Author: riggledo

Son

~ riggledo ~ 2 Comments

Two years ago, when I was contemplating becoming a Big Brother, I was looking for an opportunity to do something of value in the community.  I wanted to do something that would make a difference.  I wanted to do something that was ongoing, not just a one time deal to make myself feel better and then move on.

I suspect I wanted to fill a void in my life that can not be easily filled through more “natural” means, yet not fill it so much as to take on a 100%, full-time commitment that maybe I can’t afford to take on.  I liked the idea of having the opportunity to influence a young person and, hopefully, make a positive difference in his life.  The thought may have crossed my mind, once or twice, that I might be able to “save” a troubled kid; help him to find a better way to live.  Maybe I wanted someone to idolize me, perhaps to aspire to be like me, though I really hoped to give him more to aspire to than I have done.

There have been times, more than a few in fact, where I felt like none of that was happening.  Lil’B is a good kid with no problems to speak of.  (I hope he stays that way, but he’s only nine.)  With the exception of one outing when he was seven, the first day after Halloween, when he’d had much too much candy for breakfast, he’s never misbehaved and he accepts the limitations I place on him (that his mother has requested) without any trouble.  When we go to the movies and we go to the concession stand, when the cashier asks us if we want anything else, I see him point at the candy in the display case.  I laugh, tell him no and tell the cashier that our order is complete.  Lil’B laughs and we go on about our day.  (Mom doesn’t want him to have very much candy because he misbehaves if he gets too much sugar in his system.)  An occasional piece of candy, every once in a while is allowed, but not all the time.  He knows this and doesn’t get upset when I tell him no.

I’ve tried to enquire about deeper issues.  Is he hurting about anything?  Is there anything that’s bothering him that he wants to talk about?  But of course you have to be subtle about such things, you can’t come right out and ask.  He always tells me he’s fine.  He doesn’t talk a lot.  As often as not, I ask him a pointed question (i.e. What did you learn about in school this week?  What did you have for lunch today?) and he answers with “I don’t know.”  I feel bad when we’re driving down the road in silence, but I’ve run through my list of questions to ask him and he’s answered “I don’t know” to all of them, so, in silence we drive.

There have been times when I felt like maybe this relationship wasn’t serving any purpose after all.  I wanted to make a difference in his life, but maybe I’m not.  I wanted to feel warm and fuzzy, knowing that I was important to him, but I don’t.  I thoroughly enjoy the time we spend together, but some weeks I feel like I’m going because I’m supposed to, not because I want to.  I feel badly about that, and I hope he doesn’t see it.

Sunday afternoon was my regularly scheduled time with Lil’B.  Neither of us really knew what we wanted to do.  Our last few outings have been movies, which are always fun, but I – and I hope he – likes to do other things besides sitting around in a cold, dark room not talking to each other, sometimes.

I showed up at his house right around 2:00, our usual time and while he was finishing getting ready his mother called out to him in Spanish; something about “la escuela.”  He still has one week left of school, but he already has his report card and she wanted to show it to me.

He did very well in school.  They had three terms and for each term they were assigned a numeric score; not an average, a number.  I didn’t memorize the meanings of the numbers but essentially a 3 was average, or meeting the standard.  A 4 was proficient in the particular skill.  I’m not sure how those numbers relate to the letter grades and percentages out of 100 that I remember getting, but whatever.

For the first two terms he got 3s for both reading and writing, but then in the third term he got 4s.  This is a bi-lingual school.  So he was rated proficient reading and writing both English and Spanish.  For the other subjects, Science and Math (and it seems like there was one more) he had gotten 4s throughout the entire year.

Lil’B’s mother told me she was very happy that he had gotten such good scores; both Lil’B’s older brother and younger sister got good scores as well.  Then she told me that the day he brought the report card home he was very excited and he told her, “Be sure to show this to my Big Brother!” (Warm)

I told him I was very proud, and I am.  He’s worked hard this year.  In the second grade we had to bring his homework with us sometimes and spend some time on that and he didn’t much like having to do that.  In the third grade there was an after school program that he was in and he had time to do his homework there.  He got his homework packets done every week in the after school program and, we are told, he even helped the other students with their homework (particularly the math, yech!)

We decided to go Miniature Golfing for our outing which was a lot of fun, except that I don’t know where my sunscreen is and I was wearing short sleeve’s, shorts and flip-flops.  I now have some very oddly laid out sunburn.

