The Man From Vietnam

I was in the middle of studying my Spanish lessons, and it triggered a memory. I once worked with a young man from Vietnam. He had escaped from his country and landed in a refugee camp in the Philippines. From there he found a way to get into the US, and being in the US he got a job with the tiny company where I worked. 

What triggered the memory was this: I sometimes wonder if I'll ever speak Spanish well enough for Spanish-speaking people to understand me. I wonder about that because I never understood a word of this man's English. His Vietnamese accent was so strong that he sounded like he was speaking Vietnamese. I do not exaggerate when I say that I never understood one single word of anything he said. He could understand me, but our communication was strictly one-way, from me to him.

I admit to having trouble with accents. Some people seem to handle accents quite well, but the only accents I can understand are other American accents. I can handle a Boston accent, or a Texas accent, or a Louisiana accent, and so on. And to an English speaking person, those are definitely different accents—different from, say, a Nebraska accent or a British accent. (Britain is a small country but it has a multitude of accents. Or perhaps I should say that the United Kingdom has a multitude of accents.)

But this young Vietnamese man had a disgusting habit, and I'm sure he never realized that it bothered the rest of us in our small company. When he had to urinate, he went to the bathroom, relieved himself, and left the bathroom. The next person to enter the bathroom would find a soaking wet toilet seat because the Vietnamese man had urinated all over it. It was as if his objective was to avoid peeing in the toilet bowl. So whoever followed him to the bathroom would have to clean the toilet seat before using it.

No one wanted to say anything to the man from Vietnam, but I could tolerate only so much before I thought, "This stops now." And so one day I told the man to follow me to the bathroom. We entered the bathroom and there was the toilet with it's seat dripping with pee.

I pointed to the seat and I looked him in the face and I told him to either pee into the bowl or clean the seat after he used the toilet. I made sure he understood what I wanted. And he did; he understood me. His face displayed an expression of total humiliation. I was not trying to humiliate him, but I was willing to humiliate him, if that was required to change his toilet behavior. And it did. 

When we travel to another land, who knows what taboos we may cross unknowingly. If I had known he would be so embarrassed by my little lecture, perhaps I might have put up a sign instead of talking to him. The sign would have had drawings, one showing the wrong way to use the toilet and one showing the correct way to use the toilet. Nah, who am I kidding. I would've still done the point-and-lecture. I can't finesse this kind of thing. Sometimes I feel like I'm a blunt instrument in a world of marshmallows. 

There is one more thing I should tell you about the Vietnamese man whose English was so bad that I never understood him. When he was in the refugee camp, he had a job. Guess what he did on his job.

He taught English to other refugees.

Mocedades

The song of the day is 1973's Eres Tú by Spanish singing group Mocedades featuring vocals by lead singer Amaya Uranga Amezaga. The band has been active from 1969 to the present. Mocedades came in second in the 1973 Eurovision Song Contest and has had a hugely successful music career in Spain and Latin America.

Purpose

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“We must rise above the milieu into which we were born. Sometimes, doing that requires more strength than we have at that moment. It is a task that awaits us, will always await us, and one that circumstance will one day force us to confront.”
—VirtualWayne

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As Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) said in the movie, On the Waterfront,

“You don't understand, I could'a had class, I could'a been a contender, I could'a been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it.”

Regret is a sign that someone is evolving, growing. Their soul is becoming wiser. They know more today than they knew yesterday. They're a better person than they were. We all are evolving and may one day look back on our (possibly) misspent opportunities and think, "What a waste."

I suspect that the wiser we become, the tougher our life lessons become. We are always learning and we progress from easy lessons to difficult lessons.

What are we learning?

We are learning wisdom, to become wiser souls than we are today. To do that, we may have to walk a mile (or a lifetime) in someone else's shoes. You may be that person who is born with a disability, or who lives in grinding poverty, or who is innocent but is serving a life sentence in prison. As the proverb says, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

There will always be lessons. There will be lessons that, today, we cannot even comprehend. We will make mistakes, and we will learn from them. We may choose to learn, or Life may force us to learn, but we will learn and we will evolve and grow. Every life, every soul, has a purpose.

As was written long ago: 

“Whoever is wise, let him understand these things;
  Whoever is discerning, let him know them.”

Spiral

I was about four years old when I realized that sometimes we are conscious when we’re unconscious. Of course, I didn’t realize that I realized that. I didn’t think about it that way. It was just a part of life.

When I was four, my tonsils were removed. The doctor knocked me out with ether. Unfortunately, he administered too much ether. He gave me an overdose. If you’re a doctor, how do you know you’ve administered too much ether? Does your patient stop breathing? Probably. That’s what happened to me. On the outside, I was very peaceful — a little too peaceful, in fact. On the inside, it was quite another story.

