Father's Maturing Dividend - Part 4

“The most gifted natures are perhaps also the most trembling.”
Andre Gide
French writer, humanist and moralist,
1947 nobel prize for literature,
1869-1951

We know that every strong sensation, emotion, or excitement-- extreme pain, rage, terror, joy, or the passion of love-- all have a special tendency to cause the muscles to tremble;
Charles Darwin

A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand. Is not the mountain far more awe-inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley than to those who inhabit the mountain?
Kahlil Gibran

Our absent friend KR is fond of yanking my chain with comments about me trembling in fear. I have never as a girl or woman, been fond of terrified damsel in distress scenarios. That is not to say that there have never been situations that were distressing to me, or frightening. The difference is not the risk, but the response.

When I was fifteen, my parents allowed me to begin dating, and the first person I dated was someone very nice from my debate team; he was a senior in high school. We continued dating, although it was at best a tepid relationship on my side, after he graduated and went on to college. That became tedious - the excitement of college parties didn't offset the deficiencies of the relationship. I dated other people, some in high school, some in college.

I finally dated someone that really interested me. He was in college. We had known each other since I was 4 and he was 6; my parents knew his parents socially. The difference was that this time, my feelings were more engaged. He invited me to a party at his dorm, and asked if I would give him a ride over to the West Bank of the U of MN Minneapolis campus where the dorm was. I arranged to take the car that was nominally my mothers for the day.

I was not sure if my interest was returned. At 16 I was usually more interested in dressing in a way that gained the approval of my girlfriends, or was competitive with them, rather than dressing for male attention. (It's a 'girl' thing.) But for that afternoon, I dressed to be, well, serious "arm-candy". I was able to be 'age ambiguous'; it helped, being tall. I knew quite well how to select clothes to achieve an effect.

My parents weren't worried, I had always been very responsible concerning alcohol, driving, and dating. When I wasn't a royal pain, I was a very easy child. They never had to tell me to study, I held a part time job at the library, I maintained honor roll grades, I was active in our church and community organizations, they liked who I dated, they even approved of my taste in clothes and makeup.

My father was fond of a kid's poem, from my earliest childhood, and said it to me often:

"there was a little girl,
who had a little curl,
right in the middle of her forehead;

and when she was good,
she was very very good,
and when she was bad, she was horrid".

That was prophetic.

I picked up my date at his front door, and we headed to the dorm party. We locked my purse in his dorm room, and moved on to the room where the party was, full of loud music, lots of people sprawled around the room on beds and the floor, in couples, with cigarette smoke, and bottles of alcohol everywhere, interspersed with a few half-empty bags of chips and pretzels. The music was so loud, conversation was impossible unless you yelled a few inches from the other person's ear.

We ended up sitting on the end of a bed that was up against a back wall, my date with his legs hanging over the foot of the bed and his back against the wall, and I with my legs draped over the side of the bed, resting with my back against his chest, his arm around my waist. He talked to the guy next to him, and except for his arm around my waist, ignored me. I was apparently there just to boost his image; that's what arm candy does, you sit there. Unfortunately for me, the inebriated jock who was sitting on the floor near where my feet hung over the edge of the bed didn't ignore me. He kept asking me if I was 'a real redhead', over and over. I had a bad feeling about where the conversation was going. As the music was so loud, I just nodded, tried to avoid eye contact, and hoped he would either pass out or go away.

He did neither. Sure enough, predictably, the next question was the perennial did the collar match the cuffs, the drapes match the rug. With the addition that he slid his hand up my leg. Which was bad enough, except that not only could I not dissuade him from continuing with his hand, he thought it would be very clever to find out the answer to his question for himself, and tried to slide his hand inside the pants leg of my shorts. I tried patiently for a few minutes to get the attention of my date, who was looking less appealing by the minute, while trying to struggle with the guy mauling me. As I looked around the room, every other woman there was in a similar position to mine, more or less, looking both bored and ignored, and very submissive.

We were not dates, we were accessories for the party, like the booze and the chips and the music. The lout on the floor would not stop trying to grope under my clothes , no matter how I struggled. My date was oblivious. The drunk was bigger, and older, and stronger than I was. I think he was used to that working for him with women. Although to be fair, I don't think he had any idea of my age.

I had enough. Near the end of the bed, at the corner, was a kitchen sized wastebasket doing double duty as an ice bucket, it had melted down to half ice cubes, half water, about 2/3 full. I slid forward to the edge of the bed, and leaned forward as if to speak to the clod on the floor. Correctly guessing he would be watching my chest rather than my face - or hands, I picked up the waste basket without him noticing. It was heavy, but I suppose by that point I'd had a rush of adrenaline. I rapidly poured the contents over his head, turned the wastebasket upside down, and thumped the upturned bottom of the wastebasket solidly with my fist, sort of wedging it over his head and around his shoulders at least on one side.

