John Shore

Archive for the ‘Health’ Category


Labor Day, and Me Not Getting Killed By a Dealer/Pimp

In Health on September 1, 2008 at 6:55 am

If you think Labor Day is about commemorating all the women who have ever had babies, you’re wrong. That’s Interdependence Day. (Thankya—thangyaverymuch. I’ll be here all post.) Labor Day is where none of us goes to our job as a way of celebrating how great it is that we have a job.

I personally don’t have a job. I write for a living. Which means I don’t have to shave. And if you don’t have to shave you’re not really employed, no matter what G. Everett Koop says. I have had regular, Must Shave jobs, though. In fact I’ve had over 60 full-time jobs, which I know is Beyond Bonkers. But it’s been my confounding experience that people who hire you to do something expect you to do that thing—and that when you don’t, they come find you. And then I have to put out my cigarette, or stop eating, or whatever. (I used to smoke. But I quit once I realized how rewarding it was to overeat.)

The first real job I ever had was Recreation Leader. It was summer; I was 15 years old; and the City of Cupertino, California thought they should pay me $3.50 an hour to play in the park, which I would have done for free. The only catch was that I had to wear a whistle—which, again, I would have blown for free. Being a recreation leader is the greatest job I ever had. I don’t enjoy knowing that the best job I ever had is one when I was 15, but what can I do? I got paid to eat popsicles. Can it go anywhere but down from there?

The worst job I ever had was selling encyclopedias door to door in the ghettoes of East Oakland. People who live in ghettoes, as it turns out, are not overly interested in acquiring one new volume of knowledge each month for two years at $50 a pop. Instead, what they’re interested in is popping you on the side of your head for being so stupid as to suggest that they have $2500 lying around to spend on an encyclopedia.

Actually, I found that selling encyclopedias in ghettos doesn’t make people want to beat you up. It makes people feel sorry for you—which makes them invite you into their house, which makes you spend hours hanging out with them and enjoying their refreshments and listening to their awesome music and totally giving up on going back out in the terrible heat and trying to sell encyclopedias.

The Oakland apartment I lived in at the time was below the building’s penthouse, which was occupied by a guy who supplied half the cocaine to East Oakland. Half. To all of East Oakland. This was in 1975. I was the only white guy in my building. One day I got stuck in the elevator alone with Leon, the dealer from upstairs. He was, as always, working the full-on Disco Pimp outfit: outsized fur-trimmed hat, shades, shiny blue silk suit, cape, walking stick, Giant Shoes. Now it’s kitschy; then, it was Actual Fashion. Leon was about five foot six. I was pretty wholly terrified of him; he had serious power. There never weren’t ten Cadillacs in our parking area, driven by some of the endless numbers of people who’d come to see him. Leon, the dealer and pimp in town, was pretty much King of East Oakland.

The job I then had was selling shoes at a Kinney’s shoe store, where I got paid in cash every Friday.

When the elevator we were in jerked to a stop, Leon didn’t move. He didn’t flinch; he didn’t wonder why the elevator had stopped or when it might start again; he didn’t say a word. He just stayed leaning against the wall, as inscrutable as ever, quiet behind his sunglasses.

I, meanwhile, immediately got involved with trying not to have a heart attack.

At some point Leon slowly turned his head to regard me.

I was seventeen.

I began nodding at him frantically—in the way a parrot might signal a greeting.

“Nice shoes,” I said.

Very slowly, and with a maximum lack of expression, Leon brought one finger up to the nose of his sunglasses. He pulled them down a little, the better to see me. He stared at me for what seemed like an eternity.

“You know you white, right?” he said.

I looked down with shock at my arm. “Am I?! My God! I am!  What the heck am I doing in this neighborhood?Ha, ha, ha. Please don’t kill me.”

He didn’t. He ended up inviting me up to his place. Which turned out to be the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever seen.

Anyway, right. Labor Day. When none of us has to work. But reading is a lot like work. So let’s just stop this right now.

 

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A Broken Soul Cries Out For Our Love

In Family, Health, Religion on August 4, 2008 at 3:21 pm

A few months back I wrote a piece called Unhappy? Reject Your Parents. Yesterday a woman left on that post the “comment” below. I’m here presenting what she wrote, exactly as she wrote it, in the hope that those who read it will pray for the healing of this good woman’s heart. Please help me to show this sister of ours the love that in her life she’s clearly, and tragically, been too often denied.

