one small piece of information shifts the whole picture - or, "fortunately, unfortunately"

Seismic shift to the landscape yesterday -

She* said that she called dad MANY times to come bail her out. Said she'd call him up MANY times and say, "Guess what?"

And he'd come and rescue her.

Now, god DAMN it - why didn't somebody tell me this YEARS ago?

All this time, I've felt so GUILTY about needing help, about not being TOTALLY, 100% SELF SUFFICIENT, and BUYING this fucking BULLSHIT LIE

where everybody pretends they did everything single-handedly.

BULLSHIT! I want to run around SCREAMING that at people at the top of my lungs.

EVERYBODY, without exception (which, of course, must include *me* - dang) does this.

They FALSELY ATTRIBUTE to themselves these oh-so-MAHVELOUS qualities, like little superheroes, when in FACT they're NOTHING OF THE SORT.

They're just little, ordinary people who fuck things up left right and center, but who, quite grandly, and possibly even GRANDIOSELY, take FULL CREDIT for each and every thing.

Can you say, pretending you live in a vacuum?

Can you say, YOU'RE FULL of SHIT???

I hope it's becoming perfectly clear how LIVID, FURIOUS and fucking incandescently RAGE-ful this behavior makes me. It makes me want to SMACK people, UPside the head, and then on their litte, stupid, supercilious, smarmy, IRRITATING fannies.

WHACK!!!!!! take THAT!!!!!!!

***
Ahhhh, feeling a bit better now :-)

***
Take yesterday, for example.

We're out there, freezing our ARSES off, in the cold, the wet.

Now, FORTUNATELY, my car had stalled out in a section of side street with no irritating little parking signs, so I wasn't immediately going to get towed.

Unfortunately, the car did NOT start right up.

Fortunately, I had a larger gas can that I brought from home this time.

Unfortunately, the stupid slippy slider thingy that you have to slide back while simultaneously bending the (not-so-bendy) nozzle and pushing it through the little flap in the gas tank to get the gas in SLIPPED and took a HUGE bite out of my knuckle and there I was, bleeding like a stuck pig all over the side of the car while breathing gas fumes and cursing the stupid idiots who design all such clever devices to require THREE hands instead of two. Sigh.

Fortunately, I did not bleed to death. :-) Also fortunately, I had her* there holding the umbrella, and she even (for once!) gave me a piece of useful advice! Actually, to be fair, she was *insanely* helpful all day long. For which I am grateful.

And the *funny* part is, I watcher her*, this 70-something-year-old woman, flirting SHAMElessly with every male passerby, and SHAMElessly enlisting help from all of them.

Now, I don't know where I got this idea that I have to do everything alone, I can only guess that
a) My family made me feel guilty any time I asked for help, by mocking, shaming and humiliating me and
b) I was more sensitive to these rejections than other people in my family are.

For example, yesterday mom asked for help a *bunch* of times, from all kinds of people. She seemed to just ASSUME that someone would jump right in there and help her. I don't know if it's some kind of 'old lady' cred, or what, but it was initially kind of embarassing. After I while I got over it and started to marvel at the efficaciousness of it, and then started to try to copy her.

The problem, for *me*, is that I hate dealing with the male ego bullshit that inevitably goes along with getting help from many (not all, but many) males.

The automatic assumption of, "Step aside, little lady, let me handle that for you."

Meanwhile failing to acknowledge that I *almost* had the problem solved already, and he was just stepping in at the last second so he could look like the hero. Really, I'd already *done* all the difficult groundwork, and he was basically stealing my thunder.

I don't know why she* isn't bothered by that - maybe if you don't know enough to do something yourself in the first place, you're less likely to feel affronted if somebody does it 'for' you.

In my case I was perfectly capable of finishing the job myself - mom's 'help' was more of the variety of 'let's see how many different ways I can get in your way and make you less efficient.'

Although it *was* nice to have her standing there, it's *much* less miserable to do *any* miserable job alone.

***
Mom couldn't deal with the sight of me bleeding all over the place, so when I finished putting the gas in, she wanted to go over to the machine shop, which
was right next to where I'd had to leave the car. Yay, universe! A big crane shop, with lots of cool, gigantic cranes like they use on construction sites.

