I have been struggling with blogging this week. I had something I really wanted to write about but it was remotely related to someone I work with and since I have work friends who are FB friends who therefore probably see the link for my blog from time to time and may be tempted to read it (DON'T! DON'T PUSH THE "My Blog" BUTTON!) I had to hold off and think of something else to write about.
So I tried to think of something interesting in my life that didn't involve anyone who might be reading this, and since I have the most boring life ever and my kids have neither said nor done anything remotely funny this week, that doesn't leave me a lot of options. And when I say "anything remotely funny" what I mean is that the two of them have fought so incessantly this week that there have been times when I have wanted to leave them in the middle of the grocery store and pretend that they were somebody else's lost children. The nights that they have stayed at their fathers and engendered similar feelings in HIM have been profoundly relieving to me. So that's that.
I had a massage yesterday before my chiropractic adjustment, something I have not had in more than a year. (New resolution: get a massage EVERY MONTH!) Whenever I meet a new massage therapist I am always a little apprehensive, because if they don't say anything about all of the tattoos I feel that I have somehow shocked them. So I always have to gear myself up to explaining the meanings behind my tats, since all of them are there for a reason. The one that seems to give people the most pause is the celtic knot on my calf. Its not the knot itself, but what is written around it:
I have written about Bastard Nation before. Being a bastard was a big part of my life for a very long time. Still is, really. But I am reminded of an incident years ago, when I was in 5th grade, before BN meliorated the word "Bastard" for me and all I understood was the pejorative sense.
I was a pretty smart little kid in my day (never mind the dumbass I've become). I learned to read very early and had a struggle in public school because I picked up what was being taught in the classroom too quickly and got bored waiting for everyone else to catch on. This was of course not exacerbated in any way, shape or form by my yet-to-be diagnosed ADHD. Of course not.
There was a small group of us at my elementary school who were selected by the administration to be in a sort of "honors" group. We would go do special projects, we tutored (tortured) other students with reading and math, we got to have "free periods" where we would play endless games of 20 Questions. I supposed in the 1970's this was what passed for an "advanced" program in the Seattle public schools; nonetheless, we all knew we were smart and special.
When I hit fifth grade the district hired a new teacher. One of the other honors kids and I both ended up in her classroom. It was in one of the portables, I remember that. This teacher had a very strong personality, and I think right off the bat we didn't really like each other. But what really frosted my cookies about her is that she didn't like the fact that Owen and I got excused every day to go to our group work while the other kids had to stay and do the regular classroom work. There were couple of times she actually refused to let us go because she wanted us to stay and work on whatever particular lesson she was teaching. I grew to actively hate her and pretty much stopped trying to do anything she wanted. As a result, my straight A+'s began to slide. When the first marking period came around and my mother received a report card with C's and D's on it, she freaked right the fuck out. She marched right down to the school principal's office and DEMANDED A RECOUNT! I think I was allowed to do some makeup testing, I'm not sure - but its possible that those grades remained forever on my permanent record. At any rate, the final straw was the day I got in trouble for writing a bad word on the bathroom stall. I had been excused from class for a bathroom break, and while in the stall I dug a nickel out of my pocket and scraped the words "Mrs. ___________ is a Bastard" with it.
Some other girls were in the bathroom, saw what I did and promptly turned me in. The funny thing was that I was not even the least bit remorseful about it. I hated that teacher. My mom of course was called down to the school and she went behind the doors with the principal for a good long time. After what seemed like years, she marched out and took me home. The next week I was moved to another school in the district. Mom never said much to me about what I did, just that she was disappointed in my choice to use a naughty word, but I think she must have hated that teacher as much as I did because she refused to put me back in that woman's class.
I finished my fifth grade year at a different school with a really stern but very kind teacher, and it was hard adjusting to new kids, but I coped.
Its kind of ironic, don't you think, that the very word that I wrote about that awful teacher, the worst word I could think of as a fifth grader, was actually WHAT I AM? And to think that someday I would be incredibly proud to BE a Bastard and to know other Bastards.
The tat...there is a story there. In 1998 I was newly divorced the Seattle WA-Open group, which was mostly comprised of Bastard Nationals, was having a monthly "meeting" to plan our presentations at the upcoming Bastard Nation conference in San Francisco. Bastards By the Bay it was, that year. I say "meeting" because we usually met at Azteca on Lake Union, and during the course of our plotting would generally consume a pitcher or two of beer or occasionally margaritas. I had picked out the celtic knot design for my tat already, and had an appointment at the tattoo shop for after the meeting. Well, take a group of Bastard women, fill them up with alcohol and then mention casually "I have an appointment for a tattoo" and see what happens. Just try it! That poor shop was converged on by five drunken women demanding tattoos. The artist was in the middle of filling in the lines on my tat when someone (Julie or Shea or maybe both, I don't remember) said they thought I should put "Bastard Nation" around it because it would be SO COOL for the conference. And so I did. We all left with ink that night - it was my third tat, so no big deal to me, but for a couple of us it was the first time under the needle. At least one of us (and no, I'm not going to say who, you know who you are!) passed out. Totally awesome times, yo.
(And in another odd twist of Universal Randomness, when I met J at the conference, he was wearing a necklace with the exact same Celtic knot on it as I had just had inked onto my leg.)
Well, now, I guess I said I wasn't going to blog about people who might read this, but since there aren't any Bastard Nationals at my place of work, I think I'm safe.
Have a nice day, y'all.