I stood up, amidst cheers from the other women in the room, and loud grumbling from the men. Someone turned off the noisy music. I told off my 'date'. I told off the guy on the floor who was still sitting there in quite a lot of water and ice cubes, with the waste basket still on his head. I think he was afraid to take it off. I was blazing angry. He was stunned. My date was stunned.

I stepped over the lout's legs, taking care not to step on the ice cubes, and headed for the door. My date looked at me, blankly, because he had no idea what had happened. He hadn't been paying attention; too bad for him.

I wanted my purse, I was leaving, and if he didn't want to open the door to his room, I would find a resident advisor, a janitor, someone to do it for me. All during the party, I had expected that my escort would intervene with the drunk. I was angry that he had not - angry being an understatement. It was in retrospect probably as much anger and disappointment in my escort as it was fury with the groping drunk that was at the root of my emotions. But I was also disgusted by the passivity of the other women in the room that contributed to the situation, and on some level I decided to change that by my example, even if I was the youngest person in the room at the time.

"Poor" date, his friends were angry with him, I was angry with him; it was a no-win situation. He chose me, and followed me out of the party. He was eventually able to persuade me to go for a long walk around campus before leaving, where he tried to be belatedly romantic. Then he decided to ride back home with me, even if it meant getting a second ride back to campus afterwards. It was a turning point in my expectations, a lesson that while it may be nice for a man to be protective and attentive, it is not wise to rely on it....and it is not necessary to wait for it. Behavior afterwards doesn't change anything.

Fast forward a number of years later. I held the power of attorney for a cousin who was getting a divorce, who had gone to China for a year to provide a specialized kind of engineering during their massive dam building project. My cousin's spouse was nuts; part of the strategy in the China trip was to put my cousin out of reach of the other person's obsessive behavior. The spouse didn't like me, because my volunteering for the power of attorney had made it possible for the trip to China. It became necessary first for me to get an ordinary civil restraining order, and when that was repeatedly violated, a criminal restraining order. As with the college party date, I was disenchanted with the protection provided by law enforcement in following through on the restraining orders, as in none. On top of which, the erratic behavior, including some truly odd religious notions on the part of my cousin's spouse had convinced me this person was just romp stomping nuts, dangerously so. I adamantly refused to be manipulated, bullied, threatened or otherwise coerced into doing what this person wanted. I actually enjoyed that doing the things I needed to do with the power of attorney, for the divorce, thwarted this wacko spouse more effectively than anyone else had ever been able to do. This was a person who got their way, regularly, through the most despicable means possible. I took a lot of satisfaction in that not working with me.

The very old and dear friend who introduce me to my friends who now blog, both Pen and Mitch, was always very protective of me, but in a reserved, very courtly sort of way. I think he was perhaps rather shy, but in his own special way he always gave me the most wonderful feeling of being safe that I think I have ever enjoyed as an adult.

He was what some people might consider a 'gun nut'; he knew and loved guns the way I know and love dogs. It was his 'thing', and he was singularly skilled. Why he undertook to be concerned about my safety and to extend himself to such a great extent, I don't fully understand, but I appreciated it. His response to my situation was to enroll me in a more advanced combat pistol class - I already had a minimal fire arms proficiency - and to join me for a lot of range time, practicing.

I can appreciate that he had my best interest at heart when he was demanding about routine handgun maintenance, after our visits to the range. I'm still not entirely convinced it was necessary for me to be able to field strip my personal weapon blindfolded, but I suppose it did add to my confidence. I have always wondered if he just thought that was simply funny to watch. But he was correct that both the target shooting and the blindfold drill, along with simply the assurance that I found in his company encouraged both my confidence and my competence. Fortunately, it was a skill I never needed to use, but I am glad he taught me.

He died a few years ago, from cancer.

He told me a story a long time before that took place, back when he was still very healthy. When he was seven years old, his parents took him to their usual church service where a guest pastor was preaching the Sunday sermon. His subject for the sermon had been heaven and hell, and which one people might be going to in the afterlife. As the congregation filed out of church, the guest pastor was at the door shaking hands, and he asked my friend's family what they thought of the service. My friend, contrary and clever child that he was, indicated when asked in turn, that he had decided he wasn't going to either one; not to heaven, and not to hell.

This rather disconcerted the reverend, prompting him to ask how he intended to manage that? My friend, with his seven year old's reasoning, told him he had decided to be a ghost when the time came, and to stay here on earth.

There are times when, in adverse moments, I feel my friend very comfortingly at my shoulder, reminding me that I am capable and resourceful no matter what life might throw at me. Not really because of those skills that he was at such great pains to instill, but because of who I am inside. Who is to say what is merely memory or something more?

So, what no one else who reads this blog has known, until now, is that references to me being afraid make me think fondly but sadly of my dear friend, who I miss very much. I am grateful that he was so generous in sharing with me his special gifts with the intention to empower me, one of the very special people I cherish for having done so in my life. His second gift to me was to remind me that there are men like him, who make others feel safe instead of afraid.