How Embarrassing...?

One of the first writing assignments I was ever given in High School was to write about my most embarrassing moment.  I just wrote down something along the likes of, “Having to write this stupid infantile meaningless (etc.)... essay.”  It was a litany of double-spaced synonyms stretching down the page, and after handing it in, I was told to redo it properly.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to write up something personally embarrassing to me.  It was that I couldn’t remember one.  To me, being unable to think up anything was embarrassing in itself.

I couldn’t remember anything that could be considered embarrassing, so I made something up that could be considered embarrassing to other people. That essay was accepted and praised for being more honest.  But I can’t recall a word I wrote.

I’ve never been accustomed to feeling embarrassed.  Being self-conscious about being seen doing something in public, sure.  Being uncomfortable about reading / watching something that makes me emotionally insecure, sure.  But, not typical things that would normally embarrass other people.  I didn’t mind when my Mom showed up at school to give presentations and help out.  She was looking out and supporting me.

As a kid, I would be late for when the school bus came to pick me up, being more preoccupied with the TV.  At first, Mom had me go to school in my pyjamas, *certain* that the shame would shake me out of my complacency.  It didn’t.

I only changed my habits when I went to school without having lunch prepared, and then wasn’t allowed to have any food.  The teachers had been warned beforehand, and were told not to share their lunches with me, no matter how much I complained, even as they agonized over my reactions, but my Mom said it was necessary.  When I came home that day, I was practically starving, and my Mom said something along the likes of, “If you had been prepared before the bus came, you would’ve had lunch.”

Since then, I’ve always made it a point to be on time for anything.

It might’ve seemed borderline abusive at the time, but she was just applying Logical Consequences, which are different from Natural Consequences, where a child learns things after making silly mistakes and figuring things out, which is pretty much the mainstay of children’s TV episodes.  Once the child realizes that certain actions result in certain consequences, they’ll be better prepared to avoid doing that again.  But other times, there are moments when simply learning the lesson afterwards doesn’t work, or won’t stick without outside intervention. 

My main problem was that I never learned these potentially reputation-saving lessons until long after the fact.

When most other students would have been embarrassed at the concept of sex ed, I just engaged the lessons with the same clinical detachment as any other class, having been familiar with the source material, thanks to books like Where Did I Come From? and What’s Happening to Me?, which explained body functions like the most normal thing in the world with silly drawings.

That in turn led to me being called the 12-letter ‘M’ word.  (No, the other one)

One time in class, the teacher gave a question.  I don’t remember the question, let alone what subject we were talking about.  It could’ve been ‘things that were once thought to be harmful’, but I remember the answer I piped up with, which was, “Like Masturbating?” which elicited tons of laughs from all the students around me.  I had no idea what was so funny, and it had to be explained that even though the text said the act wasn’t something to be ashamed of, what I said wasn’t the kind of thing normally said in public conversation.  For about a year, I was paired up with a lab partner who disparagingly nickednamed me ‘Masturbation’.

Even though the act was on my mind, having it continuously pointed out and reminded really rankled on me.  I couldn’t understand why these High School teens were so utterly infantile about basic sexuality.  (Looking back on my thoughts and actions now, that should’ve been a big honking clue)

To this day, I have reoccurring dreams of being naked at school, but in these scenarios, I’m more concerned about completing my 3-month project due in 2 weeks that I haven’t even started and didn’t even know about.

I also never understood what was supposed to be so funny about men wearing women’s clothes.

If it was okay for women to wear men’s clothes, then shouldn’t the reverse be true?  Just wear whatever’s comfortable!  If the clothes you want to wear are on the other side of the rack, that shouldn’t be a deterrent, just as long as it fits.  

I don’t really care about fashion or style, just function.  My choices are fairly basic.  I prefer to wear soft clothes with seamless seams, little social commentary (allegiance to specific sports teams or cartoons are visually distracting) I’ve often had to have the holes in my clothes pointed out, since I’m so used to feeling comfortable, and don’t really care about how I’m perceived.

