Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me. I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."
In honor of John
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
[Note: I seem to have used this song twice.]
John Prine, You Wrote My Life
a life unstuck in time (to borrow a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr),
so this story can go on and on in dis-order, added to at any time the whim (or need) arises
Chapter 12
Sweet Revenge© (Part 2)
---Sweet Revenge
The white meat is on the run
And the dark meat is far too done
And the milkman left me a note yesterday
Get out of this town by noon
You're coming on way too soon
And besides that
We never liked you any way
"You will not tell anyone you love them. You will talk only about acceptable subjects such as the weather." I swear that's exactly what he said. My "boss". After two co-workers got together and decided the best way to be rid of me was to bring sexual harassment charges against me. Blind-sided. Now I know what that means. It happened to me once before, in graduate school, but that was on the softball field and I was standing a little too directly over first base, apparently, when the runner came through - some beefy guy from a real softball team, with legs like tree trunks. I was concentrating on catching that bee-lining ball the shortstop had just thrown, and I really didn't even see the runner. Felt him though. Seemed like I hit the ground the same time the ball hit my glove, but it must have been a split second after. It did seem like the umpire should have called the runner out, but maybe my feet were in the air when I caught the ball. Anyway, I got up from both incidents a little more enlightened.
I guess my co-workers knew that my recitation of a recent medical journal article stating that the average man has an average of eleven erections per day could be counted on to offend the boss - a born-again fundamentalist, ex-catholic. And since I had been schooling their underlings on which of their "management" approaches were actually illegal, they were determined to see me fired. They didn't succeed, but I got an extra dose of boss Tom in the bargain.
"You will come in to the office every morning and greet your co-workers with a friendly hello. You will make them feel comfortable in your presence. You will not walk out of the room when they come into it. You will not wear sleeveless shirts. You will behave according to the mores of the community in which you live." He had quite a list for me, which I respectfully declined to follow. It wasn't until I mentioned that I was consulting with an attorney that they all backed down. Though I usually bemoan the existence of attorneys, it does seem that they have their uses.
Those three men were all righteous "God-fearing Christians." They knew a sinner when they met one - a scarlet woman - and they knew how to deal with her. In the end, though, I kept my position. The devout Catholic who was to be the one to bring charges against me became a defendant in a real case of sexual harassment at work; the supervisor who helped him and taught him how to get away with illegal treatment of underlings, and who kept a plaque on his desk that said, "Whatsoever the Lord asketh of you, do it", was surprised by the onset of an incurable and rapidly growing cancer and died shortly after retiring early to take trips with his wife; and the boss was called by God, so he said, to a new job in Maine - on the coast as he so proudly pointed out on the map: "Out here on this finger of land." I wonder he never realized what he'd just said - God gave him the finger.
Hmmmmm fellas, maybe God's got a sense of fair play after all.
Hold on. Just a minute. I think this was a different story.....
........
Oh, yes, here we are.....
........
"We don't really have any more room. We're overcrowded as it is. But the principal from your former school called me personally and asked me to make room for you."
Those remarks from the principal at the high school I had just transferred to might have been complimentary in some way under some other circumstances. But the fact was, the principal from my former school was doing all he could to make sure I was removed from his territory. My crime was to have an African-American boy (we called them black in those days) as my best friend. I'd been too ignorant of the reality of social Christianity to realize that, although the fundamentalist church in which I was being raised claimed to adhere to the principles taught by their man Jesus, which should in theory have included love and acceptance of all races (although I admit I am unable to point out any gospel actually directing such a stance), in practice the good folk adhered to a somewhat different code. Oh sure, I was 16 years old, but I had managed to be rather isolated all that time...okay, call a spade a spade - I lived in my own world, which often had (still has) nothing to do with the place the rest of you folks live.
So, while my sister and brother remained at the former high school, I got shuttled off to another one, in another town, 45 miles away. I never thought to ask what fallout they incurred from my incredible faux pas. They really had never been inclined to accept my presence in their world, nor to make any attempt to visit mine, so perhaps I just assumed they were completely separated from anything I did that might soil their arena.
Maybe I was just too remote or too thoughtless. Some things get so far away that they seem to belong to someone else. Looking back, most of my life does seem to be a movie about someone else. Perhaps it was. Perhaps it is still.
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