Stupid Stuff What I have Done and am not afraid of the powers-that-be knowing about it...

 It's a new year, wooooo.... Time to reflect on past stupidities and things I shouldn't have ever done and laugh because I am still alive!  Ima Survivor!! WOOOOO!!!!

You know, those things that, when the moment of clarity occurs, usually due to some deep-seeded guilt track running 24/7/365 like an eternal 8-track of guilt and doom and guilt?  What? You don't have an endless 8-track of embarrassing moments and guilt running constantly?  Lucky you.  But me?  Some days it's hard to hear from all the snippets of stupidity that constantly flow.  Thank God the Tinnitus is so darned loud, it almost drowns out the Guilt and Stupidity.

Ever have a dream of showing up dressed wildly inappropriately?  Well, I used to have a fear of showing up at school in my pajamas.  So, of course, one day, half sick out of my head, feverish, I went to school in my py top and regular pants.  And it was in 4th Grade.  Still have daymares - visions of that whole thing - popping up. Yeah.

Ever wonder what it's like getting your headgear smashed up by someone with wayyyy too much pent-up rage?  Been there, done that, and yes, painful.  Here I am, 8th grade, in a math class of 'normals' (I went to a school system that was 'phased.'  Really Smart - Phase 5, Smart - Phase 4, Normal - Phase 3, Abby Normal- Phase 2 or lower..) and because I was sick during Phase testing, I got stuck in a Phase 3 class.  Where I was bored.  Made an A while reading books in class bored.  And I had bad teeth, so, off to the orthodontist for me.  Bad enough to require external head gear (remember those?  horrors...) And so I, by my mere presence, allergy-kid, nerd, head-gear boy, apparently peeved off the class slope-head thug boy and he hit me so hard he popped off 1/4 of my fittings and mangled all the wire and the headgear into one massive avant-guarde arte sculpture.  Yay.  NO.  That required going to the orthodontist and getting all the wires from the fixtures cut off, new fixtures added, everything rewired, new head gear, lots more rubber bands and the whole 9 yards of pain and suffering.  And the worst part?  The School determined it was 'My Fault' due to me only being the 10th person assaulted by said individual that school year.  And so School punished me.  Two weeks suspension for me, none for him.  Ah... the glory of justice.

Things like that.

Or, during an especially productive lung-butter session in February of 10th Grade, it was time for those pesky Presidential Physical Fitness tests.  Yay.  Not.  So, it's actually friggin cold outside, aggravating my Spring-ish session of really really really bad allergies and low-level pneumonia, and we're out at the track getting ready to do all the running, jumping and other inherent stupidity while I'm running at 1/4 lung volume and the Coach says for me to 'hustle' and 'run' and 'pick up your feet' and because I am moving like I have no oxygen in my system and am even more uncoordinated than normal, he sends me off to 'run a lap' (seriously, not barely able to stand, so 'run a lap.'  Yeah... Thus ever hatred for coaches and other athletic-trainer types...) And I take off, and he yells at me, so I turn my head to see what he's yelling at me about now and somehow I manage to entangle myself in a hurdle.  Well, it got me out of the 'Test' that year.

Then there was the time after PE in 11th Grade... changing clothes, it's day 2,485,492 of 'Torment the skinny geek' and maybe day 30 of random punches just for fun and I've had it.  Turn around, Rage takes over, and I shove the star Quarterback through his locker.  While the Coach is watching.  Why Coach didn't stop StarQB from hitting me still escapes me to this day. When Coach yells at me for reacting, I distinctly remember telling him at a rather loud volume to copulate elsewhere and cease living or something like that.  When going up to the Asst. Principal, who assigned fault to me because I wasn't on the football team, I distinctly remember telling her to go ahead and paddle me, as it isn't worse than what the jocks at the school have been doing to me all year long.

Things like this haunt my thoughts to this day.

Then there's the laughing at a show while everyone else is solemn or crying.  What? What did I do wrong now?

Playing 'who can blow out the candle' during Stations of the Cross - for all y'all non-Catholics out there, in every Catholic Church there are 14 Stations of the Cross, where each station represents one act during the whole Passion of Christ, from Judas turning on Jesus to him dying on the Cross and entombment.  During a Stations of the Cross the Priest goes and says a prayer at each station, escorted by two altar boys carrying candles.) So me and my co-altar boy played 'Who can ALMOST blow out one's candle.  Note: ALMOST.  Because actually blowing out one's candle is a SIN and will receive divine retribution by the officiating Priest smacking the back of one's head.

See?  Sometimes I actually earn my guilt-track.  Not always, but...

I even feel somewhat guilty for hitting people too hard in the SCA.  Which is weird, because until I grew up (and out, unfortunately) I was a 90lb weakling, or a 140lb weakling (big thighs, I've always had big thighs...sigh...just the rest of me caught up with my thighs... double sigh...)  One time, using a rattan spear, I stabbed a guy in the chest.  Which was and is acceptable.  But.. Rattan, being a giant grass, gets positively springy in warm humid environments, like Florida in the summer.  So I gacked him, the pole bent, he leaned back, tension released and I inadvertently knocked his helm off by the pole becoming linear again.  Which apparently hurt.  Which made me feel bad.

So I got rid of my rattan spear, converting it into rattan swords.. and fixed up a fiberglass spear (no flex at all, much better) I retrained to only gack the opponent's body and no face shots.  Which got people bitching at me for hitting them 'too hard' on the body or limbs, where there were no prohibitions as to how hard one can gack, well, not supposed to do full-power shots to the enemy's gonadial region.  (Of course, the fifth time some 'experienced' and 'acknowledged as good' fighter blew off a series of more and more powerful blows, I did kind of pin his wedding tackle to a tree.  Jerk. But do I still feel guilty and have guilt-trips over the first incident? Yep.  

Still feel guilty when I shifted... well, you know, when you hear someone in an automatic-shifted car not being able to stop the car and horrors happen?  Well, I learned on a manual shifter.  And then transitioned to an automatic.  So here I am, driving my dad's 1972 Olds 98 (with the big arsed 454 engine, more POWER!!!) with my dad riding shotgun and, well, to my ears it's time to shift (those having driven manuals know that sound) so I reach over onto the steering column and shift.  The car.  To another Gear.  Which was REVERSE. While going 50 miles an hour.  Car stopped in, maybe, 20 feet.  No perceptible damage, but a train's worth of guilt.

So... That whole 'I can't stop my car' bullscat?  Just shift to reverse.  It works even on computer-controlled cars.  Car may never work right again but you'll be alive...

Then there's all the times I spent poorly and wasted money... Lots of guilt there.

Losing jobs?  Guilt.

Losing the house?  Guilt, that one will last way past my passing.

Losing my temper at my wife?  No doubt guilt.  At least two to three tracks of that 8-track just associated with stupid things I should have never said to Mrs. Andrew.

Guilt for not listening to Mrs. Andrew and not listening to my inner fears and guilt, and moving out to BFE when we had a chance. (On the other hand, not being 20 minutes away max from 1st rate hospitals most likely would have meant Mrs. Andrew would not be here, so... well... but.. still guilt.  And now that the nation is going to turd-world status, more guilt.  Especially as the natives outside have no problem making noise, playing their damned not-music so loud while parked in the parking lot doing drug deals and other signs of a civilization that's fallen.)

Do you have a guilt-track?  If so, does it play intermittently or is it set on permanent loop?