I was just asked if I was feeling lonely yet and do I get enough to eat as though I was a guy standing at the traffic light with a cardboard sign . In fact I’ve gained three pounds and I’ll have to check the denotation of lonely in the Webster’s before attacking part one of the questionnaire but I will admit it’s dead quiet in the house right now . The television hasn’t been turned on once in two weeks nor the radio that resides out in the garage where I spend a lot of my time . It feels like I’m hiding in the cabinet beneath the sink ….. and I always liked it there .
I think I’d traveled pretty far along in life before I came to the realization that perhaps it wasn’t everyone else in the world that wasn’t exactly normal and perhaps it might just be me . An old friend of my Mothers always commented on the amount of time I spent as a child playing alone and how I would hide in the cupboard beneath the sink when ever she or others would come to visit . She never could accept any of that as the behavior of a normal child and always inferred that there might be something wrong . I don’t think at that time it ever occurred to me that other children didn’t like to play alone or hide under the sink to avoid visitors and when I learned they didn’t I wondered what could be wrong with them. It never bothered Mom one bit to have abnormal children and as it turned out it never bothered me to be one . But as time went by I came to accept that my Mothers friend might be right .
I don’t hide under the sink anymore but the truth is that I still do hide . Over the years I’ve tended to roam and move to far away places and indulge hobbies that require no one’s company and participate in sports that require no other players . On occasion I still let the battery on the phone die in order to prevent unwanted intrusions . Oddly I married into a Latino family whose culture seems to dictate that a quiet moment alone is something to be avoided at all cost and I’ve heard them whisper to each other the Spanish word “esquizoide” when they thought I was out of earshot . I don’t know that I’d completely fit the description of schizoid but I still do love a moment or two alone to indulge my own self while fully understanding their closely social lives . They , however might never understand that right now I’ve been enjoying a much wanted early Christmas present I bought myself … a plane ticket for my wife .
After hearing all of this one would think that joining the U.S. Navy and shipboard life was a poor choice for a man like me and one would be correct . Some fifty years ago I gleefully left that military base for the last time with my DD-214 clutched tightly in my hand and recently had that same feeling as I drove away alone from the Miami International Airport though with a difference . The Navy was gone forever but I’ll be back to the Miami International Airport and I will be glad the day the wife comes home ……
……….just as long as it’s not right away
