Facebook friends know how much I use the ellipsis (...) in my Comments and Posts. For those of you who do not understand the uses for the device, the ellipsis indicates that the thought/quote/idea continues beyond the last word given. ...also stand for something before the ellipsis when the beginning of the thought/quote/idea is understood, or irrelevant (see, I took out the "An ellipsis can..."). As a freelance writer, I can use the ellipsis to make a quote say what I want it to say, and claim literary license. News reporters, on the other hand, do not have that liberty, and are required by their own code of ethics not to do such things. Personally, any news writer who uses the ellipsis freely is fairly suspect. I use it because some of my comments could actually be longer, but...
Thus endeth the lesson on the ellipsis.
I don't know that anyone ever reads these, there are only three people who follow my blogs, and I have no idea if they get a notification whenever I post something. If not, my readership is me, and me alone. I could foul this up with profanity (apparently as a former sailor, I am stereotyped as a drunken, foul-mouthed lout), but I have been working on "PG13" language, particularly at home. And besides, as a former sailor, I was a polite drunk. I just think there is too much profanity in the world today.
Seriously. When I was a teenager, being male, I used profanities to prove how tough and grown up I was. Girls, in the company of boys, almost never swore. Now, young ladies are hanging out windows, giving the finger, and dropping F-bombs like B-27's over Germany in 1945 (look it up, I guessed on the year, but sometime in there, the allies bombed the living doggie doo out of the German industrial cities, so it's an apt analogy). I used to tell the girls in my English classes that if I could get one of them to stop swearing, or even to become more aware of their swearing and slow down, I would be the happiest English teacher in the school.
The way girls dress, now days, can be a problem for a male teacher. I once, during a Summer School assignment, had a young lady come into my classroom and plop down in the front row. Normally, it's a behavior I've seen in my own kids, and it's a challenge to the teacher, "Entertain me!" Except this particular young lady was very attractive, and dressed in a top and miniskirt that highlighted her... well... her cleavage. Here she was, in the front row, dressed somewhat provocatively, sitting in a rather un-ladylike position. Did I mention the miniskirt? I quickly wrote a note, telling her to please move to the back of the class. She straightened up and looked at me defiantly, and said, "Why? I like sitting in the front row." I gave her my best fatherly look and said, "Frankly, it's because of the way you are dressed. If you come to class dressed a little more conservatively, you can sit wherever you want." She got up and moved to the back of the row. The next day, she was in shorts and a blouse that buttoned up, and sat in the front row. She stayed there for the next six weeks, and in the end, she thanked me for making her think about how she appeared to people. There's a long story, but she would wear that particular outfit to drive her dad crazy (I could see why). I told her she wouldn't leave my house in that outfit were she my daughter, but of course if she were my daughter, she would only leave the house under guard. It was something, at 49, I was the oldest person she knew, her grandparents passing before her birth. Never saw her again after that summer semester was over.
I've had a chance to look back on a horrible time in my life, the loss of my daughter Amy in 1979. The old adage goes, "A parent should never see his children die." I don't know who said it, under what circumstance, but I agree wholeheartedly. I watched our second child die in my hands at Slidell Memorial Hospital in Louisiana. She was born several months prematurely, and was not equipped to handle oxygen straight from the air. She fought hard, but it was futile, her little lungs just couldn't do it, and then she went limp. It was a feeling I never want to experience again, ever. I haven't talked about this, ever, and I don't really want to get into this now. I went to see her, the nurses were all in tears, and I asked if I could see her. She was in an incubator, a plastic box with glove holes in the side. They said there was nothing they could do but make her comfortable, and it was OK for me to hold her in the box. They watched as I picked her up, and felt how little she was. Amy was kicking, like she was fighting to stay, and then she went limp...
End of story...
Except it didn't end right there. We tried, had a son 355 days later, except there was still a hole at the table where Amy should have been. For a long time, she went without a permanent marker, and there was something that remained undone, and was keeping us from reaching some closure. Mary sent me Polaroid pictures of the permanent marker, I was on deployment to Misawa, Japan in 1989, and I think I scared some folks in the barracks because of the loud weeping. Some folks worried that I was losing it, but it was the relief of having done the last thing we could do on earth for my daughter. Prior to doing that, came the second most horrible time in my life, my separation from Mary in 1981.
We said we weren't doing it, but each of us ourselves for Amy. Me because of the drugs I took in the 1960's and early '70's. Mary had her own reasons, but we started putting up barriers to communications, and soon we weren't talking to each other. I always likened it to fencing ourselves off from each other. Each thing we couldn't talk about was like a board in the fence. Pretty soon we got to the point where we couldn't talk to each other at all without starting a argument, and our relationship deteriorated fully. We were legally separated, waiting for the divorce to become final, and I had a bit of an epiphany, and we put our marriage back together, and things have been great ever since. There is another adage about marriages that make it past the first seven years will make it forever. We were married in '74, separated in '81. We almost didn't make it past seven years. This past year was 41 years together. Believe me, miracles happen, I've seen it.
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