I once worked with a guy who was bi-polar......... and of course briefly had a crush on him before I found out he got a blow job from my best (male) friend......who said that I had no social filter. He was oh-so-serious, too.
While this entry is not specifically about my mother, somehow things always lead back to her whether the issue is good, bad, or indifferent. And in this case, it goes back even further. My mother's mother is an odd bird to say the least. She's secretive and suspicious, often for no apparent reason......and somehow still remains energetic and endearing. everyone says so. Anyway, between my grandmother's secretive nature and my grandfather's alcoholism, their home was a house full of lies. My mother didn't want that for us and so as a child she always maintained that there was nothing that went on in our house that we weren't allowed to speak of to others. Sometimes following through with this appeared to cause her physical pain that was apparent in her expression.......but she was insistent that she would not do to us what was done to her.
The world according to Ms. Beth dictated that as long as you were not saying something for the express purpose of hurting someone (even if your opinion did hurt them. as long as it wasn't intended to), you had every right and even the responsibility to express it. I was honestly naive to the fact that the rest of the world did not abide by my mother's rules in regard to freedom of expression until I was in college. Throughout school, my teachers were most often enthralled with my intellect (which I'm certain has since been killed off by random drug use in my teens and twenties. lol) even when I disagreed with them. So much so that when I pushed Melissa L. down the stairs and skipped school in middle school, the vice principal gave me a coveted student assistant position instead of making me serve detention (the standard punishment for such behavior). Later, in high school my science teacher somehow averaged my grade out to a C when I had indeed earned myself a solid F.......since I had not turned in a single assignment the entire semester. He deduced from class discussions that I certainly deserved to at least pass since I was the only kid in the class who participated in discussion ("When is the test?" does not qualify as discussion.). Overall, they were more than tolerant of my opinions and often disrespectful behavior. With the exception of Ms. Schmaltz, who was not enthralled with me for the three years that I
So, the result of all of this: I have no social filter. My senior year I began referring to myself as Phineas Gage after hearing about his inability to refrain from blurting out whatever he was thinking after a freak accident that severed his frontal lobe from the rest of his brain. I felt like that. Like I was lacking a frontal lobe. I think that specific instance that Manic Mike was referring to in his annoyingly accurate assessment of me was when I commented that our friend Angie had a "cute bubble butt". Something that I had not even paused to ponder how she would receive...........she did not receive it well. The result of that conversation with a girl who had been raised in the very white, very rich suburbs of Indiana: an emotional week of starvation and rails of coke (her, not me!) as she took this to mean that she was "fat". I hope she's gotten over that. But I doubt it.
