On This Day: Your History

[ER]

November 3:

1991: A local DJ, known for his stunts, vowed to stay atop a billboard til the local NFL team won a game. That day, nine weeks after his promise, the fool was finally able to come down.

2005: My cousin Allie decided "radical honesty and full disclosure" were healing in her battle against addiction, and told me things I hadn't known, especially about her being sexually abused by her brother's friend when she was ten. Knowing she'd struggled and suffered in her life even from childhood made me regret derisive comments I'd made about her over the years.

2006: Consulted a lawyer after police told me they were going to come onto my land and shoot coyotes and I had no right to stop them. Yeah, I did.

2014: Filled out a crazy sex survey I was sent online that asked you to say yes, no, sort of, or NOYB, proving I was hopelessly willing to answer any sort of questionnaire.

2017: Got a heads-up at work about planned Antifa demonstrations around the city. The area is an intelligence hub, plus GE builds stealth bombers and drones here, but their target was P&G, over alleged vivisectionist experiments. It would've given Antifa members nightmares to learn how much the government knew about them personally.

2019: Attended my thirteen-year-old cousin Joshua's party celebrating his conversion to Reform Judaism. He was almost a generation younger than me, and a formal sort of person, serious and distant, but polite. Some people speak of being born in a body that did not match their gender, and I think somehow a Jewish soul got plopped into an Irish Catholic baby by mistake. He has stayed a faithful Jew.

[ER]

November 4, 1992 Through almost all my late childhood my dad had worked a job that frequently took him away, out of contact, for varying periods of time, and he'd told us all week another one was coming up shortly, he just couldn't say when exactly, though he knew. Maybe it was because we'd been so happy about the election but for whatever reason I got mad at him because he was going away yet again for who knew how long, a few days or a few weeks (once for months) and instead of explaining why I was upset, I said all number of mean things to him that day, then felt tortured that this was what he'd hear from me before he left, so I wrote a letter to him and left it on his desk, telling him I was sorry for what I'd said and had been sad and didn't want him to keep going away on his job where we never knew when we'd hear from him. (To be clear this only happened a few times a year but it was disruptive and upsetting.) He read it and told me he knew this was hard on Mom and especially me and that I didn't have to worry that he'd think I didn't love him because I'd said harsh things, and then he gave me the news that he was in line for a position that would put an end to him having to do this aspect of his work, and I was so relieved about that it helped me endure yet another big empty spot in life when he wasn't there for five weeks, though thankfully he did come home in time for Christmas.

[ER]

November 5:

1994: Doctors couldn't tell why it was happening and leaned toward psychosomatic causes, but since I almost died, my legs would suddenly give out and I'd fall. This went on another week and was scary.

1996: President Clinton was re-elected and my dad said he expected "complacent mediocrity" the next four years.

1997: A boy from college named Greg called me because he had a job interview and asked if I knew how to iron a shirt. I tried but did it so poorly he ended up taking over.

1998: Had an argument with my roommate because I told her I was going to move back home in January, something she didn't want, and which in the end I was unable to do because of my job.

2002: My mom played me U2's just-released album, but since it was old songs, well...

2004: I'd made a bet with a certain Austinite that he'd get a Brazilian wax if Kerry won the Presidency, and I called to remind him of the bullet he'd dodged.

2006: Saddam was sentenced to death, and I got some stares when I predicted he'd go bravely to his death, which he did.

2007: We had a hailstorm...in November!

2020: I had minor surgery to remove a subcutaneous cyst.

2022: Fifty mph wind gusts denuded our autumn trees.

[ER]

November 6:

1990: Because of his work I hadn't seen my dad for twenty days.

1995: My friend Gina's thirteen year old year old brother kept boasting about having had sex, and when I said enough about your stupid first time, he said try six times now!

1998: Saw the charming The Parent Trap remake with my friend Karen.

2001: My cousin Magda was with me on her vacation, and I reminded her of when I was little she'd put me in headlocks to try to get me to say bad words; something she denied, ha.

2007: My friend Gina was with me when she got amniocentesis results that also showed she was having a girl. This was my goddaughter Courtney.

2010: My cousin Celia abandoned her husband and daughter. Next time I'd see her she'd be hooked on opioids.

2012: President Obama got four more years. I wasn't happy but I hadn't been thrilled about President Romney either. Lunched on the unlikely combination of sushi and Grape Crush.

2013: Saw The Cabin in the Woods.

2014: Heard Prince William said not a week goes by that he doesn't think of his mom; I thought, really, a whole week?

2019: At the AFB where I worked I was suddenly given so many shots that I knew something was up, but I couldn't have guessed the clusterf**k ahead.

2021: ESPN's College Gameday was in town doing its live show, and Tyler got on TV while the camera panned across the crowd.

2022: Metal-detected an 1800s farm, then came home and watched Baz Luhrman's Elvis movie.

[Alex]

6th November 2016.

I went to see Tragedy down in Glasgow. The support act was a Frank Zappa Tribute act and left the crowd somewhat nonplussed. We were all quite glad when they finished and thought thankfully we'd never have to suffer them again.

