Category Archives: Autobiography

Responsibility

I have never felt responsible for how others behave towards me, nor for how I behave towards them. Is that because I instinctively rejected my mother’s claim that she took us to the U.S. for my benefit? Or is it because I learned early that asking for anything was an invitation to be denied?
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Celebrations

Why do I dislike celebrations of all kinds? Because they are artificial and designed to manipulate the participants. I am anti-social, happy to be solitary and disconnected. ‘Tis a guilty pleasure that must not be over-indulged.

Aging Matinee Idol

When I was sixteen, my father took me to a sort of night club which featured an aging Chanteuse with very drooping boobs. She was too pathetic to be gross in the mind of a sixteen year old, but I have never been able to figure out what possessed the regular clientele to patronize that dive. It was obviously a going concern and my father knew what to expect.

Archie Rice in “The Entertainer,” as played by Lawrence Olivier is a male version. Poor Donald is the 21st Century version–a has-been matinee idol strutting across the stage.
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Germans in the U.S.

When we arrived in Los Angeles in 1949, the first thing my mother’s uncle, our sponsor said was “No German is spoken in this house.” At eight years old, I was not bothered and learned English in a couple of months over the summer. So, when school started at Saint Cecilias, I did not miss a grade. We had already learned cursive, numbers were the same and the only read mystery was why they were collecting nickels to buy Chinese babies. Nickels could be got by returning empty bottles to the grocery store. I was, you might say, acculturated quickly.
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