Friday, September 11, 2009

Day Seven

Another long day.

I worked until noon and came home and cleaned the house. Another football game tonight. My middle and youngest sons play football for Catholic High School in Baton Rouge. I could start another blog just about football. But I'll save that for another day.

When I was in eighth grade we moved into the heart of Tokyo. We lived in Shibuya in a Southern Baptist missionary complex near several consulates and embassies.

This meant that, instead of walking fifteen minutes to school, I would ride the train to school. Riding the train was similar to the commonly stated story that parents tell their children. "I walked up hill in the snow, barefooted for an hour." It wasn't quite that way, but I did walk 15 minutes to the train station, rode the train for about 30 minutes and then walked another 10 - 15 minutes to school.

My memories of 8th and 9th grade are very foggy. I don't really remember much of anything. I do remember that I went to Miyake several times during this time. One time I went during the school year. It was the same year ASIJ students performed the musical "A Wonderful Town." I didn't participate in this musical but I remember the music and particularly the song, "Why oh, Why oh, Why oh, Why did we ever leave Ohio?"

One thing you need to know is this, every time we left Miyake and got on the boat, we didn't want to leave. As a result, everyone (well at least the girls) cried and was despondent about leaving. We would wave goodbye to Jack and sob and cry and act all crazy.

Well, this one particular time I was on the island with several friends, it was during the school year. Jack rode the boat with us to the island and he rode the boat back with us to Tokyo. As we were departing Miyake on the boat to return to Tokyo, several of us started to sing, "Why oh, Why oh, Why oh? Why do we have to leave Miyake?" And like always when we left the island we began crying. Jack always responded to our crying with compassion and love. This time, however, because he was with us on our trip back, he responded with anger. He couldn't understand why we were upset about leaving the island. He was disgusted by our behavior. As I grew older and was better able to understand this situation, I realized that Jack believed that we were upset because we were leaving him, not because we were leaving the experience of being on the island. His anger was representative of how he thought. As time goes on you will see how deranged and narcissistic his thinking was.

© Copyright 2009 Janet Calcote Simmons All rights reserved.

1 comment:

  1. very cool and perceptive insight! Realizing the reason for his disgust!

    ReplyDelete