In My Pants

If you brew dark roast coffee, triple strength, and soak a pair of new khaki pants in it, and wash those pants in hot, hot water, without any detergent, the pants will never stain when you spill coffee on them.

Saturation, is the principle. 

 If you imbue each individual fiber with as much coffee as possible, it can't absorb any more coffee. This is a science thing. It's why i.v. fluids are saline, not distilled-water based. Things like to be even. So something, whether it's a blood cell, or a cotton fiber in a pair of jackass fucking business-cas dockers...will try to absorb as much as it can of something, until it can't take any more. At that point, it'll either burst, like a blood cell suddenly surrounded by plain water - or it'll stop soaking shit up.

 Nobody told me the part above.

They just told me that if I washed my pants in coffee, they would last longer. Second day, at the job I worked for three years. This was the wisdom. If you make sure that your pants are as stained as stained can be, no one will ever be able to see any subsequent stains.

I warn you, readers, beloveds, that I am absolutely wasted as I write this. I mean it. About ten ounces of rum and a beer and a half. So I will try to be as coherent as possible, although, I will confess to you, and only you, as if only could ever be a collective:

That it was so difficult, just now, to ensure that the "h" in coherent was an "h" and not a "g" that I nearly decided to say "cogent" instead, even though that wasn't at all what I meant. 

Digression over.

"Exactly how far, Hobo, will you go for spite?"

Said my good friend and co-worker, and partner in crime and running. We were discussing policy - I had just made the irrational statement, the rash statement, that if there were an ambiguity in citation styles, our policy should be to survey five legal publications, plus Harvard, and follow the policy of whoever differs from Harvard.

The answer:

Pretty goddamned far. Pretty, fucking, far. 

How far? 

 High School

 I can read in five languages. Six, if you count English. Really well, actually. I think my total years of language study exceed my age, if you add them all up. 

How far?

I haven't worn khakis since June, 2006. And I will not. Not for anyone. Not for any job. Not for love or money. And I do love money. 

I went to a vocational high school. It was an impulsive decision, like nearly any other decision which has had lasting impact on my life. The train station near the vocational school was more pleasant than the train station near the academic high school. And my friends were planning to go there. 

I can cast silver. Lost wax. Like an archaic greek. My hands can make heroes from wax, plaster or clay, and metal. I have washed silver with acid, and filed for too long, to clear the pie away.  I nearly broke my arm learning how to cast - I wish I could tell you how, but I'm nearly done blogging, and it's too tangiential.

But when I went to the vocational school, two things happened:

1. I wanted to take French and Spanish. No policy existed against it. The school counseled me not to. They told me that it was their experience that it would be too confusing to learn them both at once.

"Considering...your education plan, wouldn't you prefer...a more traditional elective?"

No, I goddamned wouldn't.

So I took French. And Spanish. And Italian. And Latin. I have read Dante and Boccaccio in Italian. I know the French subjunctive like I'm a wishful Quebecois.

The Latin was hard to take, because the school was  canceling the program. "Oh, we wish you could take it. We DO! But we're phasing it out. So, unless you can start with Latin 3, then you can't take it."

So I taught myself first and second year Latin in six weeks.

Because why? Because fuck you, that's why.

Lately, I've started to study Brazilian Portuguese.

If you tell me I goddamned can't, I goddamned will. And that -a vow- will never change.

2. I got my damned ass booted from Advanced Placement Chemistry. Although I like to claim that every incidental slight to my dignity is an injustice, I realize that this isn't true. However, this time, I think I actually was discriminated against.

I was kicked out of this class because the teacher believed that students with I.E.P.'s (Individualized Education Plans - the mark of Cain when it comes to special education - also, the key to necessary services, should you need them. Double edged sword doesn't even come close) - couldn't pass her class. So, she told me that, no matter what, I wouldn't get "any extra help." So, when other students could make up a lab after school, if they didn't finish it during class - I would just fail.

"I told you you wouldn't get any extra help."

If my lab reports were illegible (I have always had occupational delays with small motor control - but lately, through a lot of work, I've been able to overcome them, and I can write quite comfortably longhand) I would fail.

It was so bad that my lab partner also failed. We were both kicked out of the class. I took "Vocational Bio-chemistry."

Vocational Bio-Chemistry is a year-long course where you learn how to interpret those little diamond shaped signs that are stuck to the back of mack trucks. Flammable gas, flammable liquid, explosive liquid, hazardous materials. 

