December 2019 – Deep Dark Thoughts

Abandonment Issues

lonely child staring out window at the rain

Another Christmas is in the books, and a new year is just around the corner. Before this holiday season is officially over, I wanted to take a moment to share with everyone what I think about when I hear the word, “Christmas.”

Christmas is a time for family. At least, that’s what I’ve always been told. When I was little, that was the explanation I was given every time I got tossed into a car for the ninety-minute car ride to my grandparents’ house. However, I have since come to learn that my parents were absolute hypocrites. Christmas, to them, was a time for family … unless a better offer came along.

In 1984, at the age of eighteen, I found out the cold hard truth about my parents and their dedication to family during the holidays. It was my first year of college and I had just come home for the winter break after finishing my finals.

I remember talking to my dad and asking him about our plans for Christmas. I mentioned driving down to visit grandma and grandpa for Christmas dinner, and he said we weren’t going to be doing that this year.

“We’re going to drive the motorhome down to Pismo Beach and camp by the ocean for a couple days instead,” he told me.

Well, that sounded fantastic. I was very excited by the news, so I said, “Terrific. When are we leaving?”

My dad gave me a puzzled look for a moment. Then he told me, “No. I think you misunderstood what I was telling you. Your mother and I are going to Pismo Beach. You are going to stay home and feed the cat.”

I laughed. I thought he was kidding.

He wasn’t kidding.

On Christmas Eve, we opened presents early because my parents were jumping in the motorhome and leaving first thing in the morning on Christmas day. I opened several packages of underwear and socks. I think there was even one box full of toothpaste, deodorant, and shampoo just to make the evening extra depressing.

After that bit of sadness, we sat down to enjoy a meal of overcooked ham and something that vaguely looked like a Jell-O salad. While we ate, my dad handed me a Christmas card. I quickly tore it open, hoping to find money, but the only thing inside was a note with a phone number for their campsite in case of emergencies. I think my dad noticed the disappointed look on my face, because he patted my arm consolingly.

“We already pay for your college. What more do you want?”

My dad always knew just what to say to make me feel better.

The next morning, I woke up to the sound of the motorhome pulling out of our driveway and cruising away.

Merry Christmas.

I figured at least I wouldn’t go hungry. My mom told me she had stocked the freezer in the garage with all of my favorite frozen foods. This was actually good news. Because of the way my mom tended to destroy real food, frozen meals were a real treat in our household. I started to get hungry a little after noon, and I wandered out to the garage to check the freezer. That was when I realized that my parents must absolutely hate me.

My mom’s monster of an Oldsmobile was parked in our garage, with the nose of the car pulled right up against the freezer door. My parents kept all their car keys on the same ring, so the key to the Olds was in my mom’s purse on its way to Pismo Beach. And the car was an automatic transmission, which meant I couldn’t even shift it into neutral and try to push it away from the freezer.

In desperation, I grabbed the handle to the freezer door and pulled on it. The door came open about three inches. I could just see through to the contents inside, but there wasn’t enough space to get my hand inside. I could see the food, but I couldn’t reach it. True to her word, my mom had bought all my favorite stuff. Of course, I wouldn’t be eating any of it in the foreseeable future.

That moment in my life was what a psychiatrist might call “a good place to begin our session.”

I could imagine my parents driving south to their beachside destination, laughing about how their starving son was back at home staring through a crack at all the wonderful food he wasn’t allowed to eat. The devil would be standing behind my mom, patting her on the back and saying, “Yeah, that was a good one. Wish I’d thought of it.”

Christmas that year wasn’t a total loss, however. Mostly, yes. But not total.

A couple of very dear friends heard about my plight. (They heard about it because I called them on the phone and complained very loudly about how much I hated my parents at that moment.) Wes and Kristine dropped whatever Christmas plans they already had and came to rescue me.

They picked me up and took me out to dinner at one of the few places open on Christmas day. The food was bad, and the service was worse, but it was better than starving to death in the garage. Wes even had to pay for my meal since I was flat broke. My parents figured that since they had left all that wonderful food at home for me, there was no need to give me any money.

Or maybe, that was just part of their evil plan.

My friends came through for me though, and that night is still one of my all-time favorite Christmas memories.

I know how that sounds given all the things that went wrong, but I believe that a little bit of good can often outweigh a lot of garbage. At least I hope that’s true, otherwise my own kids are completely screwed.

