the mary post

i’ve been meaning to write about this for awhile now, and i don’t think i can keep it in anymore. everything i’m about to write is true. i wish it wasn’t, but it is.

it started when my parents decided to start up a business a year after i was born, and that they were away from home most of the time because of it. as a result my siblings and i were subjected to a battery of baby-sitters, the most influential on us being mary. i’m not going to bother to capitalize her name, for she doesn’t even deserve to. keep reading, and you’ll know why.

she babysat us for my parents up until the summer before my sister and i entered fourth grade. in that time, she had pitted my sister and i against each other, and would tell us that we were wrong for doing the smallest things that she didn’t want us doing. for example, she wouldn’t let us lock our bedroom doors, because that meant that we were ‘blocking ourselves from everyone else’, when we were only putting ourselves in a position where she couldn’t get to us. i remember multiple times when my sister and i would be fighting and i would use my body weight to keep the door shut while she tried to get in; and she would yell to mary that i had locked my door in order to a) get me in trouble, and b) get me to do what she wanted.
she also would use excessive force in cases when most adults would just give a stern talk to us. i remember one time my sister carried my brother from the back porch down the 3 stairs to the ground, and mary grabbed her face and nearly knocked her over because ‘he could have been seriously injured’. she also seemed to have a problem with my sister, what i don’t think i’ll ever know. she always would call her out for simple things, and while she also did the same to me, it wasn’t as frequently as it was for her.
my brother had cereberal paulsy, as well as mental retardation. because of his cp, he was always abnormally thin and had very little muscle mass. despite this (and the fact that she was an EMT, no less), she would make him walk everywhere with us, even when we would go to the mall, and it would be evident that his body couldn’t handle it. at dinner she would make him scream and then force food into his mouth whenever he wouldn’t eat when she wanted him to. one of the worst memories i have of her is hearing him gag after she had put whatever we were eating into his mouth. i also remember hearing him screaming whenever she would force him to do other things when i was in another room, and now that i’m looking back at everything that happened, i can’t help but feel guilty for not standing up to her, and helping him out.

and her ways of venting anger wasn’t only directed at us. i think that she also had a thing against animals, because she didn’t seem to give that much concern as to keeping our pets in tip-top shape. our dog usually was put in a metal cage when he wasn’t out on his run, and we had a wooden stick that we used to keep the sliding door in the kitchen locked whenever we weren’t around. and whenever the dog would be barking loudly, or if he peed in the cage, she would take the stick, and while he was locked in the cage, poke it through the holes at the dog, often aiming it has his face. and when he would bite it, he’d leave saliva all over the end that she had stuck in. she would then chase us around the house with it, saying that the dog had rabies and that she would get it on us. if you think that’s bad, one time she got angry at one of our cats (who had probably peed in the house as well, seeing how they also rarely got out), and put it into the mesh laundry hamper, and then dragged the bag, with the cat in it, from one end of the pool to the other and back (from the shallow end to the deep end and back). the only reason why i remember this is because she had made all three of us come with her and walk with her as she did it.
i guess the one thing that she did that now bothers me the most is her pedophilia. because of her no-locked-doors rule, she would often times walk into the bathroom while i was taking a shower with either a video camera or a regular camera. i remember her taking pictures of me, every time she said that she just took one of me ‘from the waist up’, but i have no idea if she was telling the truth or not, since i never saw any of the pictures she took. of the times she would bring a video camera in, i wasn’t able to tell if the red light was on or not, because the recorder she used was one of those old enormous ones, and she would holding it at an angle that i don’t remember even seeing it.

she also molested me. i’ve never told anyone about this, and you might be wondering why i’m putting it on the internet instead of telling my parents about it first, but i honestly can’t bring myself to tell them face-to-face that she did. plus it’s alot easier writing it out than saying it. the night before my 8th birthday (which would mean that it took place in december of 1995), she brought me into her room, shut all the doors, and told me to pull my pants down. she began to touch me in ways that you’re not supposed to touch a 7 year old, and then told me that it was normal, and that she was ‘just checking to make sure everything was ok’.

alot of people have told me that i’m immature. alot of people also say that i don’t work well with kids. i know that i’m immature, because i’ve never told anyone about what she’s done to my family and i. i know that the reason why i don’t work well with kids is because i’m too damn scared to turn into her. i don’t work well with people in general. i don’t even have the kind of relationship that you’re supposed to have with a sibling that is as close in age as my sister is with me, and it’s because of what she did.

and that’s the saddest part of it.

why i hate setting standards for myself

about a year and a half ago, an acquaintance of mine said that instead of picking a resolution for the new year, she would pick a word, and try to fit it into the things she did for that year. and so, since i am quite bad at following through with resolutions, decided to try it out for myself. and i find that, six months in, i’m doing just as well with it as i did with math at leo.

for this year, i chose the word ‘health’ since i’m a walking example of why Europe thinks so low of us. i’ve wanted to change various parts of me for a while now, and i still have yet to do so. i’m still overweight. i’m still smoking. i still drink alot of soda. all of which is what i’ve told myself i’d stop doing or change. and so, since i’m going to a new school in the fall and making alot of first impressions, the last thing i want is for people to see the kind of person i was in high school.

during dinner, my parents and i talked about school, and since i did so miserably last year (getting a total of 18 out of 27 credits for both semesters), it was a touchy subject. it’s also something that i don’t want to do again this year. i know where i fucked up, and i know what i need to do in order to keep from getting further behind. because god forbid i end up getting held back another semester over failing grades.