Dear Mr. Shore,

I found this article about rejecting your parents through a random web search about parents rejecting their children.

I had no choices in my childhood, was dragged all over the country by a mother who was desperately chasing my father, who didn’t want us. My mother cut off from her family and so did my father. I never knew their families and only met my mother’s later in my life after finding them.

It has taken me many years of admitting my parents just didn’t like me and lost out on a nice child, and the last 3 years have been so revealing. I have been living my life on more automatic reactions rather than really thinking about why I do the things I do and who are or are not my friends. I finally stopped and looked at it all and it was terribly painful.

I was so discouraged from making friends, keeping friends, finding the truth and knowing who I was that I fell apart in adulthood. I was set up with no coping skills or success in anything for life. I was SUPPOSED to fail. So I could, I guess, reinforce for them,  that life is hard and you cannot win. Then I was mentally beaten by a God that loved me ON CONDITION that I did what HE wanted or ELSE. The love of God was spouted out as some kind of paneacia but when I tried to learn about his so called unconditional love I was thumped for having assumptions that I might actually be a good child rather than a waste of space or just a servant.

My parents always made me feel it was my fault for my problems. Everything is MY FAULT because I didn’t react correctly or I just “misunderstood” what them meant, even though they changed the rules again and I missed the memo. That is tiresome and I reject it. It is my parents fault for giving me nothing to succed in this life. I had to go around them and learn all I  could so I could at least function. Everything I learned I learned alone through books and observation. I have been pretending to be normal but in reality I feel lost and undesirable.

For years I have to correct everything my parents did to me, both physically and legally, and for two summers I have had epiphanies as to why I have reacted to the world as a hostile place that does not love you or ever will. I learned to hate myself before allowing anyone else to hurt me with that same attitude. That way they didn’t have to constantly beat me up mentally and really demolish my soul.I did it for them.

I have had to reject my parents compleatly, their idea of a God that loves you ONLY IF….. I tired of hearing how it was all my fault.
 
I was only trying to protect the shreds of my self esteem and inner person they didn’t get a chance to rip apart.

Since their deaths, which freed my soul from having to pretend to be whatever they wanted, which would change every time I thought I figured out what they wanted in a daughter, I am completely ready to forget them. I feel like lousy Christian because I cannot find anything about them to honor. They taught me to fear, to hate myself, and gave me no encouragement on how to interact with others in this world. They destroyed all my attempts at a better life till I finally left my home state for many years.

I felt used by them for their needs mostly. It is very hard to trust anyone who has tried to kill you as a four-year old child because it would be better to send you back to God. It basically leaves you unsure of your place on on this earth or if you have a right to survival at all. Desparately pleasing them was a survival trait I learned. Don’t ask too much or get out of line.

I am trying very hard to forgive them, but more I would rather reject them and run toward something better. They are dead now, I must admit I am so glad I don’t deal with them any longer. I had to burn my mothers journals because she said NOTHING good about me in them. She once told me I wasn’t good enough to have children, so I’d better not. I granted her wish. My body stressed itself into disease, so that I could never get pregnant.

I have felt very lonely for years although I am married to a very understanding man. He has seen this kind of ill treatment through his job and has a lot of patience. I spent years in emotional distress and physical illness and wondering if I had the right to be alive. My parents instilled in me that I was worthless to them, so I always wondered what good I was on this earth. I am working towards self love, which is NOT SELFISH. I need to love myself enough to stay alive and not give up. I do fairly well most of the time, but sometimes I get very depressed when I really need to talk to someone to make sure my feelings are natural. I am afraid to reveal my vulnerablility to others because they can use it as leverage later when they turn on me.

I keep having “epiphanies” as to why I am doing things I do, and that I no longer have to work in survival mode, but can <em>choose </em>what to do or how to react.
 
I have only one other sibling who was not there for the major beatings I had to watch my mother endure or the alcoholism I had to witness as my father went into womanizing and anger.
 
I don’t think my brother knows how deeply it has affected me but I know he has been deeply hurt too. He admitted to me that he has been harshly judgemental toward others because that is all he experienced as a child. No love, just judgement. Neither of us thought we could ever please our parents. He is doing better than I am. Maybe because they gave him more time or he was the “boy” and I was not as valuable.
 
