24

Jan

Blake’s Fallen Hero.

I’m an adult, I’ll finally admit this.  But, when Blake is upset I curl up in the fetal position and cry because he is sad.  I can’t explain how my little brother’s emotions become my own, but when he hurts I hurt.  It begins with sharing, which is not something he does easily so I know he trusts me.  His speak of Jeffrey, our deceased brother….his hero, is unique in the sense that he rarely speaks of him at all so when he begins I listen with all my soul.  The thing about Jeffrey was that he was ‘the man of the house’ and he took Blake under his wing like his very own son.  Blake was, with all intents and purposes, his.

I can not describe the difficulty of telling Blake, that very tumultuous day, that his hero was missing, gone, vanished, and I had no explanation at the time.  Seven year-old’s are smart, whether you credit them or not, and in an already confusing situation a seven year-old can question a lot.  A simple “He’s missing” doesn’t bode well, so heading into life and death territory may seem like a mature topic.  But, these were not usual circumstances and eventually it had to be done.

Blake was forced out of childhood into topics even adults shouldn’t have to endure.  He held his mother’s hand as she laid paralyzed with grief in bed, begging God to take her instead of her dear son, Jeffrey.  He braved through morbid conversations that no seven-year old should be privy to.  Blake held my heavy head as I cried my eyes out into his shirt for Jeffrey to be alive.  He just assumed the responsibility, but I should have assumed more of the role than I allowed him to take on.  After all, I was the oldest.

There’s a connection between he and I.  Without Jeffrey, I have overcompensated to fill that void.  On occasions, like tonight, Blake confides in me his pain. How he wished Jeffrey could have stuck around, but I remind him how special he was to Jeffrey.  As a matter of fact, Jeffrey was the only person that promised mom he would take care of Blake when she found out she was pregnant.  I know if he just pays attention, he’ll find Jeffrey is just a few step ahead of him.  Luckily, I’m their big sister so I’ve got it covered, but there will never be enough coverage for a fallen hero.

I love you, Blake Allen Miller, and more than anything I hope you know that Jeffrey loved you more than anyone else in this world.  You were/are his soulmate. XOXO.

 

13 years ago Short URL 2 Comments

Family Tree

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25

Nov

Happy Thanksgiving

As the end-of-year rush to fulfill self-promises goes into overkill, I can’t help but be incredibly thankful for the year (thus far).  What a year it has been for me (for a change), but that’s for my year-end blog, naturally.  This is a short but sweet thank you to all of you that come here to read about whatever it is you come here to read about…it gives me no greater joy than to write.  I’m so very thankful for my family and friends (online and offline), and the inspiration they put forth into the world.

It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without a word about my late brother Jeffrey.  My dear brother, you are never far from us during the holidays and just know everyone is getting older while you remain forever young.  Nothing is the same, but it’s how it is supposed to be.  Maybe sometimes I don’t buy into that, but you always find a way to remind me otherwise.  You are in every thank you because without you, Bubba, I wouldn’t truly know the joy of giving thanks and the wonderful gift of knowing how to love.  I’m so thankful to have known you and been inspired by your life.  What an inspirational being you continue to be.

To everyone out there in cyberland, at the moment, I wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving Day and remember to be grateful every other day as well.

Yours truly,

AO

 

13 years ago Short URL Comments

Category Allegory

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23

Aug

Happy 28th Birthday my beautiful brother…

Today you would have been 28.  I’m awake and beginning my first class toward my MBA.  I’d call you after breakfast and wish you a good day had life worked out differently.  Instead, Jeffrey, this day and all it’s about it reserved for those (like myself) whose life you immensely touched.  I’m so very grateful to have had the eighteen years of this life with you and I feel you in the simplest of breezes, the massaging of the summer sun to my skin, the breath between every thought, the comfort of the night sky, and the love within myself.  If love could have kept you here…you would have lived forever..you are so very loved by many people whose lives you’ve changed in even subtle ways and that is what life is about.  So despite your short eighteen years, bubba, you have lived a full life.

