“Omaha Steve can eat his fat greasy squalid heart out,†I announced to the former business partner when he dropped by for a visit.
Much to my surprise, my visitor—and the neighbor’s wife—had already heard the news through other channels. I wish I knew how hearing people pick up information; it seems as if they simply pull it out of thin air, or it falls from the skies onto their laps.
Everybody always knows what’s going on before I do.
“I’m just so blown away by this,†I said; “for my own inarticulate reasons, I was blatantly non-cooperative, hostile to many questions and coldly silent to the rest of the questions. By all rules of reasonable behavior, everybody could’ve just said ‘**** you, go away.’
“I suppose it was against my own self-interests to be the way I was,†I said, “but damn it, it just seemed too much like so many other things I’ve had to deal with in life, people playing games, and I’m not a good game-player.
“I was constantly asked, ‘well, what
can’t you do?’ which irritated the Hell out of me, and I constantly replied that I couldn’t think that way, think of things I can’t do. I’d spent my whole life thinking about what I
could do, which of course was a non-answer to them.
“But really, having spent my whole life doing all these things I wasn’t ‘supposed’ to be able to do, being ‘handicapped’ and all that, and I didn’t have time or energy to think negatively about myself.
"There was that interview with an otolaryntolgist who insisted I couldn't hear; I have nothing to hear with, and she was stymied as to why I 'function' so well. 'I've never seen anybody like you in all my years of practice,' she said."
But my visitor knew that, having been present when the comment was made.
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Really, I admitted, “I was surprised how patient and professional everybody was, and as it now s-o-o-o-o-o obviously appears,
mirabile dictu, they didn’t hold it against me.
“I’m truly fortunate; I’m sure I could’ve been denied simply on the basis of all this hostile behavior in which I was indulging.
“As you know,†I reminded him, “I applied in mid-summer, only about four months ago. And I was approved without first being denied and having to appeal, without having to engage an attorney.
“I don’t know anybody in any of the social services, so it’s not as if strings were pulled.
“I am truly stunned. Despite me, the whole thing went faster and smoother than a pig sliding on ice.â€
