On This Day: Your History

[ER]

May 8, 1995 When Charlotte Sometimes heard me pull up after school, she grabbed her leash and ran to meet me at the door, so I took her on a walk to a nearby bakery for a piece of her favorite treat, three-crusted pie, something I gave her maybe five times a year, not often at all. I was leaning against the side of the bakery letting Charlotte daintily take the pie from my hand, when a curly-black-haired six-foot tall woman in a Phish shirt walked up and said in this sour, semi-So-Cal tone: “Young lady, you shouldn’t feed dogs human food, and especially not sweets, their digestive system can’t handle it, so what you’re doing is abuse of an animal.”

This rebuke made me feel like a little kid being dressed down by a grown up, but my unprepared brain went through my options: A. ignore her; B say something mean back; C. try to shock her by eating the pie Charlotte had been taking slobbery bites of, though I noticed she looked like the type who probably ate after animals on a daily basis.

After I’d stood in stony silence another moment, the woman told me I was a bad “animal sister” and moved on with a backward glare, but she ruined my happy moment with Char, and I went home deflated.

[ER]

May 9, 1997 I sat in the school library at lunchtime and experienced schadenfreude as I watched juniors cram for upcoming Hell Week exams we seniors were spared, and also from a distance listened to a vile girl named Andrea brag about how she would be spending a gap year in South Africa, courtesy of her P&G exec parents. But mostly I was thinking about something discussed in Honors Theology that morning.

We’d been talking about Lourdes, and I snidely piped up that Carl Sagan had said the rate of medically-documented spontaneous remission in terminal illness in daily life was actually higher than that of unexplained healings at Lourdes. The Jesuit who taught us said those statistics didn’t account for truly inexplicable, like a British man from Liverpool who’d been shot in the head in WWI and as a result had lost so much of his brain tissue he was left vegetative, and was granted a lifelong full military pension. After the war this man’s sister took him to Lourdes, where he rose from his wheelchair and suddenly became lucid again. Doctors examined him, and concluded his healing was beyond explanation. The man wrote his Member of Parliament saying he no longer needed his military pension, but there was no provision in British law to rescind funds granted to a veteran declared disabled beyond hope of recovery.

Assuming this was all true, exactly what transpired at Lourdes that day, and why isn’t it headline news even now?

[Alex]

10th May 2019.

I ended up escorting some classified stuff that needed to be urgently shipped overseas. It was supposed to be a 2-day trip over a weekend but ended up being 4 days. We were in a 2 articulated truck convoy and my driver was in full uniform. I asked him why, given that we were in unmarked trucks and carrying sensitive stuff, was he advertising that he was in the military. He told me that it was standard orders that their warrant officer had declared they would drive in uniform to look more professional. I countermanded his orders telling the driver that I was responsible for the cargo and he was to pull into the first layby to change into civilian clothes. It wouldn't be the first time I'd change the orders of someone much more senior than myself, but it would be the last time such an incident would arise. The whole thing was all organised on a very short notice with only a days notice.

At the end of the first day, we were staying in Gretna Green which is the wedding capital of the UK. I got the honeymoon suite, complete with a jacuzzi. I learned an important lesson from this.

If you want bubbles in a jacuzzi do not use one of those small sample bottles of shampoo that you get free in hotels to make them. You will find yourself running from the bathroom with armfuls of suds and throwing them out of the hotel room window.

If you had to spend a weekend working, it wasn't a bad way to have to do it. There was a woman at the bar who tried flirting with me. In the morning, I'd see her and her husband leaving from the room next door to mine. Despite this, this is really where I started to feel that the military life was no longer for me. I'd had family come up to visit and was now going to be missing half their stay. I missed my wife and son. I felt the orders I'd overridden were insanely stupid in a security-conscious environment where we were actively trying not to make ourselves targets for terrorists. Lee Rigby was still in our minds. It was just a feeling that I was not fitting into the military environment anymore. For better or worse, this was a feeling that would only increase over the next few years.

The trip itself was relatively pleasant. We had good weather for it and really nice accommodation (because the driver of the 2nd vehicle was a civilian they had to put us up in hotels rather than barracks).

