They Keep Mentioning Stuff/Hinting/Innuendo In Interviews.
Glenn Greenwald, in his excellent talk which I have playing on davidscully.com
(it automatically plays in the top left corner when you get on the site)
has an excellent section about privacy
(it starts before minute 44 and goes to minute 49.5 or so).
He makes the point that we all value privacy.
It doesn't mean we have anything to hide.
You know, we all lock the door when we go to the bathroom.
It's private.
We all have secrets that we keep to ourselves
or only share with select friends or other select people.
We all love to know other peoples' secrets.
"Tell All" books are common from Hollywood,
and we all devour "leaks" in politics or elsewhere.
Greenwald does a good job of discussing this in its different aspects.
About the Snowden leaks,
Greenwald says he's never heard ANYONE say
that we'd be better off not knowing what's been disclosed.
BUT, even Greenwald says that they don't share ALL the information they got.
They edit, select, redact.
WHY?
Because people could be harmed.
Our national security could be harmed.
So, it speaks well of their character that they don't just dump it all.
We all have to deal with the ethics and morals of keeping secrets
and disclosing facts in truths
in our lives.
Lots of people get around the pain and difficulty
by whispering behind peoples' backs.
It's common practice, and that's what the nsa, fbi, police organizations do.
That's what so-called "professionals" do.
The best known example of people who are not allowed or supposed to share private information
are priests and attorneys.
But some still do.
We have extensive laws in The United States
prohibiting previous employers from "bad-mouthing" previous employees.
They are only allowed to give certain limited information to inquirers,
such as whether they worked there, when, and some more data, but not much.
I don't know precisely what.
That's what they're SUPPOSED to do,
but cheating and snitching and ratting is rampant.
Very often, you can tell that people have spoken about you,
even if you didn't witness it yourself.
It's kind of like knowing that there's a planet circling a star, far far away.
We know because we can see the star slowly wobble back and forth
and we can calculate the mass and the speed and the orbit of what is causing it,
i.e., the planet.
So, I go through life, and it seems a cloud follows me.
I think of things people have said and I can read an intention to hold me down.
So, it goes on and on.
I went to north dakota for oil work in 2012/2013 and an employer
kept saying my federal clearance, a routine matter, never came back,
though he said he sent it in many times.
That with a hundred other instances, informs me that the federal government
and/or all the agencies that work with it, is blocking me.
Then, there's the field of education.
I got into education in the 1980's because of news reports
that there was "a critical shortage of math and science teachers."
Of course, there still has, and has been for at least half a century.
And, I am highly qualified to teach math and science.
But, after doing an excellent job teaching math and physics
as a student teacher,
deciding not to work there because they abused me and bullied me nonstop,
even though they wanted me there,
I have been unable to get a real teaching job anywhere.
I get jobs that are "traps."
That's what red devil, alaska was in 1990
and what gallup mckinley school district was in 2016.
Then I think about some of the questions I'm asked during interviews
for teaching jobs, for trucking jobs,
and even when I go to a va hospital or clinic that I haven't been to before.
So, there are things that I don't want to talk about,
for various reasons,
but it seems that I will have to talk about them
because people mention, hint, or innuendo in various situations.
This is particularly egregious in interviews,
especially education interviews,
because in education they make a big fuss and hullabaloo about how "professional" they are.
So, four things have come up,
and I've scribbled them down,
and I guess I'll HAVE TO write about them.
Some of it will probably hurt others.
Some of it will hurt me and my image in some peoples' eyes.
If I do it well, some people will be impressed by my candidness.
There was a time (it never really ends, I suppose)
when candid, honest disclosures (or "confessions")
were popular in literature.
Saint Augustine wrote an autobiography with that title, "The Confessions."
Rousseau wrote a similar book or so
I'm in a hurry on Saturday, December 14, stopping at McDonalds for internet,
so I will START on items 1 and 2 (ex and siblings)
For ex, I will jot a BRIEF outline of an outline.
For siblings, I will download two image (videos) for you to consider.
These are the 2 best caricatures of my brother that I can think of.
Of course they're dramatic characterizations,
but that's what drama is for - to make a point.
1. ex
a. WHY did I ever marry her?
I had images of a child (the movie "South Pacific" which I will upload clips)
VIDEO DOESN'T PLAY SO LINK TO IT HERE VIDEO DOESN'T PLAY SO LINK TO IT HERE
Also, I read the trilogy,
"Mutiny On The Bounty"
"Men Against The Sea"
"Pitcairn Island"
when I was young.
So movies played a part, and other influences, which I will try to touch on.
b. What were her expectations? (America a paradise, castle, I the knight)
and mine? pretty low expectations
c. Who influenced her when she got here to adopt "victimhood?"
I taught her to drive a car and got her a license.
I enrolled her in ESL classes in Alameda CA.
These things, she complained, were "abuse."
She didn't even know what the word meant before she got here.
(I had made it a point to always move next door to,
or near, and socialize with filipine people.
Some of them taught her victimhood,
and the white feminists ALL did.)
That's it in a nutshell.
She married me for the ticket to America, of course.
I could go on with this more,
and I will, of course, because it seems to be a cloud that follows me,
even though we divorced over 36 years ago.
But right now I'm too tired to give this important topic the care it deserves.