I was unconscious, and perhaps my breathing had stopped, but I felt anything but unconscious. I could feel myself lying on the operating table in a dark room. Although I could not see them, I could sense around me the presence of others whom I took to be doctors and nurses. Above me in the blackness was a mighty, glowing spiral. It glowed with an intense white light as it slowly rotated. The spiral was unbelievably intense and seemed to burn its brilliance into my brain. I struggled to get off the operating table. The doctors and nurses fought to keep me on the table, but I lashed out at them with all my strength: kicking, flailing with my arms, thrashing, fighting. They held me down on the table while the burning white spiral spun slowly in space above me with an intensity beyond words.

When I awoke from surgery, I remembered how I fought to get off the operating table. I hoped that my struggle with the medical staff had happened only in my mind, but I couldn’t be sure; the struggle seemed so real. I knew the spiral had existed only in my mind, and therefore wasn’t “real”, but the memory was extremely vivid. For years afterward, whenever I remembered that spiral I re-experienced its intensity.

And now, a lifetime later, I wonder if, on some level of reality, might it have been real. Maybe something happened that my young mind tried to make sense of in the only way it could. With an overdose of ether in my brain, was I subconsciously fighting those who were administering it? Or was my soul about to leave my body, and the beings around me, the beings I assumed were doctors and nurses ... perhaps they were spirit guides and teachers working to keep my soul in my body to prevent me from dying. Perhaps it was simply an intense, drug-induced dream and nothing more.

I don’t know why I saw the spiral, but the spiral shape is surely a fundamental part of the Cosmos. From the structure of a seashell to the shape of our galaxy, spirals are truly abundant. Now there is a clue to something important.

Bureaucracy

My mother passed away in 2003. My father had died in 1994, so my mother's passing left an empty house in another city, the city where I grew up. I was living in Roanoke, Virginia, at the time of her passing. I was living in an apartment then, so it was easy for me to move into the empty house. I had to settle her estate, make repairs on and perhaps sell the house, and I couldn't do it remotely.

My mother had a safe deposit box at a local bank. One day I received a certified letter from the bank. I had already gone to the bank and told them she was deceased. But I didn't have the key to the safe deposit box, and they said they would need a court order to open it, and they'd have to call a locksmith and drill the lock out, and I'd have to pay $150 to have that done, etc. etc... It was a whole big deal. I thought "screw that" and I left. 

But they kept sending bills for the box rental. One day they sent the bill certified, and I could tell they were becoming impatient, with phrases like "you are severely behind" and "we will have to call a locksmith and there will be a $150 charge"... etc. 

So I took the bill to the bank, and I walked up to the front desk and said, "The bank keeps sending these bills addressed to my mother, and I came here last summer and told you she was deceased, and it is now 12 months later and she is still deceased, and I don't expect her condition to improve, but apparently the bank does, because you keep sending these bills." 

At first the teller girl said there was nothing she could do, then I took out some safe deposit box keys I had found at the house, and I said "maybe one of these will open it". She took the keys and, as we were walking to the vault, our conversation went like this:

Bank chick: "Who is the executor?"
Me: "There isn't one."
Bank chick: "Who is the administrator?"
Me: "There isn't one."
Bank chick: "What did your mother's will say?"
Me: "She didn't have a will."
Bank chick: "How are you handling everything then?"
Me: "I got a small estate affidavit and everything is taken care of except this."
Bank chick: "This could be a problem."
Me: "Not for me. Might be for you, though."
Bank chick: "Yeah."

We went into the vault, she put in her key, and tried one of my keys. The first one fit and she opened the door and removed the box and emptied it. There was nothing of value in it—just some old CDs.

I said, "I thought you had to have a court order to open that up," and she said, "I'm supposed to." Suddenly I understood. It's only a big deal when it's my problem. When it's their problem, that's different. Then, no big deal, we'll open it up right now and take care of everything. I thought it was really very funny. But of course, I kept a straight face as I left the bank. I didn't know it, but I was only at the beginning of a long battle with several financial bureaucracies. Oh, I could have written a book about it, and I should have. I would have titled it, "A Guidebook for Settling an Estate," or something similar. But I didn't. I had too much time-killing work ahead of me, and I'm only one person.

Payback

Life has rules. This is one of them. Parents should explain it to their children.

You may never get caught lying or stealing, but the Universe will know if you’re a liar and a thief. The Universe, God, Karma, Fate, however you think of it, operates by a set of rules. One of the rules is the law of balance: Life gives you back what you give Life. You can steal and not get caught, and then one day you fall in love and that person cheats on you and makes you miserable. You can tell a lie and never get caught, and then one day someone you trust lies to you and causes you misery. Some people say, "What goes around, comes around." I call it Payback. It is Life giving you grief because you gave grief to someone else.

