If true, they'll prove it

Updated June 2003

Okay, I saw a reporter again. I don't know why, it was just that time of the year.

I've been getting a lot of press in the last few months. I'm not exactly sure why, I guess my number came up on the Warhol Lottery. Perhaps it's that I'm JUST close enough to forty to have an opinion that sounds relatively educated?

I was picturing my dad at forty. He was pretty much a mess at the time, going through a divorce again, and having to deal with two teen-aged daughters. (No wonder he's an atheist!) Dad and I went on a double date once, and I think it was around this time. In fact, I think he was dating the sister of his current wife. This year I'm 39. I look back at the last 20 years and I can't get over all the stuff I've done, and am planning on doing.

I just hit that point where I finally see that BIG picture of what people are really about and what we're supposed to enjoy in life. And this is when the reporter comes to me and asks my opinions.

silly man.

"So what's your real name?", he asks as if I had a reason to respond. "I prefer talking to people who have at least attempted to read the FAQ's on the website", I say. EGADS I'm a carmudgeon. Wow, what a life treat. Generally I was nice to him. But reporters who use the word "actually" every other sentence probably have limited writing abilities, but I digress.

As he sits at the computer, taking notes, and reading through the pages, I hear him mumbling.. "oh that makes sense", or "ah, I can use that". There it was, his entire interview right there without a single word from my mouth. Then he turns and asks the question...

"Is there something you wish people knew about you?"

Now there's a question I had to really put some thought into. There is something that I've only mentioned in passing on some lyrics and in some books I've written. At twelve years old, my mentally retarded uncle attempted to sleep with me. Of all the things I've been through, and have recovered from, this is the one thing that still comes into my daily life. Uncle C had a bad asthma problem and I'm seeing someone now who has the similar problem. I sleep next to wheezing and I am right back in bed in that house as a 12 year old girl wondering what lottery I had lost that night. My mother and my grandmother both responded the same way, "He is retarded, he didn't know what he was doing."

I'm so glad that made it all right for them. But it didn't do much for me. I think that's another reason I don't suffer fools well. Stupid by choice is far more detrimental than stupid by genetics. Ironically, I was asked to be on a board of a home for mentally disabled adults, and gladly took the position. It wasn't the condition that caused a man to behave the way he did, it was the chosen ignorance of those who could have protected me that allowed it to be acceptable for him to behave that way.

So this is what I told the reporter. Maybe it will help some other kid. Maybe not. Maybe it will get printed, maybe not. Maybe it is just a 27 year old issue I should have gotten over, but maybe not.

Thanks for all the letters, and don't forget to sign the guest book!

Cathe