Your Laugh Of The Day

“I’ve put up with more humiliation than I care to remember.”~ B.B. King

I am going to tell you this story before I start digging a hole in the ground to hide in for the next week or so.

Life is filled with joy and it is filled with lots of humiliation.

This is a story of the latter.

This morning, I was hunting for some change. And finally I pinned down the apartment manager only to find out that he had no change. In total frustration, I started to spew. And the apartment manager started to spew back.

And then I heard and saw someone walk out the front door away from the office doors. I was curious because I thought I saw someone leaving that I had not seen in probably well over a year, possibly two by now.

I asked the apartment manager if I just saw who I thought I saw and his answer was “Probably.”

I tore out of his office like a lightning bolt, hoping that the person I was chasing was in no hurry to get into their vehicle and leave.

When I got outside, I saw her by the gates and I waited for a second before whistling at her.

And yeah I know, someone’s going to have a problem with that. But this is someone I’ve known for years and years and years and I know that once she saw that it was me that was whistling, she’d just giggle it off.

But whistled LOUD and PROUD. I was definitely making a bold statement to get her attention.

Then I waited for her to turn around and look in my direction.

IT WAS THE WRONG WOMAN!!!!!! 

Ohhh, what have I done? What have I done? The wave of shock and humiliation warmed over me like a cloud of death.

The strange woman looked in my direction and then proceeded on her way. She did nothing, she said nothing. And that was the end of it as I scrambled to turn around and go back inside of the office building.

She could have yelled and screamed and chewed me out. And I would have deserved every last bit of it, but she went away.

And now I sit here and think of all the different times I saw someone with long hair flowing down their back, only to find out that it was man. And that has happened more times than I want to admit.

Similar situation here.

I know that I am not the only one that has gone through this, but it is still humiliating nonetheless.

My Monday is starting out to be embarrassing. How’s your Monday????

Idiot Award For July 2014

“Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.”~ Mark Twain

I didn’t know whether or not to put this for April when the idiot was put into the spotlight or when the idiot struck, which I heard about in July. I went for the response and reply. If I am wrong, forgive me. I just was hoping to have a summer free of this award. But we can’t and so here we go.

http://www.sportingnews.com/mlb/story/2014-07-07/yankees-fan-caught-sleeping-on-tv-suing-espn-for-10-million-andrew-robert-rector-dan-schulman-john-kruk-mlb-video

Andrew Robert Rector is suing ESPN and Major League Baseball for ten million dollars.

$10,000,000.

WHY? Because he fell asleep during a Yankees baseball game in the fourth inning and cameras caught him in the act. And the commentators had a few words to say about it.

But you see, nobody did anything to him. Even the fan next to him was too busy eating ball park food to have disturbed or bothered Rector. And so what Rector is suing for is vituperative utterances.

Basically in lay men’s terms he is suing for ten million dollars for abusive comments that were made on the air. And then it also goes into comments that were added over the Internet via some sports website because he said that people were making fun of him.

Here’s the video that was promptly posted to YouTube. Some of the comments here even are about the same caliber and others (like myself) think that this lawsuit is stupid and frivolous.

See if you can find anything abusive towards the sleeping man by these sports commentators. The only thing that they did do that was out of the ordinary was continue to talk about him sleeping and how long could he sleep while NOT commentating on the game. But is that an offense towards Rector? Is that reason good enough to sue for millions and millions of dollars??

This man should have realized that by leaving the comfort of his own home and going to a professional baseball game that there was a distinct possibility of his image being put on television, whether intentionally or accidentally (such as passing by in the background or whatever.)

He should have realized that after he woke up that he might have been filmed or caught and captured on camera. If you don’t want these humiliating moments to happen— DO NOT FALL ASLEEP IN PUBLIC. Period.

Yes I know… its humiliating. Its actually happened to me too. I was on the late night news for being asleep as a child at a high school basketball game that my elder brother was playing in. It was the championship game and so there was a camera crew, and I dozed off until the next time the buzzer rang out. But it was too late. It was filmed and then displayed at the next airing of the local news.