Until they were invited to support them the next time I'd go and see them.

We spoke with the manager of the venue and he said they'd never play any of his venues again.

I also spent a fair bit of time wondering why palindrome wasn't a palindrome.

6th November 2013.

I got back after a week away doing an unimportant course that was only vaguely and in the most tangential ways connected to my job. I put in exactly the minimum amount of effort required to pass (pass mark was 60%. I scored 60%). It was the first time I'd ever not tried to pass an exam with as high a score as possible.

[ER]

November 7, 2006 I went to Kroger and as I was leaving I passed the bubblegum machines in the lobby, and there was a woman who had a little girl in her cart, and the little girl was asking for a quarter so she could get something out of the machines. Her mother said, "All my quarters are going to go for the pay phones." Hearing that as I passed I laid a quarter down on the machine beside the little girl, and kept walking, and figured it was a good deed, but nope, the woman boiled up behind me and tossed the quarter toward me and said, "We don't need your money!" I didn't look back but it disturbed me.

[Alex]

8th November 2019.

We went to a Jamaican restaurant. I'd never tried their cuisine before, and enjoyed the meal. Ash seemed to enjoy it too. I've tried to go back several times but Kristi never seems to want to.

[ER]

November 8, 2007 Fun night in the city with Landon seeing a Clive Barker-ish play called The Pillowman, about an Irish writer whose stories of brutal murders seemed to be coming true, with the killer apparently being a gruesome figure from urban nightmares, an entity constructed of pillows it used to smother its victims. The story was extremely hard-core, disturbing and brutal. Afterwards we got some food and drinks at Arnold's, which has been in operation since the 1860s, and still has a bathtub on-site in which gin was supposedly made during Prohibition. Heard light jazz in the open-air courtyard surrounded on all sides by multi-story19th century brick buildings, then as I left I kept up a personal ritual dating to my earliest visits there and slid my hands down the figures carved into the thick wooden outside doors. It was a five-minute drive to Landon's house across the river, where we fell asleep to the sound of nearby riverboats sounding their horns in the night. Life was good....

[ER]

November 9, 1995 One of the many reasons I strongly disliked Brian's dad, Joe---i.e. for years pretty much hated the man---relates to days like this one, and the effect he had on his son, who though twenty years younger than his father, was like the older of the two in some ways, always feeling responsible for looking out for his alcoholic dad's well-being, and rarely more than at this time, early November '95, when Joe's second marriage had ended and he was staying drunk and high around the clock, apparently going days without sleep while Brian babysat him as his dad binged on cocaine and drank on top of that, entering states of sheer jabbering mania Joe would later, after his religious conversion, tell me were literally episodes of demonic possession, during which he would see out not via own eyes but through the gaze of something else inside him, looking out with his eyes while he saw from its perspective, second-hand, as a cacophony of voices screamed inside his head, laughing and yelling and telling him to keep drinking, to get higher, not to stop, like somehow whatever was inside him, however many voices there were shouting, could feel his intoxication through him, like parasites.

He has said: "It was like I instinctively knew I would soon be one of them, starving in a miserable post-death state, latching on to some other drunk and trying to bring him down so I could feel what he was feeling, like those poor souls, dead but still wanting their fix, were trying to feel through me."

The way he tells it is actually quite frightening.

Anyway....

What was strange, though, was how almost every occasion I saw Joe around this time he didn't seem like he was going through any of what Brian told me he was. Joe was lucid, successful, well-dressed, always affable, and usually calm. He also disgusted me by obviously trying hard to have me find him charming and upbeat when I knew the bottom had fallen out of his life and his pretense to the contrary was all fake.

On this particular day I hadn't heard from Brian since two nights before, which was rare, and the last time I had he'd sounded hollow, repeating what he'd been saying for the last week, that I should not be around him til he got his dad to a place where he wasn't so much a danger to himself. (Like the responsibility was all on him at age twenty-one.) Though I took heart in the fact he did tell me he loved me and called me by the nickname he'd used since I was a seventh grader, "FLN" a phonetic twist on my name, Evelyn.

Life had been so good for us for so long that I only wanted us to be us again.

I went over to Brian's house after school on the 9th. and the place was dark, so I let myself in with my key and found him lying in his bed, on his back, clothes on, curtains drawn in the silent house. It was not only disturbing, it was eerie, but I laid down beside him in the dimness and didn't say anything, and all the time I was there he barely talked and never looked at me, and I had never known him to be like that when he was usually entirely the opposite sort of person: lively, self-confident, a high-achiever.

It came to me that the darkness in his father was destroying his son along with himself, and I finally had enough and burst out: "I hate your dad, and I wish he would die, so he'd lose this destructive power over you."

For a moment Brian didn't respond, then he simply asked me to please leave, so I did.

I probably shouldn't have been surprised he was choosing his father over me, but I still was, because we were in love.

His dad was acrobatic in his drug abuse, in that he could walk tightropes of chemical danger and take falls and somehow come right back, and he did that time too when a week later he curtailed his binges as if on demand and went back to being himself, this good-looking, successful, womanizing and generally much-liked man, as if nothing had happened.

