Life rant

[urbpan]

I wrote myself a note to clean the kitchen table in order to find my health card and the letter from my dad. The health card is the missing piece to making a doctor's appointment, and I was going to use the letter from my dad to post something poignant about a conversation we had.

I more or less cleaned the kitchen table, by which I mean I dug through a year's worth of stacked mail and moved some of it to other rooms and threw a lot of it in the recycling, and did not find my health card but I did find my Dental Insurance card. I figured that there's a chance that I could sign up for an online account with that, and get the ball rolling toward going to the doctor regularly like a grown man (I mean middle aged man). The application to get an online account seemed simple enough but when I got to the bottom to click "next," the blank page reloaded. Start again! After doing that 4 times I gave up.

I couldn't find my dad's letter either. I found a dozen other letters from him from earlier in the year but not that one. Suffice it to say: He documents me being a terse dick. But it's funnier than that sounds.

EDITED TO ADD:
No, wait, I'll tell the story the best I can remember it. My dad wrote it out and it was pretty funny so I'll try to approximate his version.

We were on Sanibel Island driving around, talking about Ding Darling (the cartoonist who managed to get legal protections against development on much of the island) and such when my dad said something like "Anne Morrow was out here at that time too." And then just let it hang there. Now I had no idea who Anne Morrow was, and I didn't really care. I forget what we were up to, but I didn't want to learn new history at that moment, we were trying to do one of our crazy fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants vacation style tasks. Both he and my brother do this, and I probably do too, but if I do please tell me because it's obnoxious: dropping a name or a fact out there, knowing that the person you are talking to probably has no idea what you are talking about. It's a way of dominating the conversation by leaving breadcrumbs that the other person has to pick up in order to complete the thought of the last sentence. Anyway.

I inhaled deeply and said "I don't know who that is."

"Anne Morrow's father was a partner at JP Morgan who became ambassador to Mexico and the Senator from New Jersey. Her mother was president of Smith College, where Anne went before becoming an important author. It was in Mexico that she met Charles Lindbergh, they married and she became a pilot herself. Lindbergh believed that Germany ... politics.... Lindbergh baby Kidnapping...." I confess at this point I dropped the thread of the narrative realizing that we had passed a shortcut.

"Can I stop you there, dad?" He did.

"She was Lindbergh's wife."

"Yes."

"Okay thanks."


My dad's takeaway from this exchange is that he talks too much. I'm not sure that's exactly right; I would say that we each talk a lot, and each have fairly deep interests in very different fields, and would do well to be considerate of one another. Also I diminished the important accomplishments of an important figure in history to simply being the spouse of another important figure in history. We should probably all know Anne Morrow better.

Anyway, thanks Dad! Sorry I was a dick.

Comments

[urb-banal.livejournal.com]

I have had many friends who do this and I probably do this too, however it was all easier to tolerate when we all smoked a lot of pot. Now a days it seems our bouncy brains do not always sync-up and it's like we are sometimes just throwing drabbles of factoids at each other.

It can be annoying. I must say, the fact that I am perpetually depressed probably makes it more fun for them as am usually too exhausted to contribute much more than an occasional snide mutterance.

Mutterance should be a word.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I was very much hoping you would comment to this post. :)

Mutterance is now a word, so say we all.

[buboniclou.livejournal.com]

My dad is the same way, especially on the phone. Fortunately there he can't see all my eye-rolling.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Is this a test, dad? It's a test.

[lizziebelle.livejournal.com]

If someone mentioned Anne Morrow to me, I don't know that I'd know who she was, either. If they said Anne Morrow Lindbergh, then I would, but probably only as Charles' wife.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

you don't do that.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I do it online sometimes, kind of inadvertently.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Man you're on a roll. I have like three tabs of your entries open, but now I've gotten to the back of my today's friends scroll, so I'll start with this.

As someone who talks too much, I have sympathy for your dad--because yeah, being cut off, it really does lower you and make you feel like, shit, I must be one boring person, and: damn, must learn to talk less. (Buut, it's not a bad takeaway, maybe... If people have to interrupt you, maybe you should talk less and listen more…)

And yet at the same time, sometimes--like when you're trying to identify someone--all you want is that one key piece of info that will let you file that person away. And for you, and frankly, most of us, that was "Lindberg's wife." And sometimes you don't have time for a huge long conversation, and especially when someone seems switched to transmit and is just going to KEEP GOING.

That last thing you said about Anne Morrow, too: so true. It would be great to know a person for her own accomplishments and not just for being someone's wife. (OTOH, a lot of the stuff your dad was saying was about her dad and mom, too, so it was still identifying her in terms of others)

(I don't think you're a dick.)

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for your thoughtful (and complimentary!) replies to my recent posts. It feels like the LiveJournal of old. :)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Your posts were like the LJ of old!

[plantmom.livejournal.com]

I get what you're saying about your dad, but I also get that you're lucky (in my opinion, and maybe ONLY in my opinion), in that he just drops names. With my mom, it was more like a preamble to a fourth-year-of-college lecture. She read a lot of books by Anne Morrow Lindberg. I have not read one, but I should one of these days, because despite the source leading me to her, I have a feeling she had a lot of cogent, and prescient things to say.
I'm sorry. I'm dealing with some significant family-type ghosts tonight, so I may not be making sense.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Making sense to me.

[ellettra.livejournal.com]

Hahahaha, well I don't know about being a terse dick, although that phrase made me chortle. It was more like cutting to the chase of the story than diminishing her to being someone's wife. :)

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Thanks! That's the way I intended. :)