I will put out, for now, one image for your consideration.
When she first came to the U.S., we lived in military-related housing in Dublin, CA.
The wooden porch was full of splinters,
so I requested paint and used so much paint covering it
so the splinters would all be covered
that the manager joked about it and wouldn't give me any more paint.
But I was thoughtful of her in that way.
I always sought out filipine families to live next to,
so she wouldn't be lonely,
and in Dublin we had a single American woman next door, too,
and I encouraged and nurtured that friendship as well.
The filipine neighbors worked in farming,
and they said she should work with them.
I was glad that she would have something to do,
and some people to do it with.
In the Navy, you work long days and weeks,
and you often go out to sea for weeks.
The agricultural work was extremely hard, if you weren't used to it.
I found that out on the last days of their work
when I joined them at work to be sociable.
It was grueling.
She was extremely resentful about that.
She couldn't get along with the filipine neighbors.
The manager's wife was filipina and, one day,
when she drove her home from shopping,
I rushed out enthusiastically to greet her.
"Wow!" said the woman, "THAT's a HUSBAND!"
Well, I was trying.
She was my first, and pretty much my only, relationship.
But she never behaved that way. She was sullen.
The next door filipine family told me the problem was her.
After almost a year, we returned to the filipnes,
where I was temporarily stationed for a year.
I worked and studied that year on base in Olongopo,
earning 24 semester units in accounting, biology and English,
getting straight A's at La Verne University there.
She had a maid and didn't have to do anything at all.
She even wanted me to run out in the morning
and get food from the street vendor each day.
At first I thought she should do it, but I yielded.
It was no big deal, but it was a small thing among many others.
When we'd gotten married the previous year,
she "dropped" (i.e. threw on the ground) the marriage certificate.
Someone came chasing after us, thinking she accidentally dropped it.
Then there was the time we got on the bus on base
and the back half of the bus was full of Marines.
As I selected a seat for us,
she started to strut down the aisle through the Marines
like she was working a club.
It was humiliating and I was furious.
If I'd had any sense, or any experience,
I would have known what I had and that I could (and should) do better.
I seethed, snapped my fingers and pointed to our seat (to save face),
and we sat immobile and stony-faced through the bus ride.
The Marines caught on and didn't say anything further,
though those first moments as she strutted on to the back
and I called her to the front, were humiliating.
In the U.S. the second time, she did nothing but complain about me to everyone.
I didn't realize it then because I was always busy.
But I don't feel like going into this right now.
It deserves careful thought and delicacy, not just negativity.
siblings
I have 3 siblings,
bobby 10 years older, and bernadette 9 years older.
I put them on the same line because they were the same age,
and almost a generation apart from me.
mark was 5 years older (5 years, 4 months, which he liked to stretch to 6, because diff calendar year)
At the end of my 5th grade,
we moved a half mile to South Orange,
bobby went to West Point, and bernadette engaged in a vicious, lifelong war with our mother
and usually was not there.
So the family, on a daily basis, consisted of 4 of us, me and my parents and mark,
with whom I had established an understanding truce.
Right now, because I am busy, and don't know when/if I will have time to develop this.
I only do this at all because this stuff comes up, oddly, interviews.
It's an education industry/nsa/fbi/dod surveillance police state kind of thing.
They always get everything wrong, anyway, so I guess I have to clear things up a bit.
When I think of the movie, "Back To The Future" and Jean Shepherd's "A Christmas Story"
I say, "aha! THAT's bobby and mark."
In "Back To The Future," bobby is biff, and mark is needles.
In "A Christmas Story," bobby and mark are the two bullies.
mark is like needles
he was a st. peters college ROTC lieutenant who volunteered for combat duty in vietnam.
I understand him, though.
It was all about bobby, freddy, the tallmans, uncle harry...military relatives...
and the times.
That is, everything changed around 1968,
so he lived in a different world than I did,
even though we shared time and space in the house.
Times changed that quickly.
And bobby...he lived in the 50's...from a different planet altogether.
mark couldn't drive from point A to point B
without calling some other driver to pull over and have a "scream and yell."
NOT A PERSON TO FOLLOW,
and that's always bothered him,
that I didn't much play the role of his "kid brother."
VIDEO DOESN'T PLAY SO LINK TO IT HERE
bobby is biff
a product of the fifties, happier, simpler times
The Way We Were (Short)
Ralphie (me) beats up Farkus (bobbie) and his sidekick (mark) in "A Christmas Story"
Well, since I'm still driving a truck to pay off bills, I'm exhausted.
There's only one image and story I want to put out about bobby and mark, my siblings, before I forget.
So, when I was 5, mark was 10 and bobby was 15.
When I was 7, mark was 12, and bobby was 17, and so on.
There was a story, part of the family lore, part of her "litany"
that I heard many, many, many times from my outraged mother.
A relative (I think it was the Kelleher family, related to her beloved cousin Claire)
accused bobby and mark of throwing their little boy's train set around the basement
when our family was visiting them.
I think the boy was my age.
I'm not sure because we never saw them again.
You'll understand why.
So, 17 is WAY bigger and older than 7.
If the three of them were in the basement playing with his train set,
and the little boy comes upstairs crying, saying they threw his trains all around,
and they went downstairs and saw that the trains were thrown all around,
and the boy had never destroyed his own trains when playing alone,
it's kind of obvious they did it.