So we went in, and they tried to find me a bandaid (these two, big, burly, guys covered in grease head to foot, I'm sure hadn't used a bandage themselves in *years*). The best they could come up with was a gauze pad to soak up the blood, which I accepted, gratefully and graciously, so that they wouldn't feel they'd been wasting their time.

***
Had mom jump the car ONE MORE TIME, and it sat there and ran fine. So, having had the car die half a dozen times with the previous attempts to start it, I backed up and just sort of rolled forward so that if it died again I wouldn't have this massive hassle with trying to push a dead car.

It went forward about 10 feet, sounding fine, then tapered off and died. Again.

So then I tried starting the car again, and it didn't even make a click.

Picture grasshopper with A VERY SAD FACE HERE. (Don't worry, I won't try to draw it this time :-)

***
I called to mom to come help me push it back into the parking place (it was sticking out into the road a bit), as I'd come to the conclusion that the next thing to do was to get a new battery.

Mom came over to push, and right then a young guy was walking by on the sidewalk and she asked him to help her. *I* thought she was rather peremptory about it, almost bossy, but the guy came right over to help.

We had to work it back and forth a bit, because when it stalled it had been rolling back toward the curb, and even though I cranked the wheel, the power steering doesn't work very well without the engine running, so it was up against the curb.

Then the guy in front of us moved his car, leaving me a perfect clear spot, and I asked if they could push me up there in case I had to leave it again, no one would be able to block me in as the spot was at the front of a section of curb.

***
So then we went to get the battery, and

Fortunately they had one. Fortunately, it was not terribly expensive, and the maternal unit agreed to buy it for me as an 'early Christmas present', because I was out of cash for the month, and wouldn't be getting more $$ for about a week. Had not, of course, anticipated this particular little mishap.

UNfortunately, the battery was too tall, and the hood wouldn't shut! :-(

Fortunately, the fabulous machine shop (the crane guys) had basically a full-on hardware store at their disposal, and I just walked over and asked the guy if they had a screw just like *this* one, only a 1/4 inch longer.

Lo and behold, he had it (drawers and drawers full of hardware! COOL!) and just handed it to me, along with a spare, plus washers -

"THANKS!" I exclaimed, gratefully. "Is that so I can drop one in the engine?"
"Yeah," he said, giving me what I *thought* was sort of a combination appreciative/admiring (for my fabulous intelligence, I assume :-) look, with a little bit of sheepishness, as if I'd caught him assuming I was an idiot. But I *didn't* feel that way, at all - they'd lent me a handful of wrenches and just let me go with them, apparently deciding that I seemed like I knew what I was doing.

(While we were trying to get the clamp over the top of the battery, a guy from the plumbing shop across the street came over and offered to help, as I was having trouble getting the thread to catch. I *almost* had it, and was almost kind of frustrated to not finish it myself - reference previous comments about 'stealing my thunder - but mom seemed to insist that I accept his offere of 'help'. It was such an easy job it hardly seemed like real 'help' at all, but - whatever. I guess I was happy to let him do it, as he had an actual ratchet set in his truck, where I'd just been using wrenches - I was afraid to ask to borrow ratchets, since I know they're more precious than wrenches. I figure I'd have better odds of actually *getting* what I asked for if I didn't ask for the moon.)

***
Got the new battery in the car, fired up like a champ. I was still wary, though, so pulled it off to the side to think. Decided I'd take it round the corner to the Schuck's - we had to go back there to give them my old battery and get the core deposit back, anyway - to do an alternator test. (During the course of the whole scenario, both a kid at Schucks and a*nother* guy from the plumbing shop made comments about possibly needing a new alternator. And I'd been thinking about it anyway, after all the jump starts, I wasn't *totally* convinced it was just the battery.)

So mom met me at the Schuck's, and sure enough, the alternator tested bad.

Now I have to scratch my head some more.

***
So the moral of the story is, don't *ever* take what your parents *say* as truth - just like anybody, they're liable to be guilty of stretching, exaggerating or purely mis-representing the 'truth' altogether.

Because even when people *know* what the actual 'truth' is, they still tend to twist and bend it to suit their purposes. We all want to come out smelling like roses, right?

It was interesting to SEE in action my mom's penchant for asking for help, openly and blatantly, and showing no slightest concern or remorse for what anybody thought of her. She seems to take it as just her RIGHT. Interesting.



*the woman who popped me out into this current iteration of beingness. There. Was that vague enough? :-)