Today is reserved for you.  Happy Birthday (you’re in everything every day for me, but today maybe others will be inspired to love hard).

14 years ago Short URL 1 Comment

Family Tree

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09

Aug

Dear Jeffrey, 14 days until you’re 28…

Dear Jeffrey,

There’s something peculiar about age.  If you look too much into the numbers representative of your life you begin to uncover hidden meanings in coincidence.  For instance, I found out that you were deceased and not a missing person in 2006 – I was 28.  What an awfully difficult year that was, but at 28 I had the most important experience of my life.  It’s a fact that you – my lovely brother – encouraged me to move forward in life and put forth effort to live my dreams and accomplish my goals.  Your voice, “One day, sissy, you’ll do something huge.  I believe in you.”

So, how’s this for coincidence…

Getting into NYU’s MBA program is somewhat of a conundrum. People ask me how on earth I got into the highly-selective program and a waived GMAT to boot?  I sit there – unfazed by the subtle insult of ‘how did YOU get into that program (emphasis on the YOU) – to which I dubiously reply, “I had a unique career, personal growth, and killer essay you jealous sonofabitch.”  (okay, so I don’t really name call but I should).  Nonetheless, I am highly selective myself. I select a goal and I fearlessly attempt to achieve it and sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t but at least I have the courage to face failure and grow from it …this is what you taught me, Jeffrey.

My first day of class is in 14 days – August 23rd, 2010 – your 28th birthday.

With all my love,

Sissy


14 years ago Short URL 4 Comments

Family Tree

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15

Jul

Overheard at My Own Funeral

I’m not sure why my mind puts my mom there unless it somehow thinks life will cut my life shorter than hers, or I’m afraid of her and death in the same sentence at all. Regardless, for the sake of this morbid question and for plain good storytelling let’s assume she is there. Assuming my body arrived safely in Oklahoma (pun intended) and if they do carry out my final wishes for cremation, I would probably laugh (can a fly laugh?) at the sight of these people – family, friends from all walks of life, business associates, and people that hate me there just to make sure I actually did die – sitting there in emotional trance staring at this silly little urn. I’m not a religious person by any stretch of the imagination, but my mother is so I will stress that my little beady fly eyes better not see a single pew. The officiant (who better not be a pastor of any sort) reads off a Buddhist passage from Thich Nhat Hanh on death and once he finishes the music starts. I spend a lot of time floating around in my mind and visiting people that have passed through, experiences that affixed itself to my mental postcards, and seeing what I may have missed the first time around, so since my journey is over I hope that someone else begins to float.

Sitting there as my soundtrack begins with Oasis’ “Stop Crying Your Heart Out”, Carolyn comments on the selection and then mentions how she’ll miss Rhoda (me) so I land on her shoulder and buzz “I’m the Mary.”

A few of the Antlers guys including my ex-step father David, true to discriminatory form, mention what a loss it was (of course they aren’t referring to my actual death but my sexuality).

After the first song, the Buddhist-slanting officiant opens the floor for sharing. Stormi steps up first and tells stories that make people laugh because that is who I used to be. She talks about us being so broke when we lived together that we ate bologna sandwiches every day. How we drove the 3-hour stretch from Stillwater to home penniless and with the gas light flashing for 80% of it (you would be surprised at how many times it will come on before your car sputters at all), and when we were forced to get gas we filled it up and sped out of the gas station without paying. See, in New Jersey that is impossible because it’s never self-serve. She’ll then mention how it unleashed a crookedness in us we never knew we had and lead us into Pizza Hut and we fed and ran, fast, hopped in our car with the stolen gas and went home.

My friend Lance would read a poem because he told me there was too much poetry in my soul to get my MBA. I love poetry, and I hope there are several more that read some prose at my permanent going away party.

More music, Khalil Gibran reading, and at the end a reference to my favorite author – Milan Kundera – when the officiant says “Please join me on Jeffrey’s mountain where Alisa will be thrown to the winds – the last symbol of eternal lightness.”

