family, funny stories, humor, language, memories

The unusual glory of being a “cusser”…

I’m ashamed to say this, but swearing is one of my many shortcomings as a human.  I cuss like a sailor.  Always have, and probably always will, although I’ve mellowed somewhat in my old age.  Although deep down, I am a lady, to most people, I come off as crusty as a crab cake.  I don’t even like crab cakes. 

Despite my cranky, bitter, and petty demeanor, I still have quite a few true friends who have known me for many years.  I made a lot of those friends in my freewheeling college days.  College was a pretty good time for me, although I spent those years fairly hampered by social anxiety and depression.  I still managed to have a great time at Longwood, despite those handicaps.  I left that school with lifelong friends and mostly good memories.  It was a really nice place to go to school.

One of my friends is a woman I met during the very first week of our freshman year.  In those days, Longwood College (as it was then called), had its bookstore in the basement of the much venerated Ruffner building.  The bookstore wasn’t that big, so one often had to stand in line to get in there at the beginning of each semester.  It was a chore that could take awhile.

I was standing in line, waiting for my turn to load up on overpriced textbooks, and somehow struck up a conversation with the striking redhead standing next to me.  She was a fellow freshman, dressed in denim shorts, a t-shirt, and a beautiful cardigan, which was very stylish in 1990, although curiously, I would imagine it would have been hot as hell to wear that during a typical Virginia August.  It’s also possible that my memory of what she was wearing isn’t quite accurate, although I do know she loved colorful cardigans and pearl necklaces.  What I do remember very clearly is that I noticed the redhead’s well-coordinated, stylish outfit and her brilliant red hair.  She was friendly, confident, and funny.  Her name was– and still is– Donna, a fitting name for her that means “lady”.  Donna is very ladylike and hilarious, to boot. 

We stayed friends throughout college and shared a suite during my traumatic sophomore year of school.  We were both English majors; she also majored in Spanish.  She joined Sigma Alpha Iota, the honorary music fraternity, and I was her big sister.  We were both members of Camerata Singers, which was Longwood’s auditioned choir that included a lot of liturgical, classical, and Broadway music. 

I lost touch with my friend after we graduated.  Then, one day in 2006, I got an email from her.  It was out of the blue.  She had included an adorable picture of her then three year old daughter, who was pretty much her clone.  Donna’s daughter has the same flaming red hair her mother has.  Not long after that, Facebook became a thing, and we reconnected that way.

This morning, as I looked at Facebook memories, I was reminded of something really funny that happened eleven years ago. My old college friend, Donna, was having dinner with her super bright and funny daughter. They had the following conversation:

Tonight over dinner, [her daughter] C says, “Your friend Jenny is a cusser!”

Me: “What are you talking about?”

C: “Your friend Jenny on Facebook. She’s a cusser.”

Me: “Why are you saying this?”

C: “Because every time I get on the computer, your Facebook page is up & she posts pictures that have the F-word by them. She’s a cusser.”

My friend continued…

Okay, so I just scoured your wall & I only saw one picture with the “f-word” near it & it was posted by [our mutual friend] Chris. HE’S the cusser! LOL!

It really is sad how she ended up a crack-baby & all. Especially since I never did any crack.

Donna is a dear friend, and we’ve known each other since 1990. Her daughter, C, is now a student at our alma mater, Longwood University. I’m sure she’s making her own hilarious memories at our school. Every year, on November 7, I see that funny post from 2012 and have a good laugh. What’s even funnier is that as of 2012, C hadn’t yet met me in person.

In 2014, just a few months after we moved to German, Bill and I flew home for my family’s annual Thanksgiving reunion. We were there to memorialize my father, who had passed away in July of that year. The memorial service was held in November so more people could attend. That’s also why I got married in November, although it turned out we couldn’t get married over Thanksgiving weekend. We probably should have done the deed in October. The weather would have been nicer.

Anyway, on that trip to Virginia, we met up with my college friends, Joann, Donna, Donna’s husband, and their hilarious eleven year old daughter, C, who had correctly identified me as a “cusser”. She was just as cute as she could be!  I thoroughly enjoyed meeting her.  As we were about to finish our visit, I said “Do you really think I’m a cusser?”

I treasure my true friends, and their clever offspring…

The girl blushed scarlet and hung her head in shame.  I laughed and asked for a hug, which she willingly gave me.  That day was probably my favorite of the whole visit, since it had been so long since I’d last seen Donna and Joann, and it was the first time I got to meet Donna’s husband and daughter and they got to meet Bill.  Sometimes I think if I lived in Virginia again, I might even have some semblance of a normal social life.  On the other hand, maybe I wouldn’t, because I’m kind of a recluse most of the time.

It’s getting close to Thanksgiving again.  I recently got an email from my aunt announcing the annual shindig, which she blasts to everyone in our humongous family every year.  Although I complain a lot about my family, they’re mostly very good people.  I don’t agree with most of them politically– quite a lot of them are diehard Trump fans and conservative Christians.  But they’re fun to see when there’s a wedding, reunion, or funeral.  Despite being a huge family, we’re somewhat close, thanks to the annual reunion at Thanksgiving.  Some family members are closer than others.  

Lately, I’ve felt like an outcast, but then I live pretty far away now, and have altered my views on religion and politics.  I no longer have the patience for long-winded arguments that I used to have, particularly with southern white men who are convinced that liberal politics are the pathway to Soviet Union style communism.  I might have agreed with them if I hadn’t spent so many years in Europe, which does have some socialist policies that work pretty well and doesn’t resemble the former Soviet Union in the slightest.  Having lived in the former Soviet Union just a couple of years after it fell apart, I feel as though I can speak with some authority about what it was like there.  Europe is not like that at all.  Since we are related, we all seem to have inherited a penchant for arguing to the death.  And some are more insistent about it than others.

