living with the shame of intelligence in rural america
i remember when i was first made ashamed of being bright.
it was in the fourth grade, when i was nine years old. my family had moved from irrigon to hermiston that summer, so we kids were in a new school, and for the first time i was a "new" student. i had been happy in my former school. i had lots of friends, and i was one of the leaders in my class; on the playground during recess, we frequently played games that i invented. everyone knew me in irrigon, and from the first grade through the third, no one thought i was strange. it was only in the fourth grade, in a new school, that i was made aware how very different i was from everyone else.
my first mistake in this new school was to make friends with two boys, both of whom were outcasts. i saw them the first week in the bushes, looking for bugs, and being interested at that time in all things insect-like, i joined them. apparently, both an interest in insects and a tolerance for boys made me unfit for the society of the rest of the female fourth-graders-- i was shunned, and called a bug-eater. the only girl in the class who sought my company, colleen, was even more outcast than myself. in retrospect, i would guess she suffered from both adhd and asperger's, but at the time, she was simply another "weirdo." colleen's clumsy attempts at friendship with me cemented my social doom.
before this age, i had no understanding of concepts such as "popularity." i had always been one of the smartest kids in my class; in my old school, this meant i was respected by my peers. in this new school, being the first kid with my hand up when the teacher asked a question got me mocked by my peers. and then came the iowa tests.
you probably remember the iowa tests-- the standardized assessment tests of basic skills that most K-12 students took every year. i can still remember them; a whole day of tests, regular schedules ignored, repeated admonishments to bring TWO number two pencils, filling in all those little ovals. most of the other students complained about them, but i didn't mind them, which was of course, regarded as further evidence of my "weirdness."
around six weeks after we took the assessment tests, we received the results. they were given to us on sheets of blue paper; the body of the page held explanations of what each category represented, and the scores were printed on white sticky labels and affixed to the top of the page. the teacher called us up to her desk in alphabetical order to hand out the assessments. while she called out names, many of the students stood around, quietly comparing scores. i had just gone back to my desk and sat down to look at mine. one of the other girls, shannon, came over and asked, "how did you do?" so i handed her my page while she handed me hers. i hadn't looked at hers for more than a few moments before she suddenly snatched it out of my hands and dropped my page on my desk. she didn't say anything, she just looked at me...and i will never forget that look. she looked at me as if i was a freak. and she looked as if she hated me for it.
shannon went over to a group of girls and whispered to them, and they all looked at me and giggled. i could feel my face getting hot and flushed while they stared at me as if there was something wrong with me. my highest score on that assessment was a 99 out of 100. my lowest was a 92. i folded the sheet, and then folded it again, and again, and hid it in my pocket. after that day, i was called brainiac and know-it-all, as well as bug-eater. after that day, i never shared my assessment scores or report cards with another student, and i hid my test scores whenever i was able. it never occurred to me that my being smart could make other people feel diminished. i only recognized that my being smart made me a "weirdo" in the other kids eyes, and i was ashamed.
it's funny, though-- as ashamed as i was of my high test scores, it never occurred to me to make deliberate errors. it never occurred to me to not do my best, every time. it never occurred to me to pretend to be something other than what i was, because i was incapable of doing so. i am the perpetual popeye-- i yam what i yam what i yam what i yam. and that's all that i am. but it don't win me any popularity contests.
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
Friday, June 30, 2017
how life gets in the way of blogging
i was just directing someone to my blog to look at my lego portraits, and realized that it has been almost four years since i updated this blog. how time flies when you are....living your life.
let's just recap--
got a job at the lucky bridge casino as a cashier. moved up to the office manager after the new owner took over in january of 2014, and from there to accounting manager, and from there to comptroller by the time the casino closed.what started as a 25 hour a week job turned into 60+ hours a week, and what began as awesome gradually became an overworked nightmare.
we were house shopping, and in the spring of 2015, bob brought me to a little piece of property out in finley, just southeast of kennewick.....and as soon as i stepped out of the car, i knew i was home. the whole place reminded me so much of my grandmother's place, where i used to spend summers; the same grapevines and rose bushes, the same irises everywhere, the same little orchard with the same variety of trees (cherry, apricot, crab apple and black walnut). the neighbor has chickens, which remind me of my dad, and he even has peacocks-- my grandma used to keep peacocks! the peacocks belong to the neighbor, but they wander all over our property, and since they are arboreal, they sleep in our trees, which are the tallest trees in the area. i love listening to their calls; i even do a pretty good imitation of a peacock call myself!
the house was built in 1920, and it's too small, but it's a work in progress. it was just awful when we got it; hadn't been fixed up in years, and the floor was rotted through in places. we spent six months in 2015 renovating, and in december of 2015 we were finally able to move in. we plan on expanding the upstairs, and adding bathrooms......so many plans. give us time. i've named our place asylum; i like how the word means two things-- a place of safety, and a home for lunatics. both apply here.
