I’m the bad guy

I keep forgetting this essential fact in a corporate society — the person with the complaint is always the problem. 

Who would you rather be, a wealthy, philanthropic, problem-solving job creator or a sniveling, powerless loser trying to lodge some niggling complaint?   Not much to choose there, really, in our either/or, winner/loser, black/white, powerful/helpless culture.   Then, among us puny earthlings, there is the personal sphere, the only thing we can sometimes control — how we act in response to stress.

If it weren’t for whiners like me who need to make a “complaint” any time they feel slighted, cheated, over-billed, underserved, physically or emotionally injured and all the other annoying signs of personal self-pity, corporations would never be troubled by the odd customer with a gripe of some kind.   Life is unfair, everybody, even the most powerful among us, has gripes.  De minimis non curat lex.  “The law does not concern itself with your trifle, asshole.”  Sounds more majestic in Latin.

Somehow, I take the fact that I am now a cripple personally.  When I use that ugly term to refer to myself (we prefer to be known as ‘person with a disability’ or something more respectful than ‘cripple’ or ‘gimp'[1]) I am describing a person who cannot walk a few steps without pain.  It is not uncommon for a medical limitation such as not being able to walk, after a knee replacement, with no available medical cure, to eventually make a person bitter.   I am now officially fucking bitter.

I obliged the wife yesterday by sending my dermatologist photos of two new skin growths.  I went on the MyChart of the corporation my doctor works for and sent a message.  My question was if either of these look suspicious enough to merit expediting my appointment, currently set for April.

After a night of interrupted, low quality sleep (ongoing pain, swelling and stiffness in my impeccably installed prosthetic left knee) that left me without REM, deep sleep, or any real rest, I woke today, Friday, to a text from the dermatologist’s office with a Monday morning appointment (90 minutes from here at that hour).

I hadn’t heard from my doctor. It generally takes a few days, and she always gets back to me. There was a notation on the portal, when I logged in, that my doctor had not yet seen my note. Somehow, somebody (a fucking bot driven by AI is my best guess) scanned my note, saw the words “expedited appointment” and put me on the calendar for Monday morning.

Annoying, but easily remedied by calling to cancel the appointment.  In hindsight I should have just texted “N” to “not confirm” and been done with it.  I was already cranky from another shit night’s sleep, the inability of the medical profession to fix the new problem they had caused for me, and everything related to the pain, physical and emotional, of being unable to walk.  I made the mistake of not texting “N”, instead calling to find out if there was some reason for this sudden emergency appointment.

As is the case whenever trying to talk to anyone in a corporate medical office, it was a gauntlet of ads, unsolicited advice about their convenient website and hold music.  I hung up angrily after a few minutes of a five second loop of hold muzak played over and over and over.  The wife, seeing me upset, moved in to help me out.  At one point, when she had someone on the line, she began to cry in frustration and overflowing sympathy for my aggravation.  I took the phone, explained the situation, canceled the appointment, handed the phone back to the wife.  Ten minutes later she was still making nice with the very nice clerk at the appointment desk.  The doctor was seeing other patients, but would personally call me at her earliest opportunity, she let me know.

I didn’t need a call from the doctor.  I’d make an earlier appointment if needed to after I got her response on the portal.  There was no need to trouble the doctor, there was no need to trouble myself, and yet, the call went on and on until I finally lost my shit and began screaming, as I do in the shower sometimes when I’m alone in the house and my knee is screaming along with me. 

The wife is now hurt, and I am a brutal fucking bitter asshole, in addition to an ungrateful one who snarls and yells at someone who is only trying to help me. 

Have a blessed day, y’all.  May this cautionary tale remind you to be the best person you can be, and remember to make nice after you lose control of your frustrations.

[1] Across the board, people with disabilities generally agree that words implying the person is a victim of their disability should be avoided. For example, it is recommended that people choose phrases like “they had a stroke” instead of “they are a stroke victim” or “they suffered a stroke.” These negative phrases can imply that the person is passive to their condition.         

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History, take two

Every person who can never be wrong, always blames others and fights to the death every time, knows the importance of controlling the narrative of what actually happened. If you can never be wrong, you tell the story in a way that makes you the brutally, viciously abused victim. The sick person who abused you, in your story, is the one who deserves rage and violence, because you were totally innocent, as always. It’s hard being perfect in a world of jealous weaklings.

Personal Archaeology

Not everyone is wired this way, but for me, I need to unearth clues that help me understand the tangled progress of my life.  I learn many things way too late, and I wonder about these things, once the truth of them hits me like a wall.   Some may find this process painful and do everything to avoid it. 

I am not one of these people, I have left myself countless clues over the decades.  The challenge is to assemble them to  understand what they’re telling me about the progression of my experience.

There is a type

I’m aware now, to an extent it was impossible to know before, for reasons I could explain at length, of a type that is truly incapable of emotional growth.   They are also unable to be honest, which is a big factor in their inability to grow, mature, to evolve into better, wiser people as they go through life.  They were brutally crushed at a young age and their entire personality is an exercise in never being hurt again.   They can be charming, generous, funny, gracious, hospitable, helpful, sympathetic — until they can’t be any of these things.

