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- Story Listed as: True Life For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: Ideas / Discovery / Opinions
- Published: 12/31/2018
My Secret
Born 1954, M, from St Louis Mo, United States.jpeg)
I look like a normal, everyday guy, if there is such a thing. I guess part of the issue on that statement rests in what is normal? Then when you think you have it perfectly defined you discover what is normal for me is not what you think of as normal. So I could say I am a average old guy, and here again, we are faced with the same dilemma. My idea of average and yours may be totally amiss with each other.
So I could say I am a old white guy, not really fat and not really skinny. Yet here we go down the same rabbit hole again, old to me is possibly young to you. I remember as a boy saying to my mom, that old lady .... , she would say what old lady? I would point toward her and she would laugh and say she is not even forty yet, and I doubt she would like being called old. I recall my grandma, on my dads side, talking about my grandpa and what a wonderful man he was. Yet he died before I was born and she looked old but wasn't so old. She was only 58 when I was born, my granpa was 40 years older then she was. So perhaps age is just a number.
Then if we decided on what old is we could argue about my adding the word white. What is white? One may certainly point out no person truly meets the word white, I mean come on, you don't think young Tom Sawyer was painting that fence the color of flesh, do you? If you buy a notebook it's not flesh colored pages, but white. So perhaps I should say Caucasian, but what does that even mean? I feel as if I have crossed into the dark world of an argument into being racist. Look on the wide world of the web and this is what you get.
To answer that question, it is helpful to understand where the term came from and its impact on our society. The term “Caucasian” originated from a growing 18th-century European science of racial classification. German anatomist Johann Blumenbach visited the Caucasus Mountains, located between the Caspian and Black seas, and he must have been enchanted because he labeled the people there “Caucasians” and proposed that they were created in God’s image as an ideal form of humanity.
And the label has stuck to this day. According to Mukhopadhyay, Blumenbach went on to name four other “races,” each considered “physically and morally ‘degenerate’ forms of ‘God’s original creation.’” He categorized Africans, excluding light-skinned North Africans, as “Ethiopians” or “black.” He divided non-Caucasian Asians into two separate races: the “Mongolian” or “yellow” race of Japan and China, and the “Malayan” or “brown” race, which included Aboriginal Australians and Pacific Islanders. And he called Native Americans the “red” race.
So if that didn't take you down a path you did not expect to go, you are a better person then I am. So now even in telling a story I am afraid to say I am white or black or red or hey maybe blue. Words I see as descriptive has somehow become foul, and offensive.
I am not even sure the word guy is not open to debate in this time we live in. I met Macy, a story I think I will tell at another time. Macy is a lovely blonde haired woman, with impressive measurements, which even the telling of I am sure will bring criticism. Yet I guess with my bad eyes I never really noticed the Adam's apple. Macy seemed all woman in her speech, dress, likes and dislikes. Yet Macy is what in my days of times past would of called a guy because she had jangles and frankly I might be jealous of the size of the rod. So is she a guy or does boobs and mind of a woman make her a woman?
How am I to judge or decide and so I am confused as to is saying a guy really a acceptable description. In the Bible as far back as early times there was a whole nation, think about this a whole nation, made up with women that might of been called guys but they had the jangles removed or the tool and in many cases both. Even in the New Testament it talks about the ruler coming to accept faith in Jesus. Acts 8:36 And as they went on their way, they came unto a certain water: and the eunuch said, See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized?... So instead of guy they used a word eunuch now that word is replaced with a host of others.
Then I, silly me said not really fat and not really skinny. What in pigs eye is fat or skinny. I met a German man some years ago who bragged about his beautiful wife. I listened to him talk and had a picture in my mind of playboy centerfold. He was always bragging about her ample boobs and great behind. Legs of magnificent beauty. Yet when I met her, I admit I was in state of shock and lost my ability to speak. In my thinking she did have a beautiful face and he had not lied her boobs were large and he backside broad. Yet I was not ready to see a 5'2" woman that wouldn't be safe sitting on a standard chair.
Then I had a girl friend in high school that I told her one time after a kiss on the way home from church she was so skinny I was worried about her. I could feel every rib bone when I hugged her. She let me know in a Johnny's blink of a eye, she was not at all skinny and had to watch her weight or she would be a whale.
So am I old, white fat or skinny, ugly or a handsome Jack, I guess is really is like that old statement, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and so is how we define words.