anyway, between the job taking so much of my time, and the husband and the new home taking the rest, i had little time for blogging. and then my life came crashing down again....
in the spring of 2016, my older sister started having a lot of health problems-- she broke her leg. she was also diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and just after her leg healed, she broke BOTH legs, right below the knees. then we found out she had osteoporosis. then in september, she was diagnosed with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease-- she would need a new liver. i immediately looked into the possibility of becoming her living liver donor, and i gave my boss a thirty day notice that i would be going on medical leave.
on september 17th, my husband's best friend, jim, was hospitalized-- he was diagnosed with stage four cancer of the liver, lungs, and bones....he found out by having his femur just break one night while he was walking to his kitchen; it was eaten though with cancer. he had been telling his VA doctor about his pain for a couple of months, but she apparently didn't believe him. while in the hospital, jim had a psychotic episode-- he was convinced the hospital was a prison camp in a foreign country. the cancer had metastasized and spread to his brain as well. there was nothing to do-- the docs pinned his leg together with rods (it would never heal) and sent him home to die. slowly.
jim asked bob to take his power of attorney, and to be the executor of his estate. bob spent most of the next six weeks driving back and forth between our home here in finley and elgin, oregon, where jim lived (around two hours away) arranging hospice for jim, caring for him, taking care of his business concerns. jim's psychotic episodes were increasing in length and frequency, and he often got combative, which was really bad, because by that time, his bones were so fragile that they could easily break. while this was going on, i was frantically trying to train my assistant to take my place, and find a replacement for her, while going to elgin with bob on the weekends to help with jim, and worrying about my sister's worsening condition.............and then my dad started getting breathless with the slightest exertion.
mom finally convinced dad to go to the hospital on october 10th. on october 14th, he was diagnosed with acute myloid leukemia. stage four, of course. on the fourteenth, they were saying, "he'll probably make it though the holidays." they stopped saying that when his white blood cell count doubled in the space of a day. the docs told him he could buy a little time with a five day course of chemo, but they were wrong. all it did was make him sick and miserable. NOW i was going to work, spending the morning training my replacement, leaving work in the afternoon to go see dad in the hospital for a few hours, then going BACK to work to get my actual work done....
my sister connie, who lives in shelton, washington, was getting sicker and sicker. we were calling her every day, telling her she needed to come, but she was in and out of the hospital herself, and too ill to travel (it's a 4+ hour drive.) my younger sister carol, who lives on the east coast, was able to take some time off work, thank god; she flew home and stayed with our mom. the hospital finally decided they had tortured him enough, and released dad on october 26th; mom had hospice come in and set everything up in the family room. it was all so horribly familiar to me now, since i had been visiting jim for weeks-- the same hospital bed, the same oxygen machine, sighing away in the corner, the same pink basins, the same blue vomit bags. dad was sinking fast, so fast, and he was struggling so hard to stay with us; you could see how he fought for every breath. and you could see how tired he was.
connie was finally able to travel, and she came home the evening of the 27th. dad wasn't able to talk, and was slipping in and out of consciousness a lot. i took the day off work and spent a lot of my time just sitting by dad, holding his hand, and talking about all the things i remembered from my childhood. when connie came in, i didn't recognize her at first-- she was so thin and haggard it shocked me. dad passed away not twenty minutes after connie came-- he had been waiting for her. we were all around him-- mom was holding his left hand, and i was holding his right, when he died. thirteen days between his diagnosis...and his death.
i was STILL working 12-14 hour days at the casino, so i wasn't able to help bob with jim as much as i wanted. when jim was diagnosed, he told his docs he wanted to go the physician assisted suicide route-- but this was a catholic hospital, so they wouldn't even entertain the idea of helping him. after he came home, we contacted his primary care doc, who told us he had to wait two weeks and then ask again, by state law. we waited the two weeks, and had the doc come again; this time, he okayed it, and he put in the order for the meds-- in oregon, the assisted suicide laws are pretty strict...and slow. it took close to three weeks for the meds to be available-- and even then, they wouldn't send them to him in his home. we had to send someone to pick them up in portland (four hours away.)
my husband's birthday was october 31st, halloween. so i went to elgin on the 31st, intending to take bob to dinner....but stepping inside that house was the worst deja vu i have ever experienced in my life. it was so much like what i had just gone through with dad, i could hardly bear it. i kept it together, though. jim and i had very similar tastes in music, so i spent the afternoon with him, holding his hand occasionally and playing from my computer the songs we both loved-- janis ian, jim croce, leonard cohen, crosby, stills and nash, so many beautiful songs.
