The Hero

This was the other thing I wrote in that English class that I was really proud of. Not because I got a good grade, and because the classmates I was paired with wrote awesome things about it in their review. Well, I mean I guess those are a couple reasons. But the main one is that it got a lot of things from my life off my chest.

I'd really like to transcribe it here, because even if the copies I have get lost someday (and it's really a wonder that I even still have them, and that they survived the move from the Ripon house), it'll still survive somewhere in cyberspace.

The assignment was to write an autobiographical story. I wrote mine about my relationship with my dad. It's called "The Hero".

The Hero

My memories of finding out what had happened are so clouded that I don't even remember who told me. I don't know if James and Sally, my younger siblings, were there, or if the bearer of bad news told me alone. I only remember that, at 12 years old, I didn't quite understand the repercussions of my father's actions. I knew my mother was hurt beyond repair, and I knew that the pedestal I had held Dad on for so long now had a huge crack.

Growing up, I always knew that my dad was the perfect father. He could do anything. If there was a level I couldn't get past in a video game, he tackled it effortlessly. If something broke in the house, it was fixed before I knew it. If there was something I didn't know, he knew it for sure. And I knew that if someone tried to break into our home or hurt our family, they were no match for my dad. He was Superman!

I knew that my father loved my siblings and me. I knew that he loved my mother too, and that there was no woman who could compare to her in his eyes. i knew that church was important to him, and that he wanted his children to be raised with Christian principles. I knew that, as a district attorney, he always did the right thing. I knew he was the best at his job and that everyone in his office respected him.

But, because he stole that money from his office, he had subjected his friends to questioning and searching by the police. The story was in the paper, and I'm sure that parents of kids I went to school with knew what he had done. His job let him quit instead of firing him. I was so ashamed.

Everything I knew, or that I had known about my father was crumbling down around me. Don't get me wrong; at 12 years old, I still loved my father a great deal, and even though the pedestal was cracked, it was still standing. Even today, I know that what he did is the reason for our financial troubles now, and I knew it then too. But my father was still Superman.

At around 17, the pedestal fell. I remember this night much better than the first. I was about to beg my father to bring me somewhere in the morning, I don't remember where. I walked into the study, and he was sitting at the computer. He minimized the window once he saw me, but it was too late. I tried to recover from what I had seen and to continue talking. I felt like my head was spinning, I know I didn't even ask him what I had intended to. I just blurted something out and continued through the cluttered study, up the stairs, and into my large and unfriendly room. I collapsed on my bed and started to sob.

I don't know how much you know about christianity, but in the New Testament, Jesus says that merely thinking about doing something is just as bad as actually doing it. If you think lustfully about a woman who is not your wife, you have already committed adultery. The view I had of my father's love for my mother, the relationship that created stability in my life, had fallen apart. In my mind, my dad had cheated on my mom, and she had biblical grounds for a divorce.

My mom was asleep in the next room. I got a hold of myself, gathered up every ounce of courage I could find, and walked purposefully into my mother's room. I knew I had to tell her what I had seen. I gently woke her, tears still streaming down my face.

"Mom? Mom... wake up, Mom."

"Courtney... Courtney, what's wrong?"

"Mom, I... I just went into the study to ask Dad a question. He was on the computer, and I... I caught him looking at porn."

At these words, all the grogginess left my mother's face, yet she still looked tired, only in a different way. She immediately got out of bed.

"I told him he needed to stop that. I can't believe he would do this at home, where his children are. What did he say to you when you saw?"

For the second time on this night, I felt like I was in the twilight zone, and my mind grasped for words to respond to my mother. She knew?

"I... He doesn't know I saw. He thinks he minimized the window fast enough."

Without a word, she marched down the stairs and into the study. I say slowly on my bed, thinking. What was going on? Was I dreaming? My father was looking at pornography, and my mother knew about it? This couldn't be happening; it had to be a misunderstanding. But then why was my mother not shocked?

When she came back upstairs, she started to tell me that my father had had a problem with pornography for as long as she'd known him. She told me that he was not supposed to be doing it at home. Mom apologized that I'd seen him, and that's all I remember about out conversation. She left me there with the promise that my father loved me very much.

I can't remember how long I cried. I just know that I sobbed, the tears rolled without stopping, and I cried myself to sleep. Over the next few weeks, I had taken measure to reconcile with my father. We had a talk, and all the while, my face remained firm. I was like a statue, no longer yielding to my stupid emotions, no more tears leaking my from eyes at the expense of this man. I stood stony-faced before him while he almost cried, and I felt like he deserved to cry. Not me. Superman, huh? Yeah, right.

