My art at being out-spoken has always worried me, especially when I offend friends or associates or people I don't intend to bother.
In the picture at the right, my dad appears as I remember him. It was just at the time, when I began doing work with him on the farm. He protected me from lifting things incorrectly or from things that were too heavy. But it didn't take long, and my weight training program for sports was like all the rest of the farm boys in my hometown--hauling hay, hauling rocks, hauling anything that needed hauling.
I do not, however, remember my dad being out-spoken. When I was in my thirties, we picked up some rolled barley. We took back burlap sacks the company gave us, and we received full ones. One day this one worker, who grumbled about everything, started grumbling at my dad about what bad sacks we brought to him.
I look down at the ones he filled for us. They also had holes. "They're not a hell of a lot better than what you're giving us." The worker shut his mouth.
As soon as we get into the truck, my dad says this: "Where in the hell did you get to be so out-spoken." He laughed about it a little, and then he said something interesting. "You must have picked that up in Germany."
Now my wife and I hosted teachers for 20 years. They were responsible for a number of things that were miserable to deal with. One didn't use the clutch when he shifted gears in my new car. I didn't discover that until I heard him grind the gears. "I'm speed shifting," he said.
The transmission needed work a month later.
One teacher was singlehandedly responsible for breaking a stylus on my turntable. That's a record player for readers who know nothing about "old school" music listening. The price was over $100. She also forced a disk from my new Mac we had at the time. That was expensive. I won't even talk about four or five of my favorite records she destroyed after damaging the stylus on my record player.
Another teacher flooded a level of my home. It was my birthday. She and the other German teacher wanted to take Ann and me to a restaurant. We return and the hallway is wet. "Oh," she says. "I noticed the water was rising after I flushed the toilet.
She also broke the wooden supports on two of my oak chairs by standing on them.
In almost every case, I told them not to do what they did, and in some cases I was not nice when I talked to them. I made one thirty-year-old German teacher cry, when I talked to him about messing things up during the exchange. He was a real prince. He later married one of his students he brought from Leipzig.
In spite of being very clear about my opinion, some people just don't get it, but as for my developing this tendency as a result of living in Germany, I don't believe it.
My maternal grandfather was Jack Williams or Black Jack. In a Welsh community full of people with the same first and last names, it didn't take long to get a nickname. Grandpa Williams died in the 1961, just at the beginning of the year. I wish I knew him better than I did, but I learned to know him through stories.
He didn't leave anyone wondering what was on his mind, not ever. "You don't know $h*% from Shinola," he would say to someone who said something stupid. By the way, Shinola was this waxy brand of shoe polish. His comments were hysterical. He had a sharp wit, a quick temper, a sense of loyalty to family. Grandpa said what was on his mind.
My paternal grandmother was this short feisty Welsh lady. I loved her from my first moments that I remember, because she doted on me my entire life.
"You're just perfect like you are," she would tell me.
Everyone needs someone like that in life.
That did not, however, mean that my grandmother didn't tell someone "what was what," when the time was necessary. She only did that to me once, and that was after her brainstem injury that put her in a nursing home. She said something mean, but I knew she didn't mean it, even though I cut my visit short that day.
I remember a family dinner at Maddox near Brigham City. It was a family tradition to eat there, and we had a horrible waitress. Grandma had the woman come to the table, and then I watched my Grandma Liza tell the woman exactly why she wouldn't get any tip from her that day. And grandma went into detail. Grandma finished her evaluation like this. "And I'm a very good tipper."
In future years, that lady waited on our family in the restaurant several times, but she never did that again.
When my Grandma Liza was in a nursing home for her brain injury after a car accident, a new nurse began working there. The woman was mean. I show up to visit my grandmother, and find her strapped down to a bed firmly. Bruises cover her arms and the area near her neck.
I did a bit of small talk with my grandmother at a time when we hoped there would be some sort of improvement. Grandma looked at the ceiling. I tried not to show my anger at seeing he strapped down to a bed with bed sheets. I waited for the nurse to come into the room.
When she arrived, I asked her about the situation, and especially about the bruising. The woman was defensive. I stood up from my chair.