And as always he put an inordinate and ever-puzzling amount of time and effort into trying to win me over and get me to like him, knowing in his discerning way that I was one of the few people who didn't, and I think he felt genuinely hurt by that. Let him keep trying, I thought, sure that was an impossible task, even for him, the ever-lucky, indestructible, miracle worker he seemed to be. He kept trying, constantly calling and talking to me, attempting to buy me things, bragging on me to his son, telling him I was the greatest thing that ever happened to him so he should appreciate me. And the more he tried to earn my good opinion, the more I loathed him for it.

I was glad to get Brian back to being himself that November, glad he too snapped back and we picked up where we'd left off and for much of the next year had great happiness together, but at the time I wished his dad, who still talks to me almost every day, would just f**king die.

(And when he almost did the next year, it was a shock.)

[Alex]

09th November 2013.

After Kristi kicked one of the door stops and managed to 1) Break her toe and 2) Remove all the skin from the underside of her toe, I went round the house removing all of them. I then showed Kristi how to get blood out of a carpet by pouring a small cone of salt on top of the blood stains and then adding water to the mix.

I then went into Elgin collecting money for a veterans charity, selling red poppies. I was collecting outside St Giles (shopping centre) with a young lady. A couple came over and were chatting away when my companion said to them "I am feeling a bit cold, I might just stick my hands in my pockets while no one is looking." The couple laughed and walked off. She turned to me and asked, "Do you know them?" I replied "No, but I know who they are. The guy is the Station Warrant Officer and that's his wife the Chief Clark."

Several people as well as donating also brought us hot food and drinks which was nice.

09th November 2010.

After a year of being incredibly unhappy in my new job I'd had enough. I logged onto a computer at work and made 17 clicks with a mouse that meant freedom. I had submitted my PVR (effectively handing in a years notice that I was leaving). Although I had made my intentions perfectly clear that I'd be doing this for months, it still shocked my management. They immediately pulled me off the course I was on and had to sit through chats with my immediate management and increasingly up the chain of command, making all sorts of offers to keep me in. Eventually, I relented. Had I not, my life would have been totally different in so many ways I can't even calculate all the ramifications.

[ER]

November 10, 2009 Landon and I went to hear David McCullough speak at Miami University on an Indian Summer night, where we got him to sign a copy of The Johnstown Flood. Drove back and showed Landon where Dana's infamous bungalow used to be just outside town in 1995, gone by then, and he said it would give him the creeps to live so close to a road with no guard rail, especially in a college town, and I said I used to tell her the same thing but she lead a semi-charmed life. He knew of the tale enacted there when Dana tried to get me wasted, and Brian showed up and rescued me from her machinations and my stupidity. And now that little house was gone and no artifacts of it remained except those of memory.

[ER]

November 11:

1991: Had my first ocular aura. The experience of a scintillating, serpentine rainbow creating a temporary blind spot in one's eye is painless, but gets old fast.

1997: I was listening to Ireland swear in its first female President, when through the thin walls I heard the dance majors in the apartment next to us serially throwing up after they ordered pizza.

1998: Saw American History X with Gina; found it a shallow morality play.

2011: Skyrim released; life screeched to a halt for half the people I knew. Landon described it as lacking Oblivion's soul or Morrowind's heart. Well said.

2015: Edie introduced me to someone as: "The only woman I know who had sex with an X-Man." (Which, for the record, referred to a school.)

2016: Tipped a Kroger's bagger a dollar and a condom, and said don't use them both at the same time.

2018: It was a cold morning on which the last clinging leaves shivered in their death throes, and I read that in the century since "the War to End All Wars" at least 4,500 wars had been started.

2019: I was shocked to find out I was abruptly being sent on assignment to Turkey, with virtually no warning, and with nothing about why I was going was making the slightest sense. I couldn't figure out what I could be expected to contribute there, and in the strongest terms I did not want to do it.

2021: I was part of this exchange.... Person one: "Sex is the ultimate expression of attraction."  Person two: "Nah, stalking is." (Guess which party I was?)

[Alex]

11th November 2015.

I received word that the headstone we had selected had been ordered and it would be ready early next year. This seemed to me to be a very long time to wait.

11th November 2010.

We went out shopping. I had wanted to go alone, but Kristi had (unusually) decided she wanted to come with me. She was then very unimpressed when she saw me buy everything I wanted to get her for Yule, but as I told her "Honey, by the time it comes to give you these presents, I'll have have forgotten what I bought you so I will still get a surprise."

[Trevor]

11th November 1965: my birth country claimed independence from Britain.

[Alex]

11th November 2017.

I went to see Alice Cooper live with The Mission and The Tubes in support. Alice Cooper was great. The Mission were great. The Tubes were s**t. It was one of the most painful musical experiences I have ever went through. Even the Frank Zappa tribute act were not as bad as The Tubes. If they'd played that stuff at Noriega(sp?), he'd have surrendered in half the time.

Damn but they were awful.