Leveling the Playing Field

Since I am enrolled in college, I am learning that there are different learning styles: auditory, visual, kinesthetic, and tactile. I started out being a visual learner, but I studied while in school while listening to music. Cannot do that now since I get focused on the lyrics and the music and forget what I'm supposed to be studying. I have since moved on. I have changed styles, preferring to do whatever I am studying, like practicing Morse code on a mocked-up Morse code keyer. I couldn't learn Morse code just by studying what was in the text. I really needed to tap out the codes in order to learn the code well enough to pass the test and get my radio operator's license. I am still a radio operator; that is good until 2025.

You see, I had to learn Morse code since I was planning a book on the United States being forced back into the Stone Age because an enemy, probably the Russians, the Chinese, or the North Koreans, had set off an EMP pulse and knocked out all of our technology. I believed we could win a war against a technologically advanced enemy by going low tech. I believed that we, the United States, could defeat a technologically superior aggressor by using low tech weapons. Our army and air force were built of ultralights and used Morse code, which is why I had to learn Morse code in order to write about it accurately, hence I decided to earn my radio operator's license and learned Morse code.

I have always been a researcher, but to me, research was not going to cut it for me with this book -- a book I never completed since I went back to my time homeless in New Orleans and jailed for being a notorious madam, which I was not. The New Orleans police department realized they did not have enough evidence to charge me and kicked me out during an ice storm. I ended up back in the Quarter, hooked up with my friends, and went back to work as a hot dog salesman for Lucky Dogs. I called the book Among Women. I finished that book and planned to write the sequel, but got lost along the way -- very much like I did with the technologically inferior ultralight air force and the Morse code using soldiers who fought the technologically superior aggressors.

If you did not notice, you would have figured it out soon enough since I believe in the underdog and in writing a book about the underdog defeating a superior force. Still sounds like a good book to me and maybe I will get back to it and build my army and air force using low tech weapons. I still might. Anything is possible.

The thing is that I have quite a few talents that I do very well. I just cannot settle down for very long with only one or two creative endeavors. I always need to have several projects going at once. Maybe that is the real problem, using only one talent at a time, finishing what I started, and then moving on.

Or not.

I like having several pots and pans on the stove at the same time. It always turns out better when I am cooking. I have less success when I have more than one creative project going at the same time. I lose interest or lose focus and find myself drifting over to another task, another project, something else. I am usually not so unfocused, but it seems I am these days. Maybe I need to go to a psychologist or get some testing or just get down to business. I have been told that several readers would like to know what happened to Pearl (that is me) after she got out of jail. Where did she go? Where did she end up? Did she ever manage to get a job and work toward a lucrative job?

I will never tell since I might finish the book I started with Among Men and publish it, sending it out into the world and winning myself a publishing contract.

Or not.

I am much like the woman who is dying for water in the desert, falls into a pool of water, and drinks myself until I am sated at last.

Or not.

I was showing Mel, one of the residents here in Messiah, that I once had talent as an artist. I was surprised by everything I showed him and that really did not even scratch the surface of what I have done and what I am still capable of now that I have realized that while my talents are dulled with lack of use, I can still draw credibly well.

I think that is the real problem -- knowing I can do something with practice and getting back into the practice and honing my skills. When I first began drawing as a child, I practiced on whatever caught my eye and got good at the drawing. I remember before the end of school when I was in the fourth grade, we were all told that we would spend the last day of school drawing. I did not want to be shown up and so I went through all my piano practice books and copied everything I could find. I finally settled on Minnie and Mickey Mouse and decided that is what I would draw the last day of school. my

I graduated and went into the fifth grade where I got interested in Ronny Meadows, one of the boys in our class who sang like Elvis Presley. He had presence and he had a good voice. I do not think I remember much more than that until I was punished for scratching my name on the girls' bathroom stall wall. I was punished for defacing school property. I had been punished for scratching my name on the footboard of one of the bunk beds. Mom punished me for that. I was angry and decided that the only way to mark MY stuff was to scratch my name on it since Mom gave my younger sister all the duplicate gifts whether or not I wanted to give them to her. I did not want to reward Carol on my birthday with my gifts. Carol got to keep all of her duplicate gifts and I was going to make sure she did not get my gifts simply because Mom decided it was fair for me to give her my duplicate gifts. I did not get any of Carol's duplicate gifts, which is why I was scratching my name into the footboard of my bunk bed. Carol was not going to get my bed, too. That is why I got punished. I was not supposed to scratch my name into the footboard even if it was mine. Mom was not going to give Carol my bed even if I claimed my bed with my name scratched into it. I had my bed and Carol had hers. There was no issue of equality with beds, just with birthday presents that were duplicates of someone else's gift.

Oh, well. We got through that and Carol did not have to give up my duplicate gifts. End of story. I think that was the beginning of the enmity that flared up between my sister and I and was never resolved. Mom's idea of fairness was not equal between us because Mom decided what was and was not equal. For instance, Mom paid Carol and Jimmy for their grades. She did not pay me for mine because, as she said to me, Mom and Dad would go broke paying me for my superior grades. Carol and Jimmy got Cs and Ds and I always got As and Bs. The only way to make things fair when it came to grades was to pay Jimmy and Carol for their grades and stiff me for mine. I was supposed to understand because I was the smarter one. Mom's kind of equality was never equal for me. I always got stiffed while Carol and Jimmy got paid.

Fair is fair when someone else is doing the choosing. I was never chosen, although it could be said that Mom was leveling the playing field by calling me out. It was the same for homework. Carol and Jimmy had trouble with their homework. Mom decided I would do Jimmy's homework since I was done with my homework already. I refused. I would help Jimmy do his homework, but I refused to do his homework for him. He would not learn if I did it for him. It would be easier for me to do it, but I was not going to let him off so easily and I was not going to cheat and do it for him.

Fairness is as Mom decided what fairness was. Basically, the playing field was level when I did Carol and Jimmy's homework, but no one did my homework for me. Mom and Dad did not understand what I was doing and so I was left to do it on my own.

Water over the dam or under the bridge. It is all in the past, but the memory lingers on.

I cannot point to Carol or Jimmy now because they have their own lives and I have mine. I have my own college classes to get through and I would never ask either of them to do my homework for me. I will do it myself. Mom and Dad are dead and I have come late to the college lessons, but I will do my own work. I will not rely on anyone by myself, which is good since only by doing my own work can I learn, evolve, and progress. So back to work I will go and I will finish my lessons on my own.

I do not need anyone to level the playing field. I will get through the lessons by myself and earn my own grades as I have always done. When I get an A at the end of the semester, I will have earned it and I will not have to worry about which of us will get paid. In the end, I will get paid because I have studied and done my own homework. I will come out of college with a degree and I will have earned every grade I receive. I will also have earned a Bachelor's Degree in Criminal Justice with Human Services. Basically, I will be an attorney, an advocate for the people, the very same people who will be part of the army and air force fighting the technologically advanced aggressor that set off an EM pulse (electromagnetic pulse) that takes out our technology. Maybe this time I can actually pull it all together and write the science fiction book that will earn me a publishing contract to go with the book and will culminate in earning my college degree.

I may have been adopted, but I am not, nor have I ever been, only an underdog. I will level my own playing field and I will be a success.

That is all. Disperse.