It’s there that all this comes out: Alisa was…fearless, creative, quirky, hard to comfort, funny, thought she was witty but she wasn’t, forgiving and perhaps too forgiving, strong, a wordsmith, a good communicator of the abstract, batshit crazy, not shy, loyal, clumsy, the most outgoing introvert, what you see is what you get, moody, good at keeping secrets but never having any, silly, fascinating to rapidly boring, and then someone will say what a great playlist.

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14 years ago Short URL 6 Comments

Family Tree/Life Times/Plinky

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24

May

How to save a life…

There comes a certain point in life when your life is less about ‘you’ and more about others. 

Welcome, Alisa.  Please stow your carry-on baggage under the seat in front of you or in an overhead bin.  Please take your seat and fasten your seat belt, and make sure your seat is in the upright position.  If you are seated next to an emergency exit, please read carefully the special instructions card located by your seat. If you do not wish to perform the functions described in the event of an emergency, please ask a flight attendant to reseat you.   (Looks around)  “Um, flight attendant?”

Kind of amazing to me, now, that my baggage can fit into an overhead bin or under the seat in front of me; reduced to carry-on size.  I suppose that leaves more room for another’s baggage. 

My sixteen-year old brother is visiting for the summer.  When I told a co-worker this last week his reply was, “Wow, you’re gutsy.  Did someone give you that experience when you were his age?”  It occurred to me…yes, someone did but I was eighteen and though lost I at least had a compass.  I’ve got one summer to help my brother locate a navigation system or else he’ll likely never find his way.

Step 1:  I pull out my baggage, stowed under the seat in front of me, and rummage through the contents that are left inside – the neatly folded and organized life that took a lot of work to keep the things I like and accept that which I could not change – to show him my own compass.  Maybe he won’t be impressed, but at least he’ll see that the overwhelmed is truly the most underwhelmed – unorganized and rattled beings that can’t see the path for the trees. 

Step 2: I’ll let him hold it – try it on for size – and see if that glimpse of security prompts him to find one of his own, or if he’s too far down the unbridled road.  I suspect, like most people his age, he’s got a taste of the adrenaline from entering a one way the wrong way to test his foolish theories.  The stakes are high and to control that is power in an otherwise powerless world; gotta take control of something so might as well own your own demise. 

Step 3: The millennials just don’t understand the value of a compass, do they?  C’mon gen-x’ers take a break from your innovating in the modern world and buy ’em a GPS (afterall, you likely invented it).  At every wrong turn you’ll know that it will ‘calculate back on track’ and they’ll truly never be lost in unfamiliar territory.  But, remember the one important thing…even in the deepest of places a GPS falls off-the-grid, so I hope you’ve at least passed the importance of your compass onto them for safe keeping in these times of need.

14 years ago Short URL 3 Comments

Family Tree/Life Times/Viral Vault

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13

Jan

A letter to one of my former selves…

Circa 1994 (age 16 or 17)

Dear Lisa (I didn’t go by my given and much older sounding name, Alisa, back then):

Hi, I’m who you’re going to be. The journey wasn’t easy, and I won’t candy coat it for you and tell you that the struggle ends. It doesn’t, but it gets easier every year. You’re going to come across great losses in your life from people you love, careers you nearly had, and money you couldn’t keep. But, I won’t begin there. You will experience more than most people your age and to prove this I’ll give you a sneak peak of what’s in store: skydiving, you WILL get a record deal for a band (sorry you don’t become a rockstar though), you’ll join the Army (don’t ask just get out quick), you’ll make a large amount of money all at once (do us both a favor and don’t spend it all in one place, please I beg of you to remember this when the alcohol takes over – trust me on that one), all sorts of love you will experience (try to learn from each and every one and don’t destroy anyone – save the regret for another lifetime), the written word will be your guide (I don’t mean the Bible, so when you get depressed, and you better believe you’ll battle with that an above average amount, just write it out because it will serve you in the long run), you will wind up at MTV (so don’t spend years wasting away in a depression because you live in Antlers, Oklahoma–you do get out of it and do pretty well for yourself), and you’ll get married (I’ll keep this one to myself because it won’t even make sense to you now, but you’ll end up here anyway).

