On anger, paranoia, and redemption.

When I was a kid, I was a fat kid. That’s the bad news. The good news is that it has been so long that I no longer have anxiety when I think about it. The injustices of youth have passed into oblivion. Well, that’s healthy. These feelings eventually let go mainly due to self esteem. When you have it, you are no longer affected by other people’s ideas of who you are or what you look like to them. When you don’t have it, you want to take a flame thrower to your old high school gym class. Luckily, I’m at the non-flame-throwing level of self esteem. I’m at the write-about-those-assholes level.

Even though I know I’m a good person, that I never deliberately harm anyone, sometimes I wonder if I could be better. No, that’s not true, I KNOW I can be better, but the big question is whether or not I should strive for better. Am I falling short? I’m no angel, but who is keeping score, anyway?

This chink in my armor allows those with their own agenda to place seeds of doubt. Unfortunately, these seeds bear the bitter fruit of failure. Whenever I’m bullied, put down, or held to an impossible standard, I always assume that there was something I could have done better, that I could have tried harder. It’s only in hindsight that I realize that I was the victim.

There’s an up-side to everything (except rap), and I’ve learned the most from people I’ve hated. The following is a list of people whom I hate, and if I were left in a room, alone and unmonitored, I would beat them half to death . . . twice. There’s a common theme to all of these stories: Injustice.

That guy in high school - To make a long story short, I got jumped in gym class. To this day, if I think about this guy or even pass by the old neighborhood, I think about settling the score. It’s been a long time, why would I harbor these thoughts? One reason: injustice. I did nothing to deserve a beating. I think he should be made to feel how I felt. Yeah, I’ve heard it all before, the fact that bullies have been molested, beaten, etc. So fucking what? Does him hitting me give me the right to go hurt someone else? He’s on the list.

What I learned: fight back hard. After I got trounced (surprised, really), I made a vow that the next time I was going to have to be beaten into the ground before I gave up. I truly think that determination, that look in my eye, has gotten me out of more situations than walking away.

The positive - A guy kicked my ass in High School. Because of him, I know what it’s like to be punched in the face. I can draw on that experience in my writing. He’d have a hard time getting away with that, now. One, because he’d go to jail. Two, I carry a gun.

The Chief - If you’ve ever felt sorry for Bob Cratchet, if you’ve ever got angry at Cinderella’s wicked stepmother, then you can just begin to see what it was like to work for this guy. The man was evil. He literally couldn’t stand to see any one of us not busting our asses. Despite the fact that he never caught me doing anything other than working, I was still treated like a shitbag. He even hit me, once. It wasn’t really a fight. He simply smacked me across the hands because he thought I wasn’t doing something correctly. I was doing it correctly, he was just too stupid to see it. That was a day like no other, and I remembered that guy in high school. I knew that to take it to him was going to cost me a lot more than broken bones. I had a wife at the time and I turned back. I handled it through the chain of command, but because I had such little contact with him (we all did), it passed into obscurity.

The worst thing he ever did was embarrass me for no other reason other than I was handy. He made me stand at the jack staff for over a half an hour, waiting to raise the Union Jack when we anchored. Well, they decided not to anchor, but he left me there, standing so that everyone on the bridge could see me long after everyone else knew the deal. My crime: we were talking during a sea and anchor detail of about 8 hours. Should have kept our mouths shut, I guess, even though we were all sitting around we were still within earshot of Mr. Wonderful.

What I learned - Firstly, never put yourself in a position where you have no power. Of course, sometimes, this is unavoidable. Secondly, never create a situation where you will ask "what if" later. I don’t know how much it would have cost me, but I should have gone into the deck office that night, and I should have faced him with all the anger I had mustered up. This is a regret.

The positive - I became a serious hard-ass while I worked for this guy. I was bulletproof. The best thing I learned is that laughter can get you through anything. We all hated this guy, and we jumped at every chance to laugh at his expense. The prayer before every meal was, "Please God, kill the chief, Amen."

The other Chief - This guy would start the work day at 3:00PM. He was a perfectionist, he would nit-pick, and he wasn’t at all concerned for the welfare of his men. He started me down the path of paranoia. I’m not kidding. It’s one thing to be mentally ill, it’s something else entirely to KNOW that you are being watched. He turned the whole chain of command against me and they all came by to let me know where I stood.

What I learned - Kissing ass works. There were two guys who worked in the same office before me. Both of them had their heads so far up this chief’s ass that I wondered how they could breathe. Both of them only never left the office unless the chief sent them away. Well, I wasn’t that committed. That is, until the last two weeks on board. Read below.

The XO (executive officer) - This XO had me taken to Captain’s Mass a few weeks before. Why? Because I went to the Captain with a problem, a captain who had an open-door policy and did NOT tell me I had jumped the chain of command. The complaint was legitimate, which made it even worse. If I’d just been a loud noise, I wouldn’t have been taken seriously. Add to this the fact that the captain, himself, had praised me to the entire crew only the week before, and the command had to put a stop to me. Here’s a guy who wants equal rights! Code Red!

So, the XO wanted a chance to bitch me out. Luckily, I had an officer who was looking out for me and told me what I had to do to keep off of restriction or non-judicial punishment. I kept my mouth shut, let the XO bitch me, and when I didn’t give him a reason to punish me, he let me go. But, I was being watched.

