Book appendix (part 6)

Here's a section on information warfare that didn't fit anywhere in the book:


My dad’s need for control manifests itself in diverse ways.  We call one control game “information warfare.”  In this game, the goal is to try to disclose as little information as possible while not seeming to obviously evade the question.  For example:
Dad comes through the door in the middle of a workweek.

Me: “Hello?”
Silence.
I look up to see who it is, “Why are you here?”
Dad: “I have to be here, I’m sorry.”
Me: “Why?”
Dad: “I’m not good.”
Me: “You’re not feeling good, or you have been bad?”
Silence.
Me: “Well it’s good you’re here, we can get burritos for lunch.”
Dad: “I can’t do that but you can do that.”
Silence.
Me: “You’re not making any sense.”
Dad: “Why?”

The game is played all the time.  Like soccer, most of it is just little trade offs until my dad finds the right time to strike and make a “goal”.  A goal in this game is for him to get the other person to make a false conclusion based on incomplete and/or false or misleading information that he has been feeding them.

Brother: “Dad, are we going to refinance that rental property?”
Silence.
Brother: “Dad, I was talking to my realtor who says that if we refinance we might be able to get enough out for a down payment on another property.”
Silence.
Brother: “Apparently the rates are the lowest they’ve been all year.”
Days later.
Brother: “Dad, I filled out some paperwork for the bank to refinance that rental property.”
“You did what?!”
“We talked about this, my realtor thought we could get some extra money out and lock in a very low rate.”
“Stupid, stupid, stupid.”  Three stupids in my dad’s lexicon is almost like an epithet—you are very seriously stupid.  “That property is in a limited liability partnership!  Banks won’t refinance a property that’s in a limited liability partnership!”

And that’s how you score a goal.

Book appendix (part 5)

(cont. from interview with my mother):


Sometimes I feel guilty for it because I know I was gone, being on the stage and trying to figure out what would bring happiness in my life and I was gone way too much. I should have been home more and keeping tabs on things.  

I know you were always closed off, like affection.  You weren’t ever very affectionate, as far as hugging.  You were kind of closed off emotionally.  I don’t ever remember you crying.  Instead of you being sad, you usually chose to be angry.  That was your emotion of choice.  It seems like when you got angry, you would just get in someone’s face verbally and then you would try to get that person to have their own emotional explosion.  I remember you would try to push dad’s buttons and get him to get really mad.  It’s almost like you liked the emotional turmoil of anger and every now and then you would feed into that and make it happen.  Then things would calm down, until they would build up again.  But I don’t know. Dad was like that too.  But it seemed like you and he butted heads a lot.  I don't remember you ever being sad or hurt.  Even when you were in the hospital with the physical hurt, you weren’t crying or sad.  You know, like a normal person would do.  Especially girl.  You know teenage girls, they would cry over stuff, be hurt or have their feelings hurt.  I don’t remember you ever being like that.  So you were definitely not the typical teenage girl.  I think that’s why you didn’t have a lot of teenage girl friends. Most of your friends were boys, maybe because you related to them a lot more.  Boys aren’t very emotional, they’re more thinking.   

I think you have a little ADD.  It’s hard for you to focus on one thing at a time.  You have to be doing like 3 things at once, even in church you’ll be doing multiple things.  You can’t focus on one thing at a time, or at least not for very long.  But I also think you’re always just thinking about things and wondering about things, so something will catch your interest and you’ll want to explore that.  You’re kind of an explorer type of personality; you like to explore new and different things.

In the way that you did far more and went far more than any of the other kids, that was a little bit of a surprise because I don’t think it was anything normal. You were like super child, going out and doing things far beyond what was expected.

I don’t think you’re trying to corrupt people, but I think you like to do things for shock value—just throw things out there and see how they land, see how they would fly. So I think I was a little uncomfortable with your influence over your younger siblings. I think you’re influential. Sometimes I see the whole family bending to what you want to do and I think we have set you or accepted you in that role of figuring out what we want to do or how we are going to do it, and I think we enjoy that. And I don’t think you carry it too far either. I don’t think you’re too pushy about it. But you are definitely a natural born leader. I think that’s what makes you such a good teacher. I think you’re influential because you’re smart and determined and passionate about the things you want to do, and I think people tend to want to follow someone like that. I think the family follows you because we know you’re smart and efficient and you can figure out probably the best way of doing things and you have novel and fun ideas. You’re always full of ideas. And you’re always coming up with good ways of solving problems or making things happen smoothly.

I remember one time when I was super proud of you, singing this particular song I like. That was a proud moment because you were just up there saying I’m my own person, I don’t care what other people do to me, I’m going to live my life the way I want to.  And I was just proud of you for that.  I don’t think I’ve ever been that way.  I’m getting to be more and more that way, but I used to not be.  I used to be codependent, trying to manipulate people from the wings but never really voicing my opinion and saying what I wanted, what I needed.  I was always kind of in the shadows.  That’s why I liked the stage I think, because I could be somebody else, another person.  And I was good at it and people thought I was wonderful, so I think that’s why I kind of got addicted to the stage.  

