Tag Archives: humiliation

Ballboy

Ballboy: (n) a boy who retrieves balls that go out of play during a game such as tennis or baseballDictionary B

I grew up in a village which was about 20 miles from a big city.

Even though we insisted that we were an autonomous population. we privately knew that we had to go 20 miles to actually be entertained or purchase clothes that were not second-hand.

Every once in a while, the big city would invade our little burg with a possibility. This happened when I was ten years old.

The minor league baseball team which headquartered in the big city decided to bless the neighboring burrows with an opportunity–to let one of the favorite sons be a ballboy for one night at the park.

It was a big deal.

You got to go to the game, put on a uniform and run out and chase balls that went awry, or give bats to the superstars.

So they further made a big deal of it by holding an audition to select the ballboy, which drew a crowd of about 45 kids between the ages of ten and twelve.

I was one of them.

Even though I did not like baseball very well, I was fairly athletic and certainly competitive. So at the end of fielding flies, chasing balls, and even some opportunity to use the bat, the committee selected me to be the ball boy for this game.

I had never won anything in my life expect the privilege of being born.

My skin was tingling, my head was swimming and the rest of me just wanted to pee.

So they took me into a room and pulled out the uniform I was to wear for the game and asked me to try it on.

It didn’t fit. Not even close.

I was chubby, which is what my parents called it, and everybody else knew to be fat.

I tried hard to fit into that uniform. I said that by next week I could lose some weight. But reluctantly, they awarded the opportunity to the boy who came in second place. Even though he had less ability, he also had less blubber.

I was shocked.

I was devastated.

And on top of that, I heard a giggle or two from the gallery, causing me to feel humiliation.

Until I sat down and wrote this essay today, I did not realize that I still had remnants of feelings about the injustice. Here’s an idea–one we might want to use in the future, even when electing our leaders:

Let’s find the best person for the job, and then pick the outfit.

 

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Antifreeze

dictionary with letter AAntifreeze (n): a liquid typically based on ethanol, which can be added to water in a car’s radiator, to prevent the engine from freezing.

 

Poverty promotes poor decisions.

Aside from the obvious dangers of starvation, eviction and financial humiliation, having little money often causes one to cut corners, which leads to dumping all of your existing treasure on the ground in a big heap.

When I was nineteen years old, I purchased an old green van which had originally been used by the telephone company. It was well-worn, but I was pleased to get it for $300.

Living in Ohio at the time, I was confronted with the perils of winter. One of those obstacles was the issue of “winterizing” your vehicle by adding antifreeze to make sure that you did not literally ice over and destroy your engine.

Well, here’s the problem. Antifreeze cost $2.99 a gallon, and I would be required to purchase two such units to take care of my vehicle. That was nearly six dollars–the equivalent of the food budget for my young wife and myself for three days.

I heard through the grapevine (which, by the way, is also inhabited by some nuts) that you could add rubbing alcohol to your radiator and protect it from the cold just as easily. Now, a bottle of alcohol was only twenty-nine cents, and I felt that three of them would be sufficient to provide me with the necessary coverage.

So I poured my alcohol in. A very cold Ohio night transpired, and I rose in the morning to start my van. I decided to peek in the radiator to see how my plan had worked.

It was frozen solid.

In my late adolescent mind, I figured that the best way to unfreeze my radiator was to start my engine and let the car warm itself up. (It made sense at the time.)

After starting my vehicle, I realized that I had cracked the block.

I discovered the reason for antifreeze. It performs a function. Its six-dollar price tag saves you from spending several hundred dollars repairing your engine.

It was a very expensive mistake, and one that I never repeated again.

Sometimes you swallow a little expense … so you don’t choke on a larger lump.

 

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Andersonville

dictionary with letter A

Andersonville: (n) a village in southwestern Georgia that was the site of a large and infamous Confederate prison camp during the Civil War.

The Civil War was our holocaust.

Actually, little will be achieved in this country until we universally accept this statement as true.

The Civil War is when we took a race of people, segregated them, mistreated them and then ended up fighting a war which included in its pursuits the decision to continue that same practice indiscriminately.

We murdered, created new weapons to increase the casualties and took brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers and placed them at odds with each other, continually making a “Sophie’s Choice” within the boundaries of households.

  • It was horrific.
  • It was unnecessary.
  • It was short-sighted.

And when you add in the treatment given to fellow-Americans as prisoners of war–on both sides–you have almost an identical parallel to many of the atrocities that were perpetuated in Nazi Germany.

It is our humiliation.

It is a war we should study because we need to make sure that in our present dealings, that none of the ignorance that brought about the massacre and slaughter can be welcomed again.

We need to put away all the trumpets, banners and paraphernalia from that conflict into a trunk and bury it in the ground with a ceremony of repentance.

There is nothing from that period of time that is worthy of our praise, let alone our consideration.

I admire the German people because they look on the horror of their own recent history and refuse to repeat it–by making sure the only reference to it is an apology.

To live in a country that still refers to “Yankees and “Rebs,” “North and South,” “Union and Confederate” with a sense of regional pride is an abomination to our belief in all men being created equal.

The Andersonville prison was a location where the anger, frustration and evil that had been perpetuated for three centuries was brought to bear and turned into a living hell.

But the Civil War was not noble.

It was not good.

It was not brave.

It is our holocaust–and because it is, we should reverence those who suffered and pledge to never repeat such foolish iniquity again.

 

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