Rector suing for ten million dollars is ridiculous. Greedy guy indeed. He’s not suffering anything but comments on YouTube that he would do so much better by ignoring them. Including this blog post. But this blog post serves as a reminder that we all are human and do stupid and ridiculous things. Its just that some of it is actually avoidable… but some members of the human race do it any way. And that’s when I come in to hand them their award.

Congratulations, Andrew Robert Rector.

.45 Versus 15 Year Old

“Spare the rod…”~ Proverbs

http://www.break.com/index/father-teaches-daughter-lesson-about-facebook-2298729

Okay. I’m just going to go ahead and hit the Spoiler Alert button right now. But you can go ahead and click on the link above to see what I am talking about.

A father with a heavy heart and an angry head, found a post on Facebook that was written by his 15 year old daughter. He then printed off the post and then recorded a video message for his daughter and her friends, for those who thought the daughter’s post was so cool.

The message that was written by the 15 year old was pretty much her flowing at the mouth. Being sick and tired of doing chores and being told to find a job. The daughter used a bit of vulgarity towards her parents, and basically toldher parents to piss off.

The father however, took this message and read the entire thing. And then he proceeded to comment about his daughter’s words.

The video was about 8 or 9 minutes in length. I don’t remember now. But I pretty was much sympathetic with the father for most of the video.

At one point, I kept thinking that this teenager was just talking out of her butt. But then I wondered what in the world could be going on that she continues to be “grounded” by her parents for previous infractions??

The teenager sounds like a terrible, ungrateful brat to say in the least. What a wicked child.

But then at the end of the video, the father changes the camera view and pulls out a .45 caliber handgun. What happened next seemed to be that he emptied the clip as he shot up the child’s laptop. The very same piece of equipment that the teenager used to bash her parents publicly, while believing that they couldn’t see or read it.

Some are speculating that the video is fake when the father put holes into the laptop. It looked pretty genuine to me though.

The parents were humiliated and yet tired of the child’s behavior. So the father turned around and got ONE UP on the child by doing this.

Was this a lesson in humiliation and respect or was it something that went too far??

I suspect though that this story is going to buzz heavily for a while. Perhaps gain the father a bit of a quickie celebrity status. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him on television in the very near future.

And as much as I believe that the 15 year old child was horrible… one must take the lesson of “Beware of what you write on the Internet”. You may think it is private and you can hide it. But that is not always going to be the case.

I hope that this family is able to stay together and not fall apart because of this.

 

Empty Promises

“You pile up enough tomorrows, and you’ll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays.”~ Robert Preston as Prof. Harold Hill in “The Music Man” [1962]

This blog site is now back on the air and back in business after being gone for a week. I made a last minute split decision to go out of town and hang out on a farm about 100-130 miles from my home. I am sure that I will get into more of that later as it was quite eventful. Complete with fights, animals, screaming, and the local authorities getting involved. I have so much fodder for blog posts its not even funny.

For those who are the faithful ones, I will do my best this week to catch up with posts, so your head doesn’t fall off from not having anything to read about.

But as I gather my thoughts today, I seem to be having this feeling that I have brushed upon this subject matter before already. I just don’t have the desire to thumb through all of my posts to make sure.

But in my journey last week, the person who had invited me to his farm was more than willing to put himself on the line again. (This being the second time I have visited, and the first visit was just so miserable and boring.) And because of the fact that I did not enjoy myself the first time, I told him that there was going to be a few conditions to me agreeing to return back to the farm. Conditions that he must abide by.

So then his reply was this: “Oh no problem. I promise you, I got you covered! Just come on down and have some fun.”

In a list of about seven “conditions” that I had presented, only three were fulfilled. Compared to the ONE promise that was made and that one was not fulfilled at all from the first visit.

I guess you could say, “he’s getting better”. But really, would you do that?!?

Nothing sucks like an empty or broken promise. This guy definitely is all about the sale by whatever means necessary. I have had many people promise me something and then never ever do they deliver on their promises.