I think the book is kind of cool.  I see it as another step in your healing and becoming more your own person.  Kind of dealing with all of the stuff that’s happened to you and figuring out who you really are.  I think the book is part of this process.  

Book appendix (part 4)

From an interview with my mother:


It was hard for me when you were born.  Baby number three is always hard because when there’s two there’s one for each parent, but when there are three it’s hard.  And you came so close to Jim.  And Jim was taking his sweet time getting potty trained, so I had both of you in diapers for like a year.  And that was before the disposable diapers were popular and they were expensive so we had cloth diapers and I had to wash them and hang them out on the line because we didn’t have a dryer.  So it seemed like that was my whole life was taking care of babies, changing diapers, washing them, hanging them out.  I think that was the time I went a little nutso.  I remember I just started freaking out sometime and dad had to call grandpa and have him come over and talk me out of it.  I don’t know, just the stress and everything probably piled up.  In those days I wasn’t very good about keeping on an even keel.  I’d let thing build up and build up and then just start flipping out.  

We thought you were perfectly healthy, but you had thrush at birth and the thrush got worse, which made you not want to nurse.  I would try to calm you down by nursing you.  You would just be upset and there was nothing we could do to get you to stop crying.  You would cry until you were exhausted and then sleep for a while.  So that was a very trying time.  Finally, I don’t remember how old you were until we finally took you into the doctor, and they checked you out and said you had thrush.  You had a herniated navel too, probably because you were crying so violently.  That was sad, my poor baby.  I just remember the family get together at the beach when you were crying and everyone was trying to be the one to hold you and calm you down but nobody could do it so I just took you and went away with you walking around the whole park.  I would sometimes just leave you in a room to cry.  There was nothing else to do.  I put you on your stomach on the water bed because you seemed to like it.  So you would cry and fuss, the waterbed would rock you and you would finally go to sleep.  In some ways I think that made us bond more because I was very emotionally involved with you and protective of you, wanting to fix what was wrong and wanting you to be better, happier and healthy.  So I think I was maybe a little extra attached to you.  Dad would be the one who would say, “Just put her in a room and shut the door.”  Because we lived in that little dinky house, so there wasn’t anywhere where you could escape the noise.  I wonder what Jim and Scott thought of that.  I don’t remember focusing on them at all, I was just so wrapped up in you.  Poor Jim, because he was just a little guy.  He probably got ignored a lot when this screaming baby came along and kicked him out of mama’s world.  

I can’t remember hardly anything about your childhood. I remember you drowning as a child.  I can’t remember who noticed you back there but then when I saw you, it seemed like you had let go of the boat.  But I just remembered feeling totally frantic and I remembered just having this sick feeling and praying that you would be ok.  It seems like we had to go down the river a little to be able to pull over to the side of the river.  I can’t remember how they called to get people to come help.  I ran up the beach, sick with worry.  I guess you just kind of came to and started breathing.  You seemed to be pretty much ok.  I mean kind of out of it a little, but I was just happy you were conscious and breathing and back with us.  

I remember when you had your appendix problem.  I always thought that I was pretty good at reading my kids, knowing what was wrong with them, but you were super hard to read.  And we had never had anything serious happen with the kids before, so this was a first for us. I didn’t really know or think there was something that was seriously wrong because you weren’t even acting serious until you developed a fever.  But when we went in there and it had ruptured and you were so sick, I was mad at myself for not having taken you in sooner.  But you were really good at being closed off, showing a brave front and going off and doing your thing and you didn’t really care if you were sick or let little pains get in the way.  You were just off doing yourself.  So I guess your common sense with your health wasn’t that great.  Because I remember you went and even played in a tournament with your appendix either ruptured or about to rupture.  So that was crazy.  I can’t even comprehend someone being able to do that.  

I remember you hated the hospital and always tried to get dad to eat your food, which wasn’t very hard.  And I remember he had to finish your breakfast that morning so you would get out of there and wanted to get out so bad.  And then you had to be in a wheelchair for like 5 days after.  And I remember you being at school and seeing how the kids were fawning over you and I realized that you had a lot of friends and people that cared about you.  And you seemed to be in pretty good spirits about the whole thing.  It’s not like you were like, “I’m in a wheelchair and this sucks.”  I think you were kind of enjoying a new experience.  But I think you were happy to get better—get back to your fast paced life.  You wouldn’t have lasted in a wheelchair that long for sure.

Book appendix (part 3)

From an interview with a friend:


I like talking to you because you are like a stockpile of knowledge with the capability to process important components of that knowledge and to assimilate them into an intelligent decision—the best decision.  Whereas I feel like I might fall on to decision that is fourth best, even though I have been exposed to the same data.  But I have forgotten that information in the meantime, and am unable to pull it forward when the time to make the decision arises.  And you even take into account my personal preferences.  I don’t know how, I guess because you know me now.  But something I find very humorous is that when I start explaining emotionally frustrating things to you, maybe about my marriage, and you’ll say “That’s because he __________” and I am always wondering why you have so much insight into my emotional life.  Insight that I didn’t have—like I am still hashing through the ideas emotionally and haven’t been able to reach any conclusion, but you have been able to reach a conclusion by just listening to me for a minute.  Sometimes I discount your conclusions, I will be honest.  At those times I generally conclude that you didn’t input the right information.  Other times I will be surprised at how spot on you are.  It seems like you know my husband better than I know him. I’m always surprised with your assessments of people, because you can kind of sum them up, taking this vast amount of data—a person—and you break it down into the important bits for that output.  You tell me, “well of course that is what happened because of these few things.”  

