I haven’t said much on my social medias about the current events. While I’m sure a few have interpreted my silence as complacency, or not caring, I have hopes my friends know I’ve been contemplating the best way to express my thoughts. On a topic such as this, taking the time to reflect, tear apart, and reconstruct a thought process is important.
I grew up in a small farm town that was known for its racism. It was known by every town for miles that if you are black, you don’t go to Bremen. While my father figures didn’t have much to say on the topic other than I should treat everyone with equal respect. My mother, on the other hand, while telling me I shouldn’t be racist, displayed blatant racism of her own. As a small child, I just couldn’t figure out why people hated someone just because they had a better tan. I hadn’t learned about melanin, culture differences, and all the good stuff yet. I just knew it was something they couldn’t control. Why hate someone for something they have no control over?
I heard her drop the N word on occasion, but she insisted I should never use it. I would hear her and others talking about how cops would chase black people out of the town. They seemed to think it was amusing. She once tried to tell me there was a study that proved black people were not as smart as white. I was skeptical. Later I dismissed that whole thing as a bunch of malarkey she twisted so she wouldn’t look bad. Plot twist: She’s a narcissist. Go figure.
By the time I was a teenager, I knew I wanted most definitely to leave Bremen and never come back. The general populace of the town was toxic, bigoted, and filled with stereotypes you’d expect from a small farm town. I was tired of hearing the N word. I was tired of hearing gay men being called faggots. I was tired of being surrounded by bullies that never grew out of being a bully. I swore that I would do my best to see each person I meet as just that. A person. That I would let their words and actions toward me help me decide whether or not I like them.
My Junior year of high school I moved to the next town over. There were a few black people there, but I didn’t think much beyond “New town, new situations, more to learn.” That was until the day I went to sit next to a girl on the bus and she immediately screamed “OH HELL NO!” and lept over me to get away from me and sit somewhere else. I was confused for those brief seconds until she said “I’m not sitting next to some racist Bremen bitch!” She had assumed I was racist because of where I was originally from. I felt gutted. I was being judged for something I had no control over.
I still have trouble admitting I came from that town. There is no pride in it.
I remember Rodney King. Not him personally, since I never met him. But I remember seeing the video of officers beating that man over and over. I remember the officers giving lame excuses that he was “resisting” and “Oh we think he was on drugs.” I remember the aftermath. There were the same lines then about how they won’t get anything accomplished with burning and looting. I didn’t understand the full depth of what was happening, but I knew in my heart those officers should’ve all been tossed in jail.
I have spent the years since I left there trying my best to learn. To be a better person. I admit I am not perfect. I have so much more to learn. I am guilty of so much bullshit that I don’t have enough words to express how much I deeply regret all of it. I have used the phrase “I try to be colorblind” without knowing what I was saying. I never wanted to be THAT person.
It is only within the last few weeks I’ve learned just how deep casual racism exists. I had to educate myself on how black people were called “Aunt” or “Uncle” because they were not respected enough to be called “Miss/Missus” or “Mister.” I never knew the background of phrases like “grandfathered in” or “peanut gallery” came from such horrible origins. I highly suggest looking it up if you don’t know already.
I’ve never had any great love of the police. As a child I watched my drunken stepfather beat the ever hell out of my mother. I ran to the neighbors and called the police. The police came, and because my stepfather was on the volunteer fire department, they did nothing. They sat him down and said “Now, you know you shouldn’t do that,” and then left us alone with him. I ran away from home to get away from the abuse and each time they would just tell me I was just being rebellious and sent me home to deal with the wrath. They taught me to never trust them. They taught me that they don’t care about you if what you need makes anyone they consider “one of their own” look bad. They taught me that we are not humans in their eyes. We are prey. Unfortunately, the more melanin you happen to be blessed with, the more you are seen as prey.
So, if you are my friend and you are reading this, I am asking you to call me out and educate me if you hear/see me doing something that is racist. I want to learn. I want to do better. I want to BE better.
