Notice: Function _load_textdomain_just_in_time was called incorrectly. Translation loading for the twentyfifteen domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /chroot/home/a6f7779a/9d7429a5d9.nxcli.io/html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6170 {"id":64,"date":"2014-02-07T09:41:18","date_gmt":"2014-02-07T15:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/frankdeleon.com\/?p=64"},"modified":"2014-02-07T18:26:23","modified_gmt":"2014-02-08T00:26:23","slug":"ah-stress-i-hardly-knew-ye-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/frankdeleon.com\/?p=64","title":{"rendered":"Ah, Stress, I Hardly Knew Ye…(Part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

But…my curiosity had been stoked, and I wondered what in her life had caused her to feel that she had to reach out to her social contacts to tell them she was stressed. \u00a0She was young, in middle school, and from what I knew had a pretty decent life. \u00a0Since she hadn’t appealed directly to me, or anyone else for that matter–and she hadn’t responded to the immediate queries–I was just left to wonder.<\/p>\n

After thinking for a while I began to wonder about my life back when I was a young teen, and even younger, and tried to recall when I may have first felt what we would now define as “stress”.<\/p>\n

For those of you who know me well and are familiar with my early years already know that at about age fourteen I began to have some pretty interesting experiences when my parents decided to return to that Pentecostal religion that they had unceremoniously left long before I was born.<\/p>\n

Up\u00a0until that fateful day my life had consisted mostly of going to school, coming home to do my homework, slipping out to the back yard to shoot hoops \u00a0on a raggedy-ass\u00a0backboard and rim, and waiting for my mother to yell me back into the house for a lean dinner. \u00a0Then it was off to my corner of the house (I never had a bedroom–hell, I never had a\u00a0space<\/em> to call my own in any of our many rented houses) finish off any homework I had left to do, and finally go off to \u00a0listen to my parent’s only real earthly possession, the 1940’s vintage Philco console radio. \u00a0There, with the lights off and while sitting on the floor with my back resting against the wooden front of the large console radio, I would close my eyes and float off into the wonderful world of my imagination. \u00a0Thirty minute programs with names such as, “The Shadow”, “Gang Busters”, “The Inner Sanctum”, and “The Lone Ranger” (Hiyooo Silver, away…..), would take me to places I’d never seen, have me riding horses in dusty western towns, and soak me in mysterious intrigue and delicious mysteries. \u00a0All these imaginary voyages were taken as I sat quietly on the cold linoleum floor, and seen through my mind’s eye as clearly and vividly as if I had installed a seventy inch HD Smart Plasma 600 mHz TV into my brain.<\/p>\n

Before my parents started dragging me to the Pentecostal church just about every day of the week my only recreation had been that old radio and my back yard hoops. Because my father had been drinking away almost every dollar that he earned as a painter\/diesel mechanic, my mother and I weren’t left with any”disposable income”. What money we did have came was as a result of her surreptitious rifling through my passed out dad’s pockets after he had returned in the early hours of the morning after his all night binges. \u00a0The nickels, pennies, dimes, and the occasional crumpled dollar bill my mother found went for food mostly, then if able, a few clothes. \u00a0Bottom line, that pretty much made any outside teenage social recreation virtually non existent; and that included activities such as movies, dances, or even dropping by the local drugstore for a malt. \u00a0(Uh, we didn’t have a local drugstore in the barrio).<\/p>\n

Oddly, I can truthfully say that I really didn’t know what I was missing. \u00a0It is often said that the poor usually don’t feel poor, and that’s the way it was for me. \u00a0It was what it was, and that was that! \u00a0No stress.<\/p>\n

So, admittedly, the late 1940’s, all of the 1950’s and the early 1960’s were a completely different era in most areas of life. \u00a0The kids we now call “millennials” don’t have a clue, nor do I believe they are experiencing life in rich juicy technicolor as we did. \u00a0As I begin to bring the memories of those times back into focus \u00a0it’s clear that we were actually a pretty hip generation. \u00a0For music and general media-type entertainment most of us had radios (mono), \u00a0a privileged few had TVs (most with a tiny black and white screen), and most of us had telephones (black, large, and rotary dial). \u00a0Much like today my generation’s taste in clothing, speech and general swagger was highly influenced by pop singers, TV and movie stars, and to some degree made up on the spot by those more creative “cats” in their own little individual clan-like groups. \u00a0Hand-me-down words and phrases like “cool”, “groovy” and “you guys”, were imported from the previous generation and pushed on to the next; and overused phrases like “neato”, “hep cat”, “swell” and “rat fink” \u00a0were driven straight into hip-talk extinction (thank God).<\/p>\n

