I Don't Want To Replay, Ch 2.

Well, I'm finally out of the hospital. Just as some hospitals are starting to accept the idea that patients might actually want to sleep all night, I get dumped 50 years in the past when that was the last thing they cared about. Well, second-to-last. They'd have to upgrade the food by 3 or 4 stars before I could rate it as merely "bad."

I thought about a few things but I certainly didn't write anything down, not when I had no hope of hiding it.

It's been two full days and I'm still trapped in this nightmare. But I guess I'm starting to accept it because it's been at least 24 hours since I had a panic attack. I guess it's true that a person can get used to anything. And while I keep hoping this is a bad dream that I'll wake up from, I'm not having enough of an emotional reaction that I can call it a nightmare anymore.

OK, assume that I'm really stuck here, with my totally dysfunctional parents. (I almost wrote 'fucked-up', but I guess I should quit using words like that for the next 20 years or so.)

So, start making plans. First, I need to write things down in a way that no one else can read them. Or at least no one in my family. I wonder if writing in Japanese would be good enough. I think it wasn't until the mid 1990s that I knew someone who could read it. Right now, it should be gibberish to everyone around me. I do remember that in my first time through, I went to the downtown library every third Saturday around this time. The city library should be big enough to have some teaching materials.

OK, get to the big topic: money. You'd think that any self-respecting time traveler would be able to get rich both big and quick. Well, I don't remember when anything big happened. I know the stock market crashed when I was working in the C-6 trailer at LANL, but that could have been anytime between 1988 and 1992. I think it was pretty flat in the early 1970s. I remember the big silver run-up when the Hunt Brothers tried to corner the market, and I vaguely remember it happened in the 1980s. I think. I remember something about Howard Ruff pointing out that the Aden sisters predicted that gold would peak at $400. That must have been the late 1970s. I remember the stock market newsletter telling people to buy Lotus. Of course, I didn't because 1-2-3 only ran on the PC and I was a Mac bigot. That was the late 1980s, maybe.

I don't remember any sporting events at all. Well, almost none. I remember Cassius Clay winning, but I don't remember if he won everything. Who did he fight anyway? George Foreman? Sonny Liston? I remember one horse race winner, Sea Biscuit. But I don't remember if that has already happened. I never paid any attention at all to football or baseball. Not that I could find a way to bet much on them anyway, being only 13 and broke besides.

I can certainly remember presidents: I think JFK is president now, unless he's already been killed. Check on that; if it hasn't happened yet, then I need to burn these notes and never let any mention of that pass my lips. Anyway, LBJ came after him, then Tricky Dick made it in finally. I can bet a little bit on those elections, but the odds aren't great.

But, what happened in 1963 that I can bet on that I remember the result of? It's not possible to bet on JFK getting shot, and that's the only thing I remember from this period. Well, I could bet that LTV will go broke, but there's no way I could get enough money to open a short account. And I don't remember how high it went first and when it went under. I worked for them in that noisy airplane factory in 1968, so I know they stayed in business at least that long.
How did I ever survive knowing so little about the world around me?

OK, I guess I have to make money the old-fashioned way: work for it. I guess that means working for my dad. But I'm not going to work for nothing this time around. If he wants me, he's got to pay me and he's got to make it enough that I could mention it in the same breath as the minimum wage. I think I have enough foresight that I'd actually do productive work instead of goofing off all the time like I did the first time around. I don't think I could do the paper route thing, not with the small bicycle I've got now. Or do I even have that yet?

And this time around I'm going to exercise a lot more. I think I'll start off by walking a lot, then stepping up the pace. We only live about three miles from the junior high. That's less than an hour at a moderate walking pace, and I'm sure I can get it down to half an hour in fairly short order. That's a 10-minute mile pace, which is slow for a cross-country runner. I think I won't get involved with any competitive sports at school; I don't want to spend the time on cutting split-seconds off my time and with all the bullshit involved in competing. But I do want to get into the habit of exercising and to be a lot stronger than I was in my previous life. I may not be able to walk to school many days, but I should be able to walk home most days. Even if it rains, I can deal with that. Dunno about the snow, but that doesn't happen but a few days a year.

("Previous life? Well, you're calmly accepting this now. That's a big change from a couple of days ago."

"Yeah, I guess I am. I keep hoping that all this will go away. But I've been stuck here for 2 days now and I'm starting to actually accept it. Not look forward to it, but at least accepting it.")

OK. Learn Japanese so I don't have to burn my notes. Work so I can have some spending money. Exercise. What else?

Well, if I'm working for dad, I want to get him to pay more attention to what he makes money on and what he does that doesn't make much. I doubt that he really knows what makes the most profit per hour. So if I get him to start talking to me, I can ask him some pointed questions without seeming too out of place. Of course, that requires him to start talking to me, which is a whole 'nother problem. I know that those stupid envelopes make something but they're a lot of trouble and he buys a whole lot that just sit in the cabinet unsold. I think he makes a fair amount on the ones he sells but the ones that sit for decades just take up space and probably soak up all the profit. I'll get him to cut back on the order.

I'm wandering again. Funny how in all the do-over stories I read, the time-traveler knew just what to do and did it without waffling around. I'm certainly not going to be able to do that.

