“You must be very patient,” the nice young man said as we walked down my stairs. He had come to make sure that the commode chair and bath transfer bench, to name but a few of my new favourite things, were working out well.
Ah, patient, soon like Jack Nicholson, I thought to myself.
I have been told before that I must be patient, when people heard that I was home-schooling my three children. I didn’t keep them isolated in a chamber of weird ideology, nor did I keep them home after the age of about 10, just to be clear. Because I know what you were thinking:
And we told them never to discuss those early years and the room in the basement anyways, so it should all be safe in the family vault.
But patient? The exact same characteristic has also been mislabeled [on the defensive, eh? ed.] laziness, or a lack of proper concern for the future or some such. Not enough paranoia and following the rules.
I think to some extent it is plain ordinary birth order showing up, and that as a third kid I am just used to not getting my way and trying to make other people not argue. An enabler spot in the family tree, to use the jargon. Whereas first borns tend to be ambitiously successful, and middle’s turn into revolutionaries. Obviously this is the kind of statement that can be trounced by example, but also can be well supported, as the interwebz are bound to prove, if one were not too patient to bother to search. And as one’s own immediate family, two solid generations in a row on both sides, has borne it out, anecdote shall triumph research.
Speaking of anecdote, once we were at good friends for dinner, and realized we were 5 thirds and a fourth, who was forgiven as her sister was present, and had taken third place unfairly, as older siblings often do, taking advantage of their head start. I realized this unfair advantage had been wielded but never mentioned as I grew up only as a much older adult. Of course I was less able to do things my older brothers could do – they were older. They could walk and talk but I couldn’t. And that was just the beginning. And let’s not mention being promingent and what an advantage that continued to be, alas.
I did catch up, and was always the best at starting boat motors, after the age of six, [boasting now are we?, ed.] but it sure took a lot of patience. Always a turtle to the hares in the world.
Which finally gives me an excuse to post this cartoon I stumbled upon ages ago:
Have a nice Wednesday, and don’t ever refer to it as hump day. That is just an awful expression, and Woden wouldn’t like it.
Fans of the histories of financial manias might want to check out this series that has been started by some guys at the New York Fed. They’ve covered The Tulip Mania and The South Sea Bubble so far, and plan to go up to the year 1920, which will necessarily cover the Panic of 1907. I’ve reserved my front row seat for that one, popcorn at the ready.
http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/crisis-chronicles/
Bitcoin, anyone?
i have used that terrible expression for Wednesday in the past. i offer this song to Woden as a token of my respect. yes, yet another riddle.
the bitcoin craze really is a perfect example of a mania Eric. it would be nice to recognize one of them early on, and know exactly the right time to bail. but the underlying object of the craze always seems to come out of left field. and then they continue much farther than anyone would ever believe. well, i’m going to BTND, N = next. um, not really!
i was in Germany in 1981 the very month that the Rubik’s cube came out. i brought home a few of of them as gifts. i may have been only a few hours ahead of the mania phase, since i saw a kid playing with one as soon as i stepped off the plane back in the USA. but only one kid. by the time i got all the way home, it seemed that i probably was too late. one of my brothers was playing with one.
btw Xty – i am 3 out of 4. i feel your pain.
I am the youngest of 3, though I didn’t reply on that because I think xty and I have already had this conversation, long long ago in a galaxy far far away.
But briefly, eldest is the achiever with the best work ethic, and the middle is a mess. Eldest and middle are always fueding. I get along with everyone and am the peacemaker in the family, though there is some resentment about me being “the favorite” and having “had it too easy”. Blah, blah, blah, get over it, I say. I’m not going to defend it or apologize for it anymore. It is what it is.
How I got from there to here is a twisted tale. Family stuff inevitably makes me miss my Dad. This was one of Dad’s favorite movies, and of course then one of mine as well. And as xty says, today is Wotan’s Day after all. Anybody got a tissue? (sniffle) 😥
Dad never cried though. Men were men in those days.
dang – i can’t figure out what movie that’s from. but obviously my riddle wasn’t hard enough.
i have read a lot on birth order and personalities. from my own experience, i will say that i believe that it’s easier to be a middle kid with even numbers. i could ally with the other middle kid, or the youngest, me being 3rd. when things got especially brutal, (i only had brothers), favors could get called in, or secrets threatened to be revealed, so i rarely had to go it alone.
“The Vikings” 1958 Kirk Douglas, Ernest Borgnine, Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh
wait…there was a riddle?
the Marty Robin song is based on the legend of the “Wild Hunt”, which is based on the legend of the pagan God (pick your spelling).
i just now noticed the ‘word of the day’. i guess it has nothing to do with windy conditions then.
