It was profound enough for me to actually stand up for myself, mind you all, and you might not know it, I don’t do that very often.
Sure I will stand up for anyone else but that’s a different story.
I normally let things slide and try to not cause many problems especially when it comes to people I know and deal with on a daily basis.
… You all only see me when I am mad or around others so shush you just don’t know!
I put up with a lot over the years, and a lot of you have heard some about it but this was the final straw.
He said that I wasn’t injured enough to use the VA.
He assumed that I don’t have the right to have access to something that is there for people like me.
He showed that people who don’t know have no clue.
People, who think they know, don’t have a clue.
People, who work with these people, don’t have a clue.
I was talking to a co-worker and he was telling me about Vietnam.
Wow, you ever think that you have it bad let me have you sit down with some of these guys.
He was the ‘point man’ for his unit for 6 months, he had white sulfurous hit him in the face, he was forced to jump into some punji sticks, a lot of other things for another time and story, but in the end he got back and was treated poorly by his fellow American’s.
I had nothing like that, wow nothing at all like that.
We had some fun issues ourselves but only one today I wanted to talk about.
Ready for it?
I know I need help but I love this crazy show!Simon cracks me up, Randy is a fool, Paula is a drug addict and then the new girl … Kara Dioguardi … yea good times!
One of the problems I have from my military time is I can’t go on American Idol.
To the point though, the reason I can’t go on this show.
They at some point make you sing a song of their choice.
I know this doesn’t sound so bad, I mean I have the voice of a thousand little angels after all … although some people say more like angels who are being torched in Hell, or even torturing the angels in Hell … but so not the point!
I was watching this wonderful show yet again and it popped into my mind that I couldn’t do it.
No, again not because of my lovely voice, or my age because lets face it once they see me they would wave that rule just on my looks … be nice people they let Norman on there!
It is because they might make me sing that one song, you know the one.
Then I would have to say I am sorry and walk off the stage upsetting all of my loyal followers once again.
You don’t know the one?
How is that possible?
Let me tell you a story then …(Fade to black … no not that rocking Metalica song just the color!)
Picture if you will me getting off a plane in Cairo, Egypt and getting bussed off to the port to unload.
(Even that young, I looked that good!)
We arrive and low and behold they are playing American Music, how kind, doesn’t it feel like home …
After a few hours of not paying attention we noted that they have already played this song and wait for the next one to see if it is a short tape and they only have a few songs on it.
The same song played again, then again and again.
24 hours a day and 7 days a week we heard the same song over and over.
Gloria Gaynor’s I will Survive.
Now Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris never had a clue that the song that they had written would not only one day be a female empowerment song, or even an anthem for abused people, but I have faith that they NEVER would have guessed it would be used as psychological warfare.
I spoke to another friend of mine who was over there a few years before me and he said they did the same thing to him but they played Meatloaf’s Bat out of Hell.
I have no clue who had it worse back then but I think I win now because my song is still on the radio!
Now, you might ask what this does to me … when I hear the song I get a little upset.
That’s putting it nicely I think … I want to hit something, hard and a lot and until it stops moving.
The other problem is the solders over there would sing it too us.
So I associate Arabic people with this song too.
I would like to say that I am not a racist per say … but then I would be a liar I fear.
It doesn’t matter fat or thin, tall or short, attractive or like the others, I get angry when I see them.
I don’t know how others do it when in regards to Blacks, Hispanic or other races.
I mean, I don’t know how people can hate a whole people just because of the few extremists within it, or a group because they have a different faith … or how you can classify Jewish as a ‘race’ but that’s again another Blog.
That is all, normally, a learned behavior or in some people just something in the back of their head we might never understand.
Me though, and some of the people I know who went through this also, I feel have a reason.
I am not going to go out of my way to be mean or hurtful or negative in any way toward them.
I will avoid them because I know that it wasn’t them who did this to me but in the end … I want to hurt them.
How is it fair that I want to do this?
This person who I don’t know, who could have come up with the cure for some nasty disease or saved thousands by turning on their own people and stopping another World Trade Center attack from happening.
It doesn’t matter, I in some form or another hate them.
I know it’s wrong, I know it’s bad, I even feel bad about it while it is happening … doesn’t’ mean I can stop it.
Back to some point though … because I can’t hear or God forbid sing that song I can’t pursue my goal of winning American Idol, that makes me mad yet again and pushes the issue even further.
Knowing that because of a few peoples actions, I will have a negative reaction for the rest of my life
This is one of the things I have to deal with.
It isn’t a physical problem, but God Damn it, it is something that only a few people know about and it is something that hurts and bothers me in ways this person who said I can’t use the VA because I wasn’t hurt enough, can’t understand.
Physically, I must be because they decided to give me money every month because so many parts of me don’t work.
Mentally, I still have a constant memory loss and no childhood per say.
This one though, this one could get bad and ugly really fast.
God help me, or the person I see if I come across an Arabic person singing I Will Survive!
I am not joking and or trying to make a joke … but I don’t think they will, survive that is.
That’s just another thing I have to deal with and have a constant fear of.
I spend the rest of my life in prison abandoning and ruining La Wife’s life because some poor soul decided to sing to them self.
Yea, I have issues but because of people like me, no much better then me, you don’t have to have them.
I am just blessed that mine are so mild and wonder how so many others can even live with it.
So many people were killed from these conflicts.
So many over there, some from the injuries they sustained over time and then the few who couldn’t survive because of the problems left in their heads.
My issues are mild to say the least, these other men and women though.
Some of them just can’t find their way back home, and it’s been so long.
La Wife has joked to me about some of the stuff I did when I got back … the life I lived and the people I dated.
That’s how I dealt with it I think …
I am glad that that is all I did, I stayed away from drugs and alcohol some how …
That’s what I have to deal with … what will this next group have to deal with?
Also, aren’t you glad that they are out there so you don’t have to be …
2 comments:
"First I was afraid, now I'm petrified"....
You are a complex little puppy, you know that? In your mind you have, quite profoundly, linked American Idol and the V.A. hospital, combined with the care you should/should not receive. Wow! I bow your your supreme command of mental thought. I can barely, on a good day, combine thoughts like farting and needing to use the bathroom (wow, someone else just came to mind and it's a good thing that there are no stairs in my apartment).
You are right though, there are many people that amble through their days, saying what they want and never giving a thought to how it may or may not affect others. It's sad.
And by the way, if it matters, I don't like Gloria Gaynor (I thought you NEEDED to know that).
heehee
For as tough and heartless as I am, I am a totally wussy, teary-eyed mess when I watch any U.S. armed forces unit, active or retired, pass by. I don't know who slays me more: the young; bright; sturdy troops who will sacrifice for me, or the sweet; elderly; as erect and proud as still physically possible for them to be, retired troops who have sacrificed for me. I choke up when I sing the Star Spangled Banner or America. I am grateful, always, that I am blessed enough to live in the United States of America and I know what and who it takes to keep me safely asleep in my bed at night: someone who is standing all alone, in the dark, somewhere in the world, holding a rifle and saying,"You're not coming through tonight - not on my watch." No matter what I can do for any soldier, sailor, airman or Marine . . . it will never be enough. Not ever.
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