As the years passed, I knew that I had never stopped loving my father. Whenever, I left home after a few days' visit to return to San Jose, I told him I loved him and gave him a hug and a kiss. I still loved him dearly, but I knew things would never be the same.

One night, while I was home with my family, we were all earing dinner together. My uncle on my dad's side and his girlfriend ate with us. I don't remember how the subject up, but Uncle John started asking my dad about a time when Dad was a teenager and he had captured a criminal. It seemed like all the other conversations stopped, and everyone tuned in to this one.

"You beat him with a gun, right Russ?"

"No, well, I mean, there was a gun, but I didn't-"

"Well, I thought you hit him with a bag of change," my mom piped in.

"No, I thought you pistol-whipped him!"

At this point, even though I had no idea what they were talking about, I decided to jokingly chime in.

"No Dad, I thought you had a bazooka and blasted the whole store!"

"Dad, I thought you dropped in from a helicopter with a machine gun!" teased my brother.

"I heard you were dressed like a ninja, and you had a katana and everything!"

"I heard Jack Bauer was there!"

"Yeah, well... he was taking notes," laughed my father, thoroughly enjoying our dramatizations of his story.

My father told us what really happened. As a teenager, he worked at a gas station, and on this particular night, he was working with another girl, Rita. Dad was taking out the trash, and he had locked the door behind him. As he threw the bag into the dumpster, a man came out from the shadows, dressed like a bandit from a western. He had a gun, and he held it to my father's face as he told him to get on his knees. He told my father to hand over his wallet and keys, and then made Dad take him to the door of the gas station. Finding the door was locked, the man threatened to shoot Rita if my dad didn't open the door. He opened it. The man instructed my dad and Rita to give him all the money int he store. As Rita handed over the bags of change, my dad jumped at his change. He took a huge swing at the man, hitting him right in the face. The man stumbled backward and fired his gun; the bullet went through my dad's sleeve. They started fighting, and my dad got the gun away from him and started beating him with it. The man pulled out a knife, and my father wrestled it away from him and threw it across the store.

The fight continued until the police arrived. The man was unconscious; he was taken to the hospital and wasn't released for two months. He was tried and received prison time. My dad got little more than a few bruises and a ruined jacket as a reward.

"I'll tell ya somethin'. When he had that gun pointed at me, it was touchin' my nose. I mean, right in my face. And I knew I was die. Not a doubt in my mind. I mean, I knew he was gonna kill me 'n Rita, i just knew it. And I thought, 'Well, if this guy's gonna kill me no matter what, I'm gonna try to get out of this.'"

I sat listening, enraptured, enthralled, totally immersed in my dad's story. He told us how, int he following weeks, police officers dropped by to offer their admiration. One of them even brought him an application and told him they were having tryouts for the police department, and that he would give my father a recommendation. I couldn't believe my ears. My father, who was hardworking and firm, who gave his life to his family, who had betrayed my trust and love, really was Superman! What kind of person can dodge bullets and wrestle away knives and emerge from the fight so triumphant? It felt like all the things that had happened between my father and I had never transpired. Not what I was dwelling on them constantly, or still struggling with them, but this new discovery of my father pushed it all aside.

Later that night, my dad came into the living room where I was sitting watching TV by myself. Before he even sat down, he said, "Court, I hope I didn't upset you tonight with that story."

"Upset me? Why would I be upset? It was freakin' awesome!"

My dad didn't smile. Maybe he did, but it was such a small one, I didn't see it. He too looked tired, the kind of tired my mom had looked on that night a few years before.

"Well, it was a long time ago."

And that was that. I thought long and hard about this short exchange of words. My mom said that possibly he had responded that was because, even though he saved his own life and Rita's and prevented the robbery of that story, beating that man was something he wished he hadn't had to do.

Superman was far from perfect. He had that one great weakness: kryptonite. If kryptonite was around, Superman was done for, he was worthless. But kryptonite wasn't awlays around, so Superman had it easy. Mosy people, they carry their weaknesses, their temptations with them every second of their life. What makes us a great person is whether we can overcome our weaknesses, and whether we can continue to triumph even though they are always present. I see now that ocmparing my father to Superman is fair in some ways, but completely unfair in others. Like Superman dedicated his life to the people of Metropolis, my father dedicated his life to our family. He worked so hard to provide for us, and even though my siblings and I have all screwed up at one time or another, his love is unconditional. But the comparison is also unfair because my dad is a different hero: one that carries on in spite of his weaknesses and their constant presence, and can overcome them even though they never go away, because he really is a great person.

Rumblings from the Past

More like ramblings, maybe.

