Sidetracked Charley

I and 599 other students sat in complete silence in the largest University of New Mexico lecture room the afternoon of November 22, 1963. We had just heard that President John F. Kennedy was dead. Shot in Dallas, Texas. Most of us had spent our lunch break watching the live news on TV's in the dorms or the Student Union Building. We had come to Sociology 101 not just because it was the next class on our schedule but because it was something to do besides watch the horrid images. And we figured if anyone could say something to make it all go away it would be Professor Varley. He walked up on to the stage into the silence and wrote with chalk on the black board, Class Dismissed. And he walked off. We sat. Without words. As we rose to leave a student behind me loudly said, "At least the man who should be president will be now." I slugged her. I would probably have faced a week long suspension except that all classes were suspended for all of us so that we could obser...

My brother always told me I was dumb. Not daily but often enough I got that he considered it his mission in life to make me believe it. He was clearly in league with my mother, or she with him, who would say, "Men don't like smart women so being dumb is good." Those may not have been her exact words but there was a whole lexicon of of them she marched out. Her top priorities for me were dates, marriage and kids. I was a huge disappointment because in my first year of college I did not get my MRS degree. I constantly got lectures about not studying at the law library, majoring in Fine Arts because I wanted to curate a museum and not decorate the nursery, and not going to church to catch a man. I might have gotten her to drop that last one if I had not constantly broken into lectures about religion being the opiate of the masses and Zen was the way. It was my father who revealed to me the results of my IQ scores from routine school tests to talk me out of attempting...

"Be careful what you ask for," my father used to caution. I was well read and very creative at a very young age and I could come up with curses to curl even the toes of goblins. Most were directed at my brother. We were never the best of friends even though I would protect him against the monsters down the street. He was a bit of wimp when it came to equals and grew up to become quite a beater of women. Dad never quite understood that I wanted all those things I asked for in my curses to come true. I haven't talked to my brother in thirty some years.  But I was reminded of him daily in this election cycle. Trump is like my brother in so many ways. My brother wasn't orange but he was a big mouth which always threw belittling put downs at me. Especially when he lost at a game but even when he won. I even stopped playing games with him to avoid losing or worse winning.  That is when I would come out with my hexes. Hexes to ward off the evil and protect myself. I th...

In college my father proposed to buy me a car upon completing my junior year on the Dean's list. He would buy the car for me but I had to afford everything else it required. I wanted a VW Beetle in butter cream yellow. I thought it was such a unique color. But I suddenly saw them everywhere. As I also begun to see all the expenses of a gift horse (well, Beetle). I was putting myself through college at the time. No student loans then. I had part time jobs on campus and close to campus. I mostly walked everywhere I needed to go. Or took the bus. Albuquerque had a good bus system.  So as the spring semester inched on I saw more and more yellow Beetles and more and more flaws to my father's generous offer. But I also began to see just how expensive putting myself through college was. How much a toll on my life the jobs took. Not to mention the studying to keep up my grades. All my friends worried about me. I was no longer fun.   I kept up my grades.  I completed my jun...

When life gets too complicated and overwhelming I often opt out. At least for a little while. This week has been like that. And increasingly more so. Yesterday I took radical action. I closed the my calendar, grabbed a camera and called to my loyal canine companion, and headed out to where I knew I would see nobody. I even left the cellphone in the truck. I live in New Mexico mountains because such stolen time is easy to arrange. I only had to drive a couple of miles. I did not realize until I was walking with Magique at my side how long it had been since my labradoodle and I had done this solo. Mardi Gras's passing in the last week of August had begun a round of walking with friends. I knew Magique was as lonely for our missing fur friend as I was, and I was constantly arranging play dates with friends with dogs and trails picked for the exercise and comradeship as opposed to solitude. Maybe I was over complicating my life so I would not have to face the ...

Through a glass darkly Another spindoctor word. My sister used it yesterday. She wants to simplify her life. But unlike declutter I don't know that we have any control over simplification. Unless we commit murder, plead guilty and upon entering an ultimate "long care facility" with bars do something to get us thrown into solitary confinement with no hope of release. Life generally is just messy. Let's take just passwords for those various techno machines designed to make our lives simpler. I once had this grand scheme for passwords. They came in two basic styles. I used the forbidden pet names for social media sites, and variations on a favorite author's name for ones demanding more security and then if I had to use other than letters substituted a letter with a number. Then suddenly I had to reset a password with one at least 8 characters long using upper and lower case letters and at least one number and a symbol (@#$&*or + but never (){} or []). At t...