Them Cockeyed Optimists

Noticed the last few posts on my website have been filled with angst and suppressed rage. Don’t want to end the month raging against the threat to our democracy. Must remember I once-upon-a-time had a sense of humor. I’ve never been good at remembering jokes. My humor is unintentional. Even in my writing I find spelling mistakes or grammatical mistakes which when reread are hilarious. I thought I’d reached the age by now when I would have become a little wiser and a little more dignified.

Nope.

I’m still the same kid I was when I was ten and the school bus driver asked, “Is anyone else a cockeyed optimist?” His question put the bus filled with children in a blinding panic. You could feel the bus fill with thick globules of test anxiety. Then he said, “Well, I am. I’m a cockeyed optimist and you should be too.” None of us knew if we were cockeyed optimists or regular optimists or if maybe he was hinting some of us needed eyeglasses, but because I felt sorry for him, I said, “Me too. I’m one of those.” I remember the kids laughed and the bus driver laughed, and all was right with the world again.

Over fifty years have gone by and I still blurt out stuff I wish I could take back. Like the time in my thirties when all the women in the office where I worked were sharing stories about their fathers, what their fathers did for a living and how much they loved their fathers. One of my coworkers said, “My father’s a lawyer.” Another woman told the group, “My father is a high school biology teacher.” And I piped up and said, “My father’s a bank robber.” They laughed and shook their heads, not a one believing me. But I was telling the truth. Honestly.

The man who adopted me, when I was barely a year old, happened to be a bank robber. Well, he wasn’t a bank robber when he adopted me. No. He started robbing banks a few years later. When they realized I wasn’t joking, they apologized for laughing. I’d laughed along with them because I just couldn’t resist blurting out the truth. The opening had been too good to pass up. It was true my father had been a bank robber. He paid for his mistakes and when I was older returned to society and never robbed banks again.

I never really knew him because during my childhood he was in one prison or another. He eventually ended up in Leavenworth and we had a lovely two-year correspondence. His wise advice has stayed with me all these years. And he had the neatest penmanship I’ve ever seen, from anyone, back then, and even today. He was also incredibly smart. Too bad he had to go to prison, he could have been anything: an architect, a map maker, even a hedge fund billionaire.

So, back when I was thirty, the women in the office, whenever they’d see me, would smile remembering my outburst as I proudly proclaimed, “My father’s a bank robber.” They didn’t seem to mind. They didn’t take the fact my father was a bank robber out on me. They could have, but I was lucky. They were a sweet bunch of ladies.

There are days even now when I slip back into my cockeyed optimist “me too” outbursts, when I go into work and speak aloud thoughts better left unsaid. I do try to think before I speak, but sometimes I get so excited I forget to check the words through my inner editor. For example, the other day at work I showed up and while I’m punching in my identification number, I say to my coworkers in the back room, “I want to be disciplined.” Everyone in the backroom started laughing and teasing me making euphemistic suggestions about how I could be disciplined.

Because the people I work with are so much fun to be around, I joined in the laughter. Only at home in quiet reflection do I wish sometimes I could edit my thoughts before they reach my mouth. Maybe because I feel so comfortable with these folks, I just blurt out what’s on my mind in shorthand. When I mentioned disciplined, I meant that I wanted to write four hours a day on weekdays, finish a blog once a week and spend the rest of my time managing my social media platforms. To my way of thinking, if I were more disciplined, I might have finished the draft of April Fools by now.

Sadly, I’m not as disciplined as I used to be. Lately I’m letting distractions get the best of me. Or maybe I’m just too ambitious? Maybe I’ve set unrealistic goals? Have I really? How many writers who work another job can edit three books in two years? Maybe more than I realize. Maybe none. I don’t know for sure. I can only guess. One of my colleagues at work said in an off-hand manner, “I bet you always used to sit in the front of the classroom.” Yes. As a freshman in college, I used to sit in the center row right up front. And yes, other freshman students used to tease me about being an overachiever.

Maybe I am. But what has it got me? I have several college degrees and still struggle to pay the bills. When I was in college, I noticed how some students didn’t even bother to come to class or speak up in class or finish their portfolios, but they managed to graduate. I bet they’re doing just fine. I envy them their laidback sangfroid attitudes. Why can’t I be more like them? Why am I so hard on myself all the time?

The answer was revealed to me last night, a sort of epiphany created by urgency. You see, the urgency was plugging my ears. I searched the house for earplugs. I tried them and they didn’t cut out the noise. I ended up shredding an old dish towel and tried to stick the bits in my ears to shut out the noise. It didn’t work. Then I gave in and just laid in bed and listened. The connection between my sympathy for the poor animal and pity for myself brought me to a eureka moment.

It took a hound dog’s hysterical barking in the wee hours of the night for me to connect his despair at being separated from his beloved owner with my experience as a newborn. My mother told me the story of my birth. She said a priest took me out of her arms when I was a few hours old with the intention of sending me off to an orphanage. Since she was unwed at the time and it was the 1950s and I was born in a Catholic hospital, the priest believed he had the authority to decide my future.

Without consulting my mother or my grandpa he decided to give me to a nun so that I might be adopted by a good Catholic family and raised in a proper home. My mother and my grandpa when they found out went apeshit, made a scene in the hospital halls and the priest reluctantly brought me back. If they had complied with the priest’s decision, my life might have been very different.

There were days in my teens when I had wished I’d been adopted, but as a grandmother looking back, even remembering the bad times, I’m still grateful to have been raised by my mother. She was the kind of woman who hated prejudice of any kind, who washed our mouths out with soap when we repeated racists words we heard at school. By her example I learned to love books, be brave and never give up.

Them Cockeyed Optimists

And I believe the reason Grandpa Shorty went apeshit over my abduction was because I was born with red hair and he took this as an excellent sign that he and I shared the all-powerful Irish ancestry. Somehow, he’d gotten it into his head that his ancestry was inferior because he was so damned short. Since I had red hair, he decided his shortness was confirmation he was Irish. Whatever his reasons were for insisting the priest return his granddaughter to the hospital room, I am grateful. Grandpa Shorty, your intervention allowed me to get to know three incredibly strong independent women: my mother, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother.

Therefore, after a sleepless night, I’ve decided that instead of beating myself up all the time, I need to factor in annoying interruptions as a reason I can’t finish the draft of April Fools. I get them all the time – interruptions, the knocks on the door, a ubiquitous eager face leaning in hoping to sell me something: a political candidate I’ve never heard of, a wireless plan I don’t want, or lawn care I don’t need since I don’t have a lawn. And then there are the nights when the neighborhood is on fire with dogs barking and people partying. After a few hours’ sleep, I’m a zombie. All I want to do is eat a brain, not just any brain, the brain responsible for keeping me awake.

It’s time to be a cockeyed optimist for real, full time, no stops. Although…

Between life’s interruptions and my overachieving personality my cockeyed optimism is looking positively levelheaded, maybe even brilliant. Just now I created an alarm on my cellphone – Cockeyed Optimist. The alarm will remind me – don’t be so hard on yourself; don’t be an overachiever; if you do, you might end up a success and success disciplines even the best of writers. Sad, but true.