My Mother's Nayme Was Mary

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I don't like drunks when I'm sober, and I don't like being drunk around sober people. The fact that my mother's first husband and father of my oldest sister was an out-and-out alcoholic has been a bane to my own separate existence, but only indirectly. It was sort of like, you know, if my mother loved drunks, and I needed my mother's love, then the only practical solution for me was to be-co-me a wino. It ain't easy being red... er... burgundy.

The side-effect of me finding out my mother had been married before she married my father was the kind of explosive incident that metaphors and sayings get written about. Too much information. I took it to mean that my mother's honor had been despoiled, and if my weakling of a father wouldn't extinguish the culprit, then I would.

At fifteen years old I created a ruckus as an excuse to run away from home, and I hitch-hiked to Mississippi to murder my mother's fucker. I never have truly known I can't do stuff like that if I make up my mind, but in this case it seemed like life itself took over to show me I can't keep a grudge that long. By the time I got emotionally involved with what can happen on a long hitch-hiking trip, I forgot what I was going to Mississippi for.

I did get to Mississippi eventually. It took a few days. What happened next to cause me to forget I had originally started my journey with ill intent, was that as I went along the thousand miles to grandmother's house, just walking and singing at times to get me past the graveyards at night, I realized that I was on a real adventure just like the adventures I read about in books.

Realizing I was on an adventure in my own right was much more interesting than seeking unasked-for-revenge for my highly emotional mother's Southern Belle honor. Being out on the road catch as catch can allowed me to realize that it won't me that married a drunk, it was my super-moralistic mother that found out that likker is quicker, and had to pay for her pomposity for the rest of her life. I was having more fun looking out for myself as a stranger in a strange land than embracing some dated code of chivalry.

I did meet my mother's first husband. He was staying at his parent's house where he grew up as my mother's family's next-door-neighbor. My destination in Mississippi when I ran away from home was my maternal grandparent's home, and there he was next door.

He wasn't worth killing. I didn't feel arrogant about his sad condition. There wasn't much left of him. The drinking had wasted him away to a shriveled up gnome of a man who spend much of his time playing with the neighborhood kids as if a child himself. He somehow knew I was his first wife's son and approached me. He offered me a nickel to buy some candy. I just walked away from him. I couldn't be angry at him, much less act murderously toward him.

I stayed with my mother for a couple of years after my father died. Her doctor said she couldn't live alone. I was indebted in some ways, but eventually I had to move back to my own house to save my own sanity. I hated that I couldn't save her from old age and death. I could only save myself.

My mother was a tough cookie, and not that great of a cook. Her first husband was the boy next door who married her because he got her drunk and then pregnant, but then took off for parts unknown, leaving her in a small southern community in the deepest part of the Deep South as a divorced woman with child. Some people she grew up with shunned her and called her spawn a bastard. Hard row to hoe. My father showed up as her white knight, and earned her undying gratitude.

After my father died my mother sort of lost what mental organization she had. It was like she held herself together to take care of him as he aged and died. He made her promise. There were times after he died that she didn't know who I was, and there were times when I became someone to her that she once knew. All her secrets were told to some imaginary participant (that she made me into), in order for it to be alright for her to confide

5 Jesus said, "Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you. For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed. [And there is nothing buried that will not be raised."]

http://users.misericordia.edu//davies/thomas/Trans.htm.

Two of the people my mother took me for in her dotage was my own father and her first husband. It seemed irrefutably clear that she still loved the drunk. After my father finally died and left her free to get up with him at last, her true secret love had been dead for years. I felt like a monster when I finally got her to realize she was too late. Her weeping for her loss was so heart-felt I cried myself.

I don't think my mother approved of my drinking habits when she realized my bouts with booze were more frequent than I made out. I drink when I find myself in situations of my own making that I got into even though I knew better. I have allowed myself to get up with people who should have known better than to think they could convert me into what they thought they needed from the person I allowed them to think I was. Sometime I fool myself instead of them, and there's hell to pay.

I got habits only men who are reputedly weak have, but I do what I do knowing that I ain't attached to the results. For a while I thought my drinking habits were controlled by who I stopped drinking for. Then, I realized these same people liked me better when I was drunk than they did when I was sober. That was a sobering discovery.

Recently, like in the last couple of weeks, I realized why I get the kind of attention I do from certain people, and more mysteriously why they like me for being a natural. I casually enact behavioral careactoristics they find highly amusing. It was revealed to me by a comment I heard a news pundit say on a Sunday morning broadcast. "Oh, he's the kind of guy everybody likes because he calls out the classroom teacher with embarrassing questions."

The crazy part comes into play because I don't appear to care how the teachers reacted to my impatience. It's hard to boss somebody around who might strap on a vest that comes with a cell phone. This is something very specific to my relationship with teachers of various types.

I grew up in a household where both parents taught school and usually brought their work home with them. For eighteen years I heard all their complaints about how certain students would get their goat by the way they acted in class. and heard the baffled, summarizing comment, "... and they got away with it too. The whole class just cackled."

How could I not know exactly what to say to the teachers of the world if I wanted there to be a disruption that would end up with me getting some positive attention that caused my classmates to think I was pretty cool? On the other hand, wouldn't that commit me to exposing myself to classroom environments if that was a major way I entertained myself? I've met a couple of people who changed their careers in order to get the attention they need from classroom hijinks. Can you imagine that?
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