Tag: Leslie

The recovery, at least in my tribe

Happy birthday, middle child.

My sister Leslie was employed at a company when her workload virtually doubled, responsible for the safety at 51 drug stores, rather than 26. This is, unfortunately, a rather common scenario in corporate America; one is given so much work that the only way one could possibly fulfill the obligations is to work 60 or 70 hours a week and get paid for only 40. Ultimately, her company was purchased by another company, and she lost her job a couple of years ago.

She survived primarily on short-term, part-time work, and the fact that she had one rental property, which at least allowed her to not end up on the street.

Earlier this year, she got a new job. I’d describe it more fully, except that it’s not entirely clear to me. I DO know that involves her being a safety coordinator. In one scenario, she had to get someone to get rid of bees that attached themselves to a newsstand. She didn’t have to deal with the insects herself, but she did get some city workers to remove the bees, then to ascertain who should get the bill, in this case, the newsstand owner.

Possibly not coincidentally, my father was the vice-president in charge of safety for the construction company for which he worked for a couple of decades. (Hmm – I’m the fire marshal for my office, and took training to use a defibrillator a couple of years back.)

I took her new employment as a sign that the economy recovery, however slow, is coming along.

Happy birthday, middle child.

Religion compare and contrast, and Old Silvertooth

Maybe I could have been one of Gladys Knight’s Pips.

 

Chris, with whom I have been having an interesting dialogue on Facebook about human nature, wants to know:

What do you think about other religions? Is it just “different strokes for different folks,” or are some religions better than others, or a mix? Where do you think other religions belong in Christianity?

A lot of how I view other religions is based on the bias I have seen within Christianity, including by myself. When I was growing up, I wouldn’t say anything, but I thought those Catholics who had “dirt” on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday looked silly. As a bit of cosmic comeuppance, in my last two (Protestant) churches, we now apply ashes on our foreheads on the first day of Lent.

I recall the first time I was allowed to take Communion at a Roman Catholic Church, on some important anniversary of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Albany, back in the 1990s. Interestingly, some of my Protestant friends refused to take the Eucharist because of being denied for so long, which I thought was CRAZY; they let you in, you gotta walk through the door.

Did I ever tell you about the Coptic who told me I was going to hell because Protestants didn’t believe in literal transubstantiation?

So I have enough problem sorting out my own religion that the assessment of other faiths tends to be secondary considerations.

For instance, the Texas Republican platform condemns homosexuality and invokes God. People are boycotting Oreo cookies because the brand is “violating God’s law.” I disagree with these “thought” processes, of course, but it remains my struggle to find common ground with other Christians, first and foremost, if possible. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned, Mohandas K. Gandhi said he’d consider becoming a Christian if he had ever met one.

All of that said, I’m also influenced greatly by the Baha’i faith, the religion of a former Significant Other. Basically, it said that many of the major religious leaders, such as Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Krishna, and Zoroaster, were part of a “progressive revelation”, with Christianity revealed for the city-state, Islam for the nation-state, and Baha’ism for the world-state. I never embraced it, but I accepted it as a way to respect other faiths.

Now from a purely comfort level, there seem to be far fewer jerks who claim to be Buddhists, for instance, than jerks purporting to be Christians or Muslims. And there are commonalities in many religions that suggest that at least PARTS of their doctrines are universal. Doesn’t everyone have some variation on the Golden Rule? I will admit, too, that I’m really not all that into proselytizing, at least by words.

When you fantasized about running away as a kid (I assume most people did), what did you fantasize about doing?

I liked watching or playing baseball. Or maybe I could have been one of Gladys Knight’s Pips.

If money were no issue – you were set for life, although you couldn’t just give it all away – what would you be doing?

I would get on trains and go to every Major League Baseball ballpark pretty much every season. I’d go see lots of live theater and a lot of movies in the colder part of the year, especially in New York City and in my region. I’d go visit friends. I’d read a lot more, write more. I’d love to have a companion with whom I could play racquetball wherever I went.

***
Steve writes:

Not sure if this is the appropriate post to put this on, but how did you chip your sister’s tooth?

Oh, THAT.

When I was a kid, I was a bit of a loner, even in my own family structure. I liked to read in my tiny little room or play with my baseball cards. I played with my sisters, too, who were 16 months, and five years younger than I – mostly kickball or with their dolls – but I needed my own time.

The middle child sometimes would bug me. She knew about the parents’ “no hitting girls” rule, and she took advantage by poking me. I’d do my Garbo best: “I vant to be alone!” But eventually, I’d go chase her away.

On one of these occasions, when I was about 10 or 11, I was trying to catch her – wasn’t sure what I’d do if I did, since I couldn’t hit her – and I stepped on the back of her bathrobe. She went straight down, hit the floor, and started crying loudly. She had chipped one of her front top, permanent teeth.

Ultimately, the dental folks put some silver-gray epoxy on it. The specifics of it now escape me, but what was clear is that she had this discolored item right in the middle of her mouth for months. People would say to her, “Hi, yo, Silver!” or “Old Silvertooth.” She was mortified.

