1 September 2021
I seem to have two lines of tolerance. The first one is like the Amber Alert (or yellow traffic lights.) It warns me that I’ve been pushed, but not too hard. That one is annoying, but tolerable. I’ve straddled that line for years. I can be pushed over and over, and I usually bounce back. That’s probably how I stayed married as long as I did. I like what’s on the sunnier side of that line.
The second one is more dire. That’s the Red Alert (or “Battle Stations!”) line. It’s the line of, “I’m fed up and I’m not taking any more of your shit.” Or maybe it’s, “I’m now going to give you more shit than you can tolerate,” or simply, “I don’t trust you.” There’s never an answer to, “I don’t trust you,” because I have no control over another’s mind.
After I’ve finally been pushed over the second line, I seldom return to the first. If I did, I’d risk getting close enough to be hurt again, and I don’t care for that.
For a while I thought these lines of tolerance applied solely to my love life but I’m now finding the thoughts of muzzling up and surrendering my weapons for the sake of air travel to be equally onerous, and unless I am overcome by duress, I expect I won’t be flying commercially any time soon, even if the facial diapering were to be suspended. When the TSA (They’ll Steal Anything) stripped me of my knives a generation ago, I relented because I lived on Hawai’i and yearned to see my mainland friends as well as to conduct business on the neighbor islands. I presently live on North America along with most of the rest of my scattered social set, so I reckon I’ll mostly manage via surface travel. Unless sanity prevails. Then I can go back to packing while flying.
I guess I have a wide margin of tolerance. At least in the matter of air travel, by a couple of decades. In more personal relationships the margin is more like a couple of years. I’m stubborn. And optimistic.
But eventually I stay pushed.
“It’s not what you are, it’s what you don’t become that hurts.”
— Oscar Levant
230404 — Remind yourselves of my failures, as you would not want to forget them.
People try to warn me against being “left behind” by new tech (I’m retarded), new trends (I am not impressed), and new fantasies (I’m ALREADY too nice to be a Democrat® and too smart to be a Republican®, you think I’ll fall for THAT nonsense?).
Don’t think of it so much as being “left behind” but more as “not being bugged by you idiots.”
above: image attributed to Steven Stahlberg by Chupapi Prank