So now that I have been busy beating the bushes, I will get back to what I mean to tell you. I guess I lied right at the start. I might of given you the impression that I and you are alike, normal. I would hope to tell, we are not, at least I don't think we are. Perhaps we are and I don't realize it because you have done as I have. See I have a secret I have kept hidden from you, maybe you do too. Well ok I am sure you have secrets but not like this one, or maybe you do and well maybe this is normal. And if so I sure would feel a lot better about things.
No, stop it, I am not eunuch, I tossed that in for entertainment benefit only. Yet sometimes I wonder if you and many others do share the same secret. I sit in the dr office and I see people staring into space, yet a smile will appear or sometimes a look of fear. Then others at the store seem they cannot make up there mind, they put cookies in the cart, then take them out, then put them back. I always guessed maybe it was that skinny or fat debate going on, but perhaps.....
See, well I guess you can't see it, so you will have to accept this on faith. Here I go again using words with out clear definition. Some would project Faith is as simple as to say you believe in something, could be anything. Yet that opens a big wide door too because what does it mean to believe? Oh my my now I offer another jig where there should be no jog because who knows what wide actually is or is not, why did I just not say door?
Anyway if faith is only believing and believing is to have a trust into something then we are in deep water about to drown. I have believed in many things that was not as I thought, so perhaps believing is only a thought without much of a definitive structure. Like I remember my cute little neighbor, named Kay, she made this gorgeous chocolate pie. I guess I was eight at the time, and she put mounds of whipped cream on top. When she offered me a slice I knew at last I was loved. I took a big bite, decided maybe I was mistaken and she hated me with a passion. That pie was made out of mud, mud created from where her dog peed.
Then there was that time I bought a book that had a picture on the cover of two Cowboys. I was excited expecting a great adventure to find it was about as boring as reading the presidents tweets. No see believing is just a mighty questionable pursuit. Somehow I just have in my own head faith is a bit more in depth. See if I say I believe it will rain, maybe it will but maybe it won't. It is a word that hides a big question mark behind what seems a knowing word.
Yet when I say I have faith, well that is me saying I know! There is no question mark, no room for doubt, it is a true expression of positivity. So perhaps I should not seek your faith and simply ask you to believe. In this case I hope the hidden word is not a question mark but faith, knowing I simply refuse to lie.
I cannot say my secret is a terrible one and maybe I am misguided and should. Why they're have been people arrested and locked in the loony bin. Ouch I did it again, I should not say loony, you will I hope forgive my lack of sensitivity. I guess that was possibly worse then saying the crazy house, and yet if I said insane asylum that sounds just degrading. I have no wish to degrade those folks, after all quiet sane wives was once locked in them so a husband could enjoy his mistress without a raging wife. Possibly has spared more then a few murders.
So I guess this would be better stating my cause if I say I have a secret that I hope you don't think me mentally challenged. Yet, by more then a few they would seem to think so. I once had a math teacher say, I was dumb as a rock when it came to math. I responded with, Miss Carter just how dumb is a rock? A question after the trip to the principal's office, I gathered was not an appropriate question.
That too is a troubling thing about life. I guess I have always lived on a pinnacle of decision and indecision. Who determines what is appropriate and what is not. By what decree do some get the authority to decide what is and what isn't? By who's grace are they created judges and sit on the bench of righteousness? Ah but here I go chasing the fox from an imaginary hen house.
Well I would suggest I am dumb as a rock on many things. I am not sure what dumb means to you. See I met a boy once and was told he was dumb. Yet he was the smartest kid I ever met. His weakness was he could not speak, as he had no vocal cord. So why would the word dumb be used. Does it mean the lack of something. Is a man without a leg a dumb man or a person blind dumb because they cannot see? If it means lack of something, then indeed I am a very dumb man.
I lack knowledge on many a subject, as my poor spelling and grammar all to often demonstrate. I may know how an internal combustion engine works, how a boiler heats water or creates steam. I might know how a pump works and understand such things as pressure. Did you know pressure is indeed a interesting subject. Why we hear people say, I am under so much pressure.
Pressure is a force and like most things far more complex then we choose to decipher. There is a number of things that make up pressure, and that is how life is. It is pressure that keeps your car engine cool and it's pressure that brings rain. Static pressure, velocity pressure, total pressure all play hidden roles in our everyday life.
So yes I guess I am dumb as a rock, but then how dumb is a rock? Some rocks people sure might be dumber than, because have you ever bought a diamond, or chunk of gold. So dumb as they may be, they have unimaginable value.
Now at last I guess I should get back to it, my secret. There are times I hear voices. Perhaps now you want to call the men in white coats. The voices and sometimes a voice is as audible as the sound of thunder. I expect people that talk to themselves also answer themselves we just don't hear the answers.
In the bible there are a few stories where God spoke to the people, as a large group. Some said they just heard thunder, others said it was as a large crowd and they could not understand what was said. Yet, oh yes, there were some and heard and understood. Now get ready to call the boys with the straight jackets.
I know what they mean, I hear a voice of reason in my head, sometimes giving directions. Yet I have heard another voice or perhaps better described as a voice of many. First time I heard it I was a young and it was just noise. Yet I learned to listen in a different way, till the sound became discernible. I knew as I grew older that sometimes as busy as God is he speaks to me. It is as if you are at a ball park every one speaking at once and somehow you realize they are talking about you.
Sometimes I lay in bed and or drive down the road, and I hear my mother or dad or my oldest brother speak to me. I wish I could call it a conversation but alas it's them speaking and I don't know if they hear my response. Yet that voice of many has had conversation. So yes maybe I am dumb as a rock and maybe my secret you will argue is a vivid imagination. Yet see I have faith, because I know, and now you have been told and maybe you shake your head and just say wow.
Yet want to hear the really crazy, ok I mean really out there thing? I have faith you can hear it to if you learn to listen.
My Secret(Rich Puckett)
I look like a normal, everyday guy, if there is such a thing. I guess part of the issue on that statement rests in what is normal? Then when you think you have it perfectly defined you discover what is normal for me is not what you think of as normal. So I could say I am a average old guy, and here again, we are faced with the same dilemma. My idea of average and yours may be totally amiss with each other.
So I could say I am a old white guy, not really fat and not really skinny. Yet here we go down the same rabbit hole again, old to me is possibly young to you. I remember as a boy saying to my mom, that old lady .... , she would say what old lady? I would point toward her and she would laugh and say she is not even forty yet, and I doubt she would like being called old. I recall my grandma, on my dads side, talking about my grandpa and what a wonderful man he was. Yet he died before I was born and she looked old but wasn't so old. She was only 58 when I was born, my granpa was 40 years older then she was. So perhaps age is just a number.
Then if we decided on what old is we could argue about my adding the word white. What is white? One may certainly point out no person truly meets the word white, I mean come on, you don't think young Tom Sawyer was painting that fence the color of flesh, do you? If you buy a notebook it's not flesh colored pages, but white. So perhaps I should say Caucasian, but what does that even mean? I feel as if I have crossed into the dark world of an argument into being racist. Look on the wide world of the web and this is what you get.
To answer that question, it is helpful to understand where the term came from and its impact on our society. The term “Caucasian” originated from a growing 18th-century European science of racial classification. German anatomist Johann Blumenbach visited the Caucasus Mountains, located between the Caspian and Black seas, and he must have been enchanted because he labeled the people there “Caucasians” and proposed that they were created in God’s image as an ideal form of humanity.
And the label has stuck to this day. According to Mukhopadhyay, Blumenbach went on to name four other “races,” each considered “physically and morally ‘degenerate’ forms of ‘God’s original creation.’” He categorized Africans, excluding light-skinned North Africans, as “Ethiopians” or “black.” He divided non-Caucasian Asians into two separate races: the “Mongolian” or “yellow” race of Japan and China, and the “Malayan” or “brown” race, which included Aboriginal Australians and Pacific Islanders. And he called Native Americans the “red” race.
So if that didn't take you down a path you did not expect to go, you are a better person then I am. So now even in telling a story I am afraid to say I am white or black or red or hey maybe blue. Words I see as descriptive has somehow become foul, and offensive.
I am not even sure the word guy is not open to debate in this time we live in. I met Macy, a story I think I will tell at another time. Macy is a lovely blonde haired woman, with impressive measurements, which even the telling of I am sure will bring criticism. Yet I guess with my bad eyes I never really noticed the Adam's apple. Macy seemed all woman in her speech, dress, likes and dislikes. Yet Macy is what in my days of times past would of called a guy because she had jangles and frankly I might be jealous of the size of the rod. So is she a guy or does boobs and mind of a woman make her a woman?
