killed anything but insects, one catfish, and one frog (too young to understand proper dissection). I actually save spiders.  I have never knowingly blackballed another person for a job or membership in any organization, although I did give zero ratings on National Honor Society ballots for cheaters.  I have never taken credit for work or writing I did not do myself (geez, look at the accreditations I have given throughout this missive). I have never cheated at trivia, at cards, or at school (well, except the one time we had a take home test and I opened the book for one answer). I do cheat with Big Fish Games, though. I have never hit another person, although I do regret calling others “ignorant slut,” and “spastic retard.”  For one friend in particular, I want you to know that no matter what, not only have I never said the N-word, I have never thought it, despite the fact that you think everyone in the W-Club does. If calling someone a stupid S-O-B in traffic counts, I am guilty of that.  I probably have, but never meant to humiliate or demean any person (unless that person was being a bully, and then all bets are off). I have tried to teach so that I don't bore students to death and yet get them to absorb something useful. I know for a fact I am responsible for the passing grades in many a college freshman social studies class because my students knew all their countries and capitals.

So here’s the check list for the deadly sins:

• Pride – yep – guilty of that one. Proud of my work. Proud of my students. Proud of my school. Proud of my friends (and their kids).
• Sloth – no more than most.
• Gluttony – moving on...
• Lust – whatever libido I ever had went away after the first dose of Paxil. Don’t even miss it.
• Greed - only for Merrell shoes.
• Envy – nope. I learned this one in a powerful way. As my father lay dying in the hospital, a minister came to visit with the story of a high school baseball player who had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, but, through miracle or medicine, God’s work, and/or prayer (that’s why they call it a miracle), he was cured.  The minister was trying to bring good cheer and hope. I knew that, but I listened to that man tell this story to my dying father, a skeletal figure who didn’t have enough body mass to make a wrinkle in the sheet and I was angry. I was envious that someone lived when my father was going to die. I was envious of every minute I had with my father and that a stranger presumed to come in and interrupt my time. I was unhappy with envy. Then, my father held out his hand and said, “Could we please give a prayer of thanksgiving for his continued good health?” That may have been the day the earth broke open for me to reveal the real face of compassion and empathy. Every evil, begrudging thought I had literally fell away. I even found a quote (of course I did). Socrates said, “Be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle.” Good news is good news, no matter what my situation is, and it is flat out wrong to begrudge another person’s success or happiness. In fact, begrudging anything, I have learned, is one of the most poisonous and most misery-inducing actions that anyone can indulge in. In contrast, my mother never learned that lesson, so the last four years of her life, while I was the sole caretaker, I was the recipient of a lot of that vitriol. Yes, I killed the baby Jesus. I deliberately stole her pills so she would suffer all night. I wanted to put her in the nursing home and throw her to the curb so I could sell her house and move to Colorado (with my step-family).  I hated her - she heard me say it, she said. She never put my name on her bank account or on the deed to the house because I was going to rob her blind and run away. In her mind, there was no other reason I would stick around. All of this reflected her greatest fear – being sick, old, and alone.  On the last night of her life, I let the hospice staff remove her heart monitor, so we had no clue how quickly she was failing. I went home like it was any other night. By this point in her care, it was only a matter of time, so my only goal was to hold her hand when she died, because even though she was in a morphine-induced stupor, she had enough reflex to hold my hand and I knew she would know.  At 2:30 in the morning, I got the call she had died. Alone.  I went to the hospital anyways. The staff had washed her, removed all the traces of medical paraphernalia, put her in a clean gown, and pulled the sheet up as if she were sleeping. All I could do was hold her hand until the mortician came. There will never be enough time, enough drugs, enough happy memories, enough encouraging words, or reassurances to take away this pain. Is this the sin I am paying for now?
• Anger - now I come to this one. I had written it earlier with very little comment, because I truly feel that I carry no anger except at any form of injustice and at people who are mean to other people. I have had time to reflect on it, though, and realize that anger is right up there warring with grief and anxiety. I am angry at myself for blaming myself for losing a job when it wasn't my fault. I am angry that, like some sort of rape or physical abuse victim, I have not followed due process for reporting that abuse because I am so ashamed. I am angry at myself because I could not be with my mother in her last hours (multiply that one by a google or two). I am angry that I have allowed myself to get into a paralysis of inertia. I cannot clean the house. I cannot pick up. I cannot do anything about preparing two houses for sale and consolidating those last resources for my last chance at future security. I am angry that I hate to go to parties of any kind because I am so afraid. I am supposed to go to a party Sunday night and I am already sick to my stomach. This party has no strangers, only friends that I see every week at trivia, who have been nothing but friendly and cheerful to me. I am angry that I don't trust my judgment. I am just angry. Dammit. While we're on the subject, does resentment come under anger or envy?  I have a lot of that, too. I will confess that I am resentful. I am resentful that people with ambition take advantage of anyone any time and never look back. I resent the network of friends/relations/fraternity-sorority/church/athletic connections of people who all have each other on speed dial and create a system of incestuous nepotism instead of a meritocracy. I may as well get over that. As it was in the beginning, now and ever shall be, world without end. I resent voice mail. I don’t even have to describe that, except to say that I really, really resent the voice mail that remains unanswered - like the voice mail at certain education staffing offices. This next resentment is really petty, and probably counts as envy, but it is pretty big for me. I wish I were creative in the arts - music, literature, painting, sculpture. Any of it. As it is, all I can do is write about how wonderful artistic achievement is. I am happy, though, that I can write coherently and correctly, if not concisely.

 Remember the line from the Jack Nicholson movie, "Is this as good as it gets?"