It’s the end of the school year for a lot of students.  It was also the first really nice day we’ve had so far this summer.  Mother Nature seems to have forgotten that this here is California, land of sun and fun; also that it is mid-JUNE and we like to not have to wear coats this time of year.  Naturally, the mini-golf place was very busy and there was a back log of parties on the course.

Lil’B and I got stuck behind a party of six, spanning in ages from “Grandma” all the way down to “Little Lexie” who was “not quite three and doing surprisingly well” (if you count carrying your ball over to within two inches of the hole and then using the narrow end of the club head and a double ham-fisted grip to hit it toward the hole – and still missing half the time).  Clearly a completely unbiased opinion from Grandma.  I opted not to get mad, because as much as it’s no fun to sit around and wait, I don’t like to feel rushed either and the party of six was every bit as entitled to enjoy their time in the sun as Lil’B and I, and all the people behind us.

So Lil’B and I would play our hole and we’d move ahead to wait for the next one after “Little Lexie” finished making her play.  Since we were only two, and they were six, there was a lot of time waiting between rounds.  We’d finish playing, move to the next hole and sit on one of the many benches around (Well, I sat.  Lil’B usually didn’t.)  When we were finished, the family behind us, two little boys – probably close to Lil’B’s age – and their two young parents, would play.  It seemed that only the boys were playing.  Mom was there to keep score, and I would guess, dad was the money.  (Actually, mom and dad may have been on a date.  At one point I heard one of the boys say, now I want to try this hole with my mom.  I would only be guessing to say what that meant.)

It was around the tenth hole, when I was sitting on the bench waiting for Little Lexie to finish her play and the family behind us finished their round on hole number nine.  I scooted down to the end of the bench and the two little boys sat down next to me.  Just then Little Lexie moved on and Lil’B stepped up to take his shot.  I guess the family behind us had been watching us closely because when Lil’B took his shot and his ball stopped fairly close to the hole, one of the little boys looked at me and said, “Your son is pretty good.”  (aaaand fuzzy)

I didn’t correct him.  It seemed like it would be unkind to point out an error he couldn’t have known he’d made.  Besides, “I’m not his dad, I’m his Big Brother” is no explanation at all, since you can’t see the capital Bs when you talk.  I think we all know by now, Lil’B is mexican…  I?  I glow in the dark.  Clearly we do not share any blood, so we can’t be brothers… unless one of us is adopted I suppose.

I simply answered, “He gets a lot more practice than I do.”  And from then on we were all chatting together and having fun together.  It may have become apparent later that maybe I wasn’t his father when I talked to Lil’B about our outings, but nobody questioned it.

And I realized something.  I would be proud to be his father.  Maybe someday I’ll get the chance to be a father, but if I don’t, at least I’ll have had this time with my Little Brother, and that’s pretty special, too!

3; The Best Laid Plans

~ riggledo ~ 4 Comments

By the time anyone sees this, it won’t even be true anymore, but as I write these words, it is my third blogiversary (started with an old – secret – blog).

This is a “big” week-end, as usual, in that today is the anniversary of my first blog post, ever, and in two days it will be my birthday.  This year, is particularly “big” as I am having my very first birthday party ever, tomorrow afternoon.

“You’ve never had a birthday party?” Karin asked me.

“Nope.  My parents didn’t love me.” I joked… sort of.

“Yeah, so I’ve read,” she replied.  Karin is the newest person to have breathed the same air as me and know about this blog.  She, unlike the other four people who have breathed the same air as me and know about this blog, can’t get enough of it.  I like Karin.

I digress.

Tomorrow, I am having the very first Birthday Party I have ever had.  I’m throwing it myself.  It’s kind of pathetic; one should not have to throw one’s own birthday party, but no one else is going to do it.  I decided this was the time to do it because I felt like I had a reasonable number of people to invite that were likely to come.  I invited 43 people, most of them using Evite.  Fourteen of those people haven’t even acknowledged the Evite.  Eight of those people declined.  Eight of them said “maybe”.  Eight of them said yes.  Those eight people include me and Michelle and a friend of her’s from work.  You may have noticed that that’s only 38 people.  The other five people are Michelle’s family.

It would be awesome if all of the “maybe’s” show up.  It would be even awesomer if some of the people who didn’t reply show up.  I’m not holding my breath.  I wish you could be there.   So while this is my first ever Birthday party…  it is also, probably, my last.  Way more trouble than it’s worth.

