Post by rvm45 on Nov 4, 2022 12:38:40 GMT -6
Friends,
"Quern Reboots" is still ongoing—I'm just having trouble with the next couple of chapters.
This is an essay.
H S Thompson one mentioned people who drive car as if their sole purpose was to avenge every wrong that they had suffered at the hands of man or fate…
I find that in my old age, I dwell on and obsess over every wrong that I ever suffered at the hands of man or fate.
The events in "Swimming Lessons" frustrate me, because I could never get across the idea that "I won't let you drown" is a much smaller and less important promise than "I will not turn loose of you."
Comments appreciated.
Thanx.
Swimming Lessons
I can remember, as far back as 60-years ago, sitting on the floor at my aunt’s house and listening to Father brag about how he taught some children to swim, who had baffled all their previous would-be swimming instructors.
He must have taken great satisfaction in his “accomplishments” because he told the stories on several occasions.
In retrospect, I don’t know what was so radically different about Father’s method, but it goes like so:
#1.} Assure the child that you will not turn him loose.
#2.} Get the child to execute the swimming motions.
#3.} At some point, when the child is satisfactorily executing the movements—and too wrapped up in what he is doing to pay any attention—surreptitiously let go of him.
Now all of the children in Father’s stories were so thrilled to find that they were swimming—all on their own—that not a single one said to him:
“What happened to ‘I WILL NOT let you go,’ you lying sack of shit!?!”
I can remember feeling a bit of outrage on those children’s behalf, but I never felt called upon to state my feelings aloud.
When I was old enough to be given Father’s handy-dandy patented swimming lessons, I was quite bright enough to know that “I will not let you go,” was a self-serving lie—an egregious abuse of a child’s trust.
I must admit, that I was determined not to let Father scam me—but I hadn’t realized, until I was actually in that situation, how absolutely terrifying that it is, to be in water over one’s head and at the mercy of a maniacal person who is determined to let you go, just as soon as he can catch you not paying attention.
For some reason, it was considered necessary to master lying on one’s back and floating before one could successfully turn over onto one’s stomach and master the Australian Crawl.
I can remember begging and pleading with Father:
“Daddy, please don’t let me go! PLEASE don’t let me go!!!”
“I will not let you go,” he would promise again and again…
And then as soon as I started to float, he’d try to sneak his hands off me.
I’d scream and wrap myself around him like an octopus embracing a beachball.
At some point, he would threaten:
“Do you want me to dunk you? Because if you don’t quit grabbing me, I’m going to dunk you.”
Years later, he tried to justify himself by pointing out that he never actually dunked me—just threatened.
As Grandmaster Alexander Alekhine often said:
“The threat is always stronger than the execution.”
I wonder, if on some level if Father wasn’t enjoying tormenting me. I can remember his pupils being constricted to mere pinpricks during the “face-up” part of my torture.
At some point, floating face-up was given up as a sort of Edsel, and we went to the face-down stage of torment.
Father had a fallback phrase that he often used:
“You must think that I’m a damned liar.”
He was a damned liar. He started lying early in the morning and lied often throughout the day.
As a child though, this was a mind-shattering paradox. Father is the Gold-Standard by which all veracity is judged. He cannot tell a lie—much less be a habitual liar…
Best not to dwell on Father’s unveracious statements. Dwelling on them leads to skull-cracking contradictions.
Anyway, Father would assure me—with every bit of veracity that he could summon—that he would not—under any circumstances—let me go.
Then he tried to stealth release me every time I let my hyper-vigilance relax in the slightest.
Once he finally pardoned me—for that swimming trip—he would try the same tired scam on my younger sister with the same results.
It seemed to me, that he gave up much sooner with her than with me—but maybe it just seemed that way.
While I hated my sister growing up, I never took any satisfaction in watching her being tormented in this particular way. I’m not sure why.
My mother took great pride in telling anyone who would listen, that she couldn’t swim and had no intention of ever learning to swim.
I can remember looking at her sitting in knee-deep water, in her frumpy; old-fashioned black one-piece swimming suit and urging Father to drag her out in the deep water and force her to take swimming lessons like he did with me and my sister.
I would have been particularly edified to hear her arrogant ass pleading and begging my father to halt the swimming lesson.
Of course, this would have been completely inappropriate torture for an adult person—though I didn’t realize that back then—and my father simply ignored my pleas to school my mother.
