Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
Perfect families are for the 1950's. We're pretty grown up now. We all know that any time you see perfection--that's a facade.
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I've seen an assortment of family dysfunctions come back and bite members.
One former friend was one of three children. I never met him, but by all accounts, her father was a classic character I would have enjoyed meeting. She had a brother and a sister. Unfortunately, her brother was ...
damaged, with an assortment of developmental and personality disorders. Dad couldn't admit his only son was beyond hope, and poured resources that should have done things like pay for her and her sister's education down that rat hole. By the time he finally faced reality and the kid was institutionalized, she and her sister had been screwed over.
Then dad died of cancer, leaving her sister primarily responsible for her brother. It was obvious she had lots of unresolved father issues that would now never
be resolved. On one hand, her father
was one of those wild characters and she loved him more than anything. On the other, she hated his guts for what he'd done to her and her sister, but she couldn't
admit that, even to herself.
The fallout destroyed her marriage to another friend of mine. They had been partners in a company, and expansion that was his idea didn't work and put them in a financial bind. (It didn't work because a key distribution partner went belly up. Absent that, things would have been fine.) Her primary need was security after the roller coaster ride that was her father, he wasn't providing it, and she divorced him.
Everyone who knew them took sides and most decided he was that bad guy. He wasn't. He was simply clueless, and should have understood his wife's needs far better than he did, and not been so gung ho about taking risks.
The last step was a public blowup where she stopped talking to her sister, and moved the the West Coast to start a whole new career. She effectively divorced her family and moved as far away from everything connected as she could get.
Another old friend has father and sister issues. Father is long dead, but one of those folks who levied impossible expectations on the kids when they were alive. She had no desire to meet his expectations (and likely couldn't have in any case), so got treated badly. Her sister did try to be what dad wanted, and if half the tales are true became a thoroughly dis-likeable person. She's still alive and a thorn in my friend's side. Whenever my SO and I see her, we can expect to spend some time listening to complaints about dad and sister we've already heard multiple times. All I could say last time she started in about her dad was "You
really need to let go of that..."
Quote:
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You know, I can't recall the year, but a long time ago, and far far away, I was at Comdex. '84? That sounds roughly right. Man...those were the days. We still thought that everything was possible. Ah, youth. So wasted on the young, as they say.
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All sorts of things are
possible. You just can't afford what it would cost to
do them. (I've tried to get that across in other areas about other things, where I look at what people would like done and say "There
isn't that much money in the
world!")
Companies decided there wasn't enough money to spend what Comdex cost and stopped going, and it withered and died. I never got to Comdex, but did get to a few other computer trade shows, and most were zoos.
(I went to one local show on behalf of the systems house I worked for. We resold AT&T gear, back when AT&T was in the computer business. I found myself assisting AT&T reps at the show on breaking into one of their Unix machines that needed to be reconfigured but no one knew the root password. I knew how to get root on the machine (by exploiting what was arguably a bug in the default setup), and they were very happy I was there to assist.
)
______
Dennis