So this time tomorrow, all the hard work that I have done to make this party happen will either have paid off, or I will be really bummed.  Either way it will be over and I will be glad.

~~~~~

My actual birthday is on Sunday, which I will be spending with Lil’B, who has no idea it’s my birthday and won’t do anything for me.  That’s OK, that’s not what that relationship is about.  But, that means no real special attention for, or on, my birthday.  Oh well.

~~~~~

My last post said that I was going to be MIA for the most part this month, because I had decided to make this my own personal NaNoWriMo.  Today is June 10th (it’s the 11th by the time this get’s posted) and I haven’t written a single word for my novel.  I’ve been very busy with work which has managed to stand in the way of any writing at all, novel or blog.  That kind of sucks, but since that’s technically what I get paid for, I don’t suppose I can complain… much.

So…  Who knows.  Maybe my next post will have a surprisingly good report…

…But Goodies

~ riggledo ~ 2 Comments

After my mother, brother, sister and I moved from Ohio where my father lived with his wife and step-kids to Oklahoma where my mother’s best childhood friend lived with her husband, their four kids and successful real estate business, my visitation with my less than perfect father was limited to every other holiday and summer vacations.  Eight hundred fifty miles separated the town my father lived and worked in and the town we had moved to without paternal objection because he felt, however rightly or wrongly, that he didn’t have any right to object.

Fortunately, my father and his wife loved to take road trips (and apparently required little sleep) and he usually opted to cover the distance between us by automobile, driving twelve hours to pick us up, spending an hour or so at or near our home where he would load up the additional baggage of three kids spending a period of time with their father and hit the road again for the twelve-hour drive back to his house.

On some of the shorter visits, or perhaps because we were getting older and would choose working over traveling to visit the old man, he would get a hotel room, or a cabin at a lake and spend the time in Tulsa, instead of dragging us back to Cincinnati.  I always dreaded getting into the car with my father because on one of his first visits, he discovered a radio station that he loved.  They played the music of his youth and apparently a better mix of it than any station he heard around his neck of the woods.  I hated the music of his youth, it was all so outdated and boring and the station was very aptly called “the oldies station” (said with a sneer and a mocking tone, of course!)

Today, as I was on my way to pick up my lunch, I was driving down a frontage road along side the ridiculously crowded highway and I noticed a billboard for a local radio station.  I immediately grimaced at the idea of the station as the billboard brazenly described the station as “classic oldies…”  I mean, ho-hum, right?  How boring!

Wait!  What did that say?  “Classic oldies.  All the best hits of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s! ”

What happened to the 50’s?  And since when are the 80’s oldies???  Pretty soon it’ll be best of the 80’s, 90’s and the aughts!

I’m beginning to feel the need to drive with two feet, carry a cane and shake my head as I tsk, “They just don’t make ’em like they used to” while Lil’B sits in the back seat and cringes at my terrible taste in music!

CPT, Part 2

~ riggledo ~ 2 Comments

Eighteen years ago, today, I walked across the stage at the Mabee Center, at Oral Roberts University, in Tulsa, OK, shook the hand of some random old man, had a picture snapped which somehow managed to make my nose and chin look 18 inches larger (each) than their already gargantuan proportions and walked down the steps on the other side with a diploma in my hand.  I could tell you more about the evening, but, well, I really don’t remember anything else about that day.  It was much too stressful and busy and overwhelming.

Fourteen hours ago, today, Laura walked across a stage somewhere, and shook hands with some old person (probably) and walked back off the stage with a diploma in her hands.  My graduation was from high school; her’s was from college.  I’m very proud of her and her achievement, even if I don’t really know her all that well.

A couple of weeks ago I received an e-mail invitation from Laura’s mother inviting me to an open house at her home in celebration of Laura’s graduation and I confirmed my attendance.  My assumptions about tonight’s event were slightly off, but only slightly.  This was not a party of Laura’s peers.  Maybe I should have realized that her peers would all have their own family gatherings to attend on this important day and that it wouldn’t be a bunch of 22 year-olds hanging out with the “old guy”.  Instead it was a bunch of Laura’s extended family and friends and former teachers and coaches.  I was still the odd man out, but I wasn’t the oldest person there, by far.  It’s OK.  I anticipated it and didn’t expect anything different.  Laura actually apologized to me– well, Me and Micah and Judy, for not spending more time with us.  I told her, “Don’t be sorry.  This is your day and all these people were here for you.  Most of them have known you longer than I have.  No one could expect you to spend very much time with them.  You have nothing to feel bad about.”

