When the question came up yet a third or 15th time the new response was I am divorced from reality but connected to sanity.
“Why can’t you give me a straight answer?”
“Why don’t see what sex with your dog does for you? Put on a furry suit, drop down on all fours and bark a bit. I hear we live in times where anything is possible so you can say you identify as a bitch.”
That is not the kind of line you expect to generate warm fuzzy feelings from but sometimes there is no interest in such things.
Ask me questions you don’t deserve to be informed about or things you know cross the line and you give me an opportunity to see how quick I can be on on my feet.
Makes for interesting moments because sometimes my wit is biting and sometimes it bites me instead and I am the one who stumbles.
But if you don’t fear failure or making a fool of yourself you put yourself in position to do all sorts of interesting things. Might as well gather more experiences as you go along the path towards the underworld.
Lover Of Hyperbole & Things That Require Two Hands
I responded to one of those ridiculous Facebook phishing attempts at being a lover of hyperbole and things that require two hands and then added some additional material for color.
I dated two blondes, one who was my height and the other shorter but didn’t attempt to marry either. A taller brunette talked about marriage with me more than once, promising her hand and then taking it away while promising I might win it back.
I didn’t wait to win it back and just took it again. Took the ring off of one finger and sold it to cover rent and dinner at Geracis. Fortunately it covered a meal at Corky and Lennys plus a platter of Bazooka gum.
Sadly someone stole all of the comics from the gum. I blame Bazooka Joe.
Once again someone inquired as to the meaning of it all and I said some things don’t have to have any meaning. I just write.
“No, every writer has an idea of the story they are going to tell and so do you.”
I laughed and said that is not always true. I have a dozen different stories in my head at any given time and sometimes what I spit out at you has little connection to any. I like coming up with material on the spot and seeing where it takes me.
****
I signed up for another Genealogy service today on a whim and a bit of frustration.
I have stumbled across people who have included various family members in their trees and haven’t been able to see the connection. They weren’t distant relatives either, they were an uncle and grandparent or two.
So I gained more visibility and determined that in two cases I doubt there is any relationship between us and if there is, it is not based upon the connection they made. Their scholarship is lacking and so I came to consider if I ought to send them a note.
Something soft and non aggressive that would help say we might be connected but not the way you have it.
Part of me doesn’t care. I am not the family tree police and there is probably no harm in leaving it.
Got me thinking again about whether I would sign up for DNA testing. I have a certain curiosity about what that would show but have hesitated.
It is not because I worry about family secrets coming out. I already have learned about a few and expect there have to be more because people are people.
We get involved in all sorts of different kinds of relationships and you don’t always know how certain things play out. Ok, it is different for women because if you get pregnant and deliver the baby it is pretty obvious that certain things happen.
Doesn’t work that way for men every time. I know of two stories in which the guys sort of passed through town and found out years later they had kids they didn’t know about.
Don’t think that is a common thing but I don’t know that is uncommon either.
And I definitely know of one aunt who gave up a baby for adoption. That baby is technically a first cousin of my father but I can’t ask him or Dad about what happened because they are both gone.
I know the son and he doesn’t know the details either, just a few things shared by his father. All the people that knew full details are gone now.
There are other stories I know that have some rough similarities. Babies given up for adoption or kids born through complicated relationships.
What worries me about DNA testing isn’t that kind of stuff but the security of my DNA. What happens if it is given to an insurance company and they think they have found potential pre-existing conditions that would drive up my rates or disqualify me from securing healthcare.
Probably unlikely, but not impossible.
What happens if they clone me and I don’t know. Yeah, I know that they aren’t cloning humans but if they did I’d want my clone or clones to be known to me.
We’d want to work out a schedule for who gets stuck working and or doing the chores we despise.
Message In A Bottle
I found immigration papers for my maternal grandfather’s family for the their move from Canada to the U.S. but haven’t found anything yet for my great-grandparents move there from Russia.
Found some stuff that suggests they weren’t always Silvers but might have been named Silverman. Got some Silvermen relatives on the other side too which is to say who knows if that is what we were called in Europe.
Names change and or are adjusted. Got more than a couple of Israeli relatives who are named Vilner because there is no W in Hebrew.
Hell, I have sat in rooms where they called be my Hebrew name, Yehoshua Vilner and thought about whether I would be different if I stopped using English and went solely by the Hebrew.
English is my first tongue and what I think most naturally in, but I could get deep enough into Hebrew to change some of that. Probably not numbers though, at least not without effort.
We tend to always count in whatever language we first learned to count in.
Anyhoo, you express yourself differently in other languages because how you construct your thoughts is a bit different.
Fascinates me, so very interesting and I suppose it is tied into why I appreciate those who can effectively write in more than one language.
Going through the various resources and documents that provide insight into family events feels a little bit like getting a message in a bottle.
Got about four or five lines that don’t provide many details that you are supposed to use to figure out what story you are being told and whether there is a call-to-action.
Sometimes I wonder what happens if some of my material is read 125 years from now. Will there be enough context for the reader to figure it out?
Will they know when I am serious and when I am playing? Will they be able to discern truth from fiction and or decipher pop culture references in a way that I intend?
In theory we do that with Shakespeare and other authors but who knows if we are really getting it. Who knows if old Willie wouldn’t look at us and ask WTF made us think that x means y.