In just a few days, I’ll be visiting Armenia, a former Soviet territory, for the first time since 1997. When I arrived there in 1995, it was still pretty Soviet in most things. Today, it’s a lot less like that. Every year, there are fewer people who remember what the place was like when it was a Soviet country. I wasn’t there when it was part of the Soviet Union, but I did go there less than five years after it became independent. And I can tell people I know– especially my conservative Christian southern relatives– that I have yet to see any place like that in my travels, even in countries that have “socialist” leanings. But they don’t listen to me either, because I’m not very religious; I don’t worship Donald Trump; and I am a CUSSER. Somehow, it seems like my love of swearing is the worst of my sins.

Many of my relatives who would argue with me about this are people who have not been outside of the southern United States, let alone “across the pond”.  They don’t respect my experiences or education, and stubbornly insist that they’re exactly right, no matter what, refusing to even acknowledge a perspective that differs from their own.  They don’t seem to understand that even though I’m a woman who is a bit younger than they are, I’m not stupid, inexperienced, uneducated, or in need of “special help”.  I simply have a different viewpoint based on actual things I’ve seen and done.  

I find it frustrating to engage in conversations with a lot of my family members, so I keep my distance. And they avoid me because I curse a lot.  But that doesn’t mean I’m not fond of most of my family members.  I wish them well and would happily break bread with them, if I was in a place where that was easy to do.  Maybe there will come a time when that’s the case again.

Once again, I feel compelled to share this classic song by Paul Thorn, who expertly sums up how I feel about some people who are my kin…

In July 2014, I discovered Paul Thorn’s hilarious song, ” I Don’t Like Half the Folks I Love”, as my dad was dying.  It’s a really perfect description of how I think of some of my family members.   I do love them, but I can’t spend a lot of time with them… and yet, I’d like to see them for an evening, maybe… as long as we don’t talk politics and/or religion.  Ah– never mind.  It won’t happen.  But I still wish them well. And I actually do love most of my friends– the ones who know me well, and accept me for exactly who I am.

Anyway… it might be worth it to go home to Virginia again, if only to see a few friends and eat some genuine American style junk food.  Seriously… I was looking at the menus of some of my favorite crappy chain restaurants in the States… places where there’s nothing at all healthy on the menu.  I certainly don’t need to be eating any of that stuff, but I still kind of miss it sometimes.  

November always makes me think of being home in Virginia.  I do sometimes miss being “home”.  I haven’t seen most of my friends and loved ones in years.  I think it’s having an effect on me.  I also miss really good southern fried food that will send me into a diabetic coma.  *Sigh*…  guess I’ll have to settle for Armenian food this weekend.  I’d probably rather have fried chicken, American style pizza, or ribs.  It’s probably just the hormones talking, though… which will later be silenced by my cranky digestive system. Isn’t it fun getting older? 😉 I think I’ll cuss about it some more.  

Incidentally, today is Election Day in the USA… so please go out and vote, if you can.

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musings, psychology, videos, YouTube

“You really don’t have to do me any favors…”

Today’s featured photo comes from a photo that was in my Facebook memories today. Maybe my life would be better if I didn’t dance, or swear… or sing.

I had kind of an interesting day yesterday, even though it didn’t involve any outings. I spent a good portion of the day watching The Muppet Show on DVDs that I’ve had forever, but have never got around to viewing. I’m old enough to remember when that show originally aired. Now that I’m seeing it again as a 50 year old woman, I’m realizing that it really wasn’t a show for kids. Case in point, below are two clips from the first season…

Sandy Duncan was a guest, and her number involved boozing it up…
And a hilarious number written by Shel Silverstein, and performed by Candice Bergen…

Watching The Muppets put me in a good mood. Bill joined me for awhile, then told me that his daughter sent a couple of Marco Polo videos. We went down to the dining room to watch the videos and I was inspired to send her a video I took of Bill the other night, when he first got home from his latest business trip. I wanted to just attach the video to the email, but it was too large. Since I had my iPad handy, and that was the device I had used to make the video, I decided the simplest thing to do would be to just throw the video up on YouTube.

Because I wasn’t using my computer, and because my (soon to be retired) computer is being a big pain in the ass lately, I just uploaded the video straight from the iPad, with no title or anything. I don’t usually put videos on YouTube in that fashion, so it was actually a learning curve just to figure out how to title the video something other than February 4, 2023 and put in a brief description. However, I did manage to accomplish that task.

A little while later, I got a comment from a guy I “met” on SingSnap.com maybe ten years ago. He’s a bit of a lounge singer who is nice, but seems to troll for hits on his videos. He’s also on YouTube. This fellow often comments on my YouTube videos, but not so much on SingSnap anymore. On the other hand, I don’t go on SingSnap very often myself these days. Maybe once a month, I’ll do a recording to make my subscription worth the money and try out new stuff.

Lately, this fellow, name of Brad, has been leaving me comments on my YouTube music recordings. Last night, I discovered that Brad has a habit of commenting on things he doesn’t listen to… That’s not such an uncommon phenomenon. There are some SingSnap users who are notorious about rubber stamping recordings of which they haven’t actually so much as listened to the first second. They mainly do it because they hope people will comment on their recordings. Naturally, I assume they also hope people will listen to them, too, and not just leave a comment on something they’ve never even heard. People have their egos… and some folks think they deserve more of an audience, but they don’t want to reciprocate.

I’ll be honest. I don’t listen to a whole lot of SingSnap recordings. I mainly go there to try new songs, not necessarily make friends or build a fan base. When people leave nice comments on my recordings, I do appreciate it very much. But I don’t expect them to do that. Likewise, I am happy when people comment on my YouTube videos, as long as their comments are polite. But I don’t necessarily wait for that with bated breath. I understand that when it comes to amateur recordings, people aren’t always curious.

So anyway, last night, I put up a non-musical video. It stars Bill, Noyzi, and Arran. I put the raw version of this same video in yesterday’s travel blog post. I ONLY put it on YouTube so I could share it with younger daughter. Behold…

There is no music on this video.

Below is a screen shot of the comments on this video.

