Another spectacularly, tropically rainy gray day. Weirdly beautiful. Ruby and I would be out traipsing through the ‘Hood if I could move my hip without eliciting a shriek of pain.
Alas, I can’t. So…instead, we loaf upon the bed, gazing out the big bedroom windows onto the cloudy skies and the burbling pool.
Dayum! If I didn’t hurt so much, I’d be out there paddling around in the drink.
Truth to tell, though, I’m afraid that if I got into the pool, I might not be able to climb out by myself. Would need to have a phone out there, to dial 911 if I couldn’t haul myself upright. And…
How do I not WANT to call 911 to drag me out of the drink? Let me count the ways….
My GAWD does this thing ever HURT!!! And there seems to be no position in which it hurts less.
***
The Haunts of the day take the form of memories of Saudi Arabia, where I grew up on the shore of the Persian Gulf.
My gawd! What a hellish place!
Even as a little kid, I think, I realized how horrible it was.
Well…that’s not quite the whole story. For me, as a kid resident of (un)lovely Ras Tanura, the horribleness was embellished by the fact that I was a weird little kid, whose eccentricity brought down on her all pure nastiness that grade-school children are capable of coughing up.
GOD, but those brats were monsters. And boyoboy, did they pour the hate on the weird little girl who imagined she wanted to grow up to be an astronomer. You just can’t even picture what nasty little horrors those junior Ras Tanura expats were. Evil, evil brats.
Now, in old age, one wonders where the moron teachers were. How come the idiot who ran the 2nd grade didn’t put a muffler on her little darlins’ mouths? How come the bitch who ran the 4th grade couldn’t bring herself to behave like a decent human being? How come my parents had to take me out of the school in the 5th grade so I could/would address the academic work and get through a whole day without collapsing into a nervous pile?
How did I hate that school? Let me count the ways.
And yes: the problem was the school and its monster brats and its idiot teachers. As soon as we got back to the States, I dived into the sixth grade in a San Francisco public school. And weirdly, I did just fine there.
More than just fine, as a matter of fact. I thrived. In the California public schools, I hit the National Honor Society. And my performance excelled to such a degree that I started at the university at the end of the 11th grade — skipping my senior year in high school.
Must’ve been because I was a crazy nut case, right?
Oh well. Think about something else, f’r godsake!
Clouds.
Rain.
Overgrown hedge.
Strange orange flowers.
Funny little dawg.
Sooooooo glad to be as far on the other side of the globe from Saudi Arabia as it is possible to get!
😀 😮 😀