Of course I vividly remember having some mildly harsh feelings towards those kids whom I considered the “privileged” (hep cats driving raked 1950 Fords and Chevys), because \u00a0I always had to ride the bus. \u00a0And bullying? \u00a0Yup, plenty of that for sure, and dealt with in one of several ways: be a patsy and get pummeled on a regular basis, or suck it up and attack the bully when he\/she wasn’t looking then run like hell. \u00a0The second option usually worked pretty good as it sent the bullies the message that the skinny little freak could and would \u00a0hit back. \u00a0But then there was a third option that a few of us lucky ones had access to: Personal Bullies. \u00a0Robert was mine.<\/p>\n

He was nine months older, way bigger, and knew to how to fight dirty (first you kick them in the balls then the rest is easy). \u00a0But more importantly he was insanely loyal to me for a couple of reasons. \u00a0First, we pretty much grew up in the same neighborhood, (thereby sharing a commonality), he’d never known his parents (lived with a grandmother), and was crazy envious that I had a real mom and dad, and oh, I also did most of his homework. \u00a0No big deal for me as he was taking extremely easy classes, but the stuff I did for him pretty much kept him at my beck and call. \u00a0Whenever I was threatened by some neanderthal I would sulk away quietly, then find and tell Robert. \u00a0Then, much like today’s Energizer Bunny, off he’d go–pointy shoes looking for nut sacks. \u00a0Most of the northside neighborhood we lived in, and that included an elementary school, a junior high and a high school, knew about Robert and his flying kicks and flailing fists. \u00a0He was feared mightily and by proxy, so was I. \u00a0Nope, no stress there.<\/p>\n

Alright, so I would guess my first few experiences with stress occurred when report cards were issued. \u00a0I usually started worrying about the state of my grades around final exam time, but mostly I worried about the state that parts of my body would be in if I brought home a report card with anything lower than an “A” or a “B”. \u00a0You see,my mother only went as far as the 3rd grade and one of the\u00a0things she retained in those three years was that “A’s” and “B’s” were good, and “C,D, and F’s” were bad. \u00a0I lived and died by that simple equation, and so by default that made me a pretty good student. \u00a0As someone very close to me once said, “Fear is a great motivator.”<\/p>\n

The first time I had a mark lower than an “B” on my report card happened in the 6th grade. \u00a0It was a “C” in Science that had been reduced from an “A” due to the teacher thinking that I had cheated on a quiz. \u00a0I hadn’t cheated, and in fact had been telling the dweeb behind me that I was not going to give him the answer to number 3 during the quiz. \u00a0The teacher rushed over, took both our papers and smeared a big red “F” across the front. \u00a0That was enough to drag my final grade down. \u00a0Stress building.<\/p>\n

So now here I was, getting off the bus with my report card in my coat pocket. \u00a0That semi-circle of a letter was oozing pure red fear; and as I walked the three blocks to my house my knees began to turn to jelly. \u00a0Regaining my balance after coming close to toppling over I heard one of the neighbor ladies call my name. \u00a0As I looked up I saw her coming down the steps from her porch asking if I was OK. \u00a0I stopped. \u00a0Then without even thinking about what I was going to say I screamed out: \u00a0“My mom’s going to SPANK ME BECAUSE I GOT A “C” IN SCIENCE!” \u00a0The last word trailed off into a wretched phlegmy whine, and big watery tears came flooding out of my eyes.<\/p>\n

“Why is your mommy going to spank you?”<\/p>\n

“Be..be..because I got a “C”…” \u00a0(Yowl).<\/p>\n

“Oh, that’s no reason for a spanking. No, no, no she won’t.”<\/p>\n

“Yes, yes she will”.<\/p>\n

“Well, don’t worry. \u00a0I’ll walk home with you and make sure she doesn’t spank you”.<\/p>\n

And so she did. \u00a0And my mom didn’t spank me….well, not until the lady left. \u00a0Then I got it really good. \u00a0So, maybe that was my very first really stressful experience.<\/p>\n