To be sure, this situation is mildly embarrassing. It’s embarrassing for me, because I now know that Brad just comments on shit without listening to it. It’s probably embarrassing for Brad, because he got busted. I notice this morning, I have one less YouTube subscriber. So now, I’ve been “punished”, most likely for Brad’s fuckup.

Actually, I don’t necessarily think of this as a “punishment”, per se. If you don’t actually want to watch my videos, by all means, don’t torture yourself. You don’t have to do me any favors. I put stuff up for those who like what I do. There are still a few people who enjoy my efforts. If you’re not one of them, that’s okay. And it’s okay if you don’t want to spend the time to check out my latest videos or blog posts or anything else. Just please don’t waste my time being fake.

I totally get that people often feel the need to be “nice”. I also know that there’s a big difference between being “nice” and being “kind”. People are often “nice” for their own purposes. Let’s face it. A lot of times, we put on a pleasant facade to get through things that might be unpleasant or uncomfortable. God knows, I have grinned and born it when dealing with dictatorial bosses, high conflict oriented relatives, and malevolent landladies. But there’s no need to do that on things like social media. Simply keep scrolling if something doesn’t interest you. Otherwise, you might trip up and show your ass.

Being kind isn’t always “nice”. A person can be kind by saying or doing something that will ultimately spare someone pain or inconvenience in the future. It would have been kind, for instance, if some of the narcissists I’ve known had shown me who they really were before I got too involved with them and invested a lot of time and energy in the relationship. But that wouldn’t have been “nice”, because it’s usually not nice to deal with a narcissist who is being themselves.

There’s no harm nor foul if Brad doesn’t want to subscribe to my channel anymore. It’s not a very active channel, anyway. He won’t have to rubber stamp videos he’s never listened to, and I won’t have to read his comments on my content, which he hasn’t bothered to view long enough to know what it is.

Later last night, via Statcounter, I noticed that I got a hit on blog posts I had tagged with Camerata Singers. I was a member of that choir when I was a student at Longwood University (then called Longwood College). I clicked on the link, and the first post with the Camerata Singers tag took me to an article I wrote in April 2020.

That post was about how, back in 2020, I got a request from a university official for an interview. This guy had found a blog post I wrote about my college years and was impressed. He wanted to talk to me about my experiences at Longwood. Ordinarily, I might have been flattered by his request, but as I explained in that post, this same fellow had spoken to me in 2014. Obviously, he forgot.

We had a lengthy conversation about my Longwood years and some of my experiences. He led me to believe he was going to write an article about me, but he never did. And that was okay with me, because as I also explained in my post, I realize that I might not seem like a shining representative of where a Longwood education might lead a person. It’s his job to “sell” the university, attract new students, and maybe influence alums to donate money. A person who calls themselves an “overeducated housewife” isn’t exactly the stuff of college recruitment brochures.

Still, that second request for an interview amused me, because obviously I was interesting to him, on some level. But he forgot that we’ve already spoken, which is understandable, since he probably talks to a whole lot of people. Ah well. Aside from a slight ego bruise, no harm, no foul.

I’ve come to realize that there’s more than one way to get through life. Our culture focuses a lot on people being “someone” in life. We’re expected to be someone’s spouse or partner, someone’s parent, someone’s employee, or maybe someone’s boss. If you aren’t one of those things, what good are you? I’ve run into this phenomenon a lot, especially in military communities, where family members and spouses of servicemembers are officially called “dependents” and unofficially called derogatory names like “dependas” (or worse).

I remember a few years ago, in the wine group I run on Facebook, I shared a link to a post I’d written on my travel blog. A member of the group, someone who obviously didn’t know that I was the admin, thoughtlessly posted a comment along the lines of, “Traveling Overeducated Housewife? Eww. I hope she at least has children.” I think I actually screenshot the comment at the time, but I can’t find it and it’s not important enough to go looking for it.

Naturally, I had a good time stating that no, in fact I don’t have children. And if he wanted to know WHY I don’t have them, I’d be happy to share the very personal details. I think he probably slunk out of the group after that interaction.

In the military community, especially, family members and spouses get judged. Some people get judged for being “fat slobs who abuse Tricare”. Others get judged for being “uppity bitches who don’t know their place.” Still others get judged for daring to write blogs instead of waiting tables. I don’t know where this attitude comes from… if I had to guess, I’d say it comes from insecurity and sexism. Someone like me doesn’t seem to have much value in the military community, or apparently, anywhere else. But at least my husband loves me, right? And so do my dogs. 😉

Lots of people in the military community automatically dislike me because of the name of my blog. Most of them have never met me in person, or even so much as had a conversation with me on social media. And they judge me for being “formally educated”, but not formally employed, forgetting that it’s hard to have a great career when you have to move all the time. Some people can do it, but not everyone can. I don’t want to have a job just to have a job, especially when I know there are people who need to work for the money.

Or they judge me because I don’t have children. Or because I am my husband’s second wife… and that must mean I was “the other woman”.

Like my friend Thomas commented yesterday, “People jump to conclusions all the time, they think they know more than they do, they think they’ve got something to say when they don’t, and it causes a whole range of conflict coming from different angles.”

Exactly… and sometimes, people say and do fake “nice” things, when they don’t really mean it, and are just trying to be manipulative. Or… they judge you silently, when you do something other than what they think you should be doing with your own life. I’m mostly just trying to get through life without irritating people.

I put stuff out there. Some of it’s good or noteworthy. Some of it sucks. There’s no need to do me any favors by acting like you like something I’ve put out there when you haven’t bothered to read it or watch it. There’s no need to comment or react at all, unless you’re genuinely moved to do so. The world would be a much better place if people would be more authentic with kindness as their main motivation. There’s no need to try to fool me with fake shit. I can usually smell it a mile away, anyway.

Just be real. But I know that’s easier said than done. Our society doesn’t make it easy to be real, does it?

