Saturday, March 19, 2022

 Saturday, March 19, 2022

   

  On one of my walks today, I ran into Steve. I wouldn't have recognized him if he hadn't said my name. I see his wife, Shannon, as she speed-walks down my street. In one of my conversations with her, it came out that Steve was a school principal in Korea. He was stuck there for the duration because of Covid. I wondered why Korea but didn't ask until today when I saw Steve.

   He and Shannon joined the Peace Corps right after they were married. They loved their experience. Steve got a degree in education and spent time teaching in schools in this country. After Shannon and he had kids, they decided they wanted to offer them exposure to the world they had through the Peace Core. Steve got jobs through the UN schools in different locations around the world. I didn't know yet how they wound up living in Hawaii. 

   Steve said nothing about my reading method, so I brought it up. Had Shannon mentioned I had developed a reading method I wanted to share with him? Yes, she had. He didn't follow up questions, but his sense of manners trapped him, and I took full advantage. 

   He looked interested when I got into a description of The Phonics Discovery System. He's got to be good at that. As the school principal, he is the interface between the school and the parents. He has to look interested in what everyone has to say. He said he would listen to the videos, but I did have to remind him to take my telephone number so he could give me feedback. Poor guy. He may have to find a different walking route. Nay, I won't push him beyond where I already have. Too bad if he can't find this interesting. He saw this would be a good thing to turn parents on to. Also, he did ask me about my credentials. I have plenty. 

   I had an appointment with Shelly. While I remembered Ohio had the time change, I forgot to change it on my calendar. I was surprised when she called at 10. I worked more on why some people's behavior toward me makes me so miserable. I had an insight the other day. Ryan Reynolds said he preferred relating to people through a character or a role because he didn't want people to know who he was. Uh?   I hear from psychologists that people want to be seen, really seen, and acknowledged as equal in value. To hear Reynolds so casually make that statement makes me wonder.   I always assume there's more than one way to skin a cow. 

   Judy and I speculated on why someone would prefer not to be known. Two suggestions were they were afraid of being judged, not accepted, or they had dark secrets, basically paranoid. Think Bernie Madoff or Ted Bundy.   But Reynolds said it so calmly. Ah, maybe they think someone will find them boring. We could only come up with negative reasons. I can't believe there aren't also positive ones. 

    How about this? If you live in a social group with well-defined roles, it's everyone's job to maintain their role to keep the social unit working. If someone reveals how they don't fit the role, the house of cards can fall apart. I can hear modern psychologists saying, ' it should fall apart.' But that's not true in certain settings. This possibility doesn't give me what I want, a positive interpretation of a closeted personality in modern times. Unless you are a serial killer, there's always somewhere to be safe nowadays. 

    I don't mind being rejected. I think I have the life and death circumstances of that under control. But I do mind being condemned for something I don't think I did or am. That's Kafkaesque. My mother accused me of things that didn't sound right to me. I still live with those wounds. They don't heal easily. Bummer. Better yet, some people see me that way still. I can be in a room of people; some will see me as the only safe person in the room, others will see me as a monster. It's weird. 

   I worked on healing the place in me that wants to be seen; With the caveat that it must say have some overlap with how I see myself. I think the problem is that those who condemn me condemn my character. They refuse to talk about behavior. To reconcile with another human being, never attack their character. Always talk about specific behaviors, even patterns of behavior but never character. 

   Later in the day, as I sat working on the updates, I felt a sharp pain on the top of my left foot, just below the toes between the big and second toes. I pulled my foot out from my shoe, expecting to see one of those small centipedes escape. Nothing. I waited to see the foot swell up. Nothing. I felt the area. No heat. After a while, I could see some redness. It may have been a capillary break. I have a genetic disorder; the capillaries in my hands break regularly, but this is the first time I have had it in my foot. It stung for about an hour and then resolved.

   More seriously, I had a sharp pain on the left side of my abdomen. What was that about? I poked and prodded to eliminate the possibility of appendicitis. I was fine. I went to bed with that pain, thinking I would deal with it the next day if it was still a problem.    

     Isaac texted and asked if he could eat his dinner at my house. Sure. By the time he arrived, it was after 8 pm. He had gone surfing earlier in the day at Pine Trees. I had been there on Thursday with Jean and her grandkids. It's a big surfer beach. The shoreline is rocky, not inviting for bathers. While there, I watched the surfers, impressed with their agility on the boards. They're on their feet, next flat on the board, then kneeling, and then shifting their weight. They're doing all this on a moving board that can easily tip over. Isaac said he doesn't have that agility yet. He may have been one of the surfers I was watching. I remember seeing someone who looked cautiously awkward, unsure of themselves. As he described some of the moves on the board and why they were done, I appreciated the physics behind surfing. It's spectacular. One could do a whole physics course just about surfing and cover most of any curriculum.  

   I asked Isaac if he had an appreciation for the absurd. I love it. In the movie, Movie Movie, Ann Reinking does a number, Torching for Bill. It is the most bizarre song and dance. I loved it. I shared it with Isaac. It wasn't quite to his taste.

   Isaac and I laughed. I told stories about my mom and Mike that made me smile broadly. 

   Isaac spent most of the evening throwing balls to Elsa as he ate and we talked. As he got up to leave, he asked, "What is this?" Elsa had puked. She has only done that once or twice in the four years I've had her. She may have been too active with a still full stomach. I doubted it was anything more serious than that. 

   Two weeks ago, Isaac played the piano at church. I had known he was nervous but never learned how it went other than okay. This evening I got the whole story.   He had been preparing to play the score from a hymnal someone gave him. He told me it included all the harmonies and was above his skill level. I learned that a complete score contains the parts for all the choral voices. When he practiced with the choir, he discovered they were singing from a different score than he had practiced. The score in their book just had chords. This was well in his range. He received thanks and compliments for his work that day.

   He left at 10 pm, way past my bedtime. He proposed coming back tomorrow to watch some streamed movie that just came out about a boy born to deaf people who becomes a musician. After he left, I watched some of the Brokenwood Mysteries and wound up going to bed at 11.