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Originally Posted by Treeplanter
Getting Back.
Late in 1959 an old aunt gave me a little diary for the coming year. The first date in it was the 28th December and I proudly and neatly made my first entry, "Christmas Present from Aunty Daisy". The problem was that my reading and writing at 10 years was truly appalling. It was unbelievably bad and I couldn't even spell the word aunty. Just that moment my father walked past so I asked him, "How do you spell aunty? Is it Unty? [As I had just incorrectly written]". It is even just recently I have recalled what he said. Without stopping or looking or having the slightest interest, he snapped back at me in an irritable and even angry way, "U!Au!", and kept on walking. I didn't know much about spelling and was confused and naturally didn't want to ask again so I thought to inserted an a between the u and the n to give the strange spelling for aunt as uanty. I knew it looked strange and probably wrong but what would I know or care as I decided from then on never to show the diary to anyone and to keep it all private.
"Okay", I thought to myself, "if that is how you feel, I'll never ask again," and so for the rest of the diary, all my spelling was, let me say "freestyle" and against convention.
Even to this day, I have never shown anyone this diary. I am just too embarrassed by the truly terrible writing and spelling and other too painful things to even recall. The diary is a little interesting in so far that it never mentions my feelings, [they sure didn't count] or school lessons but only I did this and I did that and a bit of cricket.
Well, in the long run, yes, I got back on him because exactly 49 years later to the day, is the day he died and I had the good fortune to realized this little story 11 years later [that was yesterday]. He died in dubious circumstances and do you know there were no regrets from anyone. He was truly a tragic and mean spirited person.
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Before my Mother died, she was complaining about my step-Father. I stopped her and told her if it wasn't for him, where would we be?
Sure, he had his faults, but he also had a good side which we never looked at.
One day I asked my Mother why did Pops by that stupid donkey? All he did was sit on his butt and hee-haa. Mom laughed. And then she thought, and she could not give me an answer. There must have been a reason why he bought the donkey but we could never figure it out.
As for Pops: girls had there place and boys had there place. That was it. On Tuesdays, he would work late at night at an auction house which meant the rest of the family got goodies like brownies, etc....... baked by myself.