bob and i went out to dinner that night while a friend stayed with jim. another friend had driven to portland that day, and was returning with the assisted suicide meds-- jim was planning on taking them the following morning, november 1st. but around two am, we woke up to the sound of jim thrashing around in bed-- he was having another psychotic episode.....and we couldn't calm him. he refused to take any pain meds we tried to give him, convinced that we were trying to poison him....the irony here is not lost on me. catherine, who had stayed with him earlier that night, came over and was able to calm him and get him to take the pain killers. but here's the kicker-- assisted suicide meds MUST be self-administered, by law, and the person MUST be sane at the time. but by the time we finally got them, it was too late. the cancer had destroyed his sanity, and now all he had was pain.
every time jim regained consciousness after that, he was psychotic. the hospice workers advised us to just keep him medicated and unconscious; they could tell he didn't have long. jim passed away the morning of november 4th. eight days after my dad passed.
my sister was getting worse. i had been thrilled to find i was a match for connie, only to be disappointed-- the doctor said her liver was too far gone for a partial donation to be sufficient. she would need a whole liver. my medical leave started on november 16th, far too late. the casino closed on november 30.
it's funny how shit all happens at once sometimes....or maybe it's not so funny. i guess it all depends on your perspective.
bob and i have been spending the last six months managing our grief, and trying to get our shit back together. the good news-- my sister finally got on the transplant list, and in march she received a new liver. she's doing great, and we are all so grateful. dad didn't want a funeral, so in keeping with his last wishes, in june we had the ken munger memorial pig roast, our last (pig roasts were my dad's thing-- he'd been throwing them every couple of years for the past 35 years.) it was so strange-- he should have been there. he would have really enjoyed it.
let's just recap--
got a job at the lucky bridge casino as a cashier. moved up to the office manager after the new owner took over in january of 2014, and from there to accounting manager, and from there to comptroller by the time the casino closed.what started as a 25 hour a week job turned into 60+ hours a week, and what began as awesome gradually became an overworked nightmare.
we were house shopping, and in the spring of 2015, bob brought me to a little piece of property out in finley, just southeast of kennewick.....and as soon as i stepped out of the car, i knew i was home. the whole place reminded me so much of my grandmother's place, where i used to spend summers; the same grapevines and rose bushes, the same irises everywhere, the same little orchard with the same variety of trees (cherry, apricot, crab apple and black walnut). the neighbor has chickens, which remind me of my dad, and he even has peacocks-- my grandma used to keep peacocks! the peacocks belong to the neighbor, but they wander all over our property, and since they are arboreal, they sleep in our trees, which are the tallest trees in the area. i love listening to their calls; i even do a pretty good imitation of a peacock call myself!
the house was built in 1920, and it's too small, but it's a work in progress. it was just awful when we got it; hadn't been fixed up in years, and the floor was rotted through in places. we spent six months in 2015 renovating, and in december of 2015 we were finally able to move in. we plan on expanding the upstairs, and adding bathrooms......so many plans. give us time. i've named our place asylum; i like how the word means two things-- a place of safety, and a home for lunatics. both apply here.
anyway, between the job taking so much of my time, and the husband and the new home taking the rest, i had little time for blogging. and then my life came crashing down again....
in the spring of 2016, my older sister started having a lot of health problems-- she broke her leg. she was also diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and just after her leg healed, she broke BOTH legs, right below the knees. then we found out she had osteoporosis. then in september, she was diagnosed with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease-- she would need a new liver. i immediately looked into the possibility of becoming her living liver donor, and i gave my boss a thirty day notice that i would be going on medical leave.
on september 17th, my husband's best friend, jim, was hospitalized-- he was diagnosed with stage four cancer of the liver, lungs, and bones....he found out by having his femur just break one night while he was walking to his kitchen; it was eaten though with cancer. he had been telling his VA doctor about his pain for a couple of months, but she apparently didn't believe him. while in the hospital, jim had a psychotic episode-- he was convinced the hospital was a prison camp in a foreign country. the cancer had metastasized and spread to his brain as well. there was nothing to do-- the docs pinned his leg together with rods (it would never heal) and sent him home to die. slowly.
jim asked bob to take his power of attorney, and to be the executor of his estate. bob spent most of the next six weeks driving back and forth between our home here in finley and elgin, oregon, where jim lived (around two hours away) arranging hospice for jim, caring for him, taking care of his business concerns. jim's psychotic episodes were increasing in length and frequency, and he often got combative, which was really bad, because by that time, his bones were so fragile that they could easily break. while this was going on, i was frantically trying to train my assistant to take my place, and find a replacement for her, while going to elgin with bob on the weekends to help with jim, and worrying about my sister's worsening condition.............and then my dad started getting breathless with the slightest exertion.