#BlackLivesMatter
Everyone has at least one pet peeve. Maybe it’s that loud chewing thing. Maybe it’s nasal voices. For every human foible there is someone who just can’t stand it. I have a few. But two stand out in my mind the most.
The first one is relatively simple. I hate being interrupted. Unless people are about to die or be severely injured, it is not going to hurt to wait the ten damn seconds it will take for me to finish a sentence and notice that you’re eagerly waiting to say something.
The second one is a bit more complicated, but still important.
“Are you sure?”
I loathe this question. I hate it with the passion of a thousand burning suns.
It usually comes after someone has asked me if I want to do a thing. Or try a thing. Or maybe just want a thing. Sometimes I have to take a moment to carefully consider the options laid out before me before I make my decision. Do I have enough time? Energy? Money? If I answer No after that lengthy pause, then it is almost always followed up with that question.
This tells me two things.
1: You do not respect my choice.
2: You do not have faith in my ability to make said choice.
Some have said they were just making sure because I hesitated. No, bitch. I was not hesitating. I was carefully thinking over the options so I could make a responsible adult decision.
People need to stop petting my peeves.
I have something brewing in my skull. Things have been very chaotic at DarthBitch headquarters.
We’ll resume normal bitching momentarily.
When I started working at Best Buy, I was placed in the Home Office department. They felt my computer knowledge would be best put to use there. It took time and a lot of effort to work my way into the Geek Squad. My transition wasn’t immediate. I spent days doing sales and then days at the GS counter, back and forth throughout the week.
During a day at the counter, I met a man who was trying to get information recovered from a hard drive that had gone bad. I had to break the news to him that we were unable to get any data retrieved. He was furious over this. I did my best to apologize and explain that there is no guarantee, but we do the best we can. After a certain point, his best option is to send it to a “clean room”, and even then there is no guarantee anything of value can be retrieved.
That man yelled and threw insults at the store, the company, the Geek Squad in general, and myself. He then took his machine and left.
One week later I was working in Home Office. That same man was standing in the aisle, looking at desktop towers. He saw me and the internal cringe was evident. He recognized me instantly. His voice was hesitant.
“Do you remember me?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Are you still willing to help me?”
I shrugged, “That was last week. It doesn’t change my ability to answer your questions.”
“Okay.”
I then spent the next several minutes going over the various options with him, how they compared, and which ones would best suit his needs. He thanked me for my patience and said he needed to think it over, but he would be back. He left the department and I went to the department computer to handle something.
About a minute later, he comes back to me.
“You said the only person you’d wish that one computer on was your ex. Does that mean you’re single?”
“…no.”
“Oh, sorry. Thanks!”
Seriously. The same dude who had just cussed me out the week before thought I might possibly go out with him.
For a short time I worked on the Geek Squad. While I enjoyed my job, I was only part time. When my hours were cut back severely after an overhaul in management and such, I had to leave. During my time there, however, I came across a number of interesting individuals.
One such interesting individual was an older man who came to pick up his laptop. I went to get it for him, set it up on the counter and turned it on. Once it was booted, I turned it to him and told him he could check everything while I was getting his paperwork in order.
I was about halfway through this when he turned the laptop back toward me and said, “I can’t get on the internet.”
I looked over and instantly recognized our firewall error message. What kind of page was this man trying to access that our firewall would block? I leaned over to check the url.
It was a porn page.
Somehow I managed to not let something unfriendly spew out of my mouth. It was difficult, I assure you. Trying to access a porn page in the middle of a store where people bring their children? What the actual fuck?
Instead I recoiled back from the laptop and calmly told him, “I’m sorry. Our firewall blocks that site.”
I reached over, while mentally thanking my coworkers for sanitizing every laptop keyboard we had to work on, and typed the url for Google into the browser. Once it had loaded, I turned it back around to him and then went to finish his paperwork.