The good outcomes (for me) were these: I didn’t get in trouble, presumably because my narrative rang true to my parents; and my sister left me alone for quite a while. More bizarre to me is that my sister had, apparently for years, until I corrected her in the past few months, attributed her ugly silver tooth to actions taken by our baby sister rather than by me.

30-Day Challenge: Day 17- A Childhood Picture

The elementary school I went to was the one closest to my grandmother’s house, rather than the one closest to our house.

Here’s a picture of (L-R) me, my sister Leslie (16.5 months younger), sister Marcia (5 years, 2 months younger).

My recollection is that we were 10, 9, and 5. One of my sisters thinks 8, 7, and 3. My mother doesn’t remember.

Regardless, it is our very favorite picture of us, especially compared with the next picture of the three of us (NOT SHOWN, thank you very much, which we call the “year of the bad glasses.” Mine were oversized horn-rimmed, and the girls were wearing cats-eyes.

The picture above, I THINK, was taken at McLean’s department store in downtown Binghamton, NY, where my mother worked in the bookkeeping department. For all the time I can remember, my mom worked outside of the home, at McLean’s, then at Columbia Gas & Electric. When she moved to Charlotte, NC, she worked at First Union Bank as a teller.

And because she was working, the elementary school I went to was the one closest to my grandmother’s house (Daniel S. Dickinson) rather than the one closest to our house (Oak Street), which had a HUGE effect on my life. There are seven kids I knew from K-9 from Dickinson, then grades 10-12 at Binghamton Central HS, at least four of whom I’m still in touch with.

The Spanking Policy

I got spanked a number of times, and usually I had no idea why.

Today is my sister Leslie’s birthday. Happy birthday, Leslie!
She is the middle child, and I’m the oldest, by sixteen and a half months. I have no recollection of my life without her.

Here’s one of those family stories, the telling of which will make more sense in a couple of weeks, I hope.

The worst spanking I ever received directly involved her. I tell this tale not to embarrass her – after all, it WAS a half-century ago – but to indicate how much that incident has imprinted on my whole life.

When I was four or five years old, Leslie marked up the piano with some crayons. My father went to Leslie and asked her who marked the piano, and she said that Roger did. So my father got the strap that hung in the kitchen – this brown leather thing about a foot long that barbers used to sharpen their razors – and started wailing on me. One of the things he was looking for from me was an apology, yet even in the midst of my pain, I was unable to do so. “I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it!” I sobbed.

Eventually, and these are pretty much in the words of my father, recounting the incident years later, he figured that I was either really stupid or I was actually innocent. Finally, he requestioned Leslie, who finally confessed, and he started wailing on her.

So, what had I learned from this?

1) Leslie was his favorite, even after Marcia was born. None of us alive – my mother, my sisters – dispute this fact, and at some point, Marcia and I became OK with it. But for years, it ticked me off that he took her word for what happened, but didn’t even ASK me, disbelieving me until he had to believe me.

2) Despite the discomfort, one ought not to admit to things one did not do.

3) Sometimes the innocent do get punished. This is a huge reason for my antipathy for the death penalty; sometimes the authorities get it wrong. (That’s not the only reason, but an important one.)

4) I just don’t believe in corporal punishment.

In January 1997, Leslie and I were visiting the folks in Charlotte, NC. My father was brooding all day; my father’s brooding practically had a physical manifestation. When we were younger, we referred to him – but not to his face, thank you – as The Black Cloud.

Finally, that evening, when I was taking a 1 a.m. train back to Albany, not so incidentally, he opens up. He believed that my sister Marcia, who was in her 30s, was not being very respectful to her/my mother; that 19-year-old Becky, who was also visiting, was not being very respectful to her mother, Leslie; that Alexandria, who had just turned six, was not being very respectful to her mother, Marcia – OK, we could discuss all of that – and that none of them were too big to use the strap on.

I’m pretty sure I bit my lip.

Leslie, always the diplomat when it came to dealing with my father, thanked him for sharing, and said some more affirming things before indicating that she would not be doing any spanking. I followed Leslie’s lead (though I had no child at the time), and Marcia did the same. Then our mother launched into this discussion of the family finances, appropriate at some point, but not right then. My father shut down, and said maybe two words – “Good night” – the rest of the evening.

So, no, I don’t spank Lydia; Carol doesn’t either. This is not merely a knee-jerk liberal parenting mantra on my part. This is because, and the sisters and I have talked about this at length, I got spanked a number of times, and the only reason I can recall to this day WHY I got spanked was the aforementioned piano incident, for which I ought not to have been spanked. I can’t think of a good reason Leslie got spanked, except for that same event. There WAS a time when Marcia was 10 when she talked back to my father, and Leslie and I independently thought, “Ooo, she’s dead!” But he didn’t spank her; maybe he mellowed a bit with the third child.

“Spare the rod, spoil the child.” I’ll risk it.

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