March 19, 2014
We have nicknamed a fellow at-the-top-of-the-road: Mr. Grumpy – because he never smiles or acknowledges another human being. He has nasty warning signs posted on his property and he angrily picks up trash around the neighborhood to be taken…to be taken god knows where…
I am probably going back 20-years-or-so, when Uncle Mark’s Mom was still with us; and, recalling how surprised I was by the way he snapped at her and cut her off mid-sentence if it sounded like she was going to say something stupid. Now Uncle Mark is 10 years my senior – so he must have been in his late 40s when he was dealing with his mid-seventiesh mother. I remember thinking that I daren’t become that grumpy…
But so I have. As I converse with my mother, I find myself becoming increasingly frustrated at having to repeat something 3 different times during the same conversation: sometimes a mere two minutes apart from the previous explanation. Old age? Onset of Alzheimer’s or dementia?? Trying to figure how she wishes to live when my 91-year-old father moves on from this plain/plane??? It’s way too soon to tell – as she has days when she is as-sharp-as-a- whip! But I can tell you that these exercises in patience leave me quite short on patience!
Just-the-other-day, Giti and I were having a discussion as we went for our evening walk and I apparently admonished her so loudly that a neighbor chopping wood turned to see what was going on! Did I mention that he was busy chopping wood?! Come-to-think-of-it, I seem to be admonishing everyone rather loudly these days (except for my college students of course – who have to pay to hang with me…admonishing them could be construed as double jeopardy!). So it’s not everyone that I have a loud retort to – it’s probably my intimates and those I hang around with the most.
Why is this? I think it’s because I’ve pretty much arrived to the place where “I’ve been there and done that” – though I’m attending a lesbian wedding this weekend and I’ve never been there or done that! But with regards to everyone else that I am becoming curt and short with (with the added volume push) – I’d have to say that I am no longer in the mood to have a discussion about a problem: let’s cut through the bullshit and identify the best possible solution!
Hell! Nowadays, when I am asked to lecture about intimate-relation problems, or, am asked my opinion on said subject at cocktail parties – I simply respond that the problem is always “money” or “sex” – in that order. People will generally concur, but then wish to intimate that a relational problem must be more complicated than that. I snap back that if the troubled duo is fucking each other – it doesn’t get any more complicated than that!
And speaking of a thorough fucking, I have just learned that a movie is being released about Anita Hill (whom Clarence Thomas’ wife thinks is the devil). What just about everyone forgets about Anita Hill’s testimony RE: Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court appointment was that she gave her initial testimony in “closed chambers.” Someone in that room leaked her testimony about pubic hair et al. and caused her to be summarily skewered.
The journalist who recently interviewed Anita didn’t seem cognizant of this important dynamic – nor did the journalist suggest that the movie makers addressed it (I deduce this because the journalist didn’t respond to my ‘pleasant’ e-mail regarding this subject).
So, life goes on and most-of-the-people-in-it continue to function in spite of themselves; paying little heed to the signs along the way: while I have always tried to pay due attention to these signs and understand them. And now, since it seems like most folks will never get whateveritis that I have got, I claim the right to be grumpy until the day I die! By god, I think I’ve earned it!!