[ER]

May 10:
1994: Got out of class for two hours to watch a solar eclipse.
1996: Went to Goodwill with my friend Mandy and got cool stuff. Came back and she asked if it was OK if she smoked a jay at my house before we watched The X-Files, and I told her to do it on the patio. She was so baked she watched under a beach towel.
1999: Shel Silverstein died, and I was sad.
2006: We went to UC to hear Ron Jeremy debate anti-porn activist Craig Gross. Pretty goofy event.
2008: Saw Carmina Burana at the ballet
2009: My first ever Mother’s Day. :-)
2010 Our eighteen-month-old was sick and my husband stayed with her the entire time, worrying over her and comforting her, and in eight and a half years I’d never felt more admiration for him.
2022: I turned 15,843 days old.

[ER]

May 11, 1989 My parents and I were on the back deck of our house in Burlington, Kentucky, when in the direction of an international airport we spied one of the “UFOs” we often saw. We never did figure out what they were, though maybe they had something to do with gases rising from the nearby Ohio River that became luminous in sunlight, but if so, the gases seemed to be capable of doing peculiar things. As we watched this particular UFO, it struck me that in a few weeks we wouldn’t live in that house anymore, or see those UFOs, and all the friends I had there would fade out of my life. Sure, my parents extolled all the great things we’d enjoy in Mason, Ohio forty miles north, a bigger house, a backyard pool, King’s Island being a few minutes away, and we’d be much nearer my extended paternal family, but that night it didn’t matter, I was leaving a house where I’d been happy, and the sadness I felt was the most real thing in my life.

[ER]

May 12, 1998 It was one of those days when stress seemed everywhere. There was a boy in college named Greg who (setting humility aside for candor) was in love with me. He was a great and kind person, probably the most normal boy I would ever get close to, but he was not the person I was in love with. He asked me to go to a Green Day concert that evening, he didn’t like the band much but knew I did, so had mostly gotten the tickets for me, and I said I was going home for the summer, so no.  He asked why I wanted to go back to where I “used to be from” when I had a life there all my own. I said, “Because that’s where I live, Greg.”  He nodded and quietly left, hurt, knowing nothing he could do would ever make me feel for him what I did for another, and right after that my dad called and told me I’d also hurt my mom by slighting her on Mother’s Day. I told him I’d sent her a card, and he said that was worse than doing nothing. By the time I was done listening to my dad list my faults and failings, I asked myself Greg’s question, why exactly was I going home? There was only one reason, really, and when that evening I called the person who was that reason, my talk with my dad came up, making Brian tell me: “Divorced or not your dad wants his wife home again, and when you slight your mom it makes him worry hurts may never be healed and so his chances of reconciling with her become that much lower.” It seemed a theme that in those times everything I did hurt someone.

[Alex]

13th May 2014.

I was in the US visiting Kristi. I was still getting use to the meds I was on and took them without quite eating enough in advance. It left me feeling as if I was trying to think through a cloud of cotton wool. Kristi was wearing a bright yellow blouse and I decided I had to get a matching shirt. I wrote this about the experience:

Guess I didn't quite have enough to eat when I was taking my pills today and afterwards I started having the side effects of feeling like my brain had to work through a layer of cotton wool and general dizziness. We were in a clothes shop and buying a really bright yellow shirt suddenly became a good idea. I went into the changing room (after having some issues with the door handle) and then had problems with the coat hooks and hangers. As I stumbled about the changing room trying not to fall over I couldn't help thinking "Wow, this is how women feel all the time".

13th May 2012.

Kristi flew back to the US after her first visit to the UK. I had been a fun week, although she spent most of it suffering quite badly from jet lag. I had said to her not to come over for less than two weeks to give her time to adjust. I think she enjoyed her trip though.