They say when God closes a door, he always opens a window. Or in my case, when God hands you crappy parents, he makes sure you have good friends.

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Between the Turkey and the Tinsel

To me, this is the most stressful time of the year. Thanksgiving is over and all the fall decorations have been taken down, boxed, and stored for another twelve months. As the Thanksgiving boxes go back into the garage, the Christmas boxes get dragged into the house and unpacked. There is no break between the holidays. As soon as one ends, it is time to scramble to get ready for the next one.

Lights, tree, figurines, and garlands all need to be dusted off and strewn around the house to make a more festive atmosphere. If this fails to happen, we risk appearing as if we have insufficient holiday spirit. This isn’t such a problem for me. My annual levels of holiday spirit have historically been low, and I don’t care who figures it out. My wife, however, insists we make the effort every year to celebrate properly.

Hence, the stress.

For the four or five weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I feel as if I am in constant motion. I am dragging heavy decorations to and from the garage, putting up lights inside and outside the house, searching for appropriate gifts for family members, and attending gatherings and holiday events I have unsuccessfully attempted to avoid.

It wasn’t always like this. I didn’t used to mind this time of year. Of course, that was before I got married and had children. When it was just me, I could stay home and only do the things I wanted to do. I didn’t have to be anywhere or try to impress anyone. I had no obligations. If I felt like it, I could sit on the couch, watch television, and eat cheesecake with a pair of chopsticks.

For clarification: the cheesecake was leftover from Thanksgiving and was the only food left in the refrigerator. I was using chopsticks because I didn’t have any other clean utensils.

Don’t judge me.

Anyway, now I have responsibilities to other people. I can’t just hide and ignore the world in December like I used to do. I also have clean forks, and real food in the refrigerator, so there are tradeoffs. Some things have improved. The tree is also much nicer these days. We have nine feet of plastic, pre-lit, fireproof tree and enough decorations to cover the entire thing completely.

Twice.

When my wife and I first lived together, we had a plastic tree then, too. However, it was only 18 inches tall and we decorated it with six, green glass balls and six, red glass balls that we bought from an ornament display at Home Depot. We also had a cat that thought the balls were a lot of fun to play with, which is why today we only have one surviving green ball that we still hang on the tree every year as a reminder of those first couple Christmases together.

That first tree didn’t have many lights on it, either. We had to put it on a table with a lamp right next to it for any real illumination. Our current tree not only has more lights than I can count, but my wife recently hooked up the plug to Wi-Fi, so if she wants to turn those lights on all she has to do is say, “Turn on the Christmas tree.”

Poof! Lights.

Although, to be fair, our tree was always like that. The only difference is, in the past, when my wife said, “Turn on the Christmas tree,” she was talking to me.

I wish my wife could figure out other parts of the holiday preparation to hook up automatically to Wi-Fi. I wish I could say, “Put lights on the house,” or “Pick out presents for family.” Unfortunately, those things I still have to do for myself.

With just one week remaining before Christmas I feel very behind in my chores this year. There are colored lights that are still just sitting in boxes, and I need to figure out what to get EM1 and EM2. Despite the fact they both deserve coal in their stockings, my wife insists that we get them real gifts. I suggested we could gift them a full year of living in our house without paying any rent, but she failed to find any humor in my idea.

The clock is ticking. I’m running out of time and the tension is building. In another week, it will all finally be behind us, but for right now I’m pretty stressed out. I’m looking forward to January, when we can all look back on a wonderful Christmas and celebrate the fact we don’t have to do it again for another year.

Or we can look back at the disaster that was Christmas, and the reason that mommy took the kids and left daddy. I’ll be honest, at this point there’s no telling which way it’s going to go.

But either way, it will be over soon.

Merry Christmas!

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To Serve and Protect, or Whatever

In 2016, I retired from law enforcement after 25 years of being a police officer in northern California. I believe I have mentioned this before. Prior to 25 years as a police officer, I spent 25 years not being a police officer and having no idea that I would ever be a police officer. So, how did I end up driving a black and white sedan with lights on the roof?

Let me tell you about it.

In 1989, I was finishing up my final year at UC Davis. I was about a month away from graduating with a B.S. in Genetics. I thought I had my career all planned out at that point. Get a job with the local genetics research firm in Vacaville, work my way up the corporate ladder, collect stock options and a high six-figure salary, then retire at 35 with more money than I knew what to do with.