When I started getting more invested in comics that weren’t of the Newspaper variety, I was quite enthusiastic about reading digest collections of Richie Rich and Archie.  (Don’t sneer - they were extremely popular and cheap) But the more I read them, the more I noticed that there was an element in these comics that kept cropping up that annoyed me.  It wasn’t the repetitive plots, the page limitations or the corny jokes.  It was that the sentences invariably ended with exclamation points, and there were very few instances where periods were put in place, and that put me off.  (Question marks didn’t count)

When I become overexposed to media, I become hyper-aware of the limitations of the form, and once notice something that keeps showing up, it becomes impossible to ignore, especially when certain themes start to show up.

I don’t know when it started (probably around Twilight & the Hunger Games), but I got annoyed when dystopian stories struggling under suppression started shoehorning in romance plots which only served to distract, particularly love triangles that hardly elevated the story, and would’ve benefited from their absence.  Why did EVERY story need a forced romance subplot?  Being more interested in creating artificial drama than authentic chemistry.

I got so annoyed by this that I even parodied this outlook early on in my WebNovel:

Homeless Unfunnies

This week, during the For Better or For Worse rerun, we got a comic that wasn't included in their collection:

On the FoobJournal, it was speculated that this comic might've been aimed at Lynn Johnson's kids.  Oftentimes, the only way for the family members to get an idea of what was bugging their mother was to read the strips in advance, otherwise, they'd be hit by the themes six weeks after the fact.  In this instance, this moralistic message of "Appreciate what you have, since others have it worse" was actually another collaborative approach with Cartoonists to devote attention to the Homeless problem.  This happened on October 25, 1988, a year after the last Famine effort failed to attract larger numbers.

As usual, we'll start with the better-known works, and work our way through obscurer titles.







Its sad to think that the above comic still remains relevant, back when politicians were less corrupt and more competent than the are now.

Of the multiple comics shown so far, only Doonesbury managed to keep a running cast of actual Homeless people, Alice and Elmont.  The former was physically similar to elderly politician Lacey Davenport that a later storyline was done having the then-Alzheimer suffering Republican mistaking the homeless lady for her sister, indulging in a brief Prince & Pauper role switching.  I only bring this up, because of another character who shares some physical similarities.

Most serial stories didn't bother to shoehorn the Homeless factor in, but the few that did, did so in a way that didn't fully detract from their story arc.  The most notable being Tom Batiuk's Crankshaft and Funky Winkerbean.



Some comics put their spin on the issue through their cynical worldview.



Jeff Martin's Mr. Boffo has had countless examples of Homeless people comics, so I didn't feel compelled to save the one I saw in Microfiche, but found one of his other comics, reproduced below.  Someday, I may go back and fine the missing Boffo comic. 

Even wild animals who roam the woods & countryside had a word or two to say about the subject.




Henry just basically puts a band-aid on the problem - by making a birdhouse, since people are more likely to support dumb animals than actual human beings.



Fun fact - this Sally Forth comic actually came a day earlier on Monday, but I included it, since it thematically fits.

In Tennis, Love is Nothing

Every year, I struggle to try to find something suitable for my parents.  And every year, I wind up short, because they're pretty self-sufficient, and don't have very many wants or needs.  Anything that needs to be replaced or repaired can be quickly found online for a fraction of the price, and there are various items that can be fixed with some slight adjustment.  Plus, my Father's quite the handyman, though computers are outside his area of expertise.  Likewise, my Mother is trying to cut down on heavy books, preferring instead to read them on her e-reader device.  (Even though multiple novels on her reading list may spontaneously disappear without warning)  So, rather than try to appease their interest through Gift Cards (which they can afford & don't need), I need to delve deeper to indulge their baser interests, especially when Christmas and Hanukah have lined up so close to their lunar dates.

And the surefire way to appeal to their target audience is to talk about Tennis.  To my regular comic readers (all five of them), forgive me for going outside the realm of normalcy, giving attention to a sport not normally seen on the funny pages, particularly for a season-specific sport, but procrastination and stinginess have brought me to this point.

From a young age, my parents were enamored with the sport, having the convenience of living next to a Tennis arena.  They even had me go to lessons there so I could join them and learn the sport.  There was even a ping-pong table in the basement for handling a miniature version of the game with ease.  With practice, I was able to handle the racquet with ease, and even bounce a tennis ball on it multiple times.