But they denied it and my mother defended bobby forever, over and over
in our house, telling the story with dramatic outrage,
" b - o - ah - ah - ah - o - b - b - y
would NEVER do something like THAT!"
But, he did.
And, for 50 years they kept the lie.
Mother should have known, and it shows her stubborn pride and delusion
to maintain, in the face of the obvious, that bobby and mark didn't destroy the little boys trains.
There was no one else there.
The trains were fine before they got there.
And then the little Kelleher boy came upstairs from the basement crying
because the teen cousins wrecked his train set.
Besides, I know it's in keeping with the personalities of bobby and mark.
I believe the Kelleher boy was roughly my age, give or take a year or so,
and I don't know where I was that day.
It's not that I was there and don't remember it
because mark told me a few years ago that bobby and he did it,
"but don't tell anybody."
So, the Kelleher boy had to live with them for a few hours that day.
I had to live with them through my childhood and adolescence and, in a sense,
through my adulthood, too.
bobby and bernadette, older by a decade,
seemed to get the lions share of the booty of the nest.
My mother's rich father died when I was a toddler.
A good portion of the inheritance my mother got
was spent on purchasing bobby's appointment to West Point.
I remember us renting a house for the summer in Neptune, near Avon, at the Jersey Shore
back then when I was a toddler, probably from the inheritance.
But, when my mother went into her dotage sometime after 2000,
bobby got power of attorney, moved her into his basement for a few months,
fixing up his basement with her money,
then sending her to a couple of homes,
the last one resembling an insane asylum.
An interesting thing is that bobby and mark didn't talk to each other all their adult lives.
Apparently, when bobby was in vietnam, mark contacted bobby's wife,
offering his (mark's) ... ahem..."physical services"...to her, in the absence of her husband.
This was in keeping with mark's behavior, as I had observed it,
once when mark and I visited another officer's dwelling
and mark tried to get a menage a trois going
(maybe mark intended me to be part of it, in which case a menage a quatre),
to the very emphatic negative head-shaking of the other officer.
I often wondered what he must have thought of mark, and whether mark did this often.
And mark also dated our cousin jerry's girlfriend when jerry was assigned to korea.
But I heard about it at home about mark contacting bobby's wife
and she writing a letter about it to bobby in vietnam,
and the two never spoke again for about 35 years
until mark's second wife, karen, favored raprochement
(perhaps because bobby had done well at an oil company and retired early).
(Actually, I don't think bobby was wealthy, just well enough to retire,
and I think he was gotten rid of and shown the door
because of his lousy personality. Unemployable, in other words).
In fact, mark and bernadette too, who never held down a job working anywhere.
mark hustled a tax preparing business.
I don't want to be the pot calling the kettles black, but I think I'm different,
though in some lesser degree the same social skills or lack there of, and attitudes rubbed off.
I remember once my mother was talking about our cousin Joe.
Joe was about 3 years older than me and was as handsome as a movie star.
He had a great personality, a trophy model blond girlfriend,
and I was his favorite relative in late elementary school and high school.
He was like my big brother, and for 2 or 3 summers
they invited me to spend the summers at there shore rental in Normandy, at the Jersey Shore.
Well, one day, my mother was talking about Joe and his great personality.
"Well...he'll never get anywhere with PPersonality! she announced,
contemptuously spraying spit as she emphasized the P-sound.
Well, the truth is that it was we Scully's who lacked
the warm and friendly outgoing personality.
Joe, despite Type-1 childhood diabetes diagnosed in his teen years
(he had to stick an insulin needle in his thigh every day of his life)
did quite well on Wall Street, because of his good personality.
I, myself, got a job on Wall Street at Merrill, Lynch after high school when I was 17.
I was nice enough, but not with Joe's personality. I was smaller and more shy.
But they liked me and favored me after orientation.
If my parents had coached and encouraged the 17-year-old adolescent that I was,
I could have had a wonderful career there.
I was fed up with boring, oppressive jesuit education,
but my mother made me quit Merrill, Lynch
and she had "made arrangements" behind the scenes for me
to enter st peters jesuit college in jersey city, still on her home turf.
It was a downhill slide since then,
and I never got my career footing again.
It annoyed me that mark joined my mother in lobbying me to quit Merrill, Lynch
"you'll never be anything without a college degree."
Of course, I could have taken business courses at night schools in the financial district,
which is what I was intending (Merrill, Lynch paying).
Decades later, I visited mark in topanga, ca
where he was trying to be the world's greatest hippie
(after volunteering to be the world's greatest soldier in vietnam with bad results).
He complained about how, after viet nam, he went to wall street and interviewed at a company.
"I commanded 70 men in combat!" he boasted at the interview.
He then stated with dramatic pain (fetching for a response, I guess)
"You know what the guy said?
He said to me 'You're a fool!' "
Well, I said nothing.
I was there as a brother and offered my presence, and my ear,
but I didn't know what to say.
I thought he was a fool for volunteering for combat in vietnam.
I thought he saw too many World War II movies,
and listened to too many stories from my mother and a couple of select relatives,
and I think he was in competition with our oldest brother, the West Pointer.
mark "wasn't West Point material" was the concensus of my mother,
and no attempt or encouragement for him to apply was made.
