Saving a soldier

[steadyb]

Hi there,

I have heard this show brought up many times, including this week. It is were Stef told someone what to do!

I can't seem to find which number podcast it is.

Can someone enlighten me?

Thanks

Ed

[Lians]

[steadyb]

Thank you!

Tragically, I didn't think to try youtube.

[Blackfish64]

I wrote this in response to FreeDomainRadio.com show: "Saving A Soldier: No Thanks For Your Service (NSFW)".  This is the absolute best Free Domain Radio Show I have ever seen.  This is my childhood in a nutshell, minus the drugs (I self-medicated with marijuana, and, later on, alcohol), and incarceration.  I, too, had the terrible childhood, minus a few items (thank goodness!).  I was abandoned, confined, abused, demonized, rejected, scorned, labeled.  Dad was in the Marine Corps, and he was always telling me, "When you turn eighteen years old, boy, you're joinin' the Marine Corps... they'll make a man outta you!"  I had to wonder if the Marine Corps had in store for me the same things they had in store for Dad.  If Dad was an example of a man, I did not want to ever become a man.I turned my back and chuckled at him, "That's what you think, Buddy.  The Marine Corps?  Me?  That'll be the day."  I neverdid join any branch of the military service, but I did go to the post office on my eighteenth birthday and complete my draft card with this in mind: 'if my country is attacked, I will go, for I believe in the use of violence for the purposeof self-defense, which is the only thing that violence is good for.  But if there is some nonsense like Viet Nam, or something crazy like that, even though I am drafted, I will object and I will not help them.  I will even go to jail ifnecessary.  That was my thinking on the matter at the time.  This was on Tuesday 14 December 1982.My family is "poison", too.  I keep away.  It's not so much about what happened in the past, but that nothing changed.  No one put in the work, like I did, and tried to grow up out of the mess and tried to make something else of their lives.  Their lives are simply a repeat of the nonsense we lived as children.  So, too, was my life for much of my adulthood.  Making things as good as they could be, as good as they are now, has been a hard battle.  I was never fortunate enough to run into a good therapist and get things straightened up.  I fell into many of the same traps I was in as a child.  I fell in with the wrong people, the wrong women, the wrong scenes.  I know Dad's always hated me.  But I didn't care.  I would not go his way under any circumstances.  I never sought his approval.  I simply hated him right back.  I was his slave and his prisoner.  I could do nothing about that.  But there were other things I could do.  Grandma hated me, too.  "You'd better watch that one!  He's different!  He's going to make trouble for you!  You'd better keep a close eye on him!"  Said the old witch, from out of her booze-infested, slurry, sloppy mouth, between drags off a cigarette and trying to catch her breath as she spoke.  I turned my back on Grandma, too.  "Look who's talkin'", said I.  I've always been kinda cocky and a rough-and-tough.  And I could be very sensible when I needed to.  I knew that both Dad and Grandma were a lost cause.  To hell with them.  The irony of the situation was that Dad, the big fake-tough-guy Marine Corps bonehead was a yellow woman-beating drunkie.  It was Mom, the tiny girl, one-hundred-ten-pounds-soaking-wet, who was the tough one in the family.  I took after Mom while my two brothers took after Dad.  She took his ferocious beatings, one of which killed her eight month old infant, still in her womb, and put up with his daily psychological abuse and maltreatment, while working two and three jobs to pay for the household, and taking care of the household, while Dad spent all his money, if he happened to have a job, on booze, other women, gambling, and cavorting.  No, this guy has never spent a day in jail or so much as paid a fine for his insanity.  In fact, to this day, he brags about how he "Will say sorry to no one", and that, "No one's gonna call me on anything!.  I answer to no one!  I'll live to piss on all your graves!"  I learned to hide and to sneak and to lie to get what I wanted.  I would hide myself away and read the books I wanted to read, and explore my own mind, my own thinking, and to sneak away and have joy and adventures when I could.  I was a little philosopher very early on.  My point is that even though I was a victim, even though I was beaten down and beaten back, I always brought the fight back to Dad, and the other irrationals in my life, one way or another.  While they were tearing me down, dressing me down, trying to get me in line, I was learning and building my own life my own way.  Even as a small child I knew there was something better than Dad and his ugly little mother, who he was scared to death of!  Ha!  Damn cowards.  Damn fools.  Damn drunken, careless, ignorant, stupid fools.  These days, Dad is getting old, I think he's seventy six or seventy seven now, and he wonders why no one comes around to pay him a visit.  And, to make things worse, he is a narcissist through and through and he hates being alone!  He's always got to have someone waiting on him.  He thinks he's god's gift to the green earth and that he deserves better and whatever he likes.  He told my older sister, the only one who still speaks to him, as she was always his special, favored pet who could do whatever she wanted and could never understand why no one liked Dad and didn't want to be around him, that Dad "Has things to tell me" and "Wants to talk sometime".  If that's the case, why does he never call or write?  She has no answer to that question.  The truth is, we have nothing in common.  I don't like him and he don't like me.  And any contact with him only leads back to bullshit.  The last time I tried to get on with him was in the mid-1990s.  I thought it was the right thing to do.  I felt obligated to be the bigger person and let bygones be bygones and get on with things.  After all, Mom had said, "He's your father!"  So I wrote a letter to him and went to see him after many years.  He acted all friendly and showed me his new house and his new cabin on the lake and all the plans he had for it.  It did not take me long to realize that he was simply trying to recruit me, to get me to volunteer to do all that work for him for free.  He is a cheap, conniving old bastard, to be sure.  He's the kind of person who takes advantage of every kindness and stretches it out as far as it can go.  He mistook my fresh act of kindness for my former weakness and helplessness.  I just laughed at him and sped off.  "Do your own work, bum.  I was forced to be your slave when I was a boy and a teen.  There was nothing I could do about that.  But I'm a big boy now.  You get out of line with me, old man, and I'll beat you up.  I'm not a big, yellow sissy and a punk, like you.  I don't flail and pull my head back in a fight, like you do.  You forget, I've seen you fight.  I've seen you get your punk ass kicked.  There's a difference between you and I.  I don't beat women and children, never have, never will, and I don't cry like a bitch when I don't get my way.  I'm a real warrior.  When I tuck my chin and search your body for targets from under my brow, you may know that I go all in all the way, every time, with the full weight of all that I am behind every blow.  No, thank you.  Not for free, not for love nor money will I help you."  And that was that.  He went back inside the house to clean out his soiled underpanties.  I am so proud of myself that I never let my glow, my light go out inside of me.  I have always kept it brightly burning.  I did not let them take that away from me.  As a young boy, I knew there was a place inside of me that could never be taken away and no one could ever get to unless I let them.  I never let them in.  And now I just laugh.  I'm a firm believer in the act of doing nothing.  I'm a firm believer in the word, no.  Let them all go.  Let them find their own way.  They, who claim to know everything, and that you know nothing, let them find their own way, just as you were forced to do.  Let them poke around in the dark, in terror, in their own personal hell, in their own self-inflicted misery and shit.  Let them do it.  Do not support them.  Do not feel sorry for them.  They need for you to doubt yourself in order to get you in their corner, validating their own miserable little lives.  But I have better things to do.  Just say no.  It's that simple sometimes.