Broken promises are lies bascially. You were told something was going to happen and it never does. So they’ve lied about that certain thing happening because it didn’t. There’s really nothing much that you can do about it. You’ve found yourself in that trap and then you begin to feel quite foolish and humiliated because you had your heart set on something and you didn’t receive it. Of course a person might go through a bit of anger because of the deceit, but still- what are YOU going to do about it??

What CAN you do about it?

Well, in my case I believe it is simple. Naturally the trust that I originally had, begins to fade away. Just like the saying goes, “once bitten, twice shy”. And because of the broken promises, I actually find myself in a better position to be armed against it. Now that I’ve been bitten twice. Those emptied promises that were conditions of my second visit to the farm, I will remember. And if a third invitation is offered, then the request will either be denied or placed on hold until he is able to fulfill his previous promises and shows that if I am needing something from him, that he provides it EVEN BEFORE I begin to pack.

If a person has broken their promise to you, you’ll feel the sting of their burn. You can either forgive the person or not. You can choose to trust in that person in the future or you may not ever again. That choice comes from you and you alone.

But in an effort for optimism, there will be those times where a promise is made but is broken and sometimes the circumstances around it are out of the control of the person providing the promise. Life happens. I just believe that this was not the case in my situation. But it has and can happen for others.

Once you figure out that the person was either lying to you, or said one thing and couldn’t hold up their end of the deal because of something that was out of their control, you can either forgive and forget or you can allow yourself to lose that trust with that person.

We feel so awful and full of shame that we allowed ourselves to believe in that person, when they couldn’t deliver. We’ve got to go ahead and pick up the pieces and learn our lessons. Then our decisions must be made on whether or not we will trust these certain people again.

Where does your faith stand?

 

Dumping Assumptions

Before anyone begins to cry foul over this post, let me just say that I am going to try to handle this specific subject matter with as much ease as possible, so that my own discernment is not misunderstood.

If I were to add a quote along with this post as I have in many posts before, I think that we all know which would be the preferred selection. This is about assumptions. And since we all already know one by heart, there really is no need for it to be posted here.

With being the totally social person that I am, in that I love to meet new people and make friends, there are those times when an introduction is made and right away I can tell that it probably isn’t going to work out in the end. And so instead of suffering through from beginning until I’ve reached the inevitable end, I simply make the choice not to go after it and allow it to dissolve on its own. Still, I have been told that people have enjoyed my company for one reason or another. I believe that it is always nice to hear something like that. Of course, who really wants to hear something like “You are totally boring! Go away!!”. Well… those who are self-sadistic maybe, but not I.

I have found myself in the past week at three different times, being pulled into a game of “match making” shall we say? Nothing thrilling to write home about by any means, but I guess something to break the monotony of this week’s slow activity. I was introduced to some people by some others that I know.

All of that was fine, until I found out that the reason why these people decided to make the introductions in the first place- was because I have a physical disability and the people in which I was being introduced to some people who ALSO had some kind of disability.

Now I am not talking down against the actual act of the introduction to these people. I am sure that they are wonderful in their own ways as every one of us really and truly are. But what I am vehemently against was the assumption that this person knew two people with disabilities, I and the other person, and believed that some sort of connection would be made based on that fact alone.

As I stated, this happened three times with three separate people over three separate events. The fourth? Well, I actually did find some merit within that person and some interest, so I stuck with it and traded my contact information with them. But the other three was solely based on the other person’s assumptions that “we’d get along great!”, because we have something in common.

Well no, not really. Two of them had different disabilities than mine. Far different lives they live than I do. I can only imagine what they have to go through on a daily basis and by comparison would probably bet money that my life is a bit easier than theirs. But because of the only commonality between these people and myself were that there was a disability… doesn’t always mean that we will automatically end up giving each other the label of BFF.

Yet I was really nice and polite with everyone involved in these awkward instances. It was no surprise to myself and to the other disabled people that we did not make that perfect fit for a friendship. The ones that made the original introductions, stood there scratching their heads in great confusion.

One of them literally came up to me and whispered, “I don’t know what’s going on! I thought you two would hit it off… because you two are so alike, with the wheelchair and all.”

