1978 through a glass darkly in Normal entries

When the going gets weird; the weird turn pro — Hunter Thompson

I had that as signature thing on my yahoo account. After about a month the GF complained as one of her conservative friends characterized Hunter as Drug Addict who wrote for playboy. I defended Hunter but changed my signature. Now that the GF is a bit of a mystery my brother pointed out to mom how very different her and mine views are from one another. With Trump in the white house I’ve become, according to surveys and opinion, the far left. Um, I haven’t changed at all, but, perhaps the middle has shifted. I mean I haven’t changed my political views, over the years I’ve come to find some of my opinions have grown more conservative, most having to do criminal sentencing. I suppose I march less too.

So, weird turning pro … The saga continues with Bangladesh midwife, or rather, the past and the present blur in a more frequent and persistent way. 1978. I don’t have very many memories of this town from 78, but I didn’t spend much time here. I have four memories and it’s possible that’s because they all were very memorable or it’s possible they are indicative of the four times I was here. I wrote about one on OD, it’s the kind of story that even the short version takes up a lot of digital geography. One was meeting the first and subsequently divorced Mrs Dawg, my babies mama. The really short version of that that has any relevancy was that she was pregnant and a decade or so ago her daughter, given up for adoption at birth, found her and they kind of have a relationship, sort of like the relationship I had with the once and future ex wife’s mother; keep it shallow and we can holster our vitriol.

I’ve been using the word vitriol more in the last month than I have in the last decade. If you need to ask why I need to ask if you have a TV or an internet connection.

The third is coming back from somewhere out west to see my classmates graduate. I bought a bottle of whisky and went to the high school. The graduation was not at the high school, so I sat and drank alone, reflected on the year and upheld the notion that I had a more interesting year than if I had graduated.

The last I don’t think on very often but the midwife and I were trying to come up with people we for sure would both know. There were these neighbors, I played with the boy that was her age. Because he didn’t play baseball we did different sort of boy stuff, punching each other in the arm, catching crickets and fireflies, looking up at the night sky and pondering our place in the universe.

I ran into him here in 78. His family, along with him, moved out to British Columbia some eight years earlier, so it was a surprise to see him. To make a depressing story short, we spent an afternoon looking for heroin, when we found some he tried to get me to join him and I didn’t.

Here in the future there are two different profiles of him, both look exactly like him. The one on Wiki has him as a successful lawyer in Vancouver with enough other accomplishments to make him interesting to the folks at Wiki, the other, his facebook page, has him as a jazz musician in LA and from Vancouver. Both are up to date. The facebook picture might be older as he has thick long black curly hair and the lawyer photo he has close cropped salt and pepper and looks older. Both look exactly like him.

Given how poor my memory is … I don’t know. I don’t remember what I had for lunch on Thursday, I forget my granddaughters birthday. But memories of things that surprised or shocked me are sort of milestones in my memory. The only possible way it could not have been him in 1978 would be that he presented himself as the kid I had known and he was so much like him I had no reason to doubt the claim. That’s a little too conspiracy theory for me and whereas I think the shit that happens to me is important, I can’t imagine why anyone would think I was important enough to fool and damage this other kids reputation. I didn’t though, damage his reputation. In fact I’ve never told that story until very recently and to the midwife. Why? Because most people in my life don’t know who he is and it’s not really anyone’s business. You’ll notice how I haven’t used a name.

My rule of thumb on using names is that the person has already drawn attention and fame or infamy for their actions. I was watching some video on facebook, some articulate feminist who may or may not be famous (I don’t recall her name) calling out white supremacists and KKK members and telling them all about their bad behavior. I commented something to the effect “You can’t shame the KKK for shit they are proud of, nobody has taken off the hood with a ‘OMG, we’re racists? I didn’t know’” And you can’t shame Trump for having the KKK’s support, he knew he did, it was on both the fake news and the “real news”. I can’t ever imagine Trump saying “OMG, I’m a racist and a misogynist and completely unfit for this office, I should step down.” Not only does he know who he is, he’s proud of it.

Huh. I thought I had more to say. I was mistaken.