Tag: Donald Trump

Why don’t you talk about what you do for a living?

I get asked this question a lot.

I have to be very careful what I say and who I say things to.

Due to my major depression and my severe anxiety I don’t “hang out” with the crew. And a lot of the crew at work interpret this as an “air of superiority”.

Just as I’ve never brought up my issues at work, I don’t really have any interest in who went fishing, or who went on vacation, or who bought a new car. Small talk doesn’t do anything for me.

And there are those that view that as being hostile.

It’s not hostility, it’s just that those things were never on my radar in my personal life.

I’m in the position that I’m in because I want to see that things are done. In the recent past I’ve worked under chief engineers who wanted to do the absolute least as this was the easiest course of action. And of course they would just turn around and blame the assistant shift engineers and the shift engineers when things went absolutely sideways.

Yes, I realize that with my skills I should be elsewhere making the big bucks and advancing my career. But if you know anything about my past you’ll know how hard it was for me to get to where I am.

And I don’t mean that I am limited by my lack of technical skills or my technical knowledge.

Dealing with major depression and severe anxiety that was diagnosed in my childhood, but for which I was not allowed to receive treatment due to the environment that I grew up in meant that my life has been a non-stop constant fight with the factions inside my brain.

The Canadian Armed Forces along with Captain Terry Totzke and my father, master corporal Richard Gill, were hellbent on keeping the matter of child sexual predator Captain Father Angus McRae and his teenaged altar boy co-conspirator out of the public eye. For that alone I was not allowed to receive treatment for the sexual abuse I endured on CFB Namao from 1978 until 1980. I guess that the logic and reasoning behind those decisions was that if I went into the civilian child care system or was even admitted to a psychiatric hospital to receive the care that I needed, the truth about Canadian Forces Base Namao would hit the local media and then the national media.

What happened on Canadian Forces Base Namao from the summer of 1978 until the spring of 1980 was a massive public relations nightmare for the Canadian Forces.
So much so that the military at the time wasn’t going to risk ANYONE discovering what happened on that base.

This meant that I was sent on a crash course towards failure and that I would never achieve the potential that I could have.

All my life has been a non-stop battle with the voice of Captain Totzke in my head telling me that I was going to grow up to be just like the babysitter because I had “allowed” myself and my brother to be abused by McRae’s altar boy.

All my life has been a non-stop battle with the voice of my father in my head yelling and screaming at me for having “fucked with his military career” and that I was to blame for the way my brother turned out.

And as I’ve alluded to in other posts, what drives me around the bend is when trades, contractors, vendors, co-workers, or even managers tut-tut me for “wasting my life” and “taking the easy path” and “just not working hard like the rest of us”.

Another fun aspect is when people with certificates, degrees, diplomas, or licences get upset with me for intentionally withholding information from them just to make them look bad.

For all of my lack of formal training and formal education I get verbal tongue lashings and hostilities when I don’t provide answer at the snap of a finger.

I know what I know, if I don’t know the answer, I can’t give it to you no matter how angry you get. You have the degree, or the diploma, or the certificate, or the licence. You should be telling me how to do this. If you want me to tell you, you’re gonna have to give me a little bit while I go R.T.F.M. to get you the answer that you’re craving.

I primarily do what I do at work to prove to myself that I am capable of doing what I’ve been told that I’m not smart enough or qualified enough to do.

There are so many things that I have improved, or upgraded, or implemented that I dare not take credit for because I don’t have a degree, or a certificate, or a licence, or a diploma. But they do give me a sense of satisfaction none the less.

I have people with the degrees, with the certificates, with the licences, and even with the diplomas coming to me for advice, or for instructions on how to do things, or program things, or set things up.

But Bobbie, you enjoy all of this technical stuff!

Do I?

Are you sure that I really enjoy this?

Or maybe this field is something that my ability to read, and to reason, allowed me to function well in.

I’ve never really known what I’ve wanted to do with my life.

I can’t imagine that if I had been given the chance to have my major depression and severe anxiety treated, and that I had been allowed to finish school, to go to college, or go to university, that I would be doing this for a living.

And this is why I don’t really address work or the day to day stuff on my blog.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

I wonder if the Chief of Defence Staff and the Vice-Chief of Defence Staff
stop by for the birthday festivities.

Well, today marks my babysitter’s 60th birthday!

Happy birthday!

I don’t honestly know what he looks like now.

His younger brother and his older sister sure look happy for him though, eh?

And there’s the Canadian Armed Forces, still handling things for him all these years later.

I don’t know where his father is.

I wonder if the Vice Chief of Defence Staff or even the Chief of Defence Staff have sent him cards for his birthday.

Handling things for the babysitter and sealing the deal with a weird handshake
and a pat on the bum

If I sound a little sarcastic or a little bitter, that’s ’cause I am.

Not a word of a lie, but I had no birthday parties from the time my mother was ejected from the PMQ on CFB Summerside by my father in 1977 until my birthday in 1985. And that one was so that my father could butter my ass up just in case civilian social services found out about his destructive blow-out in the PMQ in August of 1985.