Also, you’re blatantly honest.  At first I was scared and there were moments in this house in which I was afraid that you would provoke fights in social situations. Then I started finding the humor in it.  Now sometimes I will use it to find out things I really want to know by just asking you, although I can still get angry at some of the things you say.  Overall, though, it is refreshing, and I have a much harder time getting offended at anything you say than I used to.  Even now telling you these things, it’s odd because I think now you will understand me so much better and when I come to you with another emotional problem you will say, “Oh, it’s because of this,” or “something something something” and I will feel ok.  

When I come to you with an emotional problem though, I don’t feel like you give empathy or emotional support.  Sometimes you will say, “that’s just because your husband's a retard, sorry.”  So maybe that is empathy.  Maybe it is refreshing to hear that it comes down to something that isn’t emotional—that my problems aren’t fundamentally an emotional issue, but something separate that can be intellectualized.  It takes out the sting in the hurt.  

I remember one time you were talking to me in the car and you said something like, “I don’t think I want to marry a guy who is as intelligent as me.”  And I asked you, “someone more like me.”  You said “no, not really.”  And I thought, oh ok, smarter than me then.  

I think you’re a better computer than I am.  If you had learned all of the stuff that I learned in college, I think you could do so much better with it than I can.  But that’s alright, I supposed I have other skills.  You’re like a data processor, but better because you can also process emotional inputs.  You can’t ask Google why my husband did something.  It’s like the best thing—kind of like a fun toy.

Book appendix (part 2)

From an interview with an in-law:

The first thing that I find unusual about you is that you’re very anxious to give us, your family, whatever we want.  I see this as a sign that you love us because from what I have heard about how you act around other people, that is not at all how you act, but rather trying to get what you want through manipulation or whatever.  That’s one of the things I would say to sum you up is that you are one of the most generous people I have met.  You’re always so willing to give time, money—anything. 

I think it’s funny, I’m more guarded around you because sometimes I throw out ideas or desires to you even if I don’t really want them.  But I’m more careful what I say around you because you’re likely to make it actually happen. You’re just big on having people do what they want to do, so I think that if I said I wanted to go to a certain place, you’d say “let’s do it.”  I would give my reasons why I wasn’t going to, and you’d give your reasons why it would be good and just push for it.  Or it’s funny, when I tell you things like “I like those slippers,” and you say, “you can have them.”  I never know what you mean by that, if it means “I don’t really like them” or if it means that you do like that thing, but if you hear someone say that they really like it, you want to give someone what they really like because you think it’s better for the economy of the family to give someone what they really like rather than have you keep something that you just kind of like.

But, at the end of vacation time spent with family when you get cranky. It’s almost as if you’re too tired to do it anymore. 

But I think it is the most humorous with the children, because you are equally as anxious to give them whatever they want.  Maybe even more anxious.  It’s very interesting to watch because no other normal adults I have met are willing to give children whatever they want.  And children are subject to so many whims.  But you take them all seriously.  “Do you want to play the piano?”  “Would you like to dance?”  And so the children love you so much.  And I think it’s ironic that you think that you won’t connect with your own children, should you have any, because that is a very strong connection to children.  However there are those moments when you say “That baby is driving me crazy,” and few other human beings say that as well.  “Man, Charlie is being so rotten right now.”  Or “So and so is so cute.”  Or when you ask my children “Which of your brothers do you like better?” 

With the older kids, sometimes you bother me because you’re trying to figure out if they’re like you so you ask them questions, leading questions, like “which person do you like more?”  And sometimes, like the other night, when you tried to trick Alan into thinking that Byron said he liked Charlie better, that is where I draw the line.  I intercede in those moments to tell him “No, he did not say that.” 


I thought it was interesting when you said that you have a hard time connecting with my children, because you said you don’t understand them?  I define them as being perfectly normal children.  You don’t understand them because they’re compassionate? Is that it?  Or is it because they’re more emotionally driven and they let their emotions dictate their behavior?  It’s more primal in children, it seems easy to understand to me. 

You’re very good at giving the children gifts.  They are very age appropriate.  Most people find that to be difficult.  I think parents are much better than grandparents, but in some ways you’re even better than parents because you remove the selfish component of gift giving. I think sometimes parents don’t want to give certain presents to children because they’re too loud, messy, take up too much space, or because they want something for their children rather than thinking what the children really want.  And grandparents probably just want what is easier to find. 

Maybe your ability has something to do with your ability to process what they enjoy.  Maybe it’s because you’re always keyed into making other people happy, so you’ve been even trying to make the little people happy and thinking in those moments, “what would make them happy right now?” So it’s easier for you to think—what gift would make them happy.

The children are always so excited to see you.  You are their favorite aunt or uncle.