WHAT?!??

#1- Clearly, you are mistakened. #2- You do not know me as well as you thought you did. #3- You did not think this all the way through.

The commonality in this specific example was the fact that the other person uses a wheelchair for mobility. They were not born with Spina Bifida, nor do they have any kind of physical disability in which they deal with on a day to day basis that is medically based. They have the need for the use of a wheelchair because in their past, they were struck by a train and are now confined for the rest of their life to a wheelchair. That was the only thing that was in common.

I really wished that society would think twice before making decisions like these. It really would get rid of any kind of humiliation to be suffered by any one, including those who have made the decisions to assume. Then, it would have been a lot easier on everyone with no pressure.

Now had I gone up to my colleague and they said, “Oh hey, this is ______ , they were struck by a train a few years ago and now use a wheelchair.”, then that probably would have gone over a lot easier than assuming that they would make a perfect match. (Even though it probably would have offended the person from the train accident for having someone else volunteer their personal lives. Probably to the point where it would have still gone over better if they had left it to me to ask them why they were disabled.)

Who knows what could’ve happened then? I might have been able to make a new connection and friendship. But because it was based on an assumption and the entire situation was made uncomfortable for every one there, it failed.

Just because I like women with green hair and three boobs, doesn’t mean you should come up to me and assume that I am going to like your friend who also has green hair and three boobs. Or even white hair and three boobs. You probably just should allow those kinds of decisions to be left up to be made by me.

So I hope that I have not come across like some jerk in this post. Life is frustrating enough for me personally without someone trying to make me into a character from a novel by Anne Rice. Having people lump me together with another group of people based on an outward appearance that shows commonality. It is ridiculous. And I don’t have to say just how stupid it is to assume.

My humiliation from these experiences wore off when I departed from them.  The same probably goes for the other people in which I was introduced. But those who dared to assume that they had someone that would be “perfect” for me will probably bear their shame for some time to come.

Man vs. boy

I normally do not laugh in the face of others and their defeat but in all seriousness, this guy had it coming to him. I’m just glad I had the strength to wait until I was in the privacy of my own home before I laughed myself into tears.

Let me tell you the story:

I went to the corner store for just a moment. I have taken this journey countless times and have referred to the corner store in many previous posts in this blog. But I left even before it got remotely dark.

What should have taken only up to ten minutes from the time I left to the time I returned home, ended up being a forty-five minute lesson of humility for another person.

The sidewalks are not level all the way through from point A to point B. There is one part in the sidewalk where its so uneven that I must push the wheelchair to where the front wheels come up for a split second then come back down, then motion pulls me upwards until I have reached level ground again. Probably about a two inch difference. So yeah, I had to pop a wheelie. Not that big of a deal to me.

So some kids were walking behind me and saw the front of the wheelchair lift up, come back down and my butt was up in the air for a second and then level. For whatever reason they found it necessary to catch up to me and ask me how I did such a crazy stunt.

I did try to explain it in simple terms. But I think that they were expecting some radical “X Games” response from me. The kid that was asking me had about three other buddies with him and they all hovered around me to hear my story of how I can just blast off down the road and do such awesome and crazy things in my wheelchair.

I guess I sounded really boring to them. But one kept insisting that I teach him how to pop a wheelie. When I saw that my instructions were falling upon either deaf or ignorant ears, I decided to just let it go and continue on my way home. The kid didn’t like that.

So in front of his buddies, he challenges me. Whomever can do the most wheelchair stunts and tricks wins. And whomever does the best stunts will also win. Needless to say that his buddies was going to be the judge in all of this.

This is how it worked. It was like a game of “HORSE”. The first person did something, and the second had to follow and match it. I went first. I mean, after all- they did insist that I go first. And plus I was already in the wheelchair.

So I started off easy and popped back on this wheelie and sat there hanging in the for about what I counted ten or fifteen seconds. Then I came back down to all wheels on the ground.

Then I came off the curb nice and slow. I steadied myself using my foot beneath me so that I would not lose my balance. The “judges” called it cheating.