That was the plan.

The first step was getting through a job interview with the genetics company that my entire career path hinged upon. The job I was applying for was basically an entry level lab assistant. It would be my task to wash up the lab as the more senior people completed various tasks.

Okay, to be more accurate, they needed a dish washer. Someone to clean up test tubes and petri dishes.

During the interview, I was told that, due to the number of candidates applying for the job, a B. S. was insufficient to secure the position. They told me to feel free to reapply when I had completed my Master’s Degree program.

The only problem was that I had absolutely no intention of staying in school any longer. Certainly not long enough to go for an M.S.

I didn’t get the job. I was at the end of my schooling and had no idea what I was going to do next. The path I had imagined I would follow had just disappeared like a bread crumb trail in a windstorm … a windstorm full of hungry birds.

It was at this time that I called up my good friend, Wes Blalock. I needed someone to be a sympathetic ear and I thought he would be a good place to start. I was wrong. His advice was something along the lines of, “I don’t have time to listen to your whiny shit right now. Why don’t you come see me the next time you come down to San Jose.” This was followed by the sound of dial tone.

Have I mentioned that Wes is my best friend?

So, I did go see him the next time I was in San Jose. Wes was working as a police officer at that time and he suggested I do a ride-along with him during one of his shifts.

“So we can talk?” I asked.

“No. So you can see what real problems look like.”

Again … best friend.

I did the suggested ride-along. Sometime during the night, amidst the fast driving, foot pursuits, and one particularly messy drunk driving arrest, I got the idea that maybe I should be a police officer, too. I figured, if I can’t get a job with a genetics company, I guess I can do this.

I suggested the idea to Wes and he just shook his head like I had suggested if we flapped our arms hard enough we could get the patrol car to fly.

It was not the brightest idea I’ve ever had, and it should have disappeared the next day after a good night’s sleep, but for some reason it stuck with me. I even went home to tell my parents that I had decided to become a police officer.

My mom rolled her eyes and said, “You could get that job with a G.E.D. Why did we bother to send you to college?”

My dad looked up from the television long enough to say, “You owe us $40,000,” then went back to watching MTV music videos. Or, maybe it was a nature program. It was definitely one of the two, since he never watched anything else.

Still looking for validation, I called my grandfather. He was the only person in our family that had actually been a police officer. He worked for the Los Angeles Police Department during the 1920’s and 30’s and was a beat cop during prohibition and the Great Depression. I figured if anyone would appreciate the choice I was making, it would be him.

After I told him my decision, there was a long pause on the phone. He finally said, “Okay.” I thought that would be the end of it, but he suddenly added, “You’re kind of small. You know they’re going to kill you, right?”

Well, with support like that from my family and friends, how could I not become a cop? It was like Destiny tapping me on the shoulder and pointing down a sun-lit path, saying, “In that direction lies happiness, wealth, and contentment.” Then Destiny pointed at a dark briar patch and said, “But f**k that. You should go that way. Show all those assholes they’re wrong.”

So, with my injured pride leading the way, I leapt into the briar patch.

Twenty-five years later, I have successfully proved everybody wrong. I would love to rub their noses in it, but my grandfather and parents are all dead now, so… it kind of takes the fun out of it. It’s like successfully surviving a dangerous dare, but it killed all your friends. There’s nobody left to celebrate your stupidity with.

Wes is still alive, but I can’t talk to him. He’s still convinced he never should have taken me out on that ride-along.

I guess I’ll just have to take a pyrrhic victory lap on my own.

By the way, my advice to anyone who is thinking about becoming a police officer today is this: listen to your friends and family and run in the opposite direction just as fast as you possibly can. In the immortal words of my grandfather, “You’re kind of small. You know they’re going to kill you, right?”

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Lawn Mower Blues

My wife on the riding mower in our back yard.

My wife broke our lawn mower.

Technically, the lawn mower broke while my wife was using it, but it’s just more fun to say that my wife broke our lawn mower. I am usually the person that has my hands on anything mechanical when it decides to die or blow up so, for a change, I get to blame someone else. That doesn’t happen often, and I want to take full advantage of the opportunity.

My wife volunteered to mow the lawn recently on a Saturday to help out with some of the yard work. It was a very nice offer on her part. She sat down on our riding mower, started up the engine, then drove it into the back yard.

