Stockholm Syndrome

Do you remember spending time with your grandma, or perhaps a great aunt or uncle..someone old enough to have lived thru the Great Depression? I'm at an age where it was my mom and dad who made it thru as kids. They didn't talk much about it until you wanted to buy something they deemed as 'expensive' and then you got to hear all about how bare and empty a time it was. And then there are all their crazy habits that they never seemed to shake. Like reusing EVERYTHING until it was so used up you couldn't tell what the hell it had been when it was new. To this day my mom will still try to wash the plastic forks and spoons from a a family gathering...you'll find her digging in the trash to salvage the solo plastic cups..."Mom!! What the hell are you doing???" And she will give you one of the exasperated looks she is well known for and proclaim, "They're still good..there's nothing wrong with these, I'm washing them up for the next time." My sister and I have a good laugh every holiday as we pit ourselves against our 82 year old mother to see who can get the disposable items in the trash and out of the house before she can dig thru it and 'rescue' those "perfectly good, you can't just throw them away" items. I think she goes out with a flash light after we have all gone home and gets them back out of the trash bin anyways!!! We think it's hysterical, and we laugh about it every time the whole family gets together, but that's my mom for ya.

My dad was the same way, he would salvage "perfectly good part"s off everything from lawn mowers to dead cars and when somebody came over with some engine that had been proclaimed 'dead', my dad would hunt around in his shop, find a replacement part and have the damn thing purring like a kitten in no time. He made a lot of poor people's days as he'd open that shop garage door and say roll it in here I bet we can get a little more out of her. And he always could. He didn't throw it away unless it was truly dead....it was a lot of fun hanging out in his shop...the smell of grease and oil and gas and old men talking their talk. I learned a lot of very colorful cuss words out there!!! As well as the names of almost every tool my dad owned and what he used it for. He'd lived thru hard times....he knew how to save what was saveable cause ya just never knew when somebody might need it.

Oh I don't want to say my parents were hoarders. We didn't live in piles of junk at all. They just knew how to stash the 'keepables' and my mom had a grocery sack with butter bowls and lids as well as paper sacks and worn out jeans cut up for patches on ones that could be patched and my dad had coffee cans full of every screw and bolt under the sun...trust me...he could find one to fit...just give him a few minutes. To this day, I hear their voices in my head if I try to throw out a freezer bag that has no holes, or the extra screws that come in something you bought that said "some assembly required"....As I head to the trash can I can hear them both shouting, "You better keep that, never know when you are gonna need it.....You can't throw that out, it's still perfectly good.....You'll be sorry you were so wasteful down the road!!!" OH ALRIGHT for the love of God, shut up...I'll keep/wash out/reuse/save the damn thing back...just shut up...you aren't even in my house for crying out loud...how come you can shout so loud in my head?????

So I have spent a lot of time laughing over the years at how 'crazy' my parents acted all thru my years with them.....and then......last night....it hit me. I have it too. Holy Shit!!!! I'm actually trapped in a mind set from years of living just above the poverty line and I keep deferring to it like an old trusted friend even thought I'm no longer there. WHAT THE HELL???!!!!!

It happened at the Renaissance Festival and I just laughed it off....oh yeah, wait, I don't have to just look and dream, we really do have some bucks to spend here....but then....I realized last night, it happened again!! I have a much younger acquaintance who is now selling Premier Jewelry, and she is hosting this party where all the proceeds will go for cancer research and she invited all her facebook friends to the party. Well, I'm really not into that kind of jewelry...if you want me to go all out, you need to make a road trip with me to Arizona and hit up all those road side stands of turquoise between the Grand Canyon and Flagstaff....but anyhoo, I replied that if she sent me a book, I'd take it to work and try to round up some orders for her. Well, she sent me the book, and I did make sure it made the rounds and I brought it home Friday night. Mr Fixit saw the book and asked about it, and I told him the deal and he said I should pick something out and he'd buy it. So I looked again...not a lot that really turned my head, but I showed him a couple things and then started bitching about the price. $45 for a pair of earrings????? You gotta be shittin' me!!! I'm not spending that kind of money on earrings for crying out loud!!! Well, Mr Fixit informed me that if I wanted them, I should order them...he'd pay. I wasn't even biting...we are NOT spending that damn much on a pair of fucking earrings!! So he said to keep looking...and I did, pretty much with the same response several times over....He finally gets pissy about it and says to pick out something or by GOD he will and he's not even joking about it now!!! Well SHIT!! I'm not about to spend that kind of money on jewelry out of a party book and now I'm ready to go to war......but I kept looking and finally found a pretty cross and heart necklace for under $25.00. So I show him the piece and tell him I think I'd like that. OKAY??!!!!! Have we got a settlement now???? NO, no we don't. He tells me he likes the necklace, but I should pick out some earrings too. OH WHAT THE HELL DUDE!!!!! And we are pretty much shouting at each other over this stupid over priced jewelry and it hits me. WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR PROBLEM WOMAN????? The man wants to buy you something...why are you fighting him over it? And that's when I realized the problem.

Just a few short years ago, $45.00 would have been the difference between having lunch money for all three kids or not, it would have meant having enough to cover the house phone and the water bill or not, it would have been the difference between being able to put a decent supper on the table for a week or not. It was a LOT of money to me once upon a time and not something I could ever dare throw away on something non-essential. And here I am...a few years later...in an empty nest, with a man who makes more than enough, who'd like to spoil me a little...and I am freaking out about the expense. OH MY GOD!!! I have it now....I have TRULY become my mother after all!!!!

I tried to shrug it off in the warm light of day today....I did...I laughed about it on the way to town. No, that can't be right....I just didn't really like the jewelry...that's all!!! I hit Lowe's for some cans of spray paint needed to cover the rust spots on my "new swimming pool" stock tank for next summer. And I browsed thru the bird feeders and the garden sections...just looking around...even found some things I liked....but backed away...."I really don't need this", seemed to be the theme in my head. Then it was on to K-mart....I wanted to pick up some more sweatshirts for Mr Fixit for his work...and I browsed the movie section...but passed up a couple I'd liked....cause....they will be cheaper later on and I'll get them then.......and I'm at the check out line and I pass up the Coke cooler....I'm thinking....I'm headed home, I can wait till then and it suddenly snuck up and bit my ass. Oh You Do Have It Sister!!!! You have the 'Stockholm Syndrome" of hard times. You're thinking in friendly terms towards this mindset that has you being a tightwad when you have no need now. You can't buy a movie if it's not on sale....you can't buy an unneeded item if it's not under $10.00, you can't even talk about a new car, cause you start freaking out about the cost of taxes and insurance and how the damn thing depreciates the second you drive it off the lot. You've got it girl...you are your mother....Oh NO!! Does this mean my kids are laughing at me behind my back????? WHAT AM I SAYING, they laugh at me all the time to my face!!!!!!! Maybe I haven't been saving back screws and freezer bags to shut up my parent's voices in my head...maybe I've been doing it all along because that's who I've become. Is there a cure? Is there any hope? Will I ever shop at Dillons and buy a name brand item of food?!! I'm all confused now!!!

Well, I am going to order a pair of earrings to go with my necklace...but damn it I didn't stop looking til I found a pair under $25 that I liked. Oh yeah, I've got it bad. But awareness is the first step....and that is the dill pickle bout that.....on the clearance isle of course!!!!!