I, on the other hand, according to my mother, "was the smartest,"
and she was hell bent on me following in bobby's footsteps.
What a great victory for her to have TWO sons graduate from West Point.
From 1960 to 1965 she dragged me to West Point when she visited bobby there.
It was interesting, to be sure, but mostly it was little old lady, mother stuff.
We went often on Sundays and waited at the Hotel Thayer on base,
and waited for hours to have dinner,
and I was repeatedly tutored on the correct sequence of soup, salad, roll, dinner, etc.
It was very boring, and it didn't make me a better candidate for West Point
Now, bobby and mark got to have paper routes when they were young.
I was not allowed. I was "protected," because both of them broke their arms doing it.
I really wanted to have a paper route, too.
That would have been a job and a responsibility as a boy
that would have prepared my habits.
I did sell papers, though.
My Italian friend, Pat, sold The Newark Evening News
on the corner of South Orange Ave and Sandford Ave
in front of The Howard Saving Bank and across from Sacred Heart Church
where I attended school.
So, in the family legend, I followed my brother's footsteps, but not fully.
Even to injuries (they each broke an arm. I "sprained" mine).
Actually, I didn't even sprain it.
I was in a crib by the open door to they kitchen where they sat talking.
I had a lot of energy and I kept jumping up and down holding the rails.
Sure enough, eventually I jumped too hard and went over the side
and landed forward, breaking my fall with my hands and forearms.
It was the shock of the experience that frightened me, so I cried, holding my arm
(you know how little kids always cry a bit when they fall, even if they're not hurt).
But they went through the drama and had it x-rayed, and called it "a sprain."
Actually, it was nothing, but the legend is they each broke an arm and I sprained mine.
Funny. When I sent my daughter to be with my mother at the Jersey Shore in the summer,
she "had a sprained arm" too. Probably like mine.
But, anyway, I lost interest in West Point for various reasons.
It would take a book or a chapter at least to try to delve into why.
It was really always BOBBY's DREAM (and my mother's, no doubt).
I wasn't as motivated as he was.
I wasn't driven enough and probably wouldn't have succeeded anyway because of it.
Maybe, but I don't know.
By the time senior year was happening,
I just wanted to get an office job in New York
and put on a suit every day, as I'd been doing at Sacred Heart School and St. Peters Prep,
and continued to get on the bus and train every day, like my father,
and like I'd been doing for 4 years at St Peters Prep,
but take the train one stop further across The Hudson River to Wall Street,
like my father did for 40 or 50 years.
But my mother took me off track
and looking back, that was astonishingly stupid.
st peters college had drunken irish classmates from bayonne nj
and we had binge college parties on weekends and played football
which was fun bonding, but dulled the mind.
The curriculum sucked.
ROTC was mandatory, and I was dealing with mark's cronies
because he'd been in The Pershing Rifles, the ROTC fraternity.
He was as driven there as bobby was with West Point
(it took 3 years for bobby to get the appointment to West Point,
but he went when he got it the third year. That's how driven he was,
that's how big a dream it was for him and my mother.)
I was pretty good at the ROTC game, because of my brothers and mother,
but I find it compulsive, like golf or playing pool
(I found myself obsessively shining my shoes.
I didn't obsessively shine my shoes to work on Wall Street,
but they pointed me out at Merrill Lynch to the other high school grads
as a person to emulate for appropriate professional attire).
I actually was chosen as "battalion man-of-the-month" or something
for being able to march well, but I didn't join The Pershing Rifles.
The Army Sergeant who was in charge of the ROTC program
came up to me one day in formation
and asked me why I didn't sign up for The Pershing Rifles.
"I didn't want to, sir," I replied.
At this, the upperclassman in ROTC (who'd been underclassmen to my brother, mark)
all made that frat-boy, "WHoa!" response, as if I had just told Superman to go fuck off.
The Sergeant told me to come visit him in his office sometime later, and I did.
The Sergeant told me that he didn't think my brother, mark, would make a good officer,
and he said that he had told that to mark
He said that he thought I would make a good officer,
and encouraged me to come and talk to him anytime if I wanted to.
So, that's a story I always kept to myself (not to hurt mark).
But I felt it was true.
I don't know what words to use for mark.
I don't want to call him "stupid," because he had clever streaks,
but, as I showed in the two videos above,
he reminded me of "Needles" in "Back To The Future"
and to the bully's sidekick in "A Christmas Story."
When mark was a senior at st peters college,
and one of the leaders of The Pershing Rifles,
he led a hazing group of new recruits,
taking to the 2,000 acre South Mountain nature reserve in the hills behind South Orange NJ,
where we lived.
Great drama occurred hours later when they came back to our house,
one of the recruits with a patch on his eye.
They'd just come from the hospital.
Mark had thrown acid in his eye.
Whatever...
They had a party once in our basement
and I thought they were drunken jerks.
Now, several times I'd met bobby's roommates from West Point
and I had completely the opposite impression of them.
Here, I felt, we were meeting a better class of people than we were.
One of them had a personality like cousin Joe...nothng bully-like about him.
These were elite young men, the creme de la creme.
People who got into Ivy League or similar colleges,
or into the military academies were, usually, high quality.
I feel honored to have met them,
and, at a young age, to be able to observe differences.