I’m not sure to this day, why it is considered appropriate to torture children, but not adults.
Part two:
Up until the day that he died, whenever Father enumerated my many short-comings, he would always say:
“I never could teach you to swim.”
Sometimes he would say:
“I never could teach either of you kids to swim.”
“I knew the trick,” I’d always say—though why he needed something so self-evident pointed out to him, I never could figure out.
“What TRICK!?!” he’d angrily demand.
“You promised not to let me go, but every time that I even come half-assed close to a swimming stroke, you’d try to sneak and let me go!”
“I WOULD NOT let you go!”
“You drug me out into the water, with malice of forethought, to let me go!”
“I WOULD NOT let you go!”
“Alright, if you didn’t intend to let go of me—and you never let me go—how in Hell would I have learned to swim!?! Ergo, you firmly intended to let me go!”
“You didn’t trust me,” he’d whine.
“I trusted you! I trusted you to let me go at the first opportunity! How could I trust you, after you betrayed me time and time and time again!?!”
“I WOULD NOT HAVE LET YOU DROWN!”
I left that out of the earlier dialog, since it would be too confusing…
But Father freely switched between the two very different phrases “Let you go,” and “Let you drown.”
I wasn’t begging him—with every bit of sincerity that I could muster—not to let me drown. I was begging him not to let me go!
#1.} I was confident that he would not let me drown.
#2.} I did not fear drowning.
#3.} Long before drowning could become an issue—the worst possible thing that I could imagine happening to me, in the water, would have already taken place…
He would have LET GO OF ME!
At that point, three things might ensue:
I might drown. I might successfully wrap myself around him OR I might master swimming.
None of those three things amounted to a hill of beans, compared to the horror of having been LET GO.
Ayn Rand talked about people with “non-conceptual mentalities.” I think this very much applied to Father. He seemed absolutely incapable of separating letting someone go and letting them drown.
He also seemed totally incapable of understanding that when you make a sacred promise:
“I will not let you go.”
And then you take your hands off that person—that you have committed an egregious breach of trust.
Or maybe, he felt as if I—and everyone else in his world—owed him blind trust, no matter how many times that he let us down and even when he was obviously lying…
Well anyway, let me hear y’all’s thoughts.
…..RVM45
"Quern Reboots" is still ongoing—I'm just having trouble with the next couple of chapters.
This is an essay.
H S Thompson one mentioned people who drive car as if their sole purpose was to avenge every wrong that they had suffered at the hands of man or fate…
I find that in my old age, I dwell on and obsess over every wrong that I ever suffered at the hands of man or fate.
The events in "Swimming Lessons" frustrate me, because I could never get across the idea that "I won't let you drown" is a much smaller and less important promise than "I will not turn loose of you."
Comments appreciated.
Thanx.
Swimming Lessons
I can remember, as far back as 60-years ago, sitting on the floor at my aunt’s house and listening to Father brag about how he taught some children to swim, who had baffled all their previous would-be swimming instructors.
He must have taken great satisfaction in his “accomplishments” because he told the stories on several occasions.
In retrospect, I don’t know what was so radically different about Father’s method, but it goes like so:
#1.} Assure the child that you will not turn him loose.
#2.} Get the child to execute the swimming motions.
#3.} At some point, when the child is satisfactorily executing the movements—and too wrapped up in what he is doing to pay any attention—surreptitiously let go of him.
Now all of the children in Father’s stories were so thrilled to find that they were swimming—all on their own—that not a single one said to him:
“What happened to ‘I WILL NOT let you go,’ you lying sack of shit!?!”
I can remember feeling a bit of outrage on those children’s behalf, but I never felt called upon to state my feelings aloud.
When I was old enough to be given Father’s handy-dandy patented swimming lessons, I was quite bright enough to know that “I will not let you go,” was a self-serving lie—an egregious abuse of a child’s trust.
I must admit, that I was determined not to let Father scam me—but I hadn’t realized, until I was actually in that situation, how absolutely terrifying that it is, to be in water over one’s head and at the mercy of a maniacal person who is determined to let you go, just as soon as he can catch you not paying attention.
For some reason, it was considered necessary to master lying on one’s back and floating before one could successfully turn over onto one’s stomach and master the Australian Crawl.
I can remember begging and pleading with Father:
“Daddy, please don’t let me go! PLEASE don’t let me go!!!”