OK, now some bigger issues. I want to join the band. Last time around, I didn't know how people did that; I just knew that some people did and some didn't. So I've got to get an instrument and start practicing. I think percussion to start. Actually, I want to join the orchestra. I don't care much about the marching band. I may have to do both in order to do either.

Have I started piano lessons with Miss Rosinka yet? Have I started and stopped? I know I did them sometime in Junior High, but I don't remember just when. I need to check the piano and see what books are there. Can I get a clavichord so I can practice in my room? Or make a fake keyboard to practice on?

OK, something to spend the money that I don't have on. Or maybe I can get that old pervert friend of dad's to find me a cheap instrument; he chases people down to repossess instruments. Do we know him yet? If I can't do percussion, then strings might be good enough. I wouldn't mind doing cello or violin. Actually, I wouldn't mind doing string bass or fiddle, but orchestras don't have those.

I want to draw. I'm not sure I want to paint, but I definitely want to draw. If nothing else, I might learn to recognize people better. That will be pretty easy to start with. Just check out a couple of beginning drawing books from the library and get some unlined notebook paper. I can learn a lot by using a #2 pencil before I need anything fancier.

I want to learn to take photographs, but until I make more spending money, I can make do with drawing. I'm sure that learning composition by drawing will do me good when taking photos.
I want to learn to cook. And to better distinguish good food from mediocre. If I thought my mother could teach a bear to shit in the woods, I'd ask her to teach me. Hmmm. Maybe I'd better rephrase that. If I thought my mother could teach the Pope to be Polish... oops, that one isn't funny yet... to be Catholic. I wonder what would happen if I tried to sign up for Home Ec? They'd probably have a conniption fit. I've got a good argument ready, but I doubt that the school would listen.

"When I get out of school, I've got several choices. I can get married and eat what my wife cooks. I can live with my parents and eat what my mother cooks. I can pay half my income to eat out all the time. I can eat frozen dinners, and you know how good those are. Or I can learn to cook. Since my mother couldn't teach the Pope to be Catholic, that means taking Home Ec."

Oh, well, maybe I can get my mother to actually talk to me and teach me something.

I should be able to get almost perfect grades. Combine what I already know with actually studying for a change, and I should be able to convert my B- average to A+. Or do I have that high an average yet? Maybe I didn't manage to do that till later. I do know that I want to convince my math teachers to let me turn in all my homework at the beginning of the semester and sit in the back studying ahead for the rest of the year. I want to actually learn calculus this time instead of just learning a few rudiments and faking the rest.

OK, enough of that. Now for the really hard ones. I'll be damned (as if I'm not already) if I'm going to be my mother's slave again. I may do that for a week or two while making plans and finding allies, but I'm not going to let her sit on her butt and yell at me to pour her another beer. And I'm not going to let her yell at my sister to come change the TV channel for her. If she wants those things, she's going to have to actually get her butt out of the chair and do it. At a certain point, I'm going to start pouring the beer on her instead of into a glass. Or unplug the TV. And if she tries to beat me for it, I'm going to fight back and I'm going to hurt her. And I'll keep doing it until she gives up.

I guess in order to do that, I'm going to have to enlist Dad's help. Since we don't talk to each other, I'm sure he's going to be shocked, first that I talk to him, and second that she's doing that. I don't know how he's going to react, but I'm going to tell him in no uncertain terms that this is going to stop and stop soon.

Maybe I should exercise for a few weeks first. And learn a few aikido moves.

Now for the biggest one of all. My parents have never loved anyone in their lives. I didn't understand this until after I had talked with my cousin several years after our respective parents had all died. I found out that her mother had told her when she got married to not call her for babysitting; she wouldn't do it. She hadn't wanted kids and didn't want grandkids. And that her mother (my aunt) had been told the same thing by her mother (my grandmother) when she got married. And I found out from another relative that my mother's mother had been married twice. My mother grew up as her "father's" unwanted step-child while her half-sister grew up as the adored darling daughter.

Which is why that aunt is the only person in the family that I actually liked. She's the only one in the family who ever got taught even a little bit about love. Of course, that lesson never made it very far; she never found a guy to love. I never felt a hint that she was sexually attracted to women; if she was, she hid it incredibly well. Of course, I never saw any hints of her being attracted to guys either. Maybe she was just really good at hiding it in public, like everyone else of that generation.

Both my parents have incredible problems trusting anyone else. They come by it naturally; their parents taught it to them.

I know I have the same issues. I heard that my parents did a pretty good job of faking it while I was really young, but they seem to have quit even trying by the time my sister was two or three years old. This would have put me around four or five. Maybe that made it worse for me; maybe I started out being able to trust people, only to be crushingly disappointed later.

My brain is presumably back to having the neuroplasticity that a 13-year-old brain does. If I can get the right feedback, the right lessons, maybe I can learn to love people this time around. I certainly missed it last time. I know that it's a lot harder for a 13-year-old to learn this than a 13-month-old. But maybe there's still hope.

And if it doesn't work this time, then maybe My-God-why-are-you-doing-this-to-me might send me back a few more times until I manage to get it right.