I was also able to perceive flaws in our family.
Once, I was very embarassed.
A West Point roommate who was from Texas came to visit
(we lived in northern jersey, which is an hour or two drive from West Point).
Like a gentleman, he brought a gift for me, bobby's younger brother by 10 years.
It was a pair of fancy cowboy boots.
He encouraged me to wear them,
saying they were meant to be worn, not just for show.
They fit me perfectly.
It did seem a little strange, I will admit, for us New Yorkers,
to put on a pair of fancy cowboy boots.
(1/5/2020 ADDENDUM Sometimes after I write about something,
it comes to mind again as I drive, and I wonder if I explained it well enough.
So, let me add.
You see, in Newark, South Orange, New York,
nobody EVER wore cowboy boots, except as a costume.
We wore winter galoshes and rubber boots for the snow,
but cowboy boots were something we only saw on "Westerns"
or "The Howdy Doody Show" or something.
Of course, now that I've lived more and travelled
and lived in Alaska and Texas and throughout The West,
I understand that fancy cowboy boots are normal attire
when people dress up for a dance or other occasions.
But, when my brother's West Point roomate gave me the gift,
I couldn't conceive of ever wearing them anywhere, ever.
I thought of them as something you would buy at a gift shop,
like a statue of a horse or something,
that you would put somewhere for display, like on a fireplace mantelpiece.
I was lacking in enthusiasm, and I regret that,
but that's where our family's social skills were at.
That's the point I'm trying to make.
I gave a lackluster "thank you"
and it took much encouraging from him before I put them on briefly.
In retrospect, I'm ashamed, though I shouldn't be
because I was young and wasn't trained better.
I should have responded with the same enthusiasm that he had in giving the gift.
But the really humiliating and shaming part
was watching my mother practically laugh at him and/or the gift.
Anyway, the point is that bobby's roomates from West Point were pretty classy,
and it's something I noticed as a youngster of middle school age.
The rotc crowd from jersey city's st peter's college was a different story.
I can see why Southerners hate Northerners.
It's not just the Civil War.
It's the rude, impolite, offensive, ungracious manners.
My mother was a little strange socially.
She put on airs.
She worked so hard to get bobby into West Point,
spending perhaps much of her inheritance from her father to do it.
She LOVED to visit West Point on Sundays and have dinner at The Thayer Hotel.
It was "upper crusty."
This is where Ike went (President Eisenhower).
But, some kind of common sense and natural warmness was lacking.
For example, bobby married a girl whom he met at a West Point function.
They married the month he graduated.
Some time thereafter (I can't remember when)
the girl's sister, her husband and I think 3 young kids came to visit.
My mother was excited, had made preparations,
BUT, when they rang the front doorbell,
she answered the door and told them "preparations weren't ready,"
and told them to come back later.
I stood behind her and watched and I thought that was an unfriendly thing to do.
These people were family now.
They came from out of town.
I don't know where they went. Maybe they had a hotel or motel or something,
or maybe they idled away the time in a cafe.
I asked her why she did that, why she told them to leave.
It became a big topic of conversation at the dinner table later,
as she PROFUSELY apologized.
"David told me that I told you to leave, and I didn't mean to do that."
I just thought it was strange.
She was trying to act "upper crusty," I think,
as if we were a fancy restaurant at which you needed reservations,
and you wouldn't be permitted in if you got there too early.
I mean, she could have just given them a good ole' warm country Southern Welcome!
"COME ONE IN! Dinner's not for a few hours,
but you just make yourselves comfortable and make yerself at home!"
Ah, Whatever.)
We didn't really understand the culture of Texas, or other parts of the country.
I put them on and thanked him, perhaps not showing enough enthusiasm, but I had manners.
I mean, in the fifth grade, I wanted a bike for Christmas.
I got one, but it had an effing BASKET on the front, like for the dog Toto in "The Wizard of Oz."
I had mixed emotions and said "A basket!? Why did you get a basket!?" I was a boy, not a girl.
Still am.
But then I realized that my loving parents HAD JUST GIVEN ME A BICYCLE FOR CHRISTMAS!
So I thanked them and didn't say another word about the basket.
Now, as for the West Point roommate from Texas, I thought highly of bobby's roommates.
It seemed to me that they were all better people than were,
as far as manners and upbringing.
So, I hope I wasn't lacking in enthusiasm, and I tried them on and said "Thanks!"
but my mother was embarassing.
THE WAS LAUGHING!
She was laughing at the gift.
I couldn't believe it.
I was still in grade school, but I had enough social skill not to do that.
Of course, she pretended to hide her laughter by putting her hand in front of her mouth,
but at the same time she was rolling back and forth emphasizing her laughter.
What can I say?
I wrote about my mother in my book, "TheTruthOurGraduateStudent.htm"
Our parents were better than many, worse than some.
But I thought highly of bobby's West Point roommates.
But as 1968 rolled around, and graduation from high school,
there'd been a lot of news, which I didn't understand,
about places with names I'd never heard of (vietnam, laos).
And bobby graduated from West Point in 1965,
and a couple of years later was sent to vietnam.
He and his wife and baby boy visited us in new jersey on their way from germany,
and we had an incident where he violently knocked a cup of tea from my hand
and sent it flying across the room.
