Musical Saturday Morning

Coming up is an unpleasant anniversary week for me, so painful that I have struggled to keep this text here for two weeks, this is not who I am - remembering wrongs, but it is whom I used to be ...

First up in horrors was my parents dragging me, literally kicking and screaming, from my beloved homeland (Germany) to what the news described as a war torn America.  Okay, the US turned out not as bad as expected - but those first two years in South Carolina were far in excess of what was reported in Europe at the time!

In 1970, I met a girl I really liked, Roberta and after visiting her three times at her house and meeting her family - her father was so horrified, he literally sold the house and moved the family to South Denver - so that his daughter would not get hooked on a piece of "white meat" ...  That one hurt, at least in South Carolina I was treated well by the black community - not in the progressive West it seems.

Then my only girl friend in high school, evaporated from my life this week, 1973.  I was now seeing a trend, this was a cursed week for me!  But, I do not believe in curses or luck or circumstance.  But, this same week also saw my leaving home in Denver and moving to Seattle - really long story but it was not good, my family tossed me out because of rumors that held no truth.  There was nothing left in Denver for me.

And this week, across the next several years, saw the sanity of friendship melt into insanity and friends suddenly "disappearing" or making the oddest of decisions, which drove them from my life.  It was more than a trend by now - it was an observed fact!  And I had no response ... how could I?  What made this week so "special"?

It is hard not to comment that this 1976 ELO album's release coincided with my fiancee, the Swedish Model, dumping me and latching onto my best friend at the same time.  First I knew of their involvement was when I discovered her in bed with him during a surprise visit.  Surprise!  Oh, if only I was not a Hutterite and avowed pacifist, they both would have both died in that moment!  But, instead, I quietly crept back out of his apartment and left them to their betrayal, while I cried my soul out to the wind - I walked for miles that morning.  In fact, the first time I heard this song was during my travel when I went to see my mother ... yeah, I needed my mom just then.  Of course, it also seems that every Barry Manilow song ever written had to be played as well - no matter the station during that drive!  More than once I prayed God would just blow my car off the road and just end it for me.

(side note: mother left a note on her fridge saying she had gone to Hafia to work on a new dig site (she was an archaeologist) and to please help myself to the fridge contents!  Sure glad I had called first, mom and food was the last thing I wanted ... death would have been so much more preferable.  1,500 miles of Barry Manilow just for this!  Sommer, my sister, offered that I was far better off without SM in my life.  Like somehow that helps?  Sigh ... )


Once back home, I returned the ring  I had taken with me on that trip, the girl at the counter was filling out the return form and asked for a reason ... I quietly said, "She chose poorly."
The girl looked up at me confused, looked around and then said, "If you gave this to me, I would say yes ......"  Sentence left hanging in the air.
I was in such a state of shock, by the betrayal, that it took me years to figure out what her reply had actually meant.  And then I thought, "What the heck was wrong with that girl?  She does not know me from Adam!"  (hmmm, I wonder if she still works at that shop ... ?)

I was permanently broken.  Wanting to trust, unable to trust ...

I saved a ton of money by dropping SM from my life!  Just my phone bill that year was usually $300 a month (in 1975 dollars)!  Well almost saved, I bought an Alfa Romeo to distract me.  A very nice car, a very fast car and though lots of females hung around the car when I was at the Friday night races, my utter lack of interest was apparently my protection ...  Or, perhaps, it is just that I have always been the flake-nerd-geek in every crowd.  Yeah, being a computer geek can be a curse or a blessing, depending on how you view it!  Except when I cross paths with an intelligent female - then I am toast.

And add the young lady whom was responsible for my becoming a Christian in the first place back in 1973 going totally nuts this anniversary week and calling me every name in the book as she stormed out of my life!  Uhm, we guys, Dutchman, Swede and assorted others in my life at that time - were really stunned at how ALL females had been removed by God (?) in such a short period of time.  They were all friends and sisters ... I thought we were in any event ... I know I can be naive but really I could not see how I had caused or contributed to this bizarre chain of events.  We, the brotherhood of four, founded Bachelors Until the Rapture, or BUR!  Took laughingly funny oaths of singleness and held monthly meetings at Shakey's Pizza, when we were all in the area.

*****

The rest of the story:
Yes, two years later, I did relent, even though I had done everything "right" the first time around and my best friend had not, I did seek to offer under the terms of unconditional love ... forgiveness for the betrayal and another shot at an engagement.  It was all God, not me.  I thought she accepted, I know she did, but she turned up in bed with Dutchman the next morning and not packed to go with me, as she had said she desired.  Again, I quietly left, though I did comment to Dutchman later I felt very sorry for him.

As for Dutchman, I have mentioned last year the suffering he has lived with through all these decades at his betrayal of me and hers of him.  He has been haunted by that night for all of these years.  I truly am sorry for him - love known, then abandoned ...  At long last I am able to understand.  But, now that he had confessed this to me last year, he has been too embarrassed to see, talk or even text with me.

Just more collateral damage to place on SM's account, which I closed years ago when I realized that she truly is an Evil Woman.