whaywardj is back, yay

[RSK]

Goodness. The things people say about you when you leave the room. Aaanyway. Let me see if I can offer a response worthy of all the attention.

Like many here, I came onboard LF on the heels of the breakup of a longish romance. I also started visiting and posting at the Lifetime TV forums about the same time. I thought: Alright, I need to process a bunch of shit here and I want a woman's view of things. After reading and posting to Lifetime for a couple of weeks, it dawned on me. Damn. This is a ****ing stodgy bunch of old crows. The women there sounded like they were all in the 50's and 60's and over -- four adult children, three divorces, fifth marriage, second alcoholic-abusive husband, this physical ailment, that recent surgery -- almost ALL hand-wringing and telling each other how terribly they were taken advantage of by men; and all saying "trust in God" a little too much for my taste.

I'm no spring chicken, but I'm not dead either. I needed input that had a little more spirit, spark and optimism. At least, a little less cynicism and mean-spiritedness disguised as compassion. So I trolled around, stumbled over LF on a Google search, got a grin out of some of the wry comments I saw, and joined.

But not before a lobbed over a few conversation stoppers at Lifetime. (It was, really, almost like that. I'd post something, and the thread would go dead for days. Then there'de be a post, "Whaywardj, do you mean to say..." or words to that effect, and I could see the knives and razors slipping out from between the lines. Most oft-repeated was a slur on my screen name..."Yeah. You MUST be awfully wayward to..." Found out later, the pauses in the threads were due to the women in this or that clique PM'ing each other to plan their reply (attack?) strategy. Found THAT out because a few a the women who WEREN'T partial to any of the cliques PM'd me behind my posts, saying things like, "God! I'm soooo glad SOMEBODY finally said that. I've been wanting to put (screen name) in her place for over year, but I just couldn't find the right words.Tell me about yourself." Rather than wade through the the ten catty replies that generally followed my posts on the board to find the one I was looking for from one of these women, I opted for email and gave them my public email address. Thus began a very complicated series of very long emails from women struggling with one or another relationship issue (some, VERY wierd), on which they imagined I might be able to help in some way. If nothing else, by reassuring them they weren't stupid or insane. (Many were seriously worried they might be either one or both.) Evidently, there was a dirth of male perspective on that board, THEY wanted some of. (There was only ONE other male on the Board I know of.)

Meanwhile, back at LF, the repartee was flying and I noticed: Damn. These posts treat of the EXACTLY the same issues as on Lifetime. Does he/she really love me? When should I contact him/her? Why did he/she do that? I'm so lonely and heart-broken, I could die. Please help. They were all the same. Just phrased differently, those at LF spiked with the arrogance of youth, the sometimes absurd nature of which, I find thoroughly hilarious (when it isn't so painfully serious about itself). I thought: ****. Either the women at Lifetime haven't learned shit in all their years, or some things never change. Toward trying to get a read on which migjht be more the case, I found myself spending INORDINATE amounts of time on both boards. (And I still don't know which may be the more the case: That people don't learn or that things don't change.)

So, I elected to confine my online communications to emails alone. I vanished from both boards, except to check in on either periodically to see if a PM from someone who didn't have my email, and who I didn't mind talking to, might have showed up.

It was during one of those PM checks that I found a PM on Lifetime from Shh!, giving me what-for over not being around at LF. Flattered by her tracking me down, I decided to invite myself back to LF. You all have Shh! to thank (or blame!) for my return.

As for any romantic involvements, no. I have none. Just isn't the right Time-of-Life right now for me to have such, I guess.

Thanks for all the attention, guys. Hope I wasn't too long-winded.

hey bud,

you are definately one of a kind, and i mean this in the best possible way, especially when you use words like 'dirth'.

i'm really interested in your education, do you read a lot? what do you do? you don't have to answer if you don't want......

anyways, you are an interesting 'fellow', and although reading your posts can be challenging, they are most certainly rewarding...

Three cheers for whaywardj

hip hip............horay
hip hip...........horay
hip hip............horay

and one for luck.....

hip hip............horay

[Tone]

Thank you, shh!

[whaywardj]

I quit high-school repeating my sophomore year after having been busted for having 273 consecutive absences the prior year, RSK. So, actually, I quit at the end of my freshman year. Never looked back. Well, I take that back. I DO look back now and then wishing I hadn't quit 'cause it makes for a miserable paper trail I'm STILL having to cope with after all this time. (I'm now 55.)