It was precipitated by my mother's signal,
and was VERY MUCH like an incident I'd witnessed 5 or 6 or 7 years earlier
when my mother gave bobby a signal
and bobby picked up my father from behind in a bear hug, pinning his arms.
That astonished me. I was about 8 or 9 or 10, I guess,
and bobby was probably a junior or senior in high school.
During the coffee cup incident,
my mother and father and bobby and I were in the basement
where we did most of our living.
It was a FINISHED basement, modernized to live in,
with a kitchen and tv and couch and our kitchen table, etc.
We spend most of our time down there, cool in the summer, warm in the winter.
I was sort of standing there lingering BECAUSE I was enjoying my brother's visit.
We hadn't seen him in a couple of years,
and we didn't see much of him for his 4 years at West Point, either.
My mother told me to take a bath or shower and I said "OK."
She NEVER had to tell me to take a bath or shower
because I was grown up and in high school, not a little boy.
I took a bath every night without prompting,
but I was down there enjoying bobby's presence.
But she said it again and I said "OK, I will."
Then she gave bobby a signal and he turned around and stepped up to me
and knocked that fucking coffee cup out of my hand across the basement
and started screaming and yelling at me and ordering me to take a bath.
My father didn't say anything. He wasn't the alpha male.
Well, I never forgot that.
I forgave, but I never forgot.
Especially, in retrospect, I realize that he was under pressure
because he'd been assigned to a tour in vietnam.
I was still a high school kid and didn't appreciate the significance
(he was ok there, by the way, was assigned to Supply in Cam Ranh Bay,
sent us audio tapes about going water-skiing)
But, anyway, my mother didn't think these incidents mattered.
She kept pushing me through the steps to go to West Point.
She had bobby call me up a year or two later
and follow her script, telling me I should go.
He never contacted me throughout our lives,
except a very few times when my mother told him to call me and tell me this or that.
He stopped talking to our sister, bernadette, FOREVER, about that time,
and, like I said, didn't talk to mark for decades, after mark hit on his wife.
So, to segue to another incident...
one Christmas when bobby was in his fourth year at West Point, I believe,
he came home for Christmas for several days, or a week or more.
I believe it was New Years' Eve and we were all in bed
and I was aroused by the noise of a violent struggle.
I ran downstairs to the living room and found mark on top of my father.
My adrenaline flowing, I ran upstairs and shook bobby and he came downstairs
and grabbed mark and took him off.
I was shaking.
I loved my father.
My mother hated him.
My brothers treated him with contempt and called him "The Old Man" behind his back,
or "The O.M." for short.
But anyway, this is what happened.
We lived in my father's neighborhood, where he'd lived all his life.
He had friends and relatives.
He'd been at the tavern, walked home late in the cold and snow,
AND MY MOTHER HAD LOCKED THE WINTER STORM DOOR!
WE NEVER LOCKED IT!
EVER!
NO ONE HAD A KEY TO IT.
THERE.....WAS....NO..KEY!
It was a latch, latched from the inside.
So, my mother locked my father out...on New Years' Eve
in the cold and snow.
It's his house, by the way.
He held down a job at AT&T for 48 years to provide it.
So, he's had a few...and he's ringing the doorbell...impatiently.
mark runs to the door, grabs him and drags him to the living room
and gets on top of him.
Well...at least he didn't throw acid in his eyes!
One of my saddest memories in life is how I treated my father that night.
I was hysterical.
I hadn't figured out that this was all my mother's doing, and mark being an ass to impress bobby.
My father'd been drinking, of course, on New Years' Eve,
and we all sat in a circle in the living room,
and there was talk, maybe a little arguing...
and I YELLED AT MY FATHER
and told him to leave, that we didn't want him there.
WHAT A LOUSY FUCKING CHRISTMAS!
Well...anyway...I hated st peters college.
We spent months in turmoil, imitating the campus unrest at columbia
across the river in manhattan.
I should have been on Wall Street,
being coached and groomed by my parents
to have a good work attitude and grown-up, professional behaviors.
This was the beginning of about a 5 1/2 year "downslide", if you will,
and that's a lot to tell.
A cousin got killed in vietnam, one of bobby's roomates was killed (probably fragged) there,
and so on... and so on...
Five years later, the war was winding down, everything was changing,
I'd been thrown off track,
I didn't like what I saw in the mirror,
so I joined the military with a promise to be home-ported in san francisco,
to get away from the new york area and my family.
Now, listen to this.
This is the reason why I'm writing about these things
REMEMBER?
BECAUSE OF THE WEIRD INTERVIEW QUESTIONS, AND THE INNUENDOES AND HINTS?
So last year, I go to a high school in eunice, new mexico,
near Texas, in the permian basin oil region.
So, at eunice high school, eunice nm
tracy davis, principal, and dwayne, some shithead administrator or sup or whatever,
interview me.
Well, tracy did.
dwayne just sat with his legs crossed like the strong, silent type moron.
I can't remember the EXACT words, because it took me by surprise
and before you know it I was answering her question,
but she asked me
(nodding affirmatively, answering her own question in the affirmative)
if I joined the navy because of hostility to my brothers, who were army.
Actually, the answer is a complete and emphatic "NO!"
That is NOT why I chose The Navy.