Two minutes later, she was back in the house telling me, “I think there’s something wrong with the lawn mower.”

I asked her what she meant by “something wrong.”

She told me, “I don’t know. It stopped working.”

I followed her outside to the back lawn, and she pointed to our mower. She had left it parked in the grass. It looked fine at first, but then I saw the problem. There was a little bit of smoke trickling from under the engine cover, and the drive belt that ran the mower blades was spooled out on the lawn underneath it like the eviscerated guts of some unfortunate animal.

“Something wrong” was a bit of an understatement.

I asked my wife to move the mower back to the garage. I said I would fix it later, knowing full well that I do not have the mechanical skills to “fix” anything more complicated than tightening a screw. (Righty tighty – lefty loosey).

Still, I figured I should give it a look.

I pulled out the owner’s manual for the mower and researched replacing the drive belt. It didn’t look that hard. The dude in the illustration on page 23 didn’t look like he was much smarter than me. And he was smiling. So, how bad could it be?

I lay down on the ground next to the mower, grabbed the belt and slipped it around the first guide wheel. The guide wheel, mounting bracket, and left mower blade all fell off of the mower and into my hands.

Okay. This was going to be a much bigger job than I originally anticipated. Time to go with plan B.

Plan B is the power equipment repair shop thirty miles away. I called the shop and told them I had a broken mower. They told me to bring it in. I explained that bringing it to them might be a bit of problem for me since I don’t have any way to transport anything bigger than a bicycle. When I asked if they could pick it up, since I don’t have a trailer to transport it, they gave me a phone number for a guy who does pick-ups and deliveries to their business.

Let me just say that part again: not a company that does pick-ups. “A guy.”

Nervous, but willing to give it a go, I called their “guy.” The phone rang a few times, then picked up.

“Yup.”

“Um. Is this … Gus?”

“Yup. Who’s this?”

“I was told you might be able to help me move my lawn mower to the repair shop. I need it picked up and transported to get it fixed.”

“Sure. I guess I could do that for you. Where do you live?”

Did any of that sound like a legitimate business transaction? Because to me it felt like the opening scene from a horror movie, and I had just invited some homicidal stranger over to my house to make me his next victim.

Gus, the delivery guy, wanted $125 to pick up the mower. I thought that was a little steep just to carry a lawn mower thirty miles away, but I was sort of stuck. My choices were to pay Gus to move it or live with a giant orange paperweight in my garage for the foreseeable future. I elected to move it.

Gus arrived later that day with his flatbed trailer, then asked for payment up front before he loaded my mower. Again, as I had limited options, I paid him.

He placed a metal ramp from the ground to the back edge of his trailer, then started to drive my mower up onto the flatbed. About halfway up, the ramp slipped off the truck and Gus and my mower came crashing back down to the ground. Gus fell off the mower and landed in the gravel that paves my driveway.

Suddenly, I wasn’t feeling so bad about the hundred and twenty-five bucks. After all, it wasn’t me sprawled out in the driveway next to a broken lawn mower.

After making sure the lawn mower hadn’t gotten any additional damage in the fall, I asked Gus if he was okay. He stood up, made sure there wasn’t any blood on him or bones jutting in odd angles, then nodded.

“Good,” I said. “We get lousy cell phone reception out here and I didn’t want to go all the way back in the house to call for an ambulance.”

Gus said some stuff, but I probably shouldn’t repeat it since I don’t have age restricting software on my blog. He wasn’t very happy.

Trying to be helpful, I reminded him that the mower still wasn’t in the trailer and the repair shop was expecting it to arrive soon. He said some other stuff I won’t repeat.

Gus was not a very pleasant person. After almost getting squashed by a lawn mower I guess I can’t really blame him for that. Eventually, he did get my mower into his trailer and he drove off to get it repaired.

The whole thing was quite an ordeal, and I still blame my wife for the whole thing. After all, she is the one who broke the lawn mower and caused the whole mess.

In a way, she almost killed Gus.

I’m going to tell him that the next time I see him. I’d rather he was mad at her than at me.

Enjoying Deep Dark Thoughts? Follow me on Facebook so you don’t miss a post. Just go to my page and click the “Like” button to receive updates on my blog and other projects.

And you can follow me on Twitter @gallenwilbanks.