i’m also nervous about next year. the other guy that i took the tour of curry with during senior year was an OL this year, and while he wasn’t the one that i was assigned to, it seemed as if everytime i was around him was an awkward moment. since he’s also a communications major with a concentration in radio, i had asked him about the radio program that the school offers at one point during the day, and, from my viewpoint, it seemed as if it was just as awkward for him as it was for me. but that may be my own insecurites about myself talking, and not how he really felt.

i guess this is all.

windows vista: a haven’t-found-everything-yet review

so i recently was out with my dad and we decided that now was a good time to pick up a computer for school, since we had to give the one that leo loaned me back. the old one i had used windows xp, which i like quite alot, given the fact that my parents have been using windows ever since i could remember. however, vista is totally different. like the windows media center? what’s the deal with that? whatever happened to just having the media player play everything, and not having something that plays music, and something else play everything else? i’m going to try playing a movie on here after i’m finished posting to check and see what it’s like and if it’s a pain in the ass or not.

in short, i hate it. the computer itself is quite nice, but i was kinda hoping that microsoft would’ve learned to stop being such a bad operating system by now.

this is all. talk to y’all later on.

orientation, part one: over

so orientation happened over the weekend (the 3rd session), and quite honestly, i was more disappointed with myself than i was with the school. the school is great, it’s got it’s own radio station (if you’re in the boston area, you can hear it), the kids are nice, and everything. i just wish i wasn’t such an idiot with the way everything happened.
first, i got there half an hour before sign in started. and then they were like ‘oh, well, transfer students don’t usually stay over, but if you want to, you can’ when i thought that i was supposed to stay over. so after putting my bag back in the car, i decided to hang around until they herded us all into the gym, and that’s when i was told that there was something else that i didn’t do. the writing inventory. which, of course, i’m usually horrible with because they have you write about something that no one really knows, and it’s really quite random. i mean, who cares enough about what Isaac Asimov has to say about his car mechanic to be able to write? i guess they just needed a way to guage how well we can write.

second, there was the group. the group i was in was entirely made of transfer students, and it’s always an awkward moment when you realise that everyone else has enough credits to be in the grade that they’re supposed to, and you’re not. as if it wasn’t hard enough for me to not have the entire day be one long awkward moment. other than that, the group was cool, the kids were nice (one even let me bum a cig off him when i realised that i had left my pack in the car), and the ol was good too.

after we were finished with everything, we all left for our respective home towns. had i known that my parents were actually going home instead of where they told me to meet them, then i would have driven there instead and come up yesterday. however, despite only getting answering machines instead of either one of them talking back when calling them, it was a good drive. ended up taking 84 to route 4. it was nice.

ok, this is all for now. talk to you all later.

today’s kids are way too spoiled

so earlier today i stopped at the mobil on route 15 up in fairfield, and a couple in a minivan stopped and asked me if i knew how to fix the DVD player that it came with so that it would be in english, and not in spanish. now, under normal circumstances, i would know how to do that. if only whatever movie they were watching was being played on a regular DVD player, and not in the dashboard of a Nissan.

i don’t really see why kids need to be watching a movie while in the car. i never got to watch movies in the van while growing up, why should kids today be able to? i mean, really. my parent’s Aerostar had a driver’s airbag and only one, yes ONE, sliding door that was so heavy, you would have to use your entire body weight just to open it. not a DVD player. kids are so spoiled nowadays.

it’s raining

i haven’t been posting in a while, and it’s because i haven’t really had all that much to post about. and now i do. i’ve been getting stuff ready for school (since i’m transferring and all), while also doing databasing for my parent’s company. i leave for school thursday night for orientation part 1 which is just the regular stereotypical frosh orientation. then, after that, i have about a week or two to continue databasing, and then i’m back to school for orientation part 2. it’s a 3 week seminar-type thinger where i basically just take claasses so that their special ed department can guage how much help i really need. now if only my father had done this when i was younger, and maybe he might be less inclined to try and “help” me as much as he does now.

other than getting ready for school and working for my parents, summer’s been pretty slow. there’s 3 den nights this month, since there’s the 2 regular ones plus the den picnic, which is tomorrow night. that should be fun. i’ve been thinking about closing with the den for a while now, since i’m in college and the next oldest non-facilitator there is a sophomore in high school. plus i think that i’ve gotten what i needed out of what the den can provide, and i’ve been around long enough so that there isn’t really much that can be done anymore. plus, i’ve moved on from all the other after-school things that i had been involved with in high school, and honestly, i think it’s time to finally close with the den. it has helped immensly, and now it’s time for it to help some new people.

i was finally able to finish ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’, and to be honest, you really need to finish the whole book to really get an idea of what happens. it is much more depressing than ‘Kite Runner’, but it’s definately something to read, and it’ll leave you with an even deeper feeling of what you felt after Kite Runner.

it’s been on-and-off raining here for a few hours, with some lightning and thunder. of course my dog, the same one who’ll bark his head off whenever someone even walks down the stairs, let alone knock on the door, is scared shitless. he is easily freightened by thunder, and will follow you around if there’s a storm. if no one is home, then he will walk into the downstairs bathroom (which is completely landlocked when it comes to our house), and hide in it. because god forbid there be any loud booms that come waltzing into our house and attack him.

i think this might be my longest post ever. if not, it is certainly one of the longest. hope you all have a good day, and that your dog isn’t as much of a pansy as mine is.