After he left, I ran into the back to have a moment of squick.
Once while working the overnight shift at a hotel in Corpus Christi, a woman in pink pajamas came into the lobby. Her pajamas were wet from the knee area down. She looked a bit befuddled and very quietly asked if we could help her get back into her room. I asked her all the information to ensure it was her room, then gave her another key. She returned and said it didn’t work.
After this happened a couple more times, I went up with her to her door with a manager key. The door flashed in a manner that let me know the deadbolt had been used. I was able to override it, but then I saw the inside latch had been flipped. How on earth did she flip the latch and leave her room?!
Once more I verified all the information and then went up with a tool we have that lets us undo the latch. However, it would not work on this variety of door. Normally the maintenance crew would use bolt cutters. I did not have bolt cutters handy. But her balcony door was open.
I went back to the lobby and asked my coworker if the room next to hers was empty. It was. Great! So I got a key for it and headed back.
During this time our hotel had night security. During the first few hours of my shift it was done by off-duty police officers who were still in uniform. This particular night one of the police Lieutenants was on security detail. He had been watching all this happening with a bit of amusement. When I left with a key for the room next door, he followed along. He didn’t know what I was up to, but he was certain he wanted to see it.
He was standing on the ground below, watching as I came out to the balcony of the room next to the lady’s. I went over the balcony railing and stood on the teeny ledge between the railing and thin air. I had a death grip on that railing, by the way.
As I was swinging myself around the wall between balconies, he shook his head, convinced I was going to fall.
“You are insane! You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“Would that insanity thing stand up in court?”
“Probably. Especially if I tell them about this.”
“Cool. I might need that one day.”
I didn’t fall. I went back over the railing of the woman’s room, into her room (everything she had strewn about was just as pink as her pajamas), and let her inside.
I found out the next morning from her sister that the poor dear has a very bad problem with sleep walking. She somehow slid down to the ground from her balcony and woke up while she was up to her knees in the ocean.
So I have worked a number of different jobs in my life. Throughout the years I have encountered a number of incidents that have just stuck with me. Some were just ridiculously funny. Others were just baffling. I’ve decided to share a few of those here for your enjoyment.
I spent several years working at hotels. Usually I worked the overnight shift as something called a “night auditor.” The pay was usually a bit more than the day shift, and I didn’t have to deal with quite as many people. However, the people I did see were very often very… interesting.
This particular night was mostly uneventful. That is, until a man walked in. What made this man interesting was that he was very obviously a man wearing women’s clothing. This was in the early 2000’s, so it was a bit more uncommon to see this in my part of suburbia. I’m not one to judge, so I just smiled and greeted him as I would anyone else. He asked me, not bothering to disguise his natural voice, where the bathroom was. I pointed him in that direction and went back to what I was doing.
Several minutes later the same man returned. He was no longer dressed in women’s clothing, but in rather average jeans and flannel shirt. He had washed his makeup off and had removed the wig. It honestly took me a few moments to realize it was the same man.
He came up to the desk and said, “I have a really strange question for you.”
Considering what I had just seen, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I just said, “Okay.”
He then placed his hands on the desk and said, “How do I get these off. I put them on with superglue.”
He had bright red false nails superglued on. Now, I wasn’t quite ready for that, so all I could do was blink as I stared at his hands. But I was trying to think of the best way to remove them. His next words made my mind go blank.
“I can’t go home to my wife like this.”
There was a full minute of me saying umm and uhhh until I was able to get my thoughts back in order. But I did give him the best advice I could, wished him well, and sent him on his way.
Yes, the page is back. It’s been down quite awhile. I kept meaning to do something to get it back up and running again, but life had other ideas. However, Z was nice and helped me get it going again once he realized it was down.
I’ll be leaving more posts here in the near future. Right now I’m just getting everything sorted out again.
Let’s try this again, shall we?