It was a decision to join THE UNITED STATES MILITARY,
AND THAT INCLUDES THE ARMY, THE NAVY, THE AIR FORCE, THE MARINES, ETC.
Well, we'd lost two close people, as I just told you,
and there'd been regular horror stories
of boys coming back without limbs or in boxes,
SO DON'T YOU THINK THAT
JUST..... M A Y B E...
JUST MAYBE
THAT HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH IT.
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST...THESE GODDAMN S T U P I D FUCKING LIBERAL EDUCATION ADMINISTRATORS.
They don't have a fucking clue.
I WAS REBELLING (AS A REACTIONARY, YOU MIGHT SAY)
AGAINST THE GOD-DAMNED FUCKING HIPPIE/YIPPIE COUNTERCULTURE BULLSHIT.
I WAS MAKING AMENDS AND BONDING WITH MY ARMY BROTHERS AND OTHER MILITARY RELATIVES.
Where the fuck these stupid fucking people, these stupid education administrators
and others of the deep state,
come up with their certain conclusions
that are 180 degrees wrong...
whatever
(I suspect it could be mark, who is maybe crazy or demented
and has always been resentful of me)
I mean, I'd just wasted 5 years of my life, right out of the gates.
I found hippie counterculture brats to be worthless shits.
As written above, I had high regard for many military
and the military was always respected in our household.
All three of us had been cub scouts and boy scouts.
I saw the military as a way to get the gi bill, grow up,
and get out of the stagnant environment I was in.
Now, I'd seen horror happen to army guys.
I was a fitness nut before it became a fad,
and I almost joined The Marines,
but the hippies and college kids had told Marine stories
that scared me a bit, but I was tempted.
Perhaps we need some experts on decision-making to weigh in here,
BUT
I went down the the recruiters
and the navy had a brochure with a picture of an aircraft carrier,
with serene blue waters.
There were aircraft buzzing around it,
and support ships, I suppose,
possibly with Marines.
My thought was, "you get it all in The Navy."
Boats, Planes, Warriors like The Marines and Seals.
Clean cot, three squares a day.
They promised me san francisco as a homeport
and EN (Engineman) for training and job classification.
(I'd had ENOUGH academic at that point).
That was it.
It had NOTHING to do with hostility to my brothers.
ACTUALLY, I called up bobby in Chicago to let him know.
And, my Engineman training was near Chicago and he invited me over.
And, I visited mark in venice beach first chance I got in california.
Now, it may be the problem is with mark.
he never got his head straight,
and he ALWAYS wanted me and others to follow him, especially me,
his "kid brother."
Yes, he engaged in vocabulary from those old-fashioned, corny movies.
He was a leading fanatic to volunteer for combat in vietnam
(whereas bobby just wanted to be like ike, eisenhower, and become president or a congressman,
more practical goals)
Then, after vietnam,
mark put his finger to the wind,
found that being a war fanatic was not popular,
so he had to be the most extreme hippie.
The constant part is he had to be the LEADING warrior or hippie.
He wanted fame, greatness, admiration, respect, one way or another,
either as a warrier like in the World War II moves he'd see,
or as a hippie.
I winced when mark moved to topanga
and bragged about how he participated in (was a leader in)
topanga's annual "make fun of Memorial Day Parade."
He, a vietnam combat 2nd lieutenant,
participated in their "Let's mock Memorial Day" Parade in a tutu.
mark's second wife declared war on me for some reason said she would kill me.
Why? I don't know. I didn't even know her.
It had to be talk from mark.
Of course, I had joined the air force reserves in the 90's,
continually seeking stability in the military
from the chaotic, nonsensical society we live in.
she'd gone to purdue and was fixated on the Chicago 1968 street violence,
so I don't know why she picked on me.
At that time, I was the only one who spoke to all 3 siblings,
albeit not frequently, but I was able to pick the phone up and call them, and did.
bobby and mark hadn't spoken for something like 40 years.
As my mother aged and declined, karen encouraged mark to contact bobby.
Actually, I was the one who suggested calling bobby,
but I did not intend for them to unite against me.
So, if there was hostility between army and navy,
or between those who served in country vs. those on a ship,
the hostility was 100% from them.
karen and mark tried to set me up in a sexual encounter
with karen's 17-year-old daughter, lexi.
It was around 1991 or so, when I visited mark in topanga
on my way back to alaska, after air force training in Texas.
lexi looked like a playboy playmate of the month.
karen, the mother, said she found me attractive,
and that she was having problems with her boyfriend.
There was another girl present who was hanging around with the boyfriend.
This may have all been part of the setup.
So, they gave me a place to sleep
that was on a cot right outside of lexi's open bedroom door.
All the rooms were very small.
lexi didn't really have a door.
Either it was open, or it was just a curtain.
karen, the mother, said "put two people together, and something will happen,
something will happen."
she said this quite a few times.
So, I'm lying on the cot, and lexi comes out to the doorway,
talking on the phone about sex,
and how, now that she's done it, she likes it.
It was all very awkward for me,
but I just stayed in my cot and went to sleep.
I'm really not the lady's man some people apparently think I am.
But, as time went by and it came to mind now and then, I thought,
that god-damned fucking bitch from purdue,
that entitled white brat of The Oldest Childrenation,
was trying to get me to make a move on her 17-year-old daughter.
I'm glad I didn't.
