Monday, September 26, 2011

My Life and Ennui

A young lady made a comment regarding the using of "ennui" in one of my first posts.  Trust me, I know what "ennui" is.  I've had a lifetime of experience.  However, it reminded me of many years ago when I had Grave's Disease. (Hyperactive thyroid is the simplest explanation).  I had been trying to find out what was wrong with me (other than the obvious mental disorders) for some years and when it was finally diagnosed we had to figure out some way to pay for the treatment.  I was out of work as was fairly common in those days.  As I recall this was around late 1983.  Not a good time for an unskilled person looking for work in rural eastern Kentucky.

However, the East Kentucky Rehabilitation Center was located in the same county where we lived at the time.  Someone, I forget who, suggested we contact them about paying for my treatment.  Much to my surprise they agreed.  As one of the prerequisites was to take a manual dexterity test and an IQ test to determine what kind of rehabilitative training I should take.  Now, I will be the first to admit I have horrible hand/eye coordination but I've never hand any trouble with IQ tests.  Actually, I rather enjoyed them.

Once the results were in I had an appointment with my counselor to go over the results.  I went to his office and sat down in the visitor's chair and he did not say much of anything at all for a while.  He just sat and looked at me.  The first words out of his mouth were, "Have you been bored  with everything your entire life?".   So I said I had.  Hey, it was true after all.  Like for the whole of my high school years I never took  a single book home to study or do homework.  I took care of it all in a study hall.  I helped several people out as well.

When I was a senior my English teacher made the mistake of stating at the beginning of the year that before the year was out she could tell who had written any paper just by the writing style.  Ooooo, can we say "challenge"?  We had to do a book report at certain times.  I forget the exact timing but I know it was four times a year.  Best of my recollection I turned in four with my name on them and somewhere around ten to twelve with other people's names on them.  Lowest score on any of them was an 88%.  I must have gotten sloppy.

To add to the story, I never read but one book that I did a book report on all year.  Everything else was done from "Classic Comics" or just straight BS.  (But, intelligent BS.)    I remember doing a book report for one of the smartest girls in our class just for the challenge of it.  It was on Jane Eyre.  I never read the book.  I never read the comic.  I spent about five minutes asking her questions about the book then did the report. Only got a 92% on that one.  Boo, hiss.   Teacher was silly.  I knew my classmates.  I knew what their vocabulary was like.  I just wrote like I thought they would write.  It was simple.

But I loved that English teacher.  Mrs Butler.  She only had one lung and she missed almost as much school as I did.  Cold day and we had a substitute.  There was this one young redhead.... but that is another story.  *smile*  I loved to sit in the back of the room and chat with her.  By this time, of course, you should have realized I rarely ever paid attention in class.  With my massive reading habit by the time we hit something in class I'd already gone through that months to years prior.  Yes, ennui, was my constant companion.

Kind of rambling I know.  But, the end result of my Grave's Disease was the EKRC paid for my treatment.  (I had to drink radioactive iodine) and paid to put me through computer school as well as paying me to go.  What a deal!  I finally found something that interested me and got paid to do it.  Can we say heaven?  Plus there were lots of lovely young ladies to spend my time with when I got bored again.  Which was most days. 

But I did have good teachers.  I did the twenty four month course in eleven months but I spent the last six weeks playing around with things that interested me because I was still getting paid and I had to wait for school to end to graduate anyhow. 

Yeah, I know all about ennui.  I even used that as my screen name on AOL back when it first came out.  What was that?  Around 1988 or so?    I remember once some female type person asked me if that meant I was bored or boring.  Told her she'd have to make up her own mind. Don't think I ever heard anything from her again.

Well, that is the end of another boring story. 

1 comment:

  1. People would understand ME so much better if they would just read THIS. LOL!

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