I won’t alarm you with talk of death since I apparently talk about it all too much anyway. Rather, I will just tell you to look around at your family and friends because a few of them will not be around when you sit here writing this post. Enjoy them, and for crying out loud ‘listen’ to everything about someone…don’t listen to speak like you do, stubborn, narcissistic you, just get to know them, really know someone, and cherish it because it won’t last long. Another thing, time…it really DOES fly by so don’t roll your eyes at your grandmother’s sayings (you will say them too, eventually).

About your father, yes, he’s still alive. Well, as alive as he can be considering…his health is fine but his heart…well…it functions perfectly fine but it’s certainly not something you need to win. I have a feeling knowing what I know now won’t help much, in this department, but try to just understand that when someone is in survival mode and stops learning….they can’t really pass anything on to you because they’re too busy trying to just get through life. I’m sorry for this, Lisa, I am, but somewhere inside just find a way to forgive him for what he does not know about love because as you’ll learn, not everyone loves like you do.

So now let’s talk about Mom, yeah I know where you are right now. Frustrated. Don’t worry about that idiot she married, David, he won’t last so give her a break every now and then. Also know that you two are so close, so try not to take it personally when she doesn’t have enough to go around and wastes her energy on David, like I said his time ends (eventually). A couple good things to come out of their relationship..it’ll change your life…trust me on that! Remember, she never really had a ‘single’ life so let her live it up because you turn out pretty damn good anyway and in the end…she’s your best friend and #1 fan.

Your brother, Jeffrey, all I can tell you is that he’s a VERY special person and I urge you to never IGNORE him and ALWAYS be there for him because he NEEDS you. There will be times, a lot of them, that you’ll be selfish but please I beg of you…life is too short to waste on not being there for those you love…so please, Lisa, if you don’t listen to anything I say in this letter just trust that this is the most important…leave your heart open for him. Also, I’ll just say it…he’s your biggest teacher in life. So, if he calls just answer it!

It would be easy to tell you everything, but I wouldn’t change that for you because all of the heartache, and believe me it’ll shake you to your core many many times in the next 15 years, serves you well in the long run so I wouldn’t want you to change anything.

On friends, pay attention to those that care for you because in the end those are the ones still standing. Don’t put the extra effort into those that don’t put it back into you…it’s a major time suckage and trust me you’ve sucked a lot of time. Mostly, you need them even though you think you don’t. Don’t push people away, and you will do that, because no man is an island.

On college, go to class! You think GPA won’t matter, and for the most part it won’t but in one situation that could make your entire life easier it’ll be there! Speaking of college, don’t be confused with some events that happen there because it’s merely a discovery for you and everyone loves you exactly the same anyway, regardless of what you may realize about yourself during this time period! Just go with it and don’t over think it, but you’ll over think everything, I know you, so just try and enjoy the moment.

Internet, yeah I know what you’re thinking ‘what does it mean’. It’ll add up eventually. Let me just tell you when you take your first plunge into this world don’t abuse anyone – you will regret it. Oh, one more thing and don’t ask, just do it…file sharing (the process of direct or indirect data sharing on a computer network with various levels of access privilege; also, the process of direct or indirect file transfer via the Internet). Once you know what the internet is come up with ways to use file sharing..I’ll give you a few hints…music, video, pictures. You’re smart enough to do this, I assure you it will pay off.

Relationships…I know it seems you won’t have them (still continue to fantasize about romance because it’ll hopefully pay the bills one day), but you will and most of them won’t work out. Just know that each one teaches you about love. You will get your heartbroken, you will break hearts, and mostly you’ll have soulmates, so don’t spend too much time staring into the abyss…it gets dark and lonely and quite frankly you tend to forget to shower and your OCD (you’ll learn about this later) gets pretty intense.

Alcohol, it’s your arch enemy for many years so try, TRY, to never drink from its cup, shot, can, bottle, bellybutton (don’t ask), as an escape from something difficult….it’s too easy to rely on and you like to rely on nothing and no one (though you will).

Patience, start now! It’s one of your weaknesses, so start practicing it now.

A couple more things before I let you go ‘drag main’ in your new camaro….when you drive PAY ATTENTION and BUCKLE UP, don’t throw any books at Mrs. Gardner but if you have to just don’t throw the pen too (too messy), Be nice to Eron Eighmy (you’ll meet him later, he’s a nice fella) at the prom, drink water for every alcoholic drink (remember this it’s important), don’t drop out of college (like I said, and believe me, you DO get out of Oklahoma), don’t drink and drive, don’t park your car in the first place you want to when you make it to NYC (you’ll thank me later), steer clear of drinking around a fairly well-respected manager (professionally he’s great but personally he’s a slime ball that takes advantage of little girls), don’t query agents before you’re finished-completely–with manuscripts, if you meet an annoying girl named Ericka around 2006 just ignore her completely and don’t ever–let me repeat–don’t ever befriend her (she’s a nutjob, no really certifiably insane), don’t try to make things last that shouldn’t, don’t loan movies or books to people because you’ll never get them back, read like a maniac all the time and never stop, and lastly, don’t think you can climb in windows (especially drunk).

I hope this letter helps you, Lisa. You grow into a unique person that has a lot to give. Use your talents, enjoy the music, and always remember ‘in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make’ (The Beatles). Now, go in the next room and hang out with your brother…it’ll mean a lot later on.

Very truly yours,

Alisa (age 32)

14 years ago Short URL 10 Comments

Native Narcissism

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21

Oct

Who Am I?

I’ve started this question half a dozen times since I could comprehend the depth of it.  Here I sit, nearly 32, not old enough to be running a media company but not young enough to be in its demographic.  Hell, I only remember when the son-of-a-bitch first started, but what do I know.  The question is “Who am I?”

When I was younger and all my grievances in life had my parent’s to blame, I was Divide Community.  You see Divide Community is one of those double meaning words.  You know the words that would be hard to learn the meaning of in another language.  As a writer, we hope to be able to bridge the language barrier gap to create a universal language.  As a civilian, it’s just a book; my first book.

My journey begins in 1998 when I wanted to really answer this question; “Who Am I?”  I was working at a storage unit place, for minimum wage in the late ’90s, and had a lot of time to reflect.  Though time was plenty, my knowledge was less so.  Escape, relaxation, don’t think about yesterday or tomorrow, repressing, yeah, that was me.  I was angry and I didn’t know why, so I thought I’d just start writing.  Forrest Gump of the word processor, I typed until my ailment burst open key-by-key.  Eventually, I had a semblance of an idea for a memoir.  You see memoir’s really weren’t as big of a market back then s0 I just thought it was a book of true life.  Nearly 300 pages of unformed and stoned thoughts about who I was.  The book sat in a box for three years.

In college, the one I went to after I dropped out and fled to New York with a band of hippes and then went back, I met two kids that I immediately felt a kinship for and managed their immature band, The All-American Rejects.  I was a small fish in a small pond and I had Madonna as a role model, so I whipped their prepubescent asses in shape and got them a record deal.  They went on to sell millions, and I was screwed out of millions.  Not to mention that disorder I got called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that pretty much goes from Psychiatric code to Psychiatric code without being insane and having a clear traumatic trigger.  I got this after my brother, the only person I had as a witness to my childhood, became a missing person.  Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Missing Person, Platinum-Selling The All-American Rejects, Retarded Love, NYC, and a lot of crazy stories from an alcoholic.  Who really had time to ask, “Who am I?”

Once my Oklahoma savior personality kicked in, I crawled out of that abyss and decided to think about who I was.  There was a lot I’d experienced at a young age, there were experiences that are unimaginable for the majority, and there were parts of me I just started to realize, so I wrote.  I finished Divide Community, and it was who I thought I was.

Something peculiar happened, I became happy.  You see by this time I was going into my Thirties and several therapists later, I realized that maybe I could never sustain happiness (as a therapist once told me) but at least I could realize when I was happy.  This was a breakthrough, so I set out to edit who I was in a final book format.