I mean, anyway, mark and karen were about 10 or 20 feet away in their room.
Like I said, it was a cramped house.
A couple of times, mark insinuated that he'd had sex with his stepdaughter, lexi.
Fast forward 25 years or so, and I call my cousins in new jersey
and they encourage me to contact mark, telling me karen had just died.
I did, and I visited him twice, including the funeral services.
While there, lexi was part of a show they were putting on,
and they said they were selling tickets outside.
Now, lexi made some comments like "yeah, I'm totally in on this!"
So, I knew something was up.
I was the only one they gave tickets to, to sell.
It was a scheme, probably, to get me arrested,
sick as that may sound.
mark has two children and, of course, as an uncle,
I was interested in talking to them again, after many years.
They referred to mark, their father, as "The Scheme-er."
That was the moniker their mother, mark's first wife, had given him.
He was always scheming.
Very appropriate, I thought.
That's just what he was/is, The Scheme-er.
Probably the cousins were in the scheme when they encouraged me
to call and visit mark,
so he could set me up to be the only one to scalp tickets at the events,
and get arrested.
Actually, it was a non-ticket event.
It was an outdoor event at a semi-circular outdoor stage.
There were no tickets, at all, that ANYONE had.
But they gave me "tickets" to sell.
So, that's my brother mark.
Once, I visited him in topanga
and I watched him hack away at weeds with a machete,
and I had a painful vision of him re-living vietnam forever.
Way back in the nineties, I was having lunch with my daughter
in a chinese restaurant in Davis CA.
I suspected that my siblings were working on her,
so I was trying to explain my family to her.
To gain some traction and respect, I said,
"it's not just me. Even my mother said I was the smartest."
To which my daughter replied...
"AND THE BEST-LOOKING!"
I almost choked.
It was an awkward moment.
What did my daughter just say?
Was she attracted to me?
This is awkward!
Then I quickly realized that she was wittily parroting my mother,
"Now, David is the smartest...
AND THE BEST LOOKING!"
So, it was a laugh there for us over dinner in Davis,
but my brothers and sister are hostile.
I, for my part, have considered, and still consider,
all three of them to be TOXIC.
So, WHY would education administrators
ask me about hostility to mark during an interview?
Like, what business is my family to them?
And, what does this have to do with teaching high school math?
And WHO THE HELL
IN THE DEEP STATE
IS FEEDING THEM MISINFORMATION!?
good night
I always wondered about that
because I couldn't imagine that family making it up,
and besides, they were all there and could walk down to the basement
and see it.
Train set neatly operating before Scully teenagers come.
Trains thrown and broken after they arrive. DUH.
Well, I'm sure my father had to talk to the Kellehers and admit guilt
behind the scenes when mother and bobby and mark weren't listening.
It just fills out the picture in my head of our family dynamics.
Anyway, I'm the one who stayed in touch with all 3 siblings over 40 years or so,
while they quarrelled and didn't speak to each other.
That reversed in the recent decade as my mother got old and died
and they distributed what she had (I got nothing).
So, I particularly had a bit of a soft spot for mark,
who was a bit of a pathetic figure,
and we were closer in age,
and shared the house and parents when bobby went to West Point
and bernadette went to college and moved out.
So, I mentioned that train story, as I would mention other stories,
and he looked and me and secretively snickered,
"We did, but don't tell anybody!"
At this point he was in his sixties
and I thought he should have cleared the air with them sometime in life.
That's what I did. I called the senior Delaney cousin in Colorado
and apologized for showing up drunk at his father's wake
(it was a low point for me, and I'll go into that sometime later somewhere.)
But, the thing about the little boy's train set destruction
is really illustrative of who bobby and mark are.
That's all I'm going to say for now.
I'm exhaused.
One more thing.
I was interviewing for a teaching job in New Mexico last year,
And they asked me about my brother, mark,
and asked (nodding yes in expectation of an affirmative answer)
whether I had joined the Navy out of hostility to my Army siblings.
I didn't, and I told them so, and I was perplexed WHY,
in an interview for a math teaching position for a high school in New Mexico,
they come up with that kind of off the wall question.
But I answered it and said, "no. just the opposite.
I did it partly as a bonding with my family
which had strong military traditions."
I saw it not as Navy vs. Army
but military vs. kooky sixties counter-culture.
So, various issues come up here, like,
"why the hell are they asking that?"
And, why did their demeanor show that
they were asking it with the expectation of an affirmative answer
and a rant against my brothers (and the army, I guess).
So, it shows, not only that there's something screwy and unprofessional about them
because they should be asking me about teaching,
but also THEY GET EVERYTHING WRONG.
Let's just call them part of the deep state.
They have narratives about me that are wrong -
180 degrees wrong.
And I have no idea what other narratives they have going on.
That's why I've decided to address these straw men of
ex, siblings, girls, racism and so on.
I figure it is sort of fruitless
because there will always be something else,
but at least I can show how WRONG they are about all this, at least.
Anyway, McDonalds is closing. I'm exhausted.
Maybe more tomorrow.
(McDonalds is where I get wifi and feel comfortable working)
goodnight.
The Way We Were (Long)
VIDEO DOESN'T PLAY SO LINK TO IT HERE bobby is biff a product of the fifties, happier, simpler times The Way We Were (Short)