And yet, I never really warmed up to the sport.  I couldn't feel comfortable playing out in the bright sun, wearing reflective clothing.  Not to mention the unnecessary dress code of having to wear white shoes instead of my more comfortable running shoes.  Part of this was my innate boredom in waiting for the ball to come back.  I wanted something more stimulating, so in my spare time as a teen, I would play against the wall by bouncing two balls at once.  One ball to bounce back, and another ball coming back as soon as I made my swing.  Naturally, the wall won all the time.

Another notion that constantly infuriated me was the ball going over the high-wire fence, and having to go all the way around into the field to get the ball, toss them over, only to have the ball go over the fence again.

It's all probably a matter of taste.  I seem to be missing a particular flipped switch that enjoys doing extravascular activities, since my parents keep engaging into the game, despite returning home with frequent injuries.  I dreaded when these happened, because it'd mean that my Mother would get invariably upset, because she couldn't work out her frustrations on the court, meaning she'd be more crabbier than usual.  And she's crabby even on her best days.  So when she injured her back a long time ago, she couldn't return to the court for a good two years, leaving me to suffer the brunt of her wrath.  (Not that she'd beat me with a tennis racquet - I don't bounce very well)  She couldn't even enjoy doing any of the trickier dances on Dance Dance Revolution, because many of the advanced stages require doing multiple jumps in a row, which only aggravated her spine further.

In recent years, they haven't been able to enjoy the sport as much as they'd like to, but like addicts who need their fix, they get their required allotment of exercise by a similar substitute - PickleBall.  It's similar enough to Tennis, but played with ping-pong-like paddles and a whiffle ball instead, which requires a delicate touch.  And like Tennis, it has a similarly weird scoring system.

The surest way for me to lose all interest in any game that requires coordination, dexterity and skill is to have a bunch of intrusive rules that limit the amount of movement and fun in playing a game.  Sure, they're there to level out the playing field and make things fair, as well as add a degree of difficulty, but I feel freer when I don't have to hold back on my restrictions.  Or maybe my indifference may be something more innate - the surest way for a child to lose interest in a hobby is for parents to have a vested interest in it in the first place.

Pregnant Pause

Just a few years ago, the limit for humanity seemed to be 5 billion.  Then it was raised to 7 billion, and now, even 9-11 billion doesn't seem like much of a reach.  When my sister got married, I respected the fact that they chose not to have a baby.  The Earth already had too much of a population explosion, and another kid around the house would be more trouble than it's worth.

That, and I didn't want to share attention away from myself.

But then five years later, some kind of Biological clock switch suddenly flipped, and my sister decided to join the ranks of the statistically deprived.

While this doubtlessly made my parents happy, this news filled me with an air of impending doom.

My sister is one of the few people that I connect well enough to share my inner thoughts with, and can have meaningful conversations with over shared interests.  Having a baby around would mean she'd have less time to spare for the extra library books I take out for her that I think she'll really like.  Not to mention having a toddler in the process of growing up would wind up damaging the numerous comics that I've helped accumulate for both of us.

My sister, in all her glory, before bloating up.

But mostly, it's because I'm phobic about babies in general.

A close-up of my sister's unique shirt...

I've always dreaded being in the presence of children, because their sudden movements are too unpredictable and uncontrollable for me to react.  Furthermore, my number one fear is that I'll do or say something that could potentially corrupt their impressible young minds.  As much as they might look up to me for my sense of humour, my lifestyle isn't exactly something they should strive to emulate, since I'd be simultaneously the most mature and immature adult they'd ever know.  I'm more a model for a cautionary tale than anything.

Which looks a lot like those foam fruit protectors.

Assurances that I'll be a wonderful Uncle aren't very reassuring.  I have no experience in that field, and doubt that I'll overcome my anxiety anytime soon.  Just because women have been having children for generations is no excuse for my naive inexperience.  One of my guiltiest fantasies regarding babies is to hang around the paternity ward during a lightning storm, and when asked about the gender (is it a boy or a girl?), to cackle maniacally, and proudly proclaim, "IT'S ALIVE!!"  Scenarios like the above is why I shouldn't be trusted around children.  (Not that I relate to anybody within my age group anyways)

You can't look at these apples the same way anymore.