My childhood seemed less emotional and more like a great story.  The themes of suffering that were sprinkled within the text just showed me how strong I was, and it occurred to me that there is not a concrete answer to the lifelong question of, “Who Am I?”

I’m my likes and dislikes, my pain and my happiness, and the love I took and the love I made.  I’m several labels like a sister, daughter, wife, analyst, Buddhist, Lesbian writer, teacher, student, female, entrepreneur and overall pain-in-the-ass.  I’m adjectives like moody, beautiful, snarky, sweet, insane, neurotic, spiritual, impatient and judgmental.  I’m my experiences both negative and positive.  I’m the karma I reap, and after all this time I have realized I am not the alpha and the omega (though in high school I may have argued differently).  I’m everything around me and never did I appreciate it more.

Within my writing you can discover chapters of my life that struck a story in the world, but it’s what is between the lines that reveals the most.

14542658

15 years ago Short URL 3 Comments

Native Narcissism

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08

Oct

Oklahoma, I still believe in ya!

Some people believe you choose your family prior to birth, and if that’s true then I chose the most loving, open hearted, and understanding, family one could have picked. Unfortunately, they settled in Oklahoma, by way of California. Yeah, I don’t get it either but so it goes that my grandmother, the eldest of the Montano clan, made the pilgrimage to Oklahoma for a man and her little sister followed suit. Had they met after the second wave of the Women’s Lib., I’m sure the story would be that the men made the pilgrimage to California for the gold!

Oklahoma might be landlocked and not feature ocean-front property, nor does it have a tranquil desert spread through its land but the Native American history is still very well and alive in small towns named after the legacy; Checotah, Geronimo, Hoot Owl, Indiahoma, Kiowa, Muskogee, Oolagah, Pawhuska, Quapaw, Sapulpa, Tahlequah, Talihina (where I was born), Tishomingo, Wapanucka, Yukon, and so on. If you’ve never been to Oklahoma then you couldn’t possibly know the beauty of the Kiamichi Mountains in Fall especially since my brother’s spirit is perched at the very top of those mountains.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of red dirt that doesn’t come off your shoes easily, or at all if you have an old pair. Hell, the red dirt even has it’s own genre of music, and it’s not just “Texas Red Dirt.” Fact, red dirt only got from Oklahoma to Texas because Texas sucks. See, I’m a loyal Okie that pokes fun at Texans (even though in reality Oklahoma is more culturally devoid than Texas), lets everyone know which celebrities were from Oklahoma, and roots on Oklahoma’s college teams since we have no professional ones.

I’m not blindly loyal though, to anyone, ever. If my brother murdered someone, I would urge him to confess or I would have to do it for him (cough, cough, unlike some sisters in Oklahoma I know). When Oklahoma voted McCain over Obama due to racism (I took a survey of which I won’t go into but yeah the “N” word is commonplace), I’m the first to stand up and let people know that the majority does not speak for the minority. Thankfully, the rest of the world picked up the slack on that one and Obama is in office. When the bigot Oklahoma State Representative, Sally Kern, made headlines for her hateful anti-gay remarks and continues to do such, I call her office non-stop to try and educate her on Gays, Lesbians, Bisexual, and Transgendered people. Even now her ignorance shows:

Sally Kern is an Oklahoma state representative with her own, unique take on the economic crisis: gays are to blame.

So let’s apply some simple Math for Ms. Kern (not sure they had that when she was in school). If a low population of people can be the reason for a state’s entire economic crisis then that must mean that the revenue these people make are insanely higher than the majority. Now, let’s get fancy and put in some statistics..that would mean that the minority factor here, LGBT’s (same-sex couples accounted for less than 1% of overall Oklahoma population in the 2000 census–I’m assuming that is because most were afraid of being openly gay in Oklahoma and by afraid I mean fearful for their life, as well as the fact the census under served the gay community in 2000 and single LGBT’ers) make so much more money than 99% of Oklahoma’s population that we alone can make or break a state. Wow, no wonder Pepsi, MTV, and other big corporations have embraced us. That also must mean, granted you assume the more money you make equals to more intelligence and academic merit you have, that LGBT folks are pretty damn smart! In the next census (2010) the LGBT community will be better served by collecting data on same-sex couples (still yet under serving the community by not including gender identification and single LGBT’ers but it’s a start), and I’m going to go out on a limb and just tell you that us gay couples contribute a buttload of money into the economy so imagine if our taxes were taken away from the entire country. Wow! If we can single handedly break an entire state, I’d hate to see what we can do to a country.

