“Marked-for-life”

—“Think about it Bob,” my friend e-mailed me. “The ‘marked-for-life’ stigma is no more.”
“I wish it were,” I e-mailed back.
Over the past couple months, Yr Fthfl Srvnt has been blogging all too much about my incredible and mind-blowing success with pretty ladies.
My friend, like me, is a retired RTS bus-driver. He’s one of the ones to whom I e-mail my blog-links.
And unlike most, he seems to enjoy my celebrating my triumph over my sordid childhood.
Granted, the ones who marked-me-for-life, my hyper-religious parents, and my hyper-judgmental Sunday-School superintendent neighbor, the infamous Hilda Walton, recede into my filmy past.
Both parents are dead, and I’m sure that Sunday-School superintendent neighbor is also dead.
All are forgotten, but “marked-for-life” still exists. Self-loathing continues, plus continual amazement I have so much success with pretty ladies.
“No pretty lady will talk to/smile at/hang out with/associate with/ENJOY your company!”
Yet so many do, and I am amazed when they do.
“He has to be making that up!” people tell me. Over 76 years I met thousands. Out of those thousands only two seem to understand my childhood.
One is my aunt, 90 years old, who was continually badmouthed by her mother; that she shouldna been born = she was a mistake.
The other is my cousin, my father’s brother’s only child. “I don't know how in the world my father ended up being as decent as he was, after the childhood he had.”
So I wonder what made my father how he was = distant and unapproachable; continually telling me I was evil and disgusting.
“I could talk to the Old Man,” my kid brother tells me.
“Well I sure couldn’t,” I say. “He always told me I was rebellious.”
I also wonder what made my father’s mother, my grandmother, the way she was — such that anyone named “Robert,” my grandfather, my uncle, and me, were automatically disgusting. (Except my grandmother didn’t ascertain me as disgusting. In fact she defended me against my father. “Tom, ya gotta stop being so hard on your children!”)
So now “marked-for-life” has me feeling unworthy when pretty ladies like my attention. “No pretty lady will ENJOY your company!”
No one has smacked me yet, plus just about every contact I made has been pleasant.
So, “if you’ll please excuse me. I can’t leave this store without telling some girl she has pretty eyes.
It’s these masks of course. They force me to notice eyes-eyes-eyes-eyes-eyes.
And this store is awash in eyes, many of them gorgeous.
One of my lady friends told me ‘eyes are the window to the soul,’ and here in this store they’re everywhere.
Some pretty lady and I meet eyes, and WOW!
Smack me if you wish, or tell me to get stuffed, but you have pretty eyes.
I hafta keep doing that to convince myself I’m not evil and disgusting.
You have pretty eyes, you have pretty eyes, you have pretty eyes, and you have pretty eyes!
I hope you enjoy my telling you that, but smack me if you wish.
By so doing I counter my being “marked-for-life.”

• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs.