note: this is meant to be a companion piece to the TOP PRIMITIVE OF 2009 coming out soon, and to complement the current thread concerning the loss of a most remarkable person, all of which will be sent to the DUmping Ground, the "reference section" here, after they're dated.
While sitting here in the Sandhills of Nebraska, the only human being within six miles of myself, with snow inundating the prairies, covering up the existence of anything but snow, and with a new year coming on one being reminded how fleeting is youth, how fast one ages, I find myself grateful to God that I was not born with a rock-hard mind, upon which first impressions are engraved forever.
In fact, first impressions, second impressions, third impressions, and so on, are about as permanent in this mind as the surface of the snow, constantly shifted by the wind and melted by the sun. God gave us the gift of judgement, and judgement is meant to be exercised in sizing up other people.....and most importantly, judgement is meant to be adapted, adjusted, as one becomes more and more illuminated about other people.
Such as my own history here, where at first I was utterly enthralled by the warped primitive, who seemed to know so much about everything. But over time, the warped primitive became more and more bitter and ugly, and so I was compelled to adjust my judgement of her downward.
Or Mrs. Alfred Packer, once fondly called "Grandma," whom at first I found to be an appealing person, but in the light of recent events making it clear that Grandma wants a man so desperately that she's willing to subjugate her being, her values, her needs, to the coarser, meaner ones of his.
In real life, I've always had problems with this sort of woman; I won't even touch them with a ten-foot pole, and run away when I see one of them coming.
Of course, this works both ways; judgement can be revised upward as well as downward.
And hence Tangerine LaBamba, late of Skins's island.
I forget when I first saw Tangerine LaBamba on Skins's island, but the first comment I read of hers was of a trite, frivolous nature (we all make those sorts of comments, myself perhaps more often than others), and so the first "picture" I drew of her was that of just another typical lightweight moonbat, nothing special.
The following few comments she made, that I read, were of the same silly nature, and so I got to calling her the "tambourine Bambi" primitive.
It was some time later a better "picture" of Tangerine LaBamba evolved. Myself being deaf, I was never into movies, but of course I've read tons of books about movies, movie stars, and Hollywood, and when looking at Tangerine LaBamba, I was suddenly seeing old black-and-white photographs of Rita Hayworth, a pineapple in her hat, swiveling her hips, and singing "Down Mexico Way."
Tangerine LaBamba was the Rita Hayworth primitive for a very long time, but it never quite seemed to fit. I kept calling her that, hoping that a more-appropriate monicker would evolve, but one never did. "Gloria Swanson," without the "primitive" attached seemed better, but still not appropriate.
I first became aware of the great age of Tangerine LaBamba in the cooking and baking forum, where she counseled Mrs. Alfred Packer, at the time Grandma, that cheese food would do just as well for a certain recipe, as real cheese, thus drawing upon her shoulders the wrath of Grandma and the scorn of franksolich.
Tangerine LaBamba graciously back-tracked from Grandma; given the nature of the recipe, it was pretty much irrelevant whether one uses read cheese or cheese food, but so as to make Grandma feel better, Tangerine LaBamba admitted that it had been 45 years since she last purchased cheese food, herself.
Wow, I thought; given that Tangerine LaBamba surely had had to be an adult at the time of that purchase 45 years previously, well, it was obvious Tangerine LaBamba was no young woman.
Additional clues were provided by her references to meeting Averell Harriman, who was a contemporary of Henry Stimson, who was an intimate of Colonel House, who worked for Woodrow Wilson. So this was no young primitive.
I paid attention to Tangerine LaBamba only sporadically, but over a year or so, the attitude adjusted itself in light of new illumination about her. I still referred to her as the Rita Hayworth primitive, but midway through this slowly-dawning illumination, I began calling her Gloria Swanson, dropping the "primitive."
What I was seeing was something I had seen many times before in my own life, in real life. Myself being deaf, and flung onto the cruel shores of real life at alas too young an age, I am not bashful about admitting that, without the help of so many others, so many others now gone to the Eternal time and place, I would have never made it.....and that Tangerine LaBamba seemed remarkably similiar to such people.
My flaws are my own fault; my virtues are gifts given me by such people.
The outstanding characteristic of such people seems to have been their attitude, "Yes, I'm willing to help you, but you yourself need to do 90% of the work."
The more I read of Tangerine LaBamba, the more I got the impression that not only on the internet, but in real life, Tangerine LaBamba was such a person.
It's no wonder so many primitives loathed her.
This "picture" of Tangerine LaBamba evolved long before speculations arose about her being the left-handed attorney, the "OldLeftyLawer" primitive, who gave the Bostonian Drunkard so much grief during Fitzmas, and long before her pinning the greenbriar primitive to the mat; by the time those things came to pass, I had already developed a fondness for her.
Since her death, I have seen a photograph of Tangerine LaBamba, taken in her serene old age; oddly, excepting for that her nose was different from what I had imagined, she pretty much resembled how I had "pictured" her.
It's only the internet, not real life, and Tangerine LaBamba and I had just one fleeting encounter via e-mail, the sum total of both messages being less than a dozen words, and so not much should be made of my feelings about Tangerine LaBamba.
However, there remains this sense that despite that her politics sucked, in real life Tangerine LaBamba was undeniably an exceptional person, with a particular sort of grace and class and charity sadly lacking in the world, and which never existed among the primitives on Skins's island.