Well, school officially started today, but my first on campus class is tomorrow night, so I was looking through my backpack today to make sure I had pencils and pens and all that jazz. I did, but that's beside the point. There were a few folders in there from my last semester at San Jose State.... the good old days.

My English professor was one of my favorite professors that I've ever had. I really enjoy writing, and he was just a good guy. He was a very strict grader, however. He said he VERY rarely gave away perfect scores. In fact, most of my essays have just below a perfect score. He would write a plethora of comments at the end, none of them negative, and then still not give me a perfect score. I was never angry about this, but it made it all the more awesome the few times I DID get a perfect score.

This essay is one of those times.

The assignment was to use a semicolon sentence and all the conjunction words in one essay, and it could be about anything we wanted. Here's mine:

As she soared through the air, she felt exhilarated, just as all the other times; however, she still carried the burden. Even though day in and day out, she saved lives, it was not a life she would have chosen for herself. "When I'm not saving people," she thought to herself, "I feel lazy. Yet while I reminisce about my life before the incident, I'm filled with longing for those simpler times. If I could take that day back, I would." Because she had been such a carefree child, she had thought nothing of wandering off on her own, for she knew nothing of the dangers of the world, and she thought she would always be safe. But coming across the chemical spill had changed her. Until then, she had just been a normal child, though maybe a little more innocent than most, and now she was what you might call a superhero, or what some people might call a freak of nature. Although she looked normal, she possessed great powers that she used in an attempt to rid her city of crime. After each rescue, she neither felt happy, not did she feel sad. She always left her citizens in silence once they were safe, since revealing her true feelings about her powers would only make them look down on her. "So," she thought, "I must always save them, but no one can ever really save me."

That one earned me a perfect score from the ever-elusive Professor Lore. Muahaha.

You can see it coming from a mile away.

One of the things I REALLY hate about my job is getting sick all the time. Well, not ALL the time. But more frequently than usual.

The kids sneeze and cough anywhere, and on anyone/thing. They'll turn their heads and sneeze on me, and I just look at them and say, "Seriously? What in the WORLD was the point of that?! WHY oh why do you hate me?!"

So, needless to say, after I got sneezed on by Braden on Monday, and Luke on Tuesday, I got sick on Wednesday. And God help me, I'm going to sneeze and cough on all those little devils so they'll get sick too.

Muahahaha!

I'm not really just evil. I'm an evil genius, hence the laugh. And I'm also all about karma, even if I have to actively make what goes around come around. Haha.

I really wish people could look at things from another person's perspective. People that possess an inability to do this really infuriate me. Well... ok yeah, infuriate. Also frustrate. It's not that I'm an expert in the art of empathizing or sympathizing, but I do think I'm pretty good at trying to see life from another person's eyes.

But when you offer one person a job and they quit, and someone comes along who is really in need of a job, and you only offer them HALF of the open position, that, to me, is a little bit heartless. What in the world is it to you if someone else is hired? Someone that's needed, in fact. Because, just a little tidbit here, the staff we have now is actually ILLEGAL because we don't have enough people for the number of kids that are enrolled. Sorry, but that's just not right. I really like you, I really do. You're funny, and you would do anything for a friend. But why is the same position not opened to a person in need, just because... what, you don't know them? They're not the pastor's daughter? Or is it because you never leave your office and you don't know what it's like to work with all those kids, at all those stations, in that short amount of time, with less people than is legal to have?

I'm just frustrated. Someone whom I love dearly, and is wonderful with children, and who I feel God has sent to work with us at just the right time, can't work because you're not willing to see things from her perspective. Or from my perspective. Or from the other teachers' perspectives. It's ridiculous.

And I've been trying to see things from your perspective. But I cannot, for the life of me, see why it's like this. What is it to YOU if someone who's needed works for those hours? First of all, we need another person. Second, it's not like her salary comes our of your paycheck. It's not like you have to worry about that one bit. AND you already had someone working those hours, so the church was obviously prepared to pay that much. So I really don't understand.

I think I just need to let it go, but I just have this little... voice that keeps saying... "What are the odds that Hil just quits her job that she hates the same day we find out that Julie can't work at the preschool anymore?" The odds are pretty slim from where I'm standing. So slim, in fact, that the first phrase that came to mind when I learned of these things was, "God thing." It was a God thing... or so I thought. And I can't decide if I should keep trying to get my mom to say something more, or if I should just let it go because if it was a God thing it would have been worked our already. Maybe trying to get my mom to say something more is part of the whole God thing. Who knows... I guess only God does.

So can I win the lottery now?