When I decided, I was ready to leave, Micah decided he was ready to leave too.  Apparently that thing about him understanding he had to find his own way home was not so much with the correct.  I asked him where he expected me to take him.  I didn’t really plan on taking him home since it was out of my way.  He mumbled something about friends in The City and I told him, “I’M NOT TAKING YOU TO SAN FRANCISCO!”  He laughed and told me he had said he needed to find out if they were there and I could just drop him at a BART station or something.

I told him I could drop him at the Fruitvale BART station which is right by my house and he said that would be fine. On the ride toward Oakland, he made some phone calls and found out what he needed to know and just as I was about to take the interchange from Highway 24 to Highway 13, toward my home, Micah said, “Um, you can just stay in this lane” in a tone that suggested he was innocently giving me directions how to get somewhere I hadn’t been before.

“I can?” I asked as I turned my blinker off.  “Where am I taking you now?”  Micah kind of hemmed and hawed before telling me he guessed I could just take him home.  “I can?” I asked again.  “Is that what would be most convenient for you?”  We both laughed.  It was sort of an inside joke, as he and I had discussed my issue with Judy earlier in the day.  I decided to go ahead and take him all the way home because we were in the middle of a conversation that I deemed worth finishing.

Judy, apparently, had some issues in her attempt to take public transportation and she ended up choosing to go ahead and drive herself to the party.  She arrived, under her own steam, shortly before 7:00 and immediately launched into her “Woe is me” story of trials and tribulations trying to get there.  I acknowledge that is fairly normal human behavior given what she’d been through.  I also acknowledge that I was already on edge with her and that I may have been predisposed to not like what she had to say.

I noticed something tonight, that I’ve never noticed before, though how I could miss it I do not know.  Judy has to make everything about her.  Every conversation, every story, every interaction, everything, Has.  To be.  About.  Her.  I would start to talk to Micah about something and she’d turn it around to be about her.  I talked briefly to Laura about her day and Judy turned it around to be about her.  Somehow I managed to walk through the house and into the back yard without noticing the photo gallery inside.  As I was ready to leave I noticed some striking photographs of the San Francisco sky line, asked Laura’s mother who the photographer was, and found out that her mother is a professional photographer.  Judy managed to make it about her.

As I pulled away from Laura’s mother’s house with Micah in my passenger seat, he ruminated about whether “we all” would really hang out together now that we are approaching the final week of the EMT class.  I confided in Micah, “I know this is a terrible thing for me to say, but I’m going to say it anyway, because I’m a terrible person.  I really like you and would like to keep hanging out with you.  And I really like Laura and would like to get to know her better.  But I don’t really enjoy hanging out with Judy all that much and I’m kind of afraid it’s an all or nothing kind of package deal.”  I would hate to have my feelings about Judy get in the way of friendships with other people; on the other hand, I could see Judy getting in the way of being able to develop those friendships in the first place.  I don’t know what’s going to come of that.

Toward the end of that conversation I told Micah that there was something specific that Judy had said in the past that gave me great concern about being friends with her.  Judy has a tattoo on her leg of a rainbow-colored ichthus which one night before class Laura asked her about.  Judy told her that it was an ichthus because it’s a symbol of God, and she wanted it rainbow-colored because it represented God’s covenant with Noah and his promise never to flood the earth again.  Laura, just as innocently and endearingly as can be asked, “Is that why it’s used for gay pride?

Judy, rather indignantly in my opinion, said, “No!  They stole it.”  Her tone and demeanor actually reminded me of my mother and I was not impressed.

I told Micah this story… And I told him that I am gay.  And in spite of my best intentions of not caring what other people think or whether they approve, I was nervous; cold and shaking.  Micah, for his part said, “OK,” and moved on with the conversation.  He still wants to hang out and be friends.

I’ve thought of telling him, all three of them, more than once, but I didn’t.  First because I’m just not comfortable talking about it face to face with people, and I don’t know if I ever will be.

But the thing is, as dumb as it is, I kind of don’t want Laura to find out.  I’m still kind of crushin’ on her.  I know it’ll pass.  I know it’s all in my head.  I  know nothing can come of it, but in the back of my mind, the thought keeps coming up that maybe it could and maybe her finding out that “I thought I was gay” will send her away before we get a chance.

I don’t know.  Maybe I’m just enjoying the fantasy.  Lord knows that’s all it is.  Maybe it’s just the idea of being in love and being loved AND being in an “acceptable relationship” (acceptable to society, but even more, acceptable to my mother) that’s so bewitching, but I can’t help feeling like Laura finding out will destroy that fantasy and I’m just not ready for that to happen, yet.

It felt good to be open and honest with yet another person though.