A little musical wisdom from Ron Block. This IS a musical video, but I’m not the one singing. 😉
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education, music, musings

Repost: There’s life beyond your senior year… confessions of a C student

Here’s a repost from the original blog, written March 28, 2018. It appears as/is. I know it’s not currently college application season, but I think this post could be useful for some people.

Yesterday, my alma mater did a fundraising drive called #LoveYourLongwood.  This is apparently a new development.  For many years after my graduation in 1994, Longwood University was rather relaxed about fundraising efforts.  I’d say in the past ten years or so, they have become much more assertive about pushing alums to donate money.  I usually ignore the pleas, although I did donate during the holiday season.

I probably would have made a donation yesterday, had I not looked at our rather paltry bank balance.  March still has three days left in it.  Still, as I get older and our finances have improved, I have given some thought to donating more money to my college.  The truth is, I owe a lot to Longwood.  Maybe my time there didn’t lead to a smashing career, but it did leave me with a lot of intangible gifts like wonderful friends, some excellent experiences, and the opportunity to study music simply because I love it.  It was a warm, nurturing place to go to college.  Today, almost 24 years after I graduated, I still reap the benefits of my four years there.

I have written about my college admissions experiences before, but I’m going to briefly repeat the tale for anyone out there in Internet land who is currently experiencing the pain of rejection from college.  I’m inspired to write about this after reading an article in the Boston Globe about the immense pressure high school seniors are dealing with at this time of year.  It takes me back to the spring of 1990, when I was myself trying to find a place to go to school.

I may call myself “The Overeducated Housewife”, but the simple truth is, I was a very ordinary student.  I didn’t earn great grades in high school and didn’t have super high SAT scores.  I did do well on standardized tests, particularly in writing.  However, I was a singularly unimpressive student in high school, even in English class.  I would get praises for my writing, but I didn’t care enough about the books we were reading to put a lot of effort into my papers.  Consequently, I earned average grades.

My parents, who had already raised my three sisters, didn’t really care too much about my performance.  I got through high school pretty much on my own efforts, with lots of Bs and Cs and the occasional D.  I remember working hard in school, particularly in my math and science classes, but not as hard as I probably should have.  I didn’t have any extra help, nor did I have anyone pushing me to excel.  I was also completely unmedicated, which isn’t a bad thing, but I think if I had grown up ten years later, I probably would have taken meds for depression or perhaps ADD.  I was encouraged to get good grades, but it was entirely up to me to accomplish that.  I didn’t really know how. 

In high school, I spent most of my free time riding horses.  I did do well in that activity, although I wasn’t particularly talented.  My success in riding was mainly due to my fabulous pony, Rusty, a dedicated riding coach, and a lot of dogged hard work.  I was definitely not “born in the saddle”.

When it came time to decide on a college, I had sort of a beer budget and champagne tastes on every level.  I didn’t have the money to consider attending private schools.  I didn’t have the grades or impressive resume to consider trying to get scholarships or applying to super competitive schools.  My mother, ever the pragmatist, told me I shouldn’t bother applying to the one school I really wanted to attend.  She didn’t think I’d get in there.  She was right.  In fact, Longwood was the ONLY school out of the four I applied to that accepted me.

Looking back on it, I think I would have had more choices if I had applied to a couple more schools.  The other three that I’d applied to, besides Longwood, were in a slightly higher league– too high for me at the time.  I do think I would have ultimately succeeded if I had gotten into any of the other three schools, but they were very popular choices among my peers.  My crummy grades and mediocre test scores were simply not competitive enough and I got the dreaded rejection letters.  Even Longwood accepted me conditionally, mainly because I was struggling in math.  Fortunately, I had a wonderful math teacher my senior year who made sure I got through with the required C.

My trend of mediocre academic performances mostly continued at Longwood.  I never once made the Dean’s List; however, I did blossom in other ways.  It was at Longwood that I finally started doing what I was probably born to do.

People who knew me when I was growing up didn’t know that I could sing.  My mom knew that I had absolute (perfect) pitch, because I took piano lessons when I was very young.  My piano teacher noticed I could name pitches without a reference note.  But I would never sing in front of anyone because I was (and still am) very sensitive to bad singing.  I knew I could sing on key, but didn’t think I sounded particularly good.  So I wouldn’t sing in front of other people, and was never encouraged to try.  My parents were both musicians, though, so it makes sense that I’d have a knack for music. 

To earn a bachelor of arts degree at Longwood, I needed to take a course in one of the fine arts.  I chose music appreciation and a one credit voice class.  I ended up excelling in the voice class and my teacher invited me to study privately.  Before I knew it, I had joined Longwood’s Camerata Singers, which required an audition.  I was soon singing with people who had been in choirs all through high school.  That experience was truly life changing for me.  Making music is now something I do most days, even if not many people hear my efforts.  It’s made me a much happier person.

It may seem like a minor thing now, but that one voice class opened up a whole new world to me.  I only wish I had taken it sooner.  I might have majored in music instead of English.  I both excelled in and loved my music classes.  I got straight As in them, with the lone exception of that one music appreciation class I took.  By contrast, I was a mediocre English major, except when I took writing classes.  In my writing classes, I excelled like I did in music.

It was an adjunct music professor at Longwood who cared enough about me to encourage me to study music, even if she couldn’t persuade me to change my major. I can’t help but wonder if I would have gotten the same attention at any of the other schools I had considered.  Looking back on it, it seems as if I was destined to go to Longwood.  Maybe I wasn’t a superstar student, but I think I flourished there.  Even today, I communicate with professors who knew me in the 90s.  My husband, Bill, attended much more prestigious American University and he hasn’t seen or spoken to any of his former professors since the 80s.  Sometimes, the less famous college offers a better value.  I know I’ve often mused about how much more I got out of my time at Longwood than I did the University of South Carolina.