The crux of their situation is that they were humiliated, early and often, their noses rubbed in their powerless to do anything about it but suffer.  They grew up in frightening circumstances with no loving adult to look to for protection.  They remain hypervigilant against anything that can embarrass them, make them look bad.   If they are confronted with something hurtful they did, no matter how gently the point is raised, they react with fury.  They are always one twitch away from a disorientingly familiar, bloody war to the death that they are bound to lose badly.  They fight with childish desperation. 

I’ve known a variety of this type over the 68 years of my life.  They come in several variations.   A common trait is an inability to see things from someone else’s point of view.    They tend to be judgmental, too.  They often have a reflex to piss on other people’s parades.

The adult daughter of one of these tragically deformed souls wrote recently online of always being amazed, as a little girl who grew up in the suburbs, by the thought that every giant apartment building in New York City had a thousand windows, with a unique life and universe behind every one. She eventually, around six, managed to express this to the adult driving the car. She referred to this person as “the adult” and later used the person’s pronoun, “she”. The response of the adult, a woman I know very well, is a perfect illustration of this kind of crabbed, damaged, damaging personality.

She told her six year-old, marveling at the variation of human experience, “that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.”   Crushing the little girl in the back seat, as this type does in order to feel superior, and therefore not subject to the agony of their own emotional limitation.

I am not a man given to hatred or motivated by revenge.   Revenge is in my heart lately, directed toward a small intimate lynch mob of my once good friends.  I understand and forgive myself for the impulse, though revenge is not something I’m enthusiastic about in general.  I’ve never been a hater.  But, in a real sense, I hate this little girl’s soul crushing Nazi of a mother, eternally reserving her right to hurt anyone she feels like hurting, because she’s entitled to.   And because she’s terrified in her stunted soul, as all such empty human shells are.

Merry Christmas everybody

Thank the Lord we are all once again free to utter those beautiful words in the United States of America. There’s nothing woke, unwoke or deep asleep about uttering a traditional holiday greeting to our Christian neighbors. Feliz Navidad, y’all.

That said, Jesus, of course, is probably quite unhappy (and rightfully so) about what his most public megaphones are representing as his principles: fuck the poor, screw the meek, child poverty is God’s will, as is pediatric cancer, competition beats cooperation every time, obscene wealth and unslakable greed are the Divine’s way of rewarding the righteous, guns don’t kill people, burning toxic things doesn’t cause pollution, spit on and beat homosexuals, make raped girls give birth, as God intended, etc.

But let me not tar American Christians with the ugly sins of perhaps only a hundred million or so of them. One of the finest people I ever knew, smart, funny, irreverent, mischievous, died a few weeks ago at ninety. Rose was a religious Catholic and went to mass every Sunday, until she was unable to and began attending by video link. When I was overwhelmed, and she was out of ideas, she’d tell me to put my faith in God and let God take care of things that caused me anguish. I would gently remind her that prayer and faith had been ruined for me early on by the staggeringly idiotic hypocrisy of the Hebrew school/Jewish center I attended. She understood, but urged me to try it anyway. I’d deflect with a joke and she’d respond with one of her trademark wisecracks.

To be loved by someone who is religious can put the whole exercise of religion in a much more sympathetic light. Sure religion is an engine of control, enforced conformity and, sometimes, murderous intolerance of other faiths. Of course people who become very wealthy, influential and powerful promoting religion quickly become corrupt hypocrites, if they don’t start out that way. An old Jew I once knew used to say “the longer the beard, the bigger the thief”. No religion has a monopoly on evil in the name of God. It is good, in the face of such common ugliness in the name of religion, to remember the blessing of true belief in a moral system ruled by a just Creator.

It is encouraging for me to think of examples like Rose Cuccaro, people who lose nothing of their great and unique personalities while being imbued with faith in a divine spirit, and committed to loving and serving those around them. Religion, at its best, does that. It also brings great comfort to the dying.

At Rose’s wake, her daughter told us that her mother dreamed (two nights before she died) that she was at a great dinner party with her nephew Frankie (great guy, he died a few years back) and so many other cherished loved ones, and she named them.  “All dead,” said Adrienne.  The next day she told her “Frankie’s here to take me home” and she went with her favorite nephew (anybody else at the party would have been just as happy to escort her) for the joyous reunion with the rest of them.  

We all agreed that Frankie was the most likely guide to come down to bring her home. Whether they sent him because he was the most recent arrival (“you go for her, rookie, you’ll get a kick out of it”) or just out of Frank’s basic nature, which would’ve been “let me do this, it’s Aunt Rose, I got this one.”   Not a bad way to end this dream, if you ask me, if you can believe it.

And with that, a merry Christmas to all. May the blessings of this holiday season, centered around the shortest day of the year, and faith in the coming of Spring, be upon you.