I told her how I had better never see my grandmother strapped to a bed like that, and I also said that if I ever saw bruises on her like that again, someone's @$$ would be in a huge sling, both figuratively and literally. The nurse left the room quickly after removing the bed sheets. She also quit a short time after that.
I looked down at my grandmother. She smiled broadly from ear to ear with her eyes closed. I'll always remember that.
So when it comes to my mom and dad, they raised me to tell the truth at any cost. I was doing harvesting in a field once. It began to rain heavily, so I dumped the grain into the wheat truck and began to drive down this dirt road to the ranch.
We had a creepy neighbor, who would lift rocks from his field and throw into the road. I didn't dare stop that late August day because of the rain, but I hit a rock, and the truck veered into the neighbor's drilled field for about forty feet. I didn't dare stop either, because I was afraid of sliding off further or getting stuck.
A week later, the neighbor waited for me and my dad. He spoke to my dad. "I wonder what dummy drove into my field." The words were still fresh on his bottom lip.
"I did it," I said. My dad looked at me with wide eyes. "You know, somebody keeps throwing rocks into the road, including that one right there." The fourteen inch in diameter rock I hit was now off the road near my tire tracks where the truck skidded a bit after hitting it. "I tried to miss it without hitting the oil pan, and I didn't dare stop because of the rain and wet road, but I did manage to get back on the road without making a bigger mess in the field."
The neighbor wouldn't look at me. He finished small talking with my dad, and we jumped in the truck and drove home for lunch. As soon as dad started engine of the blue two ton '64 Chevrolet truck, he looked at me. "Hell son, I would never have owned up to that, but you did that rather well."
Oh, and that neighbor didn't throw rocks in the road any more.
Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind--Dr Seuss
So it wasn't the Germans who helped me develop this thing I have. My mom is very outspoken as well.
I was in the hospital during my fight with cancer. One member of my high priest quorum, the one who told the entire ward I was going to die any minute in 2004, looked at me as he entered my hospital room. "I just wanted to visit you one more time old friend."
I found it interesting he called me old friend, and I even felt a bit guilty, because he always gave me this pain that settled somewhere near my lower extremity and both cheeks of my lily white Gluteus Maximus. I felt it at that moment too.
He turns to my mother, and asks her about Malad. He then tells everyone in the room about this person he knew from Malad, and then he asked my mom if she knew this person.
Mom turned her head a little to the side and looked through her glasses at him square in the eye. "You know, I'm just barely 70 years old, and I'm not over 90, so no I didn't know them, but my grandparents may have."
Had I had my wits about me, I would have laughed so hard, that I may have choked on something, but I was eating hospital food at the time, and so EIRMC kept me safe as a result of their horrific cuisine. There was nothing that could have done that to me at the time, since I hadn't eaten for a while, and I didn't spend time thinking about their food. Being on chemo is reason enough to gag and squeal into the bottom of a bucket like a pig. You don't want to think about their hospital food.
So I just sat and enjoyed the moment of watching the man squirm a bit uncomfortably, say good-bye and leave.
In January of 2005, some members of the school board in my school district called and wanted to present me with a retirement gift. First, they tried to talk me into returning. That shocked me, but it was such a nice compliment, yet at the time, I have no idea what they were thinking. I look horrible now, but at that time, I didn't look well at all, especially well enough every to return to work.
One was the current chairperson, a man I had offended more than once. I said that to him and explained how I hoped my tendency to say what was on my mind hadn't offended him. His response was classic: "We asked you, because all of us knew you would tell us 'how it really was not what we wanted to hear', so if that was too risky, we shouldn't have asked. You did what we expected you to do."
I liked that.
I come from a long list of people who had no problem expressing their opinion, especially when the situation required it. So there are a lot of people to thank. For the record, my dad could express himself too. None of my family was mean about it. They just did what had to be done.
However, I am an exception. Occasionally, I find humor in things that offend people--not as much as I once did, but I still feel the urge occasionally. My son told me I had "mellowed" unbelievably, but I figure I'll take him with me to Home Depot the next time he visits, so he can watch my reaction when one of the young workers call my "Hon." I hate that.
The phrase made me realize that I'm a Skinwalker. When someone calls me that, I turn into this crotchety old coot that informs then that even though my eyes are bad, I still know they are not my "hon."
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