I must say I do not like my parents. I am trying to return to God but I really need some Christians to show me that unconditional LOVE does exist. That it’s possible for someone not to judge you because you are different, unsocial or had a rotten life, and for them not to fear who I am might “rub off on them.”  I can’t say I have met many Christians of this kind. Mostly I hear from them how everyone outside of their little sect is going to Hell and wrong. In the four years I have been living in our town I have had ONE Christian person reach out to me unconditionally and lovingly. I was like a starving skeleton eating food for the first time in thirty years. I didn’t think Christians wanted anyone new around them or anyone so hurt they cannot seem to understand how deep it goes. I wonder if there really are Christian who care anymore. Not in my town I guess. Only one person at all, I guess.
 
I guess Christians have become too frightened to reach out to others in need. Somehow a sick wounded bleeding person is supposed to crawl to a church and beg for a little help. I wonder if Jesus would have slunk back and kept his mouth shut because others might punish him for sharing the gospel. I guess not because he died for us. I am trying to relate that to me.

I pray that God will help me to forgive my parents but I must admit I would like to just put them out of my mind for the rest of my life. I wonder if we see these people in the afterlife? I would much rather see my cat who loved me unconditionally and understood all my moods and just snuggled me when I was down.

I wonder if animals are not God’s way of showing we the rejected that there is some kind of Love out there for us too. Sometimes I wish I had been born a cat or dog without the hate and anger and hurtfullness of humans. But that is probably selfish to want as well.
 
I think I am looking for my place in the world and feel cut off and lonely. I understand it when someone who looks perfectly normal and happy on the outside then manages to commit suicide and then the rest of the people around them say, I don’t understand, he/she seemed so happy, what happened? Then the obvious clues start to become clear and everyone realizes they could have done a little more, said a kind word or actually maybe tried to help the person so wounded that living becomes harder than dying.

I pray that God can come to me and I can let him in and I can forgive my parents. it is going to take time and it would help if others would understand me. But I don’t look for that anymore. I just would like to feel that complete overcoming of the holy spirit everyone talks about and I can find the ability to forgive and forget and move one. I feel like the sick person who has to heal herself alone.

 

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Wondering If He’s Mr. Right? Then He’s Not.

In Health, HowTo, relationships on August 2, 2008 at 4:16 am

 

Wondering whether or not someone is Mr. Right means he’s not. It really is exactly that simple. When you’ve met or gotten to know Mr. Right, he’ll be so Mr. Exactly  Right that you’ll know it like a lightening bolt to your chest. You’ll no sooner be able to wonder whether or not he’s Mr. Right then you’d wonder, standing out in the rain, whether or not you’re getting wet.

You’ll know. (And this is all true for men wondering about Miss Right, too.) In love—as in virtually everything—listen to your heart. Sure, it’s a doe-eyed cliche. But it’s true. Your heart knows. Your brain will do as brains do, and kick in with all kinds of noise and nonsense. But listening to your brain about such things is like listening to Bozo about blending in. Forget it. When considering if a certain someone is the certain someone, kick in with the only evaluative faculties that matter in such matters (or any matters, really): Your instincts.

It’s like with God. Think about God, and you get about nowhere. Feel  God, and he’s on you like yellow on mustard.

Think about whether you’re in love with someone, and good luck. Feel  whether you are, and you’ll know it like you know your name.

Then all that’s left is to obey what you’ve learned, to do what you know is right. And therein so often, of course, lies the rub.

 

Related posts: God Doesn’t Care If You’re Married or Not; You! Get Married! Now!; Looking for Mr. Right? You’re Missing the Point, Missy; Six Tests to Determine If He’s Mr. Right; To Single Women: Men. Don’t. Change.; Surprise (Or Not!)! Men Are Spoiled; Top 10 Tips for Becoming an Ideal Husband; What’s In A Word: The Truth Behind Men’s Personal Ads.