mom finally convinced dad to go to the hospital on october 10th. on october 14th, he was diagnosed with acute myloid leukemia. stage four, of course. on the fourteenth, they were saying, "he'll probably make it though the holidays." they stopped saying that when his white blood cell count doubled in the space of a day. the docs told him he could buy a little time with a five day course of chemo, but they were wrong. all it did was make him sick and miserable. NOW i was going to work, spending the morning training my replacement, leaving work in the afternoon to go see dad in the hospital for a few hours, then going BACK to work to get my actual work done....
my sister connie, who lives in shelton, washington, was getting sicker and sicker. we were calling her every day, telling her she needed to come, but she was in and out of the hospital herself, and too ill to travel (it's a 4+ hour drive.) my younger sister carol, who lives on the east coast, was able to take some time off work, thank god; she flew home and stayed with our mom. the hospital finally decided they had tortured him enough, and released dad on october 26th; mom had hospice come in and set everything up in the family room. it was all so horribly familiar to me now, since i had been visiting jim for weeks-- the same hospital bed, the same oxygen machine, sighing away in the corner, the same pink basins, the same blue vomit bags. dad was sinking fast, so fast, and he was struggling so hard to stay with us; you could see how he fought for every breath. and you could see how tired he was.
connie was finally able to travel, and she came home the evening of the 27th. dad wasn't able to talk, and was slipping in and out of consciousness a lot. i took the day off work and spent a lot of my time just sitting by dad, holding his hand, and talking about all the things i remembered from my childhood. when connie came in, i didn't recognize her at first-- she was so thin and haggard it shocked me. dad passed away not twenty minutes after connie came-- he had been waiting for her. we were all around him-- mom was holding his left hand, and i was holding his right, when he died. thirteen days between his diagnosis...and his death.
i was STILL working 12-14 hour days at the casino, so i wasn't able to help bob with jim as much as i wanted. when jim was diagnosed, he told his docs he wanted to go the physician assisted suicide route-- but this was a catholic hospital, so they wouldn't even entertain the idea of helping him. after he came home, we contacted his primary care doc, who told us he had to wait two weeks and then ask again, by state law. we waited the two weeks, and had the doc come again; this time, he okayed it, and he put in the order for the meds-- in oregon, the assisted suicide laws are pretty strict...and slow. it took close to three weeks for the meds to be available-- and even then, they wouldn't send them to him in his home. we had to send someone to pick them up in portland (four hours away.)
my husband's birthday was october 31st, halloween. so i went to elgin on the 31st, intending to take bob to dinner....but stepping inside that house was the worst deja vu i have ever experienced in my life. it was so much like what i had just gone through with dad, i could hardly bear it. i kept it together, though. jim and i had very similar tastes in music, so i spent the afternoon with him, holding his hand occasionally and playing from my computer the songs we both loved-- janis ian, jim croce, leonard cohen, crosby, stills and nash, so many beautiful songs.
bob and i went out to dinner that night while a friend stayed with jim. another friend had driven to portland that day, and was returning with the assisted suicide meds-- jim was planning on taking them the following morning, november 1st. but around two am, we woke up to the sound of jim thrashing around in bed-- he was having another psychotic episode.....and we couldn't calm him. he refused to take any pain meds we tried to give him, convinced that we were trying to poison him....the irony here is not lost on me. catherine, who had stayed with him earlier that night, came over and was able to calm him and get him to take the pain killers. but here's the kicker-- assisted suicide meds MUST be self-administered, by law, and the person MUST be sane at the time. but by the time we finally got them, it was too late. the cancer had destroyed his sanity, and now all he had was pain.
every time jim regained consciousness after that, he was psychotic. the hospice workers advised us to just keep him medicated and unconscious; they could tell he didn't have long. jim passed away the morning of november 4th. eight days after my dad passed.
my sister was getting worse. i had been thrilled to find i was a match for connie, only to be disappointed-- the doctor said her liver was too far gone for a partial donation to be sufficient. she would need a whole liver. my medical leave started on november 16th, far too late. the casino closed on november 30.
it's funny how shit all happens at once sometimes....or maybe it's not so funny. i guess it all depends on your perspective.
bob and i have been spending the last six months managing our grief, and trying to get our shit back together. the good news-- my sister finally got on the transplant list, and in march she received a new liver. she's doing great, and we are all so grateful. dad didn't want a funeral, so in keeping with his last wishes, in june we had the ken munger memorial pig roast, our last (pig roasts were my dad's thing-- he'd been throwing them every couple of years for the past 35 years.) it was so strange-- he should have been there. he would have really enjoyed it.
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