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

So have you ever been in a situation where the people who are in the situation with you make you feel completely sickened?

Do I love my church? Well yeah. Maybe I just love the way it used to be, I'm not sure. But there are a lot of people there that I love. Do I love my Sunday school class? That's a totally different question. You could say I love them with the love of Christ. That would probably be a safe thing to say. Because I really don't like them, but I mean... I don't hate them.

Now I'm not saying I'm perfect. Far from it, in fact. I know I do things that are wrong, and I know what makes me weak. But come on now... I've never had such a swearing problem that I can't hold it back when in the certain company that it would be inappropriate to swear in front of. Like your Sunday school class, for instance. And I've never been in a situation where the rest of the people around you (in your Sunday school class) laughed at the person who swore. You know, in the middle of the lesson.

I've never had such a sex-crazed or perverted disposition that I couldn't just hold in my disgusting comments until I was in a more appropriate place. (Notice I said "more appropriate place"... because really no place is totally appropriate for unwholesome words to come from your mouth.)

I guess right now in my life, I'm not looking to hang out with people that just seem to be running into a wall in their lives, in terms of.... I don't know. Their relationship with God, I guess. But even more broad than that... Running into a wall in terms of themselves. People who just want to drink, smoke, swear, and have sex. If that's all your life is, then you have a problem, and you're not who I need to be surrounding myself with right now.

Like I said, I'm not perfect. I know I swear sometimes, I know I do things I shouldn't. I know I doubt God. I mean, I know I do these things, and I know that they are problems. But I also know that I shouldn't be surrounding myself with people who do the same things, worse and more frequently than I do. I was really hoping that I could be in that class, because they seem to have a lot of good discussions. But a lot of them are about how we have "Christian freedoms" and if it feels right to drink and smoke, then we can do it.

Do it if it feels right?! Doesn't that go against EVERYTHING the Bible teaches?

Sigh.

"So sad that it should come to this."

Oh, the humanity!

So I always feel like I'm being taken advantage of at work. I don't know... I think that's worse than actually being taken advantage of. Because I mean, you can be taken advantage of and not know it, right? So then ignorance is bliss. But if you FEEL like you're being taken advantage of, even if you're not, then that's pretty horrible. Or just annoying.

I don't know, I might be more upset about it if I didn't like my job, which I do very much.

Anyway. After finally reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (I had been a fan of the movie since it came out), I decided I needed to read the rest of Douglas Adams' books concerning Arthur Dent. However, being short on money due to a slow, confused, and heartless loan company, I really couldn't afford to buy them. I only borrowed the first one from a friend, and I need some things to read. Well, not really. I have plenty of books I haven't read yet, but I'm on a Douglas Adams kick right now.

So after work, I went to the book exchange, which is a WONDERFUL place my mother introduced me to a couple months ago. My mom and dad have accumulated a massive amount of books over their years, so we have quite a credit at the book exchange because of all the old and rarely read books they brought in. Also, my mom got a gift certificate to the book exchange for like $25. So the store credit, combined with the gift certificate, has gotten me probably around 20 books for around $7. (You can only use store credit on old/used books, not new ones, and I think a couple of the ones I bought were new, hence the reason I have actually paid that store money at all.)

It's pretty much my favorite place to go. Pretty much.

But I feel like I'm neglecting CoH (City of Heroes, my "home" MMO). But I mean... none of my old friends play it anymore. Not even Scott, he quit just a few days ago. I'm still paying for the game, technically. But I haven't played it for a few weeks now. I logged on just the other day, because I had a new veteran reward. See, on CoH, for every three months that your account is active (meaning the monthly subscription has been paid), you get a veteran reward. These rewards give you some, but not all, of these things:

-a badge (which has no purpose in the game, except bragging rights)
-a respec (short for "respecification", which is a token you would otherwise have to earn ingame; it allows you to re-choose your character's powers within their powersets)
-new tailor options
-a bonus power
-a summon pet power
-a summon pet power, and the pet actually has usefulness
-a mission teleport power (and this is incredibly useful. Just imagine that you're a superhero, and you have to constantly travel ALL around the world to save people and whatnot. Now imagine that you're in California, and they need your help in Zimbabwe. And now imagine that, instead of having to Super Jump or slowly Fly your whole way there, you can just use that power, and *pop*, you're not only in Zimbabwe, but EXACTLY the right place in Zimbabwe that you need to be. REALLY useful.)
-a base teleporter power (This power allows you to teleport to your base, no matter where you are in the game world. Your base is like.... well, it's like Batman's batcave. Except you share it with people, and it doesn't have a butler and a superawesome car inside.)