 

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Looking for Mr. Right? You’re Missing the Point, Missy

In Health on July 21, 2008 at 6:55 am

 

Lately single women have been asking me, “John, what do guys want? I’m a pretty, intelligent, good-hearted girl who has a lot to offer any man. But all the men I know or meet invariably end up having some sort of congenital aversion to anything even vaguely resembling long-term emotional commitment—to settling down, getting serious, getting married. Why is that? I’m a fun, sweet person. I make my own money. I have lots of rewarding relationships in my life; I know how to be in a good relationship. I’m a mature, grown-up person. And I’d like to get married someday. Doesn’t everyone? Don’t guys? Isn’t that the whole point—finding that special someone, falling in love, getting married, settling down, having children, growing old together? Isn’t all that, like, the Grand Prize of life? Then why is it that if a girl on a date so much as scratches an itch on her ring finger, the guy she’s with acts like she’s sprayed him with mace? Who do these men think they’re going to get involved with, if not one of the women they actually meet?  What is it that men want? What in the world are they looking for? Do they even know?”

When women ask me this, I usually answer with, ”Do I know you? Anyway, great speech. Tough questions! Well, this is my stop. Good-bye—and good luck!”

But that’s not helping anyone. So the next time a woman poses me this puzzler, I’m going to stay on the bus until I’ve given her my real answer, which is this:

“Men find unappealing in women the same thing women find unappealing in men: Need. People are not attracted to the emotionally needy. (Actually, there are lots of men out there who are attracted to emotionally needy women, but such men—men who seek out women over whom they can exercise power—are dangerous creeps from whom all women should flee.) The fact that you’re registering that whatever man you’re with is resisting a serious relationship means you’re definitely sending that man messages that you do want to be in a serious relationship. That’s not good. You might as well hang a sign around your neck that says, ‘Desperate! Please Help! At Least Compliment My Hair!’

“You can’t live your life waiting for a man to rescue you. Wanting a man to make your life whole is the one thing guaranteed to keep men from you. Because what wanting a man to make your life better means is that you, alone, aren’t good enough for you. It means that you find yourself inadequate. It really means—or really signals—that you don’t like you. And if you don’t like you, why should anyone else? No one knows you better than you do, right? You’re the expert on you. If you’re not satisfied hanging out with you, why would anyone else think they might be?

“There’s only one way to find Mr. Right, and that’s to stop looking for him. Looking for Mr. Right can only mean that you think you’re Miss Wrong, or Miss Not Quite Good Enough. You’re Miss Ing Something. Forget that. Stop worrying about meeting Mr. Right. Instead, start thinking of yourself as Miss Perfectly Okay By Herself. (Isn’t it interesting that we use the same word to indicate an unmarried woman as we do ’failure to obtain’? If unmarried women are called ‘Miss,’ then unmarried men should be called something like ’Flop,’ or ‘Err.’ So, for instance, if single, I would be Err Shore. Which is a lot like the German ‘Herr Shore.’ Hmm. Perhaps this explains World War II.)

If you really want to find Mr. Right, stop looking for him. Stop, in other words, waiting for someone to give you a life. Get your own life! Prove to the world, and to yourself, that you don’t need anyone to make you someone.

Life is one big paradox. And one of its biggest is that the only way to find Mr. Right is to genuinely and truly stop looking for him. Live your life. Get happy. Listen to God. That’ll keep you busy enough for this life, and beyond.

Other stuff I’ve written along these lines: Six Tests to Determine If He’s Mr. Right, To Single Women: Men. Don’t. Change., Surprise (Or Not!)! Men. Don’t. Change., Top 10 Tips for Becoming an Ideal Husband, and What’s In A Word: The Truth Behind Men’s Personal Ads.  

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This Vanity Plate Confuses Me

In Cars, Health on July 8, 2008 at 8:05 am

(Sort of related posts: Is This Really The Right Name for a Porta-Potty? and Brilliant Work of Modern Art, or Actual Garbage?

 

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Bring Back The “e” Ecology Symbol!

In Health on July 1, 2008 at 7:23 am

Right on!

For years I’ve been waiting for Ye Oldye Ecology Symbol to once again become the ubiquitous cultural icon it was in the late ’60’s and early ’70’s. Have I missed something? Has The Little “e” That Could become huge again, and I’ve just missed it? I figure that must be it. Kids today love all things ’60’s, and, besides the peace sign (which of course we now see everywhere), you can’t get more ’60’s than The Ecology Symbol.

So, fully confident that I’m dorkily late suggesting this: Let’s bring back the “e” symbol!