How am I to judge or decide and so I am confused as to is saying a guy really a acceptable description. In the Bible as far back as early times there was a whole nation, think about this a whole nation, made up with women that might of been called guys but they had the jangles removed or the tool and in many cases both. Even in the New Testament it talks about the ruler coming to accept faith in Jesus. Acts 8:36 And as they went on their way, they came unto a certain water: and the eunuch said, See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized?... So instead of guy they used a word eunuch now that word is replaced with a host of others.
Then I, silly me said not really fat and not really skinny. What in pigs eye is fat or skinny. I met a German man some years ago who bragged about his beautiful wife. I listened to him talk and had a picture in my mind of playboy centerfold. He was always bragging about her ample boobs and great behind. Legs of magnificent beauty. Yet when I met her, I admit I was in state of shock and lost my ability to speak. In my thinking she did have a beautiful face and he had not lied her boobs were large and he backside broad. Yet I was not ready to see a 5'2" woman that wouldn't be safe sitting on a standard chair.
Then I had a girl friend in high school that I told her one time after a kiss on the way home from church she was so skinny I was worried about her. I could feel every rib bone when I hugged her. She let me know in a Johnny's blink of a eye, she was not at all skinny and had to watch her weight or she would be a whale.
So am I old, white fat or skinny, ugly or a handsome Jack, I guess is really is like that old statement, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and so is how we define words.
So now that I have been busy beating the bushes, I will get back to what I mean to tell you. I guess I lied right at the start. I might of given you the impression that I and you are alike, normal. I would hope to tell, we are not, at least I don't think we are. Perhaps we are and I don't realize it because you have done as I have. See I have a secret I have kept hidden from you, maybe you do too. Well ok I am sure you have secrets but not like this one, or maybe you do and well maybe this is normal. And if so I sure would feel a lot better about things.
No, stop it, I am not eunuch, I tossed that in for entertainment benefit only. Yet sometimes I wonder if you and many others do share the same secret. I sit in the dr office and I see people staring into space, yet a smile will appear or sometimes a look of fear. Then others at the store seem they cannot make up there mind, they put cookies in the cart, then take them out, then put them back. I always guessed maybe it was that skinny or fat debate going on, but perhaps.....
See, well I guess you can't see it, so you will have to accept this on faith. Here I go again using words with out clear definition. Some would project Faith is as simple as to say you believe in something, could be anything. Yet that opens a big wide door too because what does it mean to believe? Oh my my now I offer another jig where there should be no jog because who knows what wide actually is or is not, why did I just not say door?
Anyway if faith is only believing and believing is to have a trust into something then we are in deep water about to drown. I have believed in many things that was not as I thought, so perhaps believing is only a thought without much of a definitive structure. Like I remember my cute little neighbor, named Kay, she made this gorgeous chocolate pie. I guess I was eight at the time, and she put mounds of whipped cream on top. When she offered me a slice I knew at last I was loved. I took a big bite, decided maybe I was mistaken and she hated me with a passion. That pie was made out of mud, mud created from where her dog peed.
Then there was that time I bought a book that had a picture on the cover of two Cowboys. I was excited expecting a great adventure to find it was about as boring as reading the presidents tweets. No see believing is just a mighty questionable pursuit. Somehow I just have in my own head faith is a bit more in depth. See if I say I believe it will rain, maybe it will but maybe it won't. It is a word that hides a big question mark behind what seems a knowing word.
Yet when I say I have faith, well that is me saying I know! There is no question mark, no room for doubt, it is a true expression of positivity. So perhaps I should not seek your faith and simply ask you to believe. In this case I hope the hidden word is not a question mark but faith, knowing I simply refuse to lie.
I cannot say my secret is a terrible one and maybe I am misguided and should. Why they're have been people arrested and locked in the loony bin. Ouch I did it again, I should not say loony, you will I hope forgive my lack of sensitivity. I guess that was possibly worse then saying the crazy house, and yet if I said insane asylum that sounds just degrading. I have no wish to degrade those folks, after all quiet sane wives was once locked in them so a husband could enjoy his mistress without a raging wife. Possibly has spared more then a few murders.
So I guess this would be better stating my cause if I say I have a secret that I hope you don't think me mentally challenged. Yet, by more then a few they would seem to think so. I once had a math teacher say, I was dumb as a rock when it came to math. I responded with, Miss Carter just how dumb is a rock? A question after the trip to the principal's office, I gathered was not an appropriate question.