After Longwood, I joined the Peace Corps kind of on a whim.  I was soon exposed to people from other parts of the country and then the Republic of Armenia, a place that had been mostly off limits to Americans only four years prior to my arrival. I used my music skills a lot in Armenia.  Then I went to graduate school and earned those two master’s degrees that I don’t use… which became the reason I call myself “overeducated”.  Still, I recognize that I was able to compete with people who went to “better” schools, both as a Peace Corps Volunteer and a graduate student.  I don’t regret any of those experiences now, but sometimes I wonder how in the world I ended up here.  In some ways, I have been extraordinarily lucky.  I often feel kind of like a fraud, but I know deep down that I’m not one.   

I empathize with high school seniors who are now dealing with the hell of trying to get into college.  I don’t envy them at all.  They’re dealing with so many things that I didn’t have to deal with.  Life has gotten super competitive on many levels.  I thought it was bad in 1990, but my generation had nothing on their generation. 

It’s harder and more expensive to go to college these days.  So many young people are racking up huge debts, and competition for well-paid work is stiff.  Young people are having to worry about gun toting lunatics invading their schools and killing random people.  We have a total buffoon in the White House who doesn’t care about anything but making rich people even richer (ETA: Remember, I am writing about Trump, not Biden). 

I don’t envy you young folks at all, although I am very impressed by how young people are standing up and making their voices heard.  And young people today are doing such incredible things… things that perfectly average, mediocre people can’t conceive of doing.  I would imagine that the pressure to stand out must be insane… and yet it gets harder and harder every year.

I’m impressed by that insane drive to succeed that some young people have, but I have a heart for those who were perfectly average folks like me.  It’s true that life is not a dress rehearsal, but most people end up okay, even if they aren’t stars.  These years on the brink of adulthood can be tough going, but eventually, most people come to a place where grades and test scores no longer matter.  So take heart.  There’s life beyond the spring of your senior year.  You just have to get through it and keep your eyes on the prize.

A musical project I completed at the time I wrote this piece. Lately, I’ve focused more on playing guitar than singing. I’m better at singing than guitar playing, though.
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Military, music, musings, nostalgia

The “road not taken” is sometimes an overrated thrill… Common paths can still lead to spectacular places!

In the spring of 1991, when I was a freshman college student, I joined the concert choir at Longwood College. I did so because the previous semester, the very first one of my college career, I had taken a group voice class. The teacher, who was acquainted with my musical dad, recognized that I, too, had some musical gifts. She thought I should join the Camerata Singers, which is one of Longwood’s auditioned ensembles. The trouble was, I had never really sung in a choir before. In fact, I had never really sung before. So, just so I could learn the ropes, I enrolled in the concert choir with the plan to audition for Cameratas that semester. I also took my first private voice lessons that spring.

My parents are/were musicians and I somehow knew that I’d wind up being enmeshed in their stuff if I studied music. This was not so much an issue with my mom, who was a church organist for about 50 years. But it was an issue with my dad, who had a habit of either competing with me or trying to show me off to his friends. My dad and I never really got along that well, especially once I hit puberty. I loved him very much, but we rubbed each other the wrong way. He was extremely active in choirs and choral societies. I relished the times he was at practices or in rehearsals, and I didn’t want to end up in a situation where we would end up spending too much time together and getting into fights.

Also, I honestly didn’t know back then that I had a good singing voice. I knew I could sing on key, but I didn’t realize it was anything special or unusual. I did have some rudimentary music knowledge, having taken piano lessons as a very young child and been identified as having “perfect pitch” (AKA absolute pitch). I was in band for a year… first playing drums and then, when that turned out to be the wrong instrument for me, I played my sister’s clarinet. Although I was pretty good at playing clarinet, I didn’t like the band teacher and wasn’t encouraged by my parents, so I dropped out of that and focused on my horse. I have much less talent for horseback riding, but I do love animals. 😉

Years later, when I decided to study voice outside of college, my dad proved that my instincts about his tendency to want to “compete” with me were dead on. I signed up to take lessons at the Eastern Virginia School of Performing Arts. I didn’t tell my dad at first, because somehow I knew he’d also sign up. Sure enough, when he did find out I was taking lessons, he signed up with the very same teacher. 🙂 I wasn’t all that happy about it. I was taking lessons to help alleviate my depression and relieve stress. And at the time, he was a major source of my stress, as I was living with my parents after having finished Peace Corps service. As grateful as I was that my parents let me live with them, it was definitely not an easy time for any of us. But I am glad that they didn’t object to my decision to supplement my treatment for depression with voice lessons.

“The Road Not Taken” from Frostiana… words by Robert Frost, music by Randall Thompson.

Anyway, I digress… back to 1991… and my first semester in a choir. I remember during that semester, the concert choir did a piece from “Frostiana“. It was the American poet Robert Frost’s famous poem, “The Road Not Taken” set to music composed and arranged in 1959 by Randall Thompson. Much to my shame, when I was 18 years old, I had never been exposed to Frost’s poetry. “The Road Not Taken” was a new concept to me, and I actually loved the choral piece. I see from YouTube that it’s still commonly performed.

This morning, I’m reminded of that piece as I reflect on a conversation I had with Bill last night. We were talking about his career as an Army officer. Although he did well enough as an Army officer and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel promotable to Colonel, he thinks he made some regrettable choices during his time in the Army. Had he made different choices, he might have had a more successful career. Or maybe he never would have been in the military in the first place.

My husband is a kind, empathetic, gentle person. He’s probably the antithesis of most people’s vision of a military officer. Military officers are stereotypically tough, gruff, profane, impatient and politically incorrect. Military officers don’t cry easily. They have a “killer instinct”. A lot of military officers are politically conservative and somewhat old school in their views. They aren’t often interested in the arts, psychology, reading books, or visiting museums. They like to watch violent sports and action movies. And they aren’t interested in introspection.

I hasten to add that I realize this is very stereotypical thinking. Of course, the armed forces are comprised of people from all different walks of life, with all of the characteristics that go along with having such a diverse population. However, having been around military folks my whole life, I can attest to the idea that there’s a “type”. And, my point is, Bill goes against type.

When we were dating, my sisters warned me against getting involved with Bill. They seemed to think he was going to be a “knuckle dragger”. Even though I’ve always made decent decisions and have never been in any serious trouble, my sisters, and even my parents, didn’t trust me to choose my own mate. But it turns out that I was right on the money. This year, we will celebrate 19 years of a very successful union. We are shockingly compatible. I guess, like me, Bill sometimes has trouble fitting in with the crowd and goes “against type”.

Last night, Bill was telling me that he wishes he hadn’t been a “combat arms” officer. During his years in the Army, Bill was a “tanker”. He was in the Armor branch. Early in his career, a superior officer wrote that he felt Bill should do something different. The senior officer “fired” Bill from the job he was doing and gave him a bad evaluation. Another superior officer advised Bill that he didn’t have a “killer instinct”. At the time, Bill was offended by his bosses’ appraisals of him. He said he spent years resenting those negative comments that he got early in his military career. He felt that his superiors had been unfair and wrongly appraised him.

Then, in 1995, at his ex wife’s behest, Bill left active duty and worked in low paying and unfulfilling factory jobs in Arkansas. Here was a guy who had studied international relations at American University. He’d learned how to ride a horse and fence. He was interested in politics, religion, arts, movies, music, and so on… and he was making toys at a toy factory. Later, he was supervising a line for Whirlpool, overseeing the production of refrigerator doors. He wasn’t making any money, and he was living in a nightmarish situation with a woman with whom he was incredibly incompatible. Bill stayed in the National Guard to help supplement his meager earnings and, if we’re honest, to give him an escape from his ex wife, who by that time had made his life a living hell.

In 1999, Bill decided to go back in active duty via the Arkansas National Guard. He was unusual in that he managed to get a full time job as a Guardsman, working as if he was back on duty with the regular Army. That decision allowed him to continue his military career, but he was paid from a different pot of money and subject to different promotion procedures. It also helped him avoid lengthy deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. He did spend six months in Iraq– again, working for a very narcissistic boss.

Bill later realized that he probably should have pursued another branch… maybe in military intelligence or as a Foreign Area Officer (FAO). Or maybe he should have become a mental health therapist specializing with working with veterans. Any of those fields might have been better fits for him, rather than combat arms. He was sorrowful about it last night, wishing he’d taken a different path, instead of being an Armor officer, and wondering where it would have led him.

I could relate, as I have often wondered what would have happened to me if I’d studied music instead of English. Maybe I’d still be where I am today. Or maybe I’d be somewhere entirely different. As I mentioned before, I didn’t pursue music when I was growing up. It wasn’t until college that I was especially turned on to music… and realized I had a knack for it. I often wonder what would have happened if I’d changed my major. I never seriously considered doing it, though. I probably suffered a bit of worrying about failure.

I was a very mediocre English major. I love to write and read, but I don’t really enjoy analyzing literature, and I had no desire to teach school. Longwood’s English department, at the time I was a student, was mostly set up for would-be teachers. They didn’t have a creative writing program. They only offered a few classes. Ironically, I never even took the creative writing class, and none of my professors knew that my goal was more to write than study literature. I didn’t tell any of them until after I’d graduated and my former advisor, who had been writing letters to me in Armenia, commented that he thought I had a gift for writing stories. I explained that I’d been an English major because I wanted to be a writer. He used to tease me about taking music classes, but I don’t know where I would have been if I hadn’t had them at Longwood. I loved my music classes. I took a bunch of them for fun. I can’t say that about most of my English classes.

So there Bill and I were on the patio, as the sun was dipping down, and we were enjoying the last of our red wine. Bill got a little choked up as he realized that those bosses who had noticed his “lack of a killer instinct” had been right. And if he’d been wise enough to heed their counsel, he might have gone in a different, far more successful direction. There wouldn’t have been any shame in changing course. Everybody fails sometimes, because no one is a superstar at everything they do. For a moment, Bill seemed genuinely troubled at what might have been if he’d only been brave enough to take “the road not taken”.

But again, it’s not like he was unsuccessful in his role as an Armor officer who lacked a “killer instinct”. In 2014, Bill retired from the Army with a full pension. He now gets a paycheck for getting up in the morning and gets to enjoy the benefits from having served in the military. Not only that, but he left the experience mostly mentally, emotionally, and physically whole. I’d call his career a success, even if he hadn’t done work he was perfectly equipped to do.

Realizing that Bill actually was a success, I said, “There’s no point in feeling badly about the career decisions you made. Because even though you might have been better at a different job, the fact of the matter is, you still managed to succeed. By all accounts, retiring from the Army as a Lieutenant Colonel promotable to Colonel is still a very successful career. And you left the military whole– with two master’s degrees and marketable skills– free of mental illness and basically healthy and strong. You are very fortunate.”

Bill nodded in agreement. Then I said, “And now you are doing well in your post retirement career. Maybe what you’re doing isn’t thrilling for you, but you are among MANY people who work in jobs that aren’t a perfect fit for them. God knows, I have done plenty of jobs I hated so I could pay the bills. So have you.”

I continued, “You now not only have recovered from a terrible first marriage and financial disasters, but you completed a successful career. Now, you are also enjoying a very comfortable and, I dare say, luxurious lifestyle. And you have the freedom to explore things that interest you. You can study Carl Jung. You can work with a therapist and talk about your dreams and travel to Switzerland to see Jung’s house. You can take courses at the Jung Institute and read Jung’s books and learn guitar… And the reason you can do those things is because, even though you think of the military as a ‘easy choice’ in terms of secure, decently paid employment, and maybe it was not where your true gifts lie, you did a good job. When it comes down to it, you were still successful. I think you should celebrate that, because you’re way ahead of many people.”