But it seemed like a good idea at the time since I absolutely couldn't tolerate the hypocrisy of high-school, on either side of the student-teacher line. The students were just idiots and the teachers were brain-dead. They didn't have a clue that their JOB was to INSPIRE curiosity in young minds, not destroy it, as they were doing to mine.

I'd consistently cut classes and hang out at the Art Institute, the Museum of Science and Industry, and public libraries in Chicago, teaching myself whatever my curiosity led me to. Anyone in authority asked me what the hell I was doing out of school, I'd say, I was with a class on a field trip and got lost and, "Oh! They they go right now!..." then dart off into the crowd and disappear before any other questions could get asked.

Or, I'd check out the biggest, thickest books at the library I could reach on the shelves and go to the park and read them (sometimes only trying to read them, 'cause they, usually, were WAAAY over my head). The bigger and thicker they were, the better they were at deflecting any approaches from curious authorities...such as cops walking a beat. Einstein's A Theory of General Relativity and Freud's An Introduction to the Psychoanalysis of Dreams were particularly useful in this regard. Came across those when I was 11.

(Hehe. Sitting on a park bench in the middle of a school day one day, trying to figure out what the hell Freud was getting at, I noticed a cop making a bee-line for me. I made myself real small and held the Freud book up in front of my face, hiding behind its prominently embossed title. Over the edge of the hardcover, I watched the cop resister the title in his brain, then make an abrupt 45-degree turn AWAY from me. LOL! Yes, I put the book down and affectionately patted it afterwards.)

It all went pretty well for about a year there. Then they collared me. Once forced back into school, I waited anxiously to become old enough to quit. (That would've been 14, as I recall). Then did. Got a job at a local factory operating a 14-ton punch press by lying about my age.

I'm not sure if it's been downhill ever since, or not.

Now stop making me feel all embarrassed and shit by drawing all this attention to me.

[Asip4u]

I quit high-school repeating my sophomore year after having been busted for having 273 consecutive absences the prior year, RSK. So, actually, I quit at the end of my freshman year. Never looked back. Well, I take that back. I DO look back now and then wishing I hadn't quit 'cause it makes for a miserable paper trail I'm STILL having to cope with after all this time. (I'm now 55.)

But it seemed like a good idea at the time since I absolutely couldn't tolerate the hypocrisy of high-school, on either side of the student-teacher line. The students were just idiots and the teachers were brain-dead. They didn't have a clue that their JOB was to INSPIRE curiosity in young minds, not destroy it, as they were doing to mine.

I'd consistently cut classes and hang out at the Art Institute, the Museum of Science and Industry, and public libraries in Chicago, teaching myself whatever my curiosity led me to. Anyone in authority asked me what the hell I was doing out of school, I'd say, I was with a class on a field trip and got lost and, "Oh! They they go right now!..." then dart off into the crowd and disappear before any other questions could get asked.

Or, I'd check out the biggest, thickest books at the library I could reach on the shelves and go to the park and read them (sometimes only trying to read them, 'cause they, usually, were WAAAY over my head). The bigger and thicker they were, the better they were at deflecting any approaches from curious authorities...such as cops walking a beat. Einstein's A Theory of General Relativity and Freud's An Introduction to the Psychoanalysis of Dreams were partoicular useful in this regard. Came across those when I was 11.

(Hehe. Sitting on a park bench in the middle of a school day one day, trying to figure out what the hell Freud was getting at, I noticed a cop making a bee-line for me. I made myself real small and held the Freud book up in front of my face, hiding behind its prominently embossed title. Over the edge of the hardcover, I watched the cop resister the title in his brain, then make an abrupt 45-degree turn AWAY from me. LOL! Yes, I put the book down and affectionately patted it afterwards.)

It all went pretty well for about a year there. Then they collared me. Once forced back in, I waited anxiously to become old enough to quit. (That would've been 14, as I recall). Then did. Got a job at a local factory operating a 14-ton punch press by lying about my age.

I'm not sure if it's been downhill ever since, or not.

Now stop making me feel all embarrassed and shit by drawing all this attention to me.

lmao...Good stuff, Hayward. I wish i skipped that many classes to actually learn something...My friend and I would take a few girls with us and hit the beaches, parks and so on... I agree with the comment on teachers...I notice it's nothing like that in University but HS sucked in terms of the way they taught us.

[whaywardj]

God, isn't that the truth! And it's worse now than ever. The chasm in America between those who can afford a good education and those who cannot is more than appalling to me. If you can pay your child's way out of the public school system, he or she will, probably do okay as an adult. If you CAN'T and have to submit him or her to the utter and unyiedling indifference of the public school system, you're likely to end up with a dysfunctional adult on your hands. Or worse.