He promised that he would never ever forget my birthday again.

There was no birthday in 1986.

1987 was going to be my 16th birthday. He promised that he was going to sign me up for and help me with paying for driving classes with Young Driver’s of Canada. Nope. Changed his mind. Whose car would I be driving? Sure as fuck wasn’t going to drive his ’83 Mustang. If I thought that he was going to buy me a car I had another fucking thing coming. I should go speak to that cheap bitch mother of mine and she could pay for the driving lessons and then buy me a fucking car, what has she ever paid.

He sent me a $100.00 gift card for the Old Spaghetti Factory in September of 2006. This was due to the fact that I had chewed him out in August of 2006 for all of the shit related to CFB Namao and the aftermath of CFB Namao.

So yeah, from 1977 until the asshole’s death in 2017 I had 2 birthday acknowledgments and one attack on my mother. That 2 years out of 40.

Meanwhile the babysitter’s father loves him. Blames the military for the way his son turned out.

The babysitter’s sister lied for him.

The babysitter’s younger brother lied for him.

Fuck, even the Canadian Armed Forces were handling things for the babysitter.

But what the hell, it’s his birthday, Happy Birthday!

Yep.

Daily writing prompt
Have you ever broken a bone?
View all responses

Broke my right wrist and sprained my left wrist.

Back around the end of June in ’82 my father had borrowed a pickup truck with a camper in the bed from one of his buddies at 447 Sqn. so that he and his new wife, my stepmother, could go to Banff for their honeymoon.

Slide-in camper / Demountable camper.

They had no intention of taking Scott and I with them. We got unceremoniously dropped of with out mother in Calgary, AB. Yeah, the same mother that he told Alberta Social Services that had abandoned the family and that the same mother that he had told Alberta Social Services that he had no idea of how to contact.

When Richard and Sue were finished with their honeymoon they swung back through Calgary to pick Scott and I up. We drove back up to CFB Griesbach in Edmonton.

The truck was parked on the street in front of the PMQ.

Richard had gone somewhere and it was just Sue at home.

Scott got on top of the camper and stuffed the vents with leaves.

Just before Richard was due home Scott found me and told me that Richard was going to be pissed off with me for “me” having put the leaves into the vent on the camper.

I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about, so I went to check out the camper.

I looked at the camper from the outside and I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about, but once I opened the back door and climbed inside the camper I saw what he was talking about. The wind-up vent was plugged full of leaves. There was no way that Richard wasn’t going to notice this.

So, up on the roof I went.

Tim’s truck was a raised 4X4 with proper off road tires. With the camper on the back the roof had to be about 3 metres off the ground.

I got all of the leaves cleared out. It was spick and span.

I went to climb down the ladder and I lost my footing.

I landed on the ground flat on my back.

I had the wind knocked out of me and all I could see was stars.

It took so much effort to start to breathe again.

One of the locals came over and helped me up and walked me back to the PMQ where Sue was.

Sue sent me up to my room with the warning that Richard was not going to be happy when he got home.

When Richard got home he was none too pleased to find what had happened. The fact that I did something stupid that could get him in trouble with his commanding officer showed that I didn’t care about his military career.

The fact that I allowed Scott out of my sight meant that Scott could have fallen off the roof of the camper.

The fact that I wasn’t responsible enough to look after my brother meant thatI should take this as a lesson and learn from this.

My left wrist was burning. My right hand was swollen, numb, and immovable. But neither were anything compared to the headache and vomiting.

My father gave me some of his 222s to help me sleep.

Two days went by and then he took me to the Charles Camsell hospital in Edmonton to get my wrists looked at.

That’s when it was discovered that I wasn’t faking anything.

A couple of the larger bones in my right wrist were fractured. My left wrist had hairline fractures and was sprained.

The headaches and the vomiting had stopped by this point so I don’t think that Richard had mentioned anything to the doctors.

I can’t remember what Richard told the doctors, but I know he didn’t mention anything about falling off campers.

My left wrist got wrapped in a tensor. My right arm was set in a cast.

For illustrative purposes only

Did you know that it’s almost impossible to wipe your own ass when your dominant hand is set in an arm cast? My left arm wasn’t much use either. Hairlines are really super sensitive to force.

I wasn’t Sue’s kid, so that was out of the question. After Richard and Sue got married Sue wasted no time in telling Scott and I that we were to address her as Sue only that we were never to call her “mom” or refer to her as our “mother”. So yeah, wiping my ass wasn’t on her list of agreed upon tasks.

Richard only kept my brother and I because “it was cheaper than paying child support”. Wiping my ass was not very high on his list of priorities.

And as much as I feared my grandmother, she had moved out of the PMQ back in the spring of 1981. Walking from the PMQ at 10215 – 138 Ave over to my grandmother’s apartment at 10611 – 111th St. to get my butt wiped wasn’t in the cards.

Many creative ways were tried and tested to wipe my ass that didn’t involve using my hands.

The cast was only supposed to stay on my right arm for six weeks, but it ended up staying on for the entire summer as Richard insisted that this was the best way to teach me to not fuck around.