Likewise… although I have visions of where my talents and dreams might have taken me, I really can’t complain too much about where I am. I have had the great fortune to see and do many things that my peers never will have the opportunity to do. And they have seen and done things I will never do. That’s the nature of life. We all have strengths and opportunities that take us on a path through life. Maybe it would have been more exciting and fulfilling to take the “road not taken.” But we’re both halfway through life now… and we can’t recapture our youth. What we CAN do is take those experiences we had when we were younger and follow our passions now. So Bill will probably never have a fulfilling career as a FAO or as a “healer”. He can still pursue his interests and learn new things. And who knows, maybe there will still be a fork in the road that takes him down the “road not taken” after all.

Same for me… maybe in the second half of my life, I’ll finally write a book or record an album… or do something else that is earth shattering, life changing, or even just interesting. It beats the hell out of working in a factory or waiting tables to pay the bills. And before anyone gets upset, I hasted to add that there’s nothing wrong with working in a factory or waiting tables if that’s what gets you through life or it something you even enjoy doing. That’s not the point of todays’ post. The point is, there’s no use in lamenting past career decisions that can’t be changed. Life is a continual journey. As long as you’re still breathing, you have the opportunity to change course and try new things. And Bill, for one, is especially fortunate, because he truly does have the ability and the freedom to explore things that interest him, even if he got here on a well-traveled road that maybe he wasn’t the best suited to travel. He still got here… and he still has places to go. I’m glad I get to travel with him.

We’re both lucky, because we can and do continue to do things we love. Not everyone has that luxury. There are so many people who, due to financial, health, or personal constraints, end up spending their lives on the hamster wheel, working to get by and not especially enjoying the process of life as much as they could. We should count our blessings and realize that all things considered, things have worked out just fine. I think it also makes sense to consider that sometimes the “road not taken” is a road straight into Hell. 😉

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nostalgia

Repost: Artistic personalities… a look back at my first English professor and his ilk

This is a flashback post I wrote on February 23, 2018. I was fondly remembering my very first English professor at what was then known as Longwood College. I think it’s kind of a cool memory, so I’m reposting it as is.

Because I’m tired of writing about politics and mean-spirited people who send me hate mail, I’ve decided this morning’s post will be about one of my old professors at Longwood.  He was an interesting character and I loved his class, although his methods were very unorthodox.  I’m not sure, but I don’t think he got a lot of love from the other English professors.  It’s probably because he was a very eccentric man… or at least that’s how he seemed to me.

Last night, I looked up Otis Douglas III.  There isn’t a whole lot about him online.  I never knew how old he was, but when I knew him, he had a rather rumpled look, with wild white hair and old sweaters.  Some might think of him as an “absent minded professor”, although I never really thought of him in that way.  I figured he was well-seasoned by the time I met him in 1990.  He’d been teaching at Longwood for almost as long as I’d been alive.

The class I took from him was called Rhetoric and Research, otherwise known as English 100.  It was a basic class that almost all freshman took upon arrival at Longwood.  It was supposed to help us learn how to write.

A short blurb about my former English teacher from a 1974 issue of The Rotunda…  If any of my classmates are reading this, I highly recommend checking out the whole paper.  It’s a hoot!  Especially the letters to the editor!

As I was researching Mr. Douglas, I learned that his family was from Reedville, which is a town not too far from where I grew up.  I’ve only been to Reedville once.  It was in 1998, when a friend and I caught a ferry there.  She was working for a bike tour company, scouting out places to do new tours.  Since she was visiting my neck of the woods, she and I got together and spent the day driving around the Northern Neck of Virginia.  We stopped in Urbana and Irvington, then went to Reedville with bikes, which we brought to Tangier Island.  

Tangier Island is a tiny, fascinating place in the Chesapeake Bay.  It’s accessible from Reedville, Virginia, Onancock, Virginia, and Crisfield, Maryland.  Unfortunately, environmental concerns now threaten Tangier Island’s existence.  I’m sure there were concerns in 1998, too.  Beach erosion and serious storms are big problems for the little island.  I’m just glad I got to see it twenty years ago.  It’s a very interesting place populated by just a few families who have been there for generations.

Mr. Douglas’s roots were apparently near the water, not far from Tangier Island.  I found evidence that he has many kinfolk from Reedville and the Northern Neck, and ties to the College of William and Mary.  I also noticed that there was a United States Navy minesweeper known as the U.S.S. Otis W. Douglas.  She was purchased from the Douglas Company of Reedville, Virginia in 1917 for use in World War I.  Sadly, after serving in Brest, France until 1919, she encountered storms on the way back to the United States and sank.  I’m not sure, but it appears that the Douglas family of Reedville might be linked to McDonnell-Douglas, the company that makes airplanes.  At least the Wikipedia article about the ship implies that maybe it does.  Reedville is not a big place, so I can’t imagine there were many other Douglas families there in the early 20th century.

I grew up near the water, in fact in a county not far from the Northern Neck, but my family comes from Virginia’s mountains and valleys.  I found out that Mr. Douglas’s father was kind of a famous man.  Mr. Douglas is the son of Otis Douglas Jr., a very well-regarded football player and coach who once played for the Philadelphia Eagles.  I don’t have to read too much about Mr. Douglas’s father to know who he is.  The photo of Otis Douglas Jr., included in his New York Times obituary, reveals that his son bears a striking resemblance.  In fact, when I looked at Otis Douglas Jr.’s picture, I was momentarily stunned by how much he looked like a cleaner cut version of his son.  

I learned in an obituary about Mr. Douglas’s sister, Eleanor, that their family moved a lot, due to their father’s career in sports.  They lived in twenty-six states and Canada.  Mr. Douglas never mentioned any of this in class.  Much like my former philosophy professor, Dr. John Peale (son of Norman Vincent Peale), he kept it quiet.  Instead, he engaged us with stories about how to publish articles and talked about how difficult writing well is. 

My very first English professor at Longwood was very intent on teaching his students how to gamble.  I remember Douglas telling us that writing well is one of the hardest things a person can do.  He taught us that it takes many drafts to get something just right.  He wanted us to write many drafts of papers about rather mundane subjects.  Our class consisted of nothing but keeping a portfolio with assignments that I recall seemed either bizarre or tedious.