Home life after my full \u00a0immersion into extreme Pentecostalism was, well, interesting. \u00a0Not having much to eat on a regular basis before we got religion came as a direct result of my dad’s heavy drinking problem. \u00a0 He’d get paid on Friday and we wouldn’t see him until Sunday morning. \u00a0Usually he could be found passed out on the porch if he wasn’t too drunk, or hanging out of the driver’s side of his car if he had tied on a real bender.<\/p>\n

After he found Jesus (really, I think it should be the other way around) he developed a new obsession. \u00a0Instead of throwing money away in bars he now tried to impress the brothers and sisters in the church with his extremely charitable nature by throwing what little money he earned on trivial bullshit like contributing excessively and extravagantly to the church fund to buy the pastor a new Buick every year. \u00a0My mother’s developing health problems, agonizingly painful kidney stones, and the resulting crazy expensive medical bills resulting from her hospital stays, brought on rip roaring high decibel arguments and really did the hokey pokey on my developing teenage angst. \u00a0OK, maybe a little stress there.<\/p>\n

Because we pretty much lived in the poverty rut I never attended any football, basketball, or baseball games. \u00a0I never went to one high school dance or after school party. \u00a0Save for the symbolic membership in my school’s French Club (required if you wanted to take French), I belonged to nothing and pretty much didn’t socialize with anyone except maybe Robert. \u00a0Besides my thug friend I had no close or really even distant friends. \u00a0Lunch time in high school was spent on the front lawn of Jeff Davis High School usually with a small group of lonely girls who had also been outcast from school society for various reasons. \u00a0We didn’t talk very much. \u00a0Most of the time we just munched our bologna or pressed ham sandwiches in silence, buried in our common dejection. \u00a0I’m thinking a more low self esteem thing than stress there.<\/p>\n

Health wise, I was a real mess. \u00a0Throughout my teen years I suffered from asthma, pus filled pimples and whiteheads, constant earaches, and a raging case of athletes foot. \u00a0For a couple of years in high school I contracted chronic jock itch which would, at the most inopportune time, flare up and demand to be scratched mightily and repeatedly. \u00a0When that urge subsided the athletes foot would start up. \u00a0Neither of these conditions would demand scratching \u00a0unless I was delivering a book report in front of the English 101 class, or reciting a Bible verse to Sunday School class at church. \u00a0Itchy stress.<\/p>\n

Then of course there was the dating scene. \u00a0Actually for me, the non-dating scene. \u00a0As a teen I never had any kind of serious boy\/girl relationship because (1) it was prohibited by our church, (2) I didn’t have any money anyway, (3) I wasn’t popular or particularly attractive, physically or otherwise, (4) our one phone was on a 4 party line, so any date making conversations that I may have wanted to have with anyone would’ve been discussed, dissected and distributed to my entire neighborhood in 1.2 nanoseconds; and (5) any dates would’ve had to have taken place at our Pentecostal church–so that the unfortunate girl could be completely exposed to the “love Jesus or die in eternal flames you sinning scum” sermon. \u00a0My constant thought: “I’ll never meet any girls and I will die an old maid”…stress.<\/p>\n

But even with all that pressure I still don’t recall ever \u00a0having \u00a0to reach out to my social group (Robert) and scream, “STRESSED”! \u00a0If I had, he would’ve probably whipped out his switch blade, assumed his pointy shoe balls kicking stance, and screamed, “WHERE?”<\/p>\n

So, having recalled all these experiences– I guess in a way–my way– I may have been, OK, maybe a little stressed, but I was just just too dumb to know it. \u00a0Also, and more to the point, my generation, and particularly the kids in my neighborhood, \u00a0just didn’t use that word as part of our daily dialogue. \u00a0The same for phrases such as ADHD, emotionally challenged, PC, culturally disadvantaged, and many many other current catch phrases and words.<\/p>\n

Looking back at those colorful years I think we just tried to live the best we could and complain as little as possible. \u00a0We lived day by day without understanding that all those feelings of inadequacy, guilt, sorrow, fear, angst, pity, melancholy, sadness, anguish and dejection could’ve just been lumped into that one word: Stress. \u00a0But hey, who knew?<\/p>\n

To be continued…….<\/p>\n

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