The textbooks were newsprint and twenty-four pages long. The exams were open-book, and the answers were in the back of the textbook. The class average on the midterm was a D. 

So.

I took neuroscience, the second time I went to college. I know goddamned more about the organic chemistry and electric reactions of axons, dendrites, and the discrete little humpings of calcium and sodium that allow us to think and feel - than most people you know. Than many people with entirely working brains. I have touched seen and know by heart the feel of the spider mother, the hard mother, and the tender mother. 

I have seen the seahorse. I have looked at the dark stuff. I saw what a brain looks like when it has Parkinson's disease. I have held the whole of human fucking experience in my goddamned two hands.

Why? Because fuck you, that's why.

 Boston.

"Fuck you, that's why."

 People think that  Boston is Ivy and brahmin. It's not. It's triple-deckers. It's oil heat. It's bubblers and tonic and hot dogs at Sullivan's. It's knowing at least three people with your last name who died of lung cansa from the foah rivah shipyad. 

I lost most of my accent in college. I've said this before. My father was never happier than the Thanksgiving I came home and didn't sound like him, or my mother, or my sister, or my brother. 

My vowels are the same as they ever were.

Only the consonants have changed. I am glad of this. It takes a Boston ear to cure a Boston accent. Luckily, my crusading bourgousie missed the a's, and o's and e's. The shallow attitude of the non-Boston ear towards the Boston accent ensures that traces remain. When they are able to bully a mouth into accepting the Rs as imposed by Websters, they count it as mission accomplished and walk away.

The sense of humor remains, too. If you meet a girl from Boston - really and truly from Boston - you'll notice that she doesn't give you an inch. If a girl from Boston implies, with a smile, that your penis is small, your ego large, and your parentage uncertain - she's probably in love.

If you're not from Boston, you'll think she's a bitch. 

 Again, a digression. Did I mention that I'm drunk?

The point is: My accent has been stripped, but I am the same. And I know that not having that accent is one of the things that opens doors, but thinking back to that girl, on that snow-covered hill in Vermont, trying to understand exactly what was wrong with the way she spoke...

Later

My grandfather fell down the stairs.

Not inside, but outside. 

On the way to the market, where he bought the Sunday paper. His cardiologist told him to cancel delivery of the paper, and to walk somewhere to get it. That way, he'd keep moving every day.

 The stairs had uneven tread. My grandfather had scarred lungs, and poor vision. The stairs had no railing. The steps were uneven, ragged, and rotting.

He tumbled and hit his head, broke his hip. The ambulance took him to one of the best known hospitals in hyper-intellectual Boston. The emergency room physician noticed his distress and confusion. He ignored it.

Alzheimers. Sundowning, he said.

My mother, and her four siblings, insisted that he did not have alzheimers, and had no dementia, of any kind. 

Sundowning. The intern wrote on the chart. The family couldn't accept it, the implication was. 

The brain damage was severe. His concussion was sever. The brain damage, combined with the broken hip, meant that he could no longer live without supervison. 

The day after he went to the hospital, the market where he was attempting to buy the paper, demolished the stairs he fell down. They no longer exist.

My mother consulted a lawyer. All they wanted was, maybe, enough money to get a couple hours of personal care per day, so her father could live independently in his house. All he needed was someone to help him with showering, check in on his medications, and make sure that his nutrition was alright. Ninety minutes a day was what was recommended,

The attorney told her they had no case.

"I could file this for you, but, if a court finds for the market, you'll have to pay all their costs, and yours. It'll be really expensive."

No suit. No insurance claim. No medical bills. My grandfather had to take a reverse mortgage on his house to pay his bills and get a personal care attendant twice a week. Four of his five children rotated nights, staying with him.   When he took the reverse mortgage, because of the shitty advice of a previous attorney, who told him to put the house in trust for his children, in order to be eligible for medicare - part of the proceeds had to go to the creditor of one of his children.

Thirty thousand dollars. Thirty thousand that could have kept him in his house a few days more. Have you heard of transfer trauma?  It's what happens to people that are pretty fragile - their condition declines. Severely. If they have to move.

There are lots of neurological, scientific reasons that this happens. But, basically -the difference between in-home, personal care, and in-institution, attendant or nursing care, is fucking huge. It shortens lives.

Quality of life is shot.