Mr. Douglas didn’t have us write essays.   He’d have us write directions to locations.  We had to pay close attention to specific details as we wrote our directions.  I found the process pretty boring, although I enjoyed Mr. Douglas’s offbeat teaching style.  He wasn’t like any of my other professors.  He would tell us stories sometimes, but mostly, he talking about playing games of chance, like Blackjack. 

He even had us learn the basics of shooting craps.  I had never shot craps before I met Mr. Douglas, and I haven’t in the 27 years since I was a student in his class.  I don’t gamble.  But Mr. Douglas taught us the basics of the game, and as he taught us, he had us write about how to shoot craps.  It was bizarre and I’ll never forget it, because it was so unconventional.

I also remember the one final paper I wrote for that class.  I really don’t know where my wild streak comes when it comes to writing things down, but for some reason I decided to write a paper about sadomasochism.  I titled it “The Chains of Love”.  I think I was inspired because I was reading a lot of Nancy Friday’s books at the time.  

The late Nancy Friday was famous in the 1970s for writing My Secret Garden, which is a book about women’s sexual fantasies.  It was shocking and groundbreaking at the time.  I think it was published in 1972 or thereabouts, right around the time I was born.  In those days, people evidently didn’t talk frankly about sex, but it was obviously a topic of interest.  Nancy Friday went on to write several other very successful books about sexual fantasies, most of which I read when I was in high school and college.  Because there’s a provocative side to my personality, I guess I decided to write about them in Mr. Douglas’s class.  He must have liked my paper, because I got an A in the class.  I had been told by an older hall mate that Mr. Douglas didn’t give out As.  Obviously, she was wrong about that.

Incidentally, I was a piss poor English major.  I mostly got Bs and Cs in my major, except for classes that focused on creative writing.  I also got an A in a non-fiction writing class.  That class was taught by a similarly eccentric professor named Mr. Woods, who would never correct anyone who called him “Dr. Woods” by mistake.  Mr. Woods could be spotted riding his bike around campus.  I had him for two classes.  One class mostly involved him talking about Madonna’s Sex book, which had just been published and was causing a scandal.  He also talked about the Price Club a lot.  I got an A in his class because I wrote about being flashed while riding on a bus on I-95.  I’m sure I’ve written about this incident before, but since I’m in a stream of consciousness mood, I’m going to write about it again.

It was during my junior year spring break at Longwood and I had gone on spring tour with the Camerata Singers, which was the auditioned choir.  We went on a recruiting tour every spring break that generally culminated in New York City.  We’d perform at churches and schools, then take in a Broadway show.  

The choir was usually pretty exhausted by the end of the spring tours.  Such was the case in 1993, as we headed south toward our college.  I was looking out the window, daydreaming.  Some guy in a bright yellow car pulled up alongside the bus.  I looked at him.  He looked at me.  I looked away.  He dropped out of sight.  When I turned to look out the window again, there he was.  But he’d pulled out his penis and it was kind of flopping there as he drove alongside the bus, flashing everyone who happened to be looking out the window.

Naturally, I let out a yell of surprise, which woke everyone up.  I think more than a few people were traumatized by that guy, getting his jollies exposing himself while speeding down Interstate 95.

I figured I might as well get some traction from being flashed, so I wrote about it and actually drew a crude picture of what I saw.  Mr. Woods was apparently impressed.  He wrote, “Oh my God!  Is that what I think it is!”  And yes, the paper got an A.

Mr. Woods was often compared to Mr. Douglas.  The two of them were kind of outliers in Longwood’s English department back in the 90s.  They were affectionately regarded by students, especially those who were kind of slack.  I’m not sure they were as well-regarded by other professors.   I remember being at a department social and mentioning to one professor– one I never had, though she had quite a reputation– that I liked Mr. Douglas’s class.  I noticed a flash of kind of a disgusted look on her face.  Then, she diplomatically said, “Well, he has what you’d call an artistic personality.”  

Maybe that’s what’s “wrong” with me, too.  My whole life, I’ve been annoying, bewildering, shocking and offending some people, while apparently delighting others.  My husband seems to adore me, even if my parents never really did.  I never had a lot of really close friends or even too many close family members.  Some people I thought were “close”, actually weren’t.  And yet, here I am, married to the nicest guy ever who loves my inappropriate sense of humor and love of shock value.  On the other hand, maybe my experience is everyone’s experience.  Maybe everyone feels like they’re “weird” and eccentric.  I may have to think some more about that today as I wait for the weekend to begin.  

I am sitting here realizing that I have a lot of time on my hands, time that I’m using to look up people I used to know, learning their histories.  I hadn’t thought of Mr. Douglas in a very long time, but it appears that he has a very interesting story.  I love it when I make these discoveries and uncover cool stories.  It feels kind of like striking gold.

This is the one interesting comment someone left on the original post. S/he also took Mr. Douglas’s class. I want to preserve it, so I’m reposting it here.

Unknown May 1, 2018 at 3:53 PM

Great stuff! I enjoyed reading your article. I was in Dr. Douglas’s class In the Fall of 1990. I vividly remember one afternoon, when Mr. Douglas came in the the classroom, and overheard a female student say, ” Guys suck!”
Otis paused and responded “They’re not supposed to.”

It was classic Mr. Douglas.

You nailed it… we wrote papers on how to play Craps.

Another interesting story that I learened is that he taught two of my friends a system to win at Craps, and had them go to Atlantic City to play for him, as I think he was banned from Casinos because of his system of winning. (Think of the movie 21 with Kevin Spacey.)

Is Mr. Douglas still living?

  1. knotty May 1, 2018 at 4:45 PM Thanks for the comment! I don’t know if he’s still living. I think he moved to Charlottesville. I had him Fall of 1990, too, and I remember he was in Richmond at that time.
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