The XO called me up to the bridge as we were getting underway for two weeks at sea. With all of the things that had to be done, with all of the other responsibilities that he had going on, he called me to the bridge. He was such a fascist about it, too: "Uh, Thompson, do you remember that little conversation we had a couple weeks ago?" That ‘conversation’ was the aforementioned Captain’s Mass. He let me know that if I didn’t do the work of two men this week then he was going to cancel my terminal leave. What did that mean? That meant that instead of going home in a week, I would be stuck on the ship for another month. That may not sound like a big deal, but I was looking over my shoulder every second. A month of that would have driven me crazy. Why did I have to do the work of two men? Because of the other guy in the office. His wife was in a car accident TWO WEEKS BEFORE. She wasn’t hurt, just shaken. He was allowed to stay behind to look after her. Meanwhile, my wife (at the time) had to pack up our stuff, clean up the apartment, and get ready to permanently move while I was at sea. Who had the bigger burden?

What I learned - For that week, I stuck my head square in the chief’s ass. He literally had to tell me to get out of the office. The result? When I left he said, "This past week was the first time you acted like a personnelman." I guess living the job was what was expected of me. So, I guess I learned two things. One: what I’m physically capable of. Two: don’t take a job that you have no intention of committing to.

The positive - A few guys in khaki fucked with me in the Navy. Hey, I collected every dime of my pay and did every day of my time. They took nothing away from me but a bit of freedom and gave me a few grey hairs. You may not believe me, but I just KNOW the fact that they were never able to really "get" me pissed them off. Thoughts like that keep me warm at night.

That guy I used to live with - I had plenty of roommates over the period of time while I was going to college; thirteen, to be exact. Some were good, some were bad. This guy was a pain in the ass. He told me more often than not that he didn’t have rent money. Now, I hate getting in someone’s business. I really do. But there was one occurrence where he didn’t pay me, told me he was broke, then went out and got a brand new tattoo. It was a big one, too. Without explaining every instance, suffice to say that he got in my pocket a lot as far as aggravation and money. He moved out, eventually. I figured he owed me about $200 when all was said and done.

I got over it. Fast forward a couple of years. He had gotten a job, got a brand new vehicle, was doing very well for himself. I met up with him and some other friends I hadn’t seen in a long time. Now, at the time, I was broke. We’re talking I was making just enough to make my car and insurance payment. It was at the end of a meal, and I ordered a beer. They had eaten dinner, I had not. Part of the conversation was my situation in life, so he was well-aware. Do you know that this motherfucker actually asked me for the money for that beer?! Eight people at the table, a receipt about ten inches long, and he went over that with a fine tooth comb to be sure that I paid my three bucks. He was an ass about it, too. I should have gotten up from the table. I should have threw it in his face. I didn’t. At the time, I thought I was over-reacting. Since then, however, it has become clear that he is completely self-absorbed.

What I learned - I know I should have confronted him right then and there, but at the time I seriously thought it was none of my business. I’d been on the receiving end of that kind of criticism and I really didn’t want to be that guy. I should have thrown him out when he refused to pay the rent. I should have told him to stick that $3 up his ass. Better yet, I should have ordered a bunch of shit and then stuck him with the bill. The lesson is that you can NOT expect people to act how you would in any given situation. It’s ridiculous to think so. If you don’t get your needs met, you have no one to blame but yourself. To this day, he is completely unaware of the effect he had on me at the time. It’s pointless to bring it up, now, and even more pointless to dwell on it, since it was MY responsibility to get my way, not wait for someone to give me justice.
The positive - I’ve learned the signs that point to the narcissist. I’ve been able to see selfishness when it rears its ugly head. Also, I won’t make the mistake of giving someone who owes me money the benefit of the doubt. Fuck you, pay me.

That Bitch at Welfare - I was employed for six months at the PA dept of welfare. The short story is that there is a group of women that decides who makes it and who does not. From talking with people who were hired before me, they arbitrarily pick who they are going to railroad out of the job. It was so bad that, out of the new hires, the ones they didn’t like used to write notes with their questions to the ones they did like so that they could be asked with impunity. I didn’t have anyone to screen for me. If I didn’t ask a question, I had to look up the answer, which meant it took me longer to do everything. If I did ask a question, it was documented that I was stupid.

What I learned - Document everything! If I had written down everything that was said to me off-hand, every smartass comment that was made in my direction, everything that the other employees had told me, I could have made the water a little hotter for them.

The positive - I also learned that it’s very satisfying to slip into someone’s office and fart. I know it’s juvenile, but it made me feel SO much better. From there I went on to teaching, practically doubling my salary at that office.

Is this the complete list? No. Not even close. There are plenty of people out there who have done me much more wrong. I’ve lost a lot over the whims of others. I have been almost destroyed by the impassivity of those in charge, the indifference of a system that cares nothing for the truth. That list, the people who did not know me, I can’t hold entirely to blame. The above are people who had the opportunity to know my heart and chose to make my life hell for the fun of it.

I try hard. I do the best I can. There are people who are going to dislike me no matter what I do. There are people who are going to take advantage of my trust or my naivety. There are people who are going to point out everything I do wrong despite how hard I try. Well, what can I do? What’s the alternative to living in a world of trust? Paranoia sucks. It’s a hell of a way to live. I refuse. But, I’ll watch for the signs, since I’m pretty good at picking them up, now. I’ve had a lot of practice. Acting on them, however, is very risky. There’s always the chance that I’ll turn it into a self-fulfilling prophesy; making it so rather than avoiding it.

The biggest lesson is that, without exception, I always moved on to bigger and better things. Those evil gremlins who live to torment are really just tormenting themselves. My internal gremlin wants me to blame myself for not watching my back. Hey, sometimes it’s just not my fault. I’ll continue to be open, honest, and trusting. If it doesn’t work out, at least I can fart in someone’s office before they run me out of town.