This is the law of balance in the universe. Life rewards you according to the way you live. Everything you say and everything you do is balanced by Payback. You can lie, cheat, and steal, but the Universe will always know and it will always balance your actions with Payback. Fortunately, Payback works just as well when you do good things as when you do bad things. The more you give to Life, the more Life will give to you.

I know some readers will say, "What about reincarnation? If we die and are reborn, does Payback extend into our next lifetime?" My answer is, "Yes, it does." Your bad deeds may haunt you for several lifetimes. Eventually, you will learn what you must learn for your soul to advance. But why not start now? Why live miserable lifetimes if you don't have to? Be good, be decent, in your thoughts and actions starting now.

Suppose you do this. Suppose you make the necessary changes in your life. If it turns out that Payback isn't real and reincarnation doesn't exist, the "worst" that will happen is that you will make yourself into a better and happier person. So be a good person. In the long run, one way or another way, you really can't lose.

Dire Straits

The song of the day is Brothers In Arms from the 1978 album Brothers In Arms by British rock band Dire Straits, featuring vocalist and lead guitar Mark Knopfler.

Memories Etc.

The time is 2:15AM. No, nothing is wrong. This is the time of day I usually get up. Sometimes it's 3AM, sometimes it's 4AM, and sometimes it's 2AM. 

It didn't used to be like this. When I was a youngster, I had a paper route and I had to get up at 4AM every day of the week to deliver newspapers. I didn't like getting up at 4AM. I wanted more sleep. Eventually my brain and body learned to turn off the alarm clock without me waking up. That was not good.

The alarm clock was on the floor beside my bed. To turn it off, all I had to do was reach down and push the alarm button in. So I decided to make it more difficult to turn off. I placed the alarm clock under my bed, in the exact center of my bed. This way, to turn off the alarm I had to get out of bed and crawl partially under the bed in order to reach the clock. I was successful, for a while.

Then my brain and body learned to turn off the alarm clock without waking me up. That's right—I crawled out of bed, crawled under the bed, turned off the alarm, crawled out from under the bed, and got back into bed without waking up. It's amazing what the body can learn to do.

So delivering the morning paper went like this: At 4AM I rode my bike to the newspaper drop-off spot, and I gathered the bundles of papers, and I cut the wires holding the papers together and I rolled the papers and put them into a basket on the front of my bike. Then I rode my bike through the streets of my route, throwing papers at porches, on sunny days, rainy days, snowy days. Warm weather and ice cold weather, seven days a week. On Thursday afternoons (after school) I collected payment from customers on the first half of my route. On Friday afternoons (after school) I collected payment from customers on the second half of my route. On Saturday mornings I collected payments from people who were not at home on Thursday and Friday evenings.

I sold the papers for 45 cents per week, and the papers were big and heavy. They've shrunk to almost nothing nowadays, thanks to Internet competition. The 45 cents bought you seven days of home delivery newspapers. You could buy 5 days, weekdays only, for 25 cents (5 cents per day), or you could buy only the Sunday paper for 25 cents.  The Sunday paper was a monster, but the Thursday paper was no slouch—next to the Sunday paper, it was the second heaviest paper.

A bonus of delivering papers on a bike was dog attacks. I was bitten a half dozen times, always in sneak attacks, by dogs who roamed the streets freely.

For all those miserable hours of delivering newspapers on hot days, freezing cold days, rainy days, nice days, and then spending two afternoons and a morning collecting payment, how much did I make after I paid for the papers? I made about seven dollars per week. Yes, a dollar per day. I paid 3 cents for weekday papers and sold them for 5 cents. I paid 20 cents for Sunday papers and sold them for 25 cents. Times have changed. The papers now cost a lot more, and the size and weight of the newspapers have dwindled to the size of an advertising flyer that comes in the mail. But when you're 13 or 14 years old, your options for making money are limited. I suppose kids today simply ask their parents for money, but that wasn't an option for me.

Quickly changing the subject now...

I love popcorn, and I have some microwave Pop Secret (with natural butter taste) in the kitchen. I would not be surprised if one day my brain and body learn to get me up while I'm sleeping and have me make popcorn. I will know nothing of it, of course, until morning, when I awaken and become aware of butter on my face and t-shirt and then I will become suspicious that my body has been having fun without me.