The plan was to keep my sister's pregnancy a secret until she revealed the big news on her social media.  However, the influx of hormones in her system made her continuously tired, and she wanted to draw a picture commemorating the moment, but kept putting it off.  At this point, keeping her bulging belly from being noticed is getting harder to ignore, and is pretty much general knowledge by now.  To make up for that oversight, I decided I couldn't wait any longer, and use the picture she drew on the card, commemorating her announcement.

(Chant - if you want to switch this self-caricature out, now's the time)

Even at this stage, I'm not 100% certain that the baby won't turn out to be flawed upon delivery.  Every expectant mother lives under the illusion that their babies would turn out perfect, but there are so many things that can go wrong.  It could be premature, it could be stillborn, it could be handicapped (my sister and I were both born Deaf), it could suffer from any number of potential death-related injuries or undergo a fate worse than death.

Some women cry when they hear their baby's heartbeat.  My sister took the opportunity to record the sound of the baby's heartbeat instead.  That's just an indication of how much things have changed since the old days.  People have become so accustomed to taking selfies they're now attempting doing them while driving, when the previous distraction worry was just texting. It's only a matter of time before someone decides to take the ultimate selfie by capturing their birth via cellphone.  Future hospital dialogue would likely be in the vein of "I - ugh - I can see the head!" all while holding the instrument of vanity aimed at their privates.  That'd be an unfortunate home video quite difficult to explain for any unsuspecting soul who'd find it.

On the plus side, my sister's deafness has the unintentional advantage of being unable to hear her child's overnight cries.  That should make sleeping much easier for her.

Even so, I compiled a list of universal constants that, baring a sudden shift in evolution, should withstand the test of time for... a decade or two, assuming humanity lives long enough to survive past then.

You'll attempt to show your favorite children's movies (and pre-screen the latest releases to ensure they're suitable for your kid), but the things children get scared of may not be the same disturbing things seen on the screen.

Your kid will be a constant purveyor of TV shows and movies that'll be watched repeatedly, beyond the scope and limit of what you'd consider reasonably acceptable.

Your kid will not believe that there were novelty comics / books / cartoons / movies that were better than the current stuff, and that the people who created such timeless classics are dead, or about to be dead.

Your kid will develop its own interests, which will drive you nuts, since you'll get repeat requests for toys along those lines.  If you can't provide, you'll have one unhappy customer.

Your kid's interest in these various forms of entertainment will reach fanatical levels that will last a lifetime, or peter out and die, once they've gotten used to the formula, and move on to more stimulating things.

Your kid will suss out the plot points to many old TV shows and movies that existed before their time, in order to catch up on many pop-culture references.  Either through osmosis, word of mouth or a general promiscuity for spoilers.

You will struggle to maintain your opinion from the "helpful" influence of well-meaning friends and family members, who may have conflicting ideas of how to best raise your child.

You will be continuously astounded by how smart and stupid your kid is; retaining astounding amounts of trivia while remaining remarkably ignorant on other issues.

You'll struggle to wrestle your child's attention away from the shiny allure of latest technologies, which they'll instinctively master.

You'll attempt to shield your child from the harsher realities of the world.  Up to a certain point, this will work, but eventually, your kid will find out these things, whether you like it or not.

Your kid will be an adept mimicker, aping aspects of its parents... up to the day it'll rebel and enthusiastically decide NOT to follow in your footsteps.  Enjoy it while you can!

Your kid will ask questions you won't have answers to.

Your kid will attempt to keep secrets from you.  Chances are, you'll find out about these secrets yourself, and you'll be split on deciding to play ignorant, and let your kid think they pulled a fast one on you.  If the situation is serious enough, you'll want to confront your kid over these issues before they become a blown-out problem.

You'll also have to learn about deciding when to give your baby reins of control over your lives, and when to put your foot down, no matter how painful it may be in the short term.  Being a parent means setting rules with boundaries, making sure those rules get enforced, and that there are consequences for breaking them.