I mean, right? It’s the best. It used to be everywhere.

Come back, li’l e! It’s your time again!

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I’m Green Like Kermit

In Health, HowTo on June 24, 2008 at 5:19 pm

 

My Hero

I used to be a broke underachiever. Thank God those days are over. Now, instead, I’m green like Kermit.

I drive an old Ford Focus that I never wash or change the oil in. Whereas before this meant I was monetarily challenged and adverse to effort, now it means I’m a dedicated environmentalist.

I’ve always lived in compact, vertically stacked, densely-arranged residential units. Too poor to buy a house? Wrong. Habitatilly (I’m sure it’s a word) green.

When the choice is between steak and rice with beans, I always choose the rice with beans. Too broke to gnaw a bit o’ Bossy? Nah. Just green as Bossy’s dreams.

Just about everything I own, I bought at a thrift store. Not allowed in Bloomingdales — or like the thought of dales in bloom? You guessed it.

I’m not huge on grooming — I rarely shave, and take really fast showers. Am I someone with whom you’d be embarrassed to be seen in public? I don’t know. Depends on how you feel about murdering the earth!

Awesome.

Where once towards me you could be mean / You’d now have to admit: I’m green!

 

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A Painful Memory

In Family, Health on April 18, 2008 at 11:39 am

So lately I’ve been getting much e-love from across the blogosphere. A beautiful thing, indeed. Makes me feel like I have friends. And with your friends, of course, you tend to share things that you wouldn’t normally share with others — personal, painful-type things. Things that happened to you when you were a kid.

Speaking of painful things that happened to me when I was a kid, here’s a memory o’ mine:

I am sitting on the floor of our family room. Each of my feet is wrapped in several layers of plastic wrap. I’m maybe four. I am the unhappy posessor of a condition whereby the skin on my feet itches so badly that I am constantly using just about anything I can get my hands on to scrape large and deep portions of it away, prefering the resultant stinging pain to the torture of unrelieved itching.

Since I can remember, the entire lower fourth of all my bed sheets have been stained with blood; instead of regular shoes I wear sandals and paper-thin socks that I wear once, peel off, and then throw away. The question of what exactly is wrong with my feet makes doctors call in other doctors, who call in other doctors, who shrug their shoulders and say they just don’t know, let’s try this.

The latest thing they’ve tried is putting salve on my feet, and then wrapping them tight in the same stuff you use to wrap sandwiches. If possible, this has made my feet itch even more — plus, now I can’t get to them. If I end up in hell after I die, and the fire starts burning me, I’ll go, “Oh, yeah. This feels just like something that happened to my feet once.”

Anyway, as I’m sitting on the floor of our family room with my Saran-wrapped feet before me, I am trying my best not to cry, and generally failing at it. I’m also looking up at my mother, who is standing in the door space between our living room and kitchen. She is regarding me as if I’m something foul the cat has dragged in. Because my pain and tears are choking my words away, I try to communicate with my eyes that I know she can’t do anything about my feet, but that I desperately want some of her affection. She is having none of it, though. Looking disgusted, she turns and disappears back into the kitchen.

So. There’s … that moment. Awful!

My feet got better, by the way. They continued to plague me throughout high school (though they began improving around junior high), and by the time I was about 23 they were fine. (I have this weird, speckely sort of discoloration on the tops of my feet, though, from where I guess I actually scratched the color pigment off my feet, if you can believe it. There was a time they were actually talking about amputating my feet, I’d done them such damage. So I guess that makes sense.)

Today, I am happy to report that I am positively insane about shoes. Especially any kind of athletic shoe, which I used to never be able to wear. Life, of course, offers us all mind-boggling pleasures galore — and one of them, for me, will always be putting on … well, any kind of real shoes at all — but especially a pair of athletic shoes.

Me, The Gym, and My Hamster Mike

In Health, Humor, Uncategorized on April 9, 2008 at 4:02 pm

I joined a gym in early January of this year. I’d gained more weight than I’m comfortable carrying, and thought that if anything could stop me from increasingly looking like my erstwhile pet hamster Mike, it would be spending great amounts of time frenetically running on a thing that just kept going round and round so that I never went anywhere at all, just like ol’ Mike used to spend great amounts of time frenetically running on a thing that just kept going round and round so that he never went anywhere at all.