And it's not as if it's by accident. Here's a horror story of a rumor I heard about Birmingham, AL over ten years ago:

NASA had a K-12 math and science education project it was doing. Birmingham Board of Education was approached to participate in the program. I know because I'm the guy who approached them. After many weeks of presenting and persuading, nothing happened. I went back to California. Later, I learn from a Birmingham acquaintance that one of the School Board officials had quipped after my departure, "Well, we want our kids to be smart, but we don't want them to be THAT smart. They'd just up and leave when they started looking for work and we'd lose more of our tax base." He PRETENDED to be joking, I'm told. Because he was an officer of some sort, other Board members laughed.

Multiply that attitude by the times it, or something similar, might occur across the country, add to it education policy at federal level, which, generally, follows the the corporate labor needs of the moment (based on which comapnies are doing well on Wall Street), and you have "the U.S. public school system."

Thank God, my high-school counselor happened across short-story I'd written for my freshman English class in my school records. That led to my getting a scholarship for year at a Chicago liberal arts college when I was 17, depsite the fact I didn't have a high-school diploma, or even a G.E.D. After high school, college was like heaven to me. Had it not been for him (he was gay, BTW, Bluevette), I would never have had that opportunity and my entire outlook on life would be radically different than what it now is. Or, I'd already be dead, most likely, shot by a drug-crazed member of some Chicago street gang...which was the only community high-school drop outs had left to them at the time.

[Junsui]

And it's not as if it's by accident. Here's a horror story of a rumor I heard about Birmingham, AL over ten years ago:

NASA had a K-12 math and science education project it was doing. Birmingham Board of Education was approached to participate in the program. I know because I'm the guy who approached them. After many weeks of presenting and persuading, nothing happened. I went back to California. Later, I learn from a Birmingham acquaintance that one of the School Board officials had quipped after my departure, "Well, we want our kids to be smart, but we don't want them to be THAT smart. They'd just up and leave when they started looking for work and we'd lose more of our tax base." He PRETENDED to be joking, I'm told. Because he was an officer of some sort, other Board members laughed.

Wow, that's horrible to hear.

[Tone]

What she said =/

[inkeepingsecret]

whayward, please keep going. tell us more!!!

[RSK]

whayward, please keep going. tell us more!!!

i agree with this post

[whaywardj]

Please, please. It's depressing enough to just recall it, much less elaborate on it. Besides: What more is there to tell? You want an ending the story? Take a good look at America. What it's become IS the ending of such a story.

I find it most ironic and quite revealing that the Hippies of yesteryear have given us the miserly leaders we have today. That's why an enlightened youth are so important to a culture's vitality. When you're young, you have the daring (and ignorance!) to challenge a status quo and wreak a little well-deserved hell on it. When you're old, you ARE the status quo and dare not change a thing which might rattle your comfortable complacency. THAT is why it's NOT REALLY in the interests of prevailing powers that be to "overly" educate other people's children. Too much of a risk they and their own children will be made to suffer a change in values they've worked hard to resist.

But in fact, the comparison I made between the Hippies of yesteryear and the leaders they've become today, DOES NOT denote a change of values. It's the same values couched in aged terms. In the 50's the counter-culture was all about non-conformity; in the 60's it was all about personal discovery. Now, the prevailing culture is all about "me," whether that 'me' is a person, a corporation, or governmental entity. Pretty much the same focus as the 60's, but minus the empathy and compassion for others; since oldsters, at the close of their lives, usually have lost interest in having any compassion for anyone else but "their own."

It doesn't suprise me in the least, therefore, that the counter-culture of today is, mostly, about violence.

[indigosoul]

Why is it that the younger members "disappear" when the topic gets serious??

In other words, GET INVOLVED. VOTE. You can change things and make a difference.

BTW, W. One thing I've always felt strongly about is a mentoring system for our public schools. I think every professional/responsible adult should become involved in the education of at least one child ( if you have kids this should be in addition to one's own offspring). This could take many forms, the simplest perhaps being getting involved with the local public elementary school. I started doing this as a young scientist (giving demos/talks) to some middle school kids and it was a great experience. You never know who you will inspire or what it may lead to.

[whaywardj]

Good plan. Were I not presently working 6:00 AM - 6:00 PM five days a week, I'd enjoy doing that. When this currently complicated phase of my life recedes, I'm going to do just that. Better yet, I'm going to find places where such things don't exist and make them...and remember that you reminded me of it.

I'm sick of being sick over the deficiencies.