Oh Ms. Kern, you’re an idiot.

Oklahoma, listen up, ok? hehehe. This is just plain archaic what I’m reading about abortion. I know my small hometown would easily be able to spot that girl that ‘moved closer to her orthodontist’ or got half a dozen abortions to save her overly strict parents from embarrassment. We suspected in high school, but now stuff like that would be confirmed. C’mon, isn’t discrimination tiresome?

Get on the phones, call the leaders in your state and let them know how you feel about this stuff or write a letter. I can speak from experience that your words and you matter in change, but you need to be heard. Let Ms. Kern know if only 1% of the population is accounting for your state being broke then for heaven’s sake why wouldn’t you want the minority to be fully integrated into the population..imagine what the poor state would get back from the active minorities?! Women, get on the phone and let your state government know that YOU have the say over your body and deserve the privacy of your choices.

I don’t live in Oklahoma, and I’m happy to work for a company (MTV) that holds equality in the highest regard so that I can achieve greatness within it. I also live in a state that includes me fully into the population (lucky them that they get 45% of my paycheck for simply giving me something that should be free, freedom). I still remain loyal to Oklahoma, which is why I posted this blog because there is 1% of the Oklahoma population that are bullied by Ms. Kern and company and their spirit is heavy.

Oklahoma is beautiful, and even though I’m disappointed in the politics of the poor state over and over again, I still have hope that those amazing spirits that reside there (like my family and friends that are truly great people) will join together to make Oklahoma great like it’s people. Then you can send Ms. Kern to Texas!

15 years ago Short URL Comments

On A Serious Note

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12

Aug

Electronic Breakfast Table

Breakfast was a symbol of  something pure that products of divorce, such as myself, used as a compass to happiness; a happy family.  While my own family ate wherever they lingered in their solitude and typically only ate together at one table on holidays, there was this ever-present dream of a wholesome family meal; untainted and a ‘what if’ attainability.

The few times we wrestled with sitting down at the table for a family breakfast or dinner, the only thing served was silence or resentment; not much of a variety of tastes.  Instead, we could watch Leave It To Beaver reruns at dinner time and watch the Cleavers, loving and virtuous, communicating and eating a full bird.  I didn’t get to eat a full bird until recently and if you’ve ever seen a full bird during preparation it’s enough to make you wonder if even June Cleaver, America’s most perfect mother, was a deviant.  Looking back, her obsession with kitchen activities and ability to do exceptional card tricks may have just been OCD and a gambling problem.  I guess even the All-American family has their imperfections, but it didn’t keep us from looking up to them and wanting a little slice of Cleaver pie.

We watched the Jetsons and heard the media projections on the future, but it came and went without flying cars and watch computers.  We didn’t experience the Apocalypse in 2000, and I’m pretty sure the one in 2012 is just a ploy to sell more batteries and water.  However, I can’t deny the digital age in front of me and the lack of simplicity all around me.  Why would children ride bikes when there’s an app for that?  What will become of imagination and pretend when it comes from a device?  What will double entendre become but acronyms and symbols like OMG PIG : p  (Oh My God Pretty Intelligent Girl–sticking tongue out) .  I failed in college at learning another language and luckily Ebonics didn’t stick, but I may have to noodle on text language.

I’ve got to finish this blog posting soon though because my iPhone is blowing up, but the point is that the NY Times came out with an article about electronic breakfast tables (my term, not theirs).  It’s a sad reality that my wholesome symbol of family will be as extinct as playing house in a real tree house and not on SIMS.

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15 years ago Short URL 1 Comment

On A Serious Note

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