Maybe I’ll just fill an old refrigerator box with shredded paper, and start sleeping in it. Might as well get busy fulfilling the destiny God has in mind for me, which is clearly to become a giant hamster.

Cool. I always wanted to drink out of one of those glass pet bottles, with the tube and black stopper. I love those things.

And how I used to love ol’ Mike. He once chomped my finger so hard I almost passed out, but how else would I have learned the invaluable life lesson of never touching a sleeping hamster? And how else would Mike have learned he can fly?

Yes, if there’s one thing nature teaches us, it’s that blood and flying somehow go together.

Anyway, the gym. I joined. I sweat. I groan. I make faces in public I’d be embarassed to make in private. And at least once every time that I’m pounding away on the treadmill, I think back to my old pal Mike the hamster, and reflect upon the possibility that maybe, just maybe, he knew more about life than he was letting on. 

How Two Toddlers With Kaopectate Made Me Quit Smoking

In Health, HowTo on March 11, 2008 at 6:14 pm

In Smokin’, I talked about how, when I was 10 years old, I willed myself to become the Marlboro Man. A reader was kind enough to respond with, “Dude! You left me hanging there at the end. Did you manage to make it through? Are you a smoker today? Give me more!!!”

So here’s the story of how, why and when I quit smoking:

By the time I was twelve years old I was smoking a pipe. It was lame, and embarrassing, and I had to do it in private, but I was really very fond of tobacco — and a pure tobacco experience means smoking either a pipe or a cigar. And I knew  I didn’t want to be a twelve-year-old Al Capone. So a pipe it was.

Pipe smokers tend to collect pipes, and I was no exception. By the time I was seventeen, I had my collection down to the five pipes I liked best. That’s where I drew the line: five. I figured anything after five pipes just couldn’t be about the tobacco anymore.

Man, I liked those pipes. I still remember each one exactly. I’d lost some good pipes to get it down to those five.

At seventeen years old, I got a job as a live-in nanny (or, as I used to call myself, a manny) to the two two-and-a-half-year-old sons of a scion of one of the world’s wealthiest families. These people were as wealthy as wealthy gets.

How wealthy were they?! you ask? Well, here’s just the smallest example of the kind of money these folks had: At around eleven o’clock one Saturday night, the husband and wife of the family got into a fight. The husband stormed out of the house with nothing on him but the slacks and sports shirt he was wearing. Five days later a new, huge, golden Mercedes pulls into the driveway. It’s the husband. He’s wearing a full length fur coat. He pulls four or five large Louis Vuitton suitcases out of the trunk. He has been, we learn, to Paris. His wife rushed into his arms. All was well again.

Anyway, this couple hired me as a live-in caretaker for their two boys. And by “caretaker,” I mean I never left those boys, 24/7. Wake ‘em up, clean ‘em, feed ‘em, change ‘em, dress ‘em, teach ‘em, clean up after ‘em, hang out with ‘em, put ‘em to bed, wake ‘em up in the morning, love ‘em the whole time — same as any parent does.

I lived with the boys in the downstairs part of the house  – there was nothing down there but them and I. I slept in a little room just off their bedroom. I used to keep my pipes in a rack that I kept on a small table beside my bed.

One morning I woke up to find that the boys had woken up before me. I knew this because I saw that someone had been doing something to my pipes. Having just awoken in the dim morning light, it took me a bit to figure out what.

It turned out that, one by one, the two boys had taken my pipes and dipped them in Kaopectate. And showing a thoroughness, manual dexterity, and attention to detail I’d never noticed them exhibiting in anything else they’d ever done, they had also very carefully filled to the brim each of my pipes’ bowls with that same lovely diarrhea-thwarting product.

The boys were thrilled about their feat. They were positive I would respond to it with a gratifying show of enthusiasm. I’m not sure if I let them down or not.

I do know there was no saving my pipes. Once it hardens, Kaopectate is like Liquid Bowling Ball. For a while I tried to dig and scrape the stuff out of the bowls and stems of my pipes, but it was hopeless.

I was too bummed about the fate of my beloved pipes to ever buy another one, or really ever smoke tobacco again. As young as I was, even I understood that once toddlers dunk your pipes in Kaopectate, it’s time to leave smoking behind, and move on.