I might be forgetting something... well, I probably am, because I'm quite forgetful. But my point was, I knew I had earned the 48 month veteran reward, which means I got the second "summon pet power" in the list. And I was pretty psyched about that. There's a small list of pets you can choose from, and whichever pet you choose, it gives you a certain buff. It's really not all THAT outstanding... I was just excited about it because it meant that I got my 48 month veteran reward, and not a whole lot of people have that.

Well. One of the other teachers at work broke her arm. So I've been lucky enough to be my boss's go-to girl when a time slot needs to be filled in. Which is cool, because like I said, I'm fairly short on money. And by fairly, I mean seriously. The only bad thing is that I'm REALLY not a morning person, and I'm seriously bad at waking up in the morning. Notice I said, "waking up in the morning" not "waking up early", meaning I just have a general problem waking up because I really love to sleep.

All right, readers that I don't have. Douglas Adams is calling my name.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

The Woes of Me

Well. This is the third blog I've started in my lifetime. Hopefully this site will prove to be more inspirational to me than the last ones... whose names will go unmentioned. Let's just say that I haven't been on them for so long, I doubt I would even be able to log back in. Ah, the good ole' days, when I only blogged because the boy I liked blogged on that site too.

But lately, I've been thinking that some of my closer friends would be incredibly happy if I started seriously blogging my thoughts, problems, opinions, etc., instead of dumping it all on them. As much as I know they love me, I've gotta love them too, I guess. And take all my frustration and opinionated...-ness, out on a poor, defenseless blog.

We can mourn for it later ;)

But right now, let me give a general overview of my life, and how it's turning around for the better... at least for the time being.

I grew up in a small, conservative Christian town in California, and attending the private, Christian school in that town from kindergarten until I graduated high school. It holds a special place in my heart. I miss it dearly, especially high school.... ah, the memories. Anyway!

I went to San Jose State when I started my college career. Shortly after I moved into the dorms, I met my husband, Scott, on an MMO. He lived in Georgia, I lived in California... long story short, we were engaged the following February (after we had met several times in person), and we got married... not the following August, but the August after.

The next December, we were separated. And in January, he went back to Georgia, because he had no place to stay here, and neither of us made enough money on our own to actually survive on our own.

I won't place the blame on any one person, because we were both equally at fault. But sometimes I do place all the blame on me, but I have to force myself not to do that.... it makes the guilt of it all eat away at me, until all I can think about is hearing him sobbing alone, where he thought no one could hear him, and knowing that it was because of me that he was crying.

I think if I spent my whole life trying to make up for it.... I don't know, maybe trying to make it up to Scott. Maybe just spending the rest of my life in celibacy, denying myself the things I love most... maybe if I never read another book, or maybe if I never played video games again, or maybe if I never had sex again, maybe if I never ever sang or hummed a tune... maybe THEN, when I got to heaven, I would be able to be guilt free. MAYBE, but probably not. "Guilty" really isn't a strong enough word to describe how I feel about it all.

But you can't change the past, no matter how often you wish for a time machine. That's something I had to learn the hard way, by yanking my head out of the clouds and realizing that time travel doesn't exist. And if it does, I'm not important enough to know about it. Which sucks, because there are a whole lot of things I'm not important enough to know about. I'm the kind of person that just really wants to know secrets. I don't really want to tell anyone else, I just want to know the secrets for the sake of knowing them. I'm really the most trustworthy person to entrust a secret to, because I really have no interest in telling them to anyone. I just have this compulsive need to possess the knowledge of a secret.

So, back to my overview.

Scott and I are now in a state of limbo. I have a great job, after being out of work since November. And he has a job too, back in Georgia. And I mean, who ever really WANTS a divorce? It's just sometimes necessary, or inevitable, or... whatever other word you want to use. But I know that I love him, and I don't want a divorce. And I know that he loves me, and he doesn't want a divorce. So I guess I'm hoping he'll come back to me, even though I know I don't deserve it.

Now, I work at a preschool. I love kids, and especially those ones. They're pretty awesome. So I'm getting experience with kids, which I will need for my aspiration to become a child therapist to come true. AND I'm working with my mom, who is a teacher, and I get to be her aide. Which is awesome, because I really don't do dirty diapers, and she doesn't mind them, having had three children of her own.

In a couple weeks, my own school semester starts, and I'm excited to get into a busy schedule, so that I don't have time to just sit and think about how much I miss Scott.

So anyway, now you have a general overview of my life, and I'm sure you're just overenthused... is that a word?

Welcome to the thoughts, opinions, and rantings of Courtney. I'm sure you'll enjoy it here :)