A QUERY INTO MY MENTAL HEALTH FOLLOWED BY CRAZY COMMENTS

Just received:  a gentle inquiry into the state of my mental health.  

I'm actually "OK."  I've always been a little "off."

My response to the craziness query:   

"The concern you've heard expressed is well-meaning, but misdirected, based on what I've written. . . .I deal with the criticism with simple logic, but that flies over the heads of local partisans, thus the conclusion that "he's lost his way." People of various ideologies sometimes assumed that, because I listened, I believed. I never believed. Politics is total bullshit to me, always has been. I observe the process but don't buy the product."

Anyway, that exchange got me thinking about things I've been told over the years that stayed in my brain, typically because I retold them again and again, making them an indelible part of my brain circuitry.

Please allow me to sprinkle in a few quotes that remain stuck in my brain.

In fifth grade, after I explained to Dennis Kuder why I couldn't do certain things because of being in a strict, high control religious cult, Dennis replied:  "Well, we all have our own little holies."

Googling Dennis a few years ago, I found that he became a medical doctor,  owned a condo in Black Diamond, Washington, had gotten divorced and once declared bankruptcy.

Another:  

When I told my sixth grade teacher, Mr. Ewing, that I'd read in the Seattle Times that our city was getting major league baseball, he stood up from his desk, pointed a finger at me and screamed:  "Seattle will NEVER get a major league team!"

To this day, I don't know what made him so angry.  It was the first time I'd ever witnessed someone "foam at the mouth."

Now, this one:

George Pringle, the man who hired me at age 13 to do janitorial work, had been diagnosed as manic-depressive and was undergoing electric shock therapy.  When I told him that was quackery, he stopped the treatments.  

George used to stop at my grandfather's house in Maple Valley and ask to use the piano.  He would play boogie-woogie music for an hour or two.  Everyone in the house tippie-toed around, giving each other the "hush" sign.  George's playing was viewed as self-medication without the pharmaceutical.  

After an hour or two, George would close the piano, say "Thanks a lot" and walk out.

One of George's lines to me, repeated ad nauseam was:  "Jim, are you serious or delirious, psychotic or neurotic, hydrocephalic or microcephalic?" followed by a huge laugh.

Back in school:

Richard LaBelle, my best friend in school, the son of divorced college professors, had one serious question for me:  "Jim, when the Bible says Jesus performed a miracle, do you really believe he did or is that just being used as a moral lesson?"  

When I told him my belief at the time, that Jesus actually performed a miracle, he replied:  "That's all I wanted to know."

That was when Rich revealed to me that he was an atheist.  What he didn't tell me was that he'd received a four year scholarship to Seattle University, a Catholic school.

LaBelle became Dean of Religious Studies at Gonzaga Preparatory and president of a rock climbing club.  His name made the Spokane Spokesman-Review in the 80's for calling the police on a pedophile teacher.

This time, a teacher:  

Mr. Ewoldt, my 11th grade English teacher, a horrible stutterer, returned a sample of iambic pentameter I'd scribbled out in the minutes before the class bell rang.

On the top of the paper was a big red "F" and this note:  "This will be one of those assignments that, years from now, in retrospect, you'll wish you had completed."

That stung!