Xty – 2nd white day here – it didn’t get warm enough to melt it all. please, take back your air. 😳
alright. going ot again..are you guys(gal) able to stack a couple of utoobs and have them display? selfish again but am in a Buffet mood. Xty if you don’t get the beating heart emote guy soon….sir green and i will jump to the highest bidder.
obscure; tune for the Woodpecker.
my stack…
edit: nope.
edit: well blow me down! it’s working! 🙂
nice. …what a crazy world..i wonder if Xty would give us her take on karma?..lot’s of heavy pressure being applied by me and mr green. always liked this one the most…hi all…carry on.
a nasty blast of Xty’s Canadia(e)n wind way down here, nice tomorrow though and 70’s this weekend. ahhh the 70’s.
i’d be happy just to get back to the fixties…
hey man.
big moon coming…already large in the daylight sky today.
Despite my apparent logical shell, I am a huge believer in karma. It is one of those things that if it only works as a placebo, I am still all for it. As my daughter once said about our evil developer neighbour, karma’s a bitch, so we don’t need to worry about him. Positive people will cluster and negative people will cluster and we actually do have a choice about what karma we give. The harder thing is refusing to accept bad karma.
Must put karma shield on full, without closing heart. Tricky to say and to do.
And on a lighter note, to stack up tunes just put them in separate comments. I think you can get away with two links per comment, as long as they are on separate lines.
I didn’t realize the beating heart was missing. Hmnn.
I’m thinking I may start reading up on people who have woken up from a long term coma. Like years and years long. Are there any? If so, how do they feel? What goes on in their heads?
The reason this comes to mind is that this is how I feel lately. It didn’t happen overnight exactly, but relatively quickly in the grand scheme of things. Over the past year or two, I have steadily, bit by bit, emerged out from under the spell of a great many things that have held sway in my life for decades. The umbrella term for it, I’ll call “Doomerism”. Subcategories include goldbuggerhood and peakoilerism, though there are other variants as well.
Another analogy perhaps is waking up after a terrific debauch of a party. Memory is hazy, and a debris field of evidence lies everywhere. I have a gold price widget on my desktop and a host of forgotten links in my bookmarks, like so many empty booze bottles. Spreadsheets on natural gas supplies and debt/gdp ratios, like cigarette butts and empty pizza boxes. A stack of precious metals like so many used condoms stuck to the carpeting. What the hell? What did I do last night? What have I done for the past 25 years? Where is my wallet? I’m mystified by it now.
I was surrounded by people I didn’t like anymore. Some were crazy, others were abusive. Articles of faith that bound us together had been demonstrated by reality to be full of holes. It was too much. Too toxic. Something inside of me began to rebel. A spark. A survival instinct perhaps. This is not how I want to live. This is not who I want to be. Save yourself now or go down a dark path forever. Live or die.
I decided to live.
you won’t have to look hard at all to find others waking up EO.
i believe that a key point is realizing that fear is used to control.
i have a lot i want to say here, but i am being persecuted this morning by modern life, and all its intrusive gadgets.
i’ll check back later. thanks for sharing your thoughts EO.
Just hadda post this. I’ve heard of Shorthairs fetching a rock tossed into a lake. The SAME rock…
this song has been in my head for a bit too long… EO’s post above must have reminded me of it.
a friend of mine had a Brittany Spaniel that would retrieve rocks thrown into the lake but it usually returned with a different rock. that dog could dive quite deep like the pointer in the video.
i’m still thinking about your post above. i believe we are about to enter a period of rapid change. the developed countries all have aging populations, you know, the baby boomers. it is natural for people to get more conservative, selfish, inflexible as they age. but with such a skewed distribution the effect has been profound. politics in many of these countries have become reactionary! too many folks, including my own parents, just want to keep what they have, and aren’t thinking too much about the grand kids. lately i have been purposefully talking to the ‘grand kids’. they see that so much of what is taken for granted is unsustainable. they also have a concept of limited resources, and externalities, ie, the costs of convenience such as pollution. so i am hopeful, because there is reason to be. i plan to stay young in attitude by completely changing my focus, and a big part of that will be determined by who i choose to hang around with.
karma can be said in another way, “you reap what you sow”, or “you create your own reality.” it is also called the “law of attraction”… you attract what you envision. now if ya think i’m getting all squishy here, well you may want to look into what modern physicists are discovering about reality and consciousness.
ramble off.
does this place have a bar yet? i want to sit down and drink a mug of beer, and this fine young lady is looking for a part time job. she will provide her own uniform as well.
Better get her trained up fast. We can be a thirsty bunch!
it may be too late.
.
How long do people have to be wrong before it is generally accepted that they are not “early”, but in fact just…plain…wrong? 3 years? 30 years? Details, details. Why quibble about facts or timeliness when ideology is on the line?
2010 Reminder: QE = Currrency Debasement and Inflation