The high temperature yesterday was 74°F. That's warm for mid-winter in central Virginia, but winters are generally getting warmer, as are summers. The outside temperature now is 67° and we have rain. Today is supposed to be partly sunny, and the weekend will be sunny with temperatures in the 50s. That's fine with me. I'll burn less heating oil, the house will be more comfortable, and I might even go outside for a walk. I know some people will be shocked, but I used to walk around the neighborhood every day. It became tiresome (boring) after a number of years and I quit walking. But I need to do it, so maybe I'll begin walking again. Maybe later today, when the sun is peeking out of the clouds. Maybe tomorrow, too. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

It's a little after 3AM now. Still dark, of course. I hope you have a great day! And if you can, go for a walk around the neighborhood.

Haunted Headphones

I've written about many strange occurrences in my house. The first one occurred maybe two days after I moved into the house. Here are a few of the blog posts in which I wrote about what I consider to be paranormal occurrences.

Go Figure (2012)

House Ghost (2015)

Odd Stuff (2015)

More Strangeness (2020)

Small Mysteries (2020)

Old Stuff (2021)

I have written other blog posts about the strangeness I live in, but they're hard to hunt down amongst the 1758 posts on this blog (as of this date). However, reading the above six posts will give you the flavor of what goes on in my house.

Now for something new. I was watching a video on YouTube. It was a video about odd occurrences and the title of the video has slipped my memory. It may have been "Scariest Things Caught on Live TV" but I'm not certain.

Nevertheless, I was on the web page and I was listening to the narrator through my computer speakers. On the third "strange" video, there was some narration—a spoken sentence—then there was a pause, and during that pause, I heard the narration again, the very same sentence spoken one more time, but this time the sound came from my headphones. But...my headphones were lying beside me and were not plugged in. If the headphones had been plugged into the computer, I would not have been able to listen to the speakers, because plugging in the headphones cuts out the speakers. Nevertheless, I heard the words spoken through my speakers, followed by the same words coming from my headphones which, as I just said, were not plugged into anything.

I quickly closed the page I was on. I was just a little spooked by the event. I didn't want to hear the remaining scary things. I closed that web page and began browsing other pages. I did not go back to that page. I didn't want to tempt Fate.

The Super Bowl and The Jeep

Today is Super Bowl Sunday. It's 4:20AM now, as I begin writing. It's dark, outside and inside, except for the glow of my computer screen. I hear the boiler running in the basement. My house has hot-water radiator heat. One of the radiators is very slow to warm and never gets as hot as the others. The bathroom radiator no longer gets hot at all. I don't know why. I used a radiator key to remover the bleed plug from both radiators. I used a paper clip to make sure the air bleed hole was open and not blocked by rust. Still, nothing came out of the bleed hole—not air, not water. Nada. I fear my options are (1) an expensive repair or (2) live with the problem. The ground floor of my house has five other radiators that work well, so I'm not cold.

Yesterday I drove my Jeep to Walmart at 6AM to pick up a few items. When I returned to my vehicle, still in darkness, I got in, shut the door, inserted the key into the ignition and turned the key. Nothing happened. This was not good.

I got out and raised the hood. In the dark and without tools, there wasn't much I could do. I grabbed each battery cable and pulled on it and shook it. I got back in the Jeep and turned the key again. This time the engine started. I drove home and parked inside my garage. The night air was 45° so I waited for the day to warm up somewhat. By 2PM the day was sunny and the temperature was 70°, very comfortable and warm for a February day in central Virginia. But that's the way February is. One day it's sunny and warm and the next day, like today, the high temperature will be 39° and rain then snow are in the forecast. 

At 2PM, I went to the garage and attempted to start the Jeep. Once again, nada. So I called my friend Butch who lives close by, and we worked on the Jeep for an hour. I was hoping that the problem was merely corrosion on the battery post. The battery post and the cable termination were badly corroded, so I mixed baking soda and water in a jar, stuck a toothbrush in it, and began cleaning the connection. At some point, this required removing the cable terminator from the battery post. Then it became obvious that a new battery post terminal was needed. So Butch drove me to AutoZone and I bought a new terminal for $5. 

We went back to my garage. and soon we had the new battery post terminal installed on the battery cable and connected to the battery. We checked the electrolyte level in the battery and three cells needed to have water added, so we did that. When I turned the ignition key, the Jeep started up just fine. Now, I could have taken the easy path of buying a new battery for $175, but my time and Butch's time were free. We needed something to do, anyway. 

So now it's Super Bowl Sunday. This is Super Bowl LVI—Super Bowl 56. I can remember Super Bowl 1. It didn't seem like a big deal then. It wasn't hyped like it is today. After all, it's only a football game. But I'll walk down to Butch's house around 6:30PM and, if he's home, we'll watch the Super Bowl. Did I say "walk" to his house? No, I'll probably drive to his house, what with rain and snow coming down. And it will be dark, both when I go and when I come home. So that will be my weekend. A small repair on the Jeep and watching a football game with a friend.

What will you (did you) do with your weekend?