[ER]

May 13, 2007 It was Mother’s Day and I was such a nervous wreck I could barely enjoy spending the afternoon with my mom, or focus on the creative meal I was making her. A loquacious soul, she’d say something and I’d have to sheepishly say, “Sorry, what?” It was like I was too jittery for words. Within hours Landon and I would be boarding a plane to Los Angeles, from there to fly to New Zealand for almost a month, and though I’d been taking flights all my life, this one had me worked up. It wasn’t that I worried we’d crash, and even the long distance that lay ahead of us with nothing below but the Pacific Ocean wasn’t unnerving, since I’d crossed the Atlantic too many times to be superstitious about traveling above water, but some nebulous factor was eating away at me with all the drip-drip-drip of British water torture. (Uh-huh.) All I know to this day is never in my entire life did a pending trip draw my nerves so tight. Once we were on the plane I felt cool as ice, but even in the airport I was as jumpy as laspeyresia saltitans inside a Mexican bean, flinching when Landon touched my shoulder. (Obviously everything went fine.)

[ER]

May 14, 1991 Every once in a while my poor mom would rekindle her misguided notions that she could teach me to play piano, and this day contained an episode of that recurring tragedy.
 
At the keys I had never been able to handle anything more complex than Chopsticks, so once again my mom sincerely tried to teach me what music was about, and once again it went down like the Hindenburg. She actually sat in stunned silence after the lesson and asked if I was messing with her. I wasn’t, I had really tried.

“Are you just not interested?”

“Well, no....”

“Not even to make me happy?”

“That was why I tried at all.”

It was a mess, and yet through chapters of my youth Mom would get these recurring urges to try to teach me, and they’d usually begin with her playing something gorgeous, then asking, “Wouldn’t you like to be able to do that?”
 
Whenever I heard those words I knew maternal heartbreak was coming. Recently she’s asked my children if they’d like lessons, so I guess dashing yourself against the rocks of suffering is an Irish specialty.

[chefzombie]

it's may 15th here. i lost my sweet kate on this day 3 years ago, and nobody told me she was in hospital, so i didn't get the chance to take of her or say goodbye. i'm still trying to understand why her daughter did that to me, maybe someday i will. at least i know that she knew how much i loved her. 

[ER]

May 15, 2019 Took the departing interns from work on an outing to a river federally designated as “wild, scenic” to see nature and find fossils, and have sno-cones in a park on the way back.

We talked about the litter of endangered African painted wolves born at the local zoo that week, and we were all pulling for the little ones to make it.
 
I also pondered the fact that my daughter Daisy was ten and a half and I wondered if she’d like to spend part of the upcoming summer in Ireland, seeing the country and getting to know her relatives there. I made a note to call my cousin Donna and ask how she might feel about keeping an eye on Dizzie for a few weeks, offering to return the favor if anyone in her family wanted to come over here.

I made sushi that night and watched the riveting finale of Survivor: Edge of Extinction, which capped off my almost twenty-year-old fandom with that show.
 
Ran two miles on the treadmill before bed and sent an email back to Donna, who said Daisy was always welcome.

It was a full day in the Ellieverse.

[ER]

May 16, 2005 Made my third visit to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, still convinced there was something wrong with enshrining a genre meant to be nihilistic. They had an exhibit about Tommy, The Who’s “rock opera” and I said it should just be called an “opera” without the “rock” qualification. (I was full of opinions, if you notice.) We wandered around Cleveland, which Southwest Ohioans are required by custom to refer to as “the Brown End of the State,” and bought a small-press novel called Articles of War, on the recommendation of The Man in Austin (who has terrible taste in reading material, truth be told), and saw Bright Eyes/Conor Oberst in concert that same night. Driving home we heard some comments on the radio by Britney Spears, who said her best days were behind her, she didn’t care about her looks anymore, and expected she was going to have weight problems the rest of her life. Personally I think she’s held up well over the years considering her life has been filled with exploitation. Coming back I observed how when you leave the cities and hit those long rural stretches of interstate, it can get pleasantly dark under those star-filled country skies.

[ER]

May 17, 1990 My several-houses-down neighbor Rachel had a fourteen-year-old cousin, Randall, who visited from Pittsburgh, the best-looking science nerd (and Jewish person) I had ever seen. This kid was an alpha, could’ve had a teen drama show, jet black hair, confident aura to him, muscles, golden eyes like a bird of prey, and yet, rarer still, he was actually nice. Somehow it even made him still more appealing that he’d broken his wrist doing ramp-jumps while waterskiing in the Bahamas the summer before.

