I have evidentially lead a despicable life.
I was listening to the radio tonight. [last night by now I guess] A song came on talking about the singers past. His childhood. Things that he wouldn't change. Not from the 70"s not from the 80"s. The song title is "19 Somthin' "I suppose I would have to include the 60's as well. He said that he wouldn't trade those days for nuthin' of words to that effect.
As I listened to this song and was disheartened to think that I would trade it all away for a clean conscience. Nothing that I can think of would off-set my willingness to cleanse my conscience, my soul. I watch a TV show "Lucifer". On the show they describe "Hell" as a loop where in you relive the thing that causes you guilt. While watching this I sort of thought that might make sense. But Holly Shit there SO MANY guilty memories. Nearly every memory I can recall with any clarity is a guilty one. All of my earliest memories are guilty memories. I had a sweet loving mother who I, for lack of a better word, abused. I strong 'willed' her into things, stupid things, selfish things. When I was in high school for instance, I felt that I deserved a Gold Seiko Digital watch. This watch had two alarms and a countdown timer function. In today's terms this would have been the Very Highest end Apple watch. And I know that it had a slew of other "cool factor" functions that I don't even recall. This watch was $200.00. The date of this was something like the middle of 1977. I don't know what the inflation adjusted to today's dollars would be but I imagine it was WAY more that a middle achieving high school student deserved. At this time I was attending high school at a private school. A school for the very rich and very influential. As I recall one years tuition cost on the order of $5000.00. I later learned that you could have purchased a very nice, very new BMW 2002 for that money. When the 289 Shelby Cobra was being made and sold in the late 60's you could have had one of those for $5000.00. I imagine you could buy a VERY nice watch with that inflation adjusted money. I am absolutely certain that this watch was much better that the watch my father wore. Much Better. That is just one example. The truly bitch part of that is that I don't even have that watch anymore. I don't even remember when or why I threw it out. I don't even ware the watches that I do own. The same goes for an VERY high dollar engineering Calculator that my father purchase for me. A Texas Instruments TI 59. I don't remember when or why I threw that out either. I was at CostCo the other day and nearly purchased a set of plastic storage bins. These thoughts rolled right out of my memory and I said to my self that If I own so much stuff that I need to buy storage bins to keep the stuff in, then I have too much stuff. That is another Guilt inducing tangle of memories. But as I sit here I do recall one gift that my father purchased for me. A small transistor radio. The Sony Walkman of the day, I imagine. He purchased this radio while he was serving in the Marin Corps in Viet Nam. He was a Marine Corps Engineer and was in charge of the set up and maintaining of MANY of the Camps or Bases that you no doubt have hear the names of. This was when we were living in Hawaii on the Kaneohe Naval Air Station. I was in the second grade so I was about six or seven. This marvel of compact electronic know how was however wasted on me. But years later when we had moved to Saline Michigan, I was in the fifth grade so maybe ten or eleven years old, while unpacking our things my father unpacked this radio. He was so emotionally amazed and astounded that I did in fact still have this radio and that it did in fact still function. He turned it on, dialed in a local AM station and played it over the phone to my mother she was equally astounded. I had such a habit of breaking things that my father described it to his friends that "I could take apart a steel ball bearing with a rubber hammer just to see what was inside". I imagine that he was caused to describe this habit of mine this way because at some point while living in Hawaii I snuck into the top drawer, his drawer, of a six drawer highboy dresser where I found a grey 3/4 inch marble. I stole this marble out of the drawer and did in fact smash it with a hammer. I don't know why I felt compelled to do such a stupid thing. As it turns out that marble was very sentimental for him and from his childhood. As I recall he won this marble from the reining school marble play champion. Marble play was a big deal in his childhood. Marble play was likely the nonviolent equivalent of fighting. I remember when I was in third grade marble play was still very serious business. I know he was very much saddened by this senseless act on my part, one of so many, many, many stupid, selfish things I did. I do still have that radio and it does still function, mostly because of that one incident. As I sit here I can dredge up right off the top of my head so more similar examples. Alpine-Lite Backpack, compressed air bottles, welding equipment, belt sander... Each one leads to the next, snowball down a hill like. I am very certain that if for what ever reason I really took some time to add all these incidents up there would be many, many more and that is just how I treated my mother and father. So many more that they far out weigh the good happy memories. By Far and away. When I move up to the women that I have the good fortune to be involved with in my life this guilty conscience list balloons out to... well huge proportions, exponential proportions, astronomical proportions, Biblical proportions.
I recently read that we as humans evolutionarily are 'conditioned' to remember the bad things. The bad things, evolutionarily speaking, would most likely revolve around life and death situations. In this article it said that in the 'dark ages' [maybe] after teaching a child an important thing the instructors would violently throw the child into a cold stream. The adrenaline would somehow solidly cement this learned thing solidly into the child's memory.
I have also read that we as humans somehow anesthetize ourselves from bad memories. Somehow selectively massaging and editing them down into less troubling memories. To the point of even turning them into good memories. When I read that I thought woah, woah, woah, back up, Good Memories?. I think that somewhere in my 'Drug addicted weirdo days" I must have killed off that anesthetizing agent in my brain chemistry. Because when I look back over my life, truly the bulk of the memories floating around my mind just floating on the surface are decidedly guilty memories. My used to be fiance once told me that I was a 'Spoiled child'. I immediately disagreed with her as you might imagine. But those words have stuck with me for... well, ever since. And more and more I am believing that assessment of my character, moral character, ethical character and any other descriptor that you might saddle my character with. I just looked up "Spoiled Child" this is what came back "The spoiled child syndrome is characterized by excessive
self-centered and immature behavior, resulting from the failure of
parents to enforce consistent, age-appropriate limits. Many of the problem behaviors that cause parental concern are unrelated to spoiling as properly understood." I do not believe in laying the blame on my parents for my shit behavior because I should have grown out of that shit behavior, Long ago. On my own. The Brad Paisley song "Celebrity" the line "... cant wait to sue my dad. Wreck a Ferrari on my way to rehab."
I should have learned to be a better human being.
I failed, not my parents.