After that I hopped back ON to the curb. It was a bit of a struggle and took a few attempts but I did it.

And then, I went back on a wheelie again and spun in a complete circle. I could hear the jeers and boos from the “judges” as they just were not impressed. Even the other kid who had challenged me started taunting about how pathetic I was being.

Then we went on to the property where I live. Up the hill I went and turned around at the top. They laughed and laughed and laughed at me as I kept going so slowly up that hill.

What they did not realize is that there’s a crossroads in the middle of the sidewalks and its in the middle of the hill. I went screaming down the hill again and pulled a sharp left and kept going. I heard one of them say, “Oh shit!”. So I think at least one of them saw that they truly were biting off more than they could chew and recognized that their mouths had a broken filter when they were bragging.

Now I came back to my place and grabbed a second wheelchair because I was not going to allow this kid to do anything damaging to the one that I use every day. He said he didn’t care which wheelchair he got to use. Maybe he should have because what happened next was a textbook example of why you should keep your mouth shut.

The kid knew that he had to jump off the curb and then jump back on again. What does he do? He takes a running start at the edge and then just DROPS to the street, racking his own balls in the process. He sat there with his hands between his legs for several moments before he moved again. As the saying goes, “Gravity is a bitch!”.

Then he had to get back on the curb again. He struggled worse than I did. Finally, he almost made it. He was half on and half off the sidewalk. Then he did the worst thing possible. He leaned back. Before any of his buddies could blink, he flipped backwards and tumbled out of the chair and into the street.

I suddenly felt this stare on me. All of his buddies were looking at me to see how I would react to this guy’s failure to come back onto the curb. I sat there, not saying a word. I didn’t even laugh. But I was cracking up hysterically on the inside. He hadn’t even tried to pop a wheelie, which is something he was wanting to learn how to do in the first place!

Eventually he gathered himself to sit there. With his back matching the pain to his groin, he decided that he should try to pop a wheelie. On the third attempt, he was successful. I was about to give him a bit of praise about it. But that was just before he became overwhelmed with accomplishment, held up by the cheers and applause of his buddies, which caused him to go into a double fist pump of victory into the air with his arms over his head.

When he let go of the wheels, he fell backwards. Completely tipped over!

I think that by that point, he was finished. It didn’t seem like he had the fire in his eyes to outshine what I had done. But his lack of strength to hold up to peer pressure caused him to continue.

He never did try the stunt of popping a wheelie and spinning in one complete circle. Some how, he missed that one. Instead, we got back on property and he had to push himself up that hill and get to the top. Of course it took him longer to do it than I did. And his buddies even came up from behind him and helped him push. I knew that if I had cried FOUL on that, that they were going to ignore it. After all, the judging was a bit one-sided.

He had sat back and let them do all the dirty work of going uphill. But what he did not realize is that they had stopped pushing him and let him go on his own.

Remember that scene in “Forrest Gump” where Forrest meets up with Lt. Dan outside the TV studio in the cold and Lt. Dan ends up losing control of the wheelchair and slides backwards until he has presumed to have crashed at the bottom of the ramp? Yep. That’s what happened to this guy. He started sliding backwards down that hill again and he freaked out and for the third and fourth time had fallen out of the wheelchair. By then, he had a nasty little scratch on his knee.

I had to be the bigger person and take the second wheelchair away from them all and bring this to an end. I knew that this kid wasn’t going to make that sharp left turn in the middle of the crossroads section of the sidewalk. I let them off the property and came home.

All in all, this kid scraped his knee, fell on his back, his hands, and both knees, banged his head on the asphalt, and worst of all, nailed himself in the nuts. I could not live with myself if this kid would have gotten himself injured any more seriously than what he had already.

He couldn’t walk straight at all. And he probably was wishing he had the wheelchair to take home with him. But I think that it would have made him more afraid to move around in it, being that he couldn’t seem to control it. The kid called his mother on a cell phone to have her come pick him up. I made sure that they were off the property before I did anything else.

Now the winner of this was supposed to win $1.00, but all I got in reward was the middle finger.