I’d been outside that afternoon waiting on Gina to get home so I could tell her about my dream that our school burned down and mice had survived by jumping into my locker, so naturally to pass the time I undertook my recurring hobby of seeing how far I could walk down our sidewalk with my eyes closed, taking my seventieth step minus one, when from somewhere in front of me I heard Randall ask what I was doing. I opened my eyes and there he was, wearing a black U2 War t-shirt, looking amazing.

I blurted out, “I did sixty-nine.” Realizing I’d left out the fact I meant steps, I turned my back, my face flushed red, while I heard Randall cracking up. Oy vey.

[ER]

May 18, 1995 For years Dana told me there was no way I was going to be able to sustain my status as an honors student and all–around good kid, and predicted: “When you finally fall you are going to fall hard.” At the time I thought it was one of the rudest things anyone ever said to me, but when I’d talked to her the evening before, one of the few phone calls my suddenly Draconian father allowed me to make, she told me with a certain degree of admiration that the collapse of my virtuous life had been: “Spectacularly Victorian.”
 
Getting in my car and driving off in the middle of a school day to disappear for hours had been a last straw, and I was no longer allowed to drive myself, and my dad had started this regimen wherein he drove me in mornings and I waited supervised on school grounds doing homework til he came and got me at day’s end to bring me home for dinner (which he made me partake of, no tolerance for eating disorders), and then he studied with me for the next couple hours, and that was pretty much my life during most of May 1995. Early to bed, going nowhere.
 
Yet oddly my father was also excessively nice to me during all this, he wasn’t mad or even seemingly upset about the things you might think he’d be mad at me for doing, it was more of a genuine worry that I’d reached a personal breaking point with all the misfortunates of the past seven months, and was volatilely wrecking my own life.
 
So I rode home with him after he got off work downtown that day, the 18th , and it was hello honey how was school, etc., questions I didn’t answer, just sat like a sullen statue. We came home and he said we should have something I liked for dinner. Whatever, I thought, so we had salad stuff, as salads were about all I was eating then, since I had to eat something or die, and he talked nonstop, not seeming to care I wasn’t replying, and I knew my dad understood interrogation and subtly breaking people, but he had never done anything to me like the things he was doing then, just locking me away from the world and everyone in it. The calendar may have said it had only been a couple weeks but it felt much longer.

That night he had his friend Bud over to watch basketball, and I was so bored in my room, where everything had been taken away---TV, phone, music, books, everything but my dog Charlotte---that I came downstairs and asked if I could watch the game with them, and Dad said in this kind voice, “Why sure honey, glad to have you.”

How nice he was to me in the midst of all this was the craziest part.

Bud, who’d known me since I was ten, told me to help myself to the snacks he brought over, and you’d think it was the Brady Bunch around there that night instead of me in this state of near-total lockdown, determined not to break, deciding I’d die before I broke, but knowing it was all wearing me down.

[ER]

May 19, 2010 When I was working on an Air Force base, I spent the day listening to a government efficiency expert probably two years out of college brightly try to tell a group of us how we could better do our jobs. I asked my co-worker to give me a sip of the “coffee” he had in his thermos, and after the bourbon fumes finished burning my throat, I endured the academic airhead a little better, and soon we were fugging with her hard enough to have her flustered. Later I drew a picture of her with fire shooting out of various parts of her body that made my co-workers laugh, and it was like middle school all over again, except in middle school I wouldn’t have drawn a picture like that, I’d have behaved. I dared one of my co-workers to ask the efficiency expert if masturbation, when judiciously used on the job as a stress reliever, improved working performance, and he actually did! The poor young woman stepped away from her PowerPoint slides like a deer caught in headlights and I actually saw her cheeks redden and her forehead begin to glisten. It was a goofy day spent with non-conformists who were nothing like the popular stereotype of people who worked high-clearance jobs.