That too is a troubling thing about life. I guess I have always lived on a pinnacle of decision and indecision. Who determines what is appropriate and what is not. By what decree do some get the authority to decide what is and what isn't? By who's grace are they created judges and sit on the bench of righteousness? Ah but here I go chasing the fox from an imaginary hen house.
Well I would suggest I am dumb as a rock on many things. I am not sure what dumb means to you. See I met a boy once and was told he was dumb. Yet he was the smartest kid I ever met. His weakness was he could not speak, as he had no vocal cord. So why would the word dumb be used. Does it mean the lack of something. Is a man without a leg a dumb man or a person blind dumb because they cannot see? If it means lack of something, then indeed I am a very dumb man.
I lack knowledge on many a subject, as my poor spelling and grammar all to often demonstrate. I may know how an internal combustion engine works, how a boiler heats water or creates steam. I might know how a pump works and understand such things as pressure. Did you know pressure is indeed a interesting subject. Why we hear people say, I am under so much pressure.
Pressure is a force and like most things far more complex then we choose to decipher. There is a number of things that make up pressure, and that is how life is. It is pressure that keeps your car engine cool and it's pressure that brings rain. Static pressure, velocity pressure, total pressure all play hidden roles in our everyday life.
So yes I guess I am dumb as a rock, but then how dumb is a rock? Some rocks people sure might be dumber than, because have you ever bought a diamond, or chunk of gold. So dumb as they may be, they have unimaginable value.
Now at last I guess I should get back to it, my secret. There are times I hear voices. Perhaps now you want to call the men in white coats. The voices and sometimes a voice is as audible as the sound of thunder. I expect people that talk to themselves also answer themselves we just don't hear the answers.
In the bible there are a few stories where God spoke to the people, as a large group. Some said they just heard thunder, others said it was as a large crowd and they could not understand what was said. Yet, oh yes, there were some and heard and understood. Now get ready to call the boys with the straight jackets.
I know what they mean, I hear a voice of reason in my head, sometimes giving directions. Yet I have heard another voice or perhaps better described as a voice of many. First time I heard it I was a young and it was just noise. Yet I learned to listen in a different way, till the sound became discernible. I knew as I grew older that sometimes as busy as God is he speaks to me. It is as if you are at a ball park every one speaking at once and somehow you realize they are talking about you.
Sometimes I lay in bed and or drive down the road, and I hear my mother or dad or my oldest brother speak to me. I wish I could call it a conversation but alas it's them speaking and I don't know if they hear my response. Yet that voice of many has had conversation. So yes maybe I am dumb as a rock and maybe my secret you will argue is a vivid imagination. Yet see I have faith, because I know, and now you have been told and maybe you shake your head and just say wow.
Yet want to hear the really crazy, ok I mean really out there thing? I have faith you can hear it to if you learn to listen.
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Kevin Hughes
01/01/2019Aloha Rich,
Quite a conundrum in the first part of this "story" trying to label yourself (or anyone else for that matter) is a slippery slope that leads to insult, insensitivity, and yet another label. LOL But it was your last two paragraphs that made the most sense. I am not a man of Faith (or Religion of any kind) yet I understand its power. The Voice of Reason, can also be the Voice of Love, and perhaps that Voice Channels itself into folks in different ways.
Learning to listen to something outside yourself is something few of manage to pull of. I talk to my Mom often (ashamedly - not as much as I used to) and she has been gone for three decades. My sister Kathleen died way back in 1970, and yet I can still laugh at her jokes.
I have heard many people speak, few listened. isn't it amazing at our age, to look back at how much we did, or didn't do? I am becoming a bit more practical in my old age- for I have stopped beating myself up over things I can't change. What was done, was done. Like my Mom used to say: "You can't even change yesterday's clothes." She's right.
Today is the day. It might be the last, or the next, but it is all we get. LOL
Smiles, Kevin
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Rich Puckett
01/02/2019Hello sir
Haha now that makes us feel old when so,wine says sir, or does me. I think maybe this story is too deep for me to get. The first part is a continuing state of confusion, verbal through chaos as is life if we dwell to much on it.
We spend our life worrying about so much sometimes we forget to just live. So I like where it took you, where I hoped it would. Like you as I have aged, wiser I don't know, but I do know I have let loose of the holds, one my say the bars that include religious doctrine men's chains, to just live I hope as one that is set free, to love others and in so doing I find I love my self more. So I don't run from the voices I try to just hear what they say, ah, one might say to listen
Thank you, I love reading you comments and insights
COMMENTS (1)