“I will not let you go,” he would promise again and again…
And then as soon as I started to float, he’d try to sneak his hands off me.
I’d scream and wrap myself around him like an octopus embracing a beachball.
At some point, he would threaten:
“Do you want me to dunk you? Because if you don’t quit grabbing me, I’m going to dunk you.”
Years later, he tried to justify himself by pointing out that he never actually dunked me—just threatened.
As Grandmaster Alexander Alekhine often said:
“The threat is always stronger than the execution.”
I wonder, if on some level if Father wasn’t enjoying tormenting me. I can remember his pupils being constricted to mere pinpricks during the “face-up” part of my torture.
At some point, floating face-up was given up as a sort of Edsel, and we went to the face-down stage of torment.
Father had a fallback phrase that he often used:
“You must think that I’m a damned liar.”
He was a damned liar. He started lying early in the morning and lied often throughout the day.
As a child though, this was a mind-shattering paradox. Father is the Gold-Standard by which all veracity is judged. He cannot tell a lie—much less be a habitual liar…
Best not to dwell on Father’s unveracious statements. Dwelling on them leads to skull-cracking contradictions.
Anyway, Father would assure me—with every bit of veracity that he could summon—that he would not—under any circumstances—let me go.
Then he tried to stealth release me every time I let my hyper-vigilance relax in the slightest.
Once he finally pardoned me—for that swimming trip—he would try the same tired scam on my younger sister with the same results.
It seemed to me, that he gave up much sooner with her than with me—but maybe it just seemed that way.
While I hated my sister growing up, I never took any satisfaction in watching her being tormented in this particular way. I’m not sure why.
My mother took great pride in telling anyone who would listen, that she couldn’t swim and had no intention of ever learning to swim.
I can remember looking at her sitting in knee-deep water, in her frumpy; old-fashioned black one-piece swimming suit and urging Father to drag her out in the deep water and force her to take swimming lessons like he did with me and my sister.
I would have been particularly edified to hear her arrogant ass pleading and begging my father to halt the swimming lesson.
Of course, this would have been completely inappropriate torture for an adult person—though I didn’t realize that back then—and my father simply ignored my pleas to school my mother.
I’m not sure to this day, why it is considered appropriate to torture children, but not adults.
Part two:
Up until the day that he died, whenever Father enumerated my many short-comings, he would always say:
“I never could teach you to swim.”
Sometimes he would say:
“I never could teach either of you kids to swim.”
“I knew the trick,” I’d always say—though why he needed something so self-evident pointed out to him, I never could figure out.
“What TRICK!?!” he’d angrily demand.
“You promised not to let me go, but every time that I even come half-assed close to a swimming stroke, you’d try to sneak and let me go!”
“I WOULD NOT let you go!”
“You drug me out into the water, with malice of forethought, to let me go!”
“I WOULD NOT let you go!”
“Alright, if you didn’t intend to let go of me—and you never let me go—how in Hell would I have learned to swim!?! Ergo, you firmly intended to let me go!”
“You didn’t trust me,” he’d whine.
“I trusted you! I trusted you to let me go at the first opportunity! How could I trust you, after you betrayed me time and time and time again!?!”
“I WOULD NOT HAVE LET YOU DROWN!”
I left that out of the earlier dialog, since it would be too confusing…
But Father freely switched between the two very different phrases “Let you go,” and “Let you drown.”
I wasn’t begging him—with every bit of sincerity that I could muster—not to let me drown. I was begging him not to let me go!
#1.} I was confident that he would not let me drown.
#2.} I did not fear drowning.
#3.} Long before drowning could become an issue—the worst possible thing that I could imagine happening to me, in the water, would have already taken place…
He would have LET GO OF ME!
At that point, three things might ensue:
I might drown. I might successfully wrap myself around him OR I might master swimming.
None of those three things amounted to a hill of beans, compared to the horror of having been LET GO.
Ayn Rand talked about people with “non-conceptual mentalities.” I think this very much applied to Father. He seemed absolutely incapable of separating letting someone go and letting them drown.
He also seemed totally incapable of understanding that when you make a sacred promise:
“I will not let you go.”
And then you take your hands off that person—that you have committed an egregious breach of trust.
Or maybe, he felt as if I—and everyone else in his world—owed him blind trust, no matter how many times that he let us down and even when he was obviously lying…
Well anyway, let me hear y’all’s thoughts.
…..RVM45