Stories from my past

       What prompts this post is an old lady asking me to sit down on my way out of a monthly doctor's visit. She had overheard me telling stories back in the other part of the building. We were in the waiting room when we met, and I was on my out.

            Well today is Pearl Harbor Day, to me.  And I used to live there, too. And her brother is entombed in the Battleship Arizona, forever. And she wanted to share this story with me. She had even been there to throw lei's in his honor.

            Heck, I learned to play spin the bottle in a bomb shelter (we had to break-in which we boys and girls knew how to do) built in Southern California just to protect people from Japanese bombing that our ancestors feared, and prepared for.  Hard to believe now.

            Even during my first time in Okinawa, my Momasan (when I could afford one back then), shared a story about being in a cave with her grandmother, when the Marines came in. She assumed she would die, since she had been taught that to be a Marine you had to kill and eat your grandmother just to qualify. Hard to believe now, and I shared this story, too.

            And my last time at the Pearl Harbor Arizona Memorial, it was full of Japanese tourists. As luck would have it I was also at the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima a couple of weeks before. In both places I felt sheepish when I realized most of the visitors had to learn about such things through books and school due to their age. As for me, I will always remember in my mind the impression, shadow if you will, of a human embossed on a stone pillar from the bridge where the first use an atom bomb in war went off.

            Well then the stories got flowing. And my impression was that women can lie/embellish stories just as well as the men. So it was a fun experience, to me. By then the ratio in the doctor's waiting room was like 4 females to 2 males.

            So then we got into earthquakes, future beachfront property, and stories about California, like Southern versus Central versus Northern.  I even shared a story about camping out in Yosemite, and the park ranger warning us about a marauding  bear and to hang our food in the trees. Well, to make a long story short, we saw the bear when coming out of outhouses, and when my brother tripped (age 3 or so) my mother passed him up on the way from the bear and on the way to the camp. So much for maternal instinct versus self-preservation.  And my little brother got up, and still beat his Mom back to the camp. And when we got to the camp, and turned around, the bear was running the other way. I expect my mother will arise out of her grave and come get me tonight just for sharing this story.

            And this old lady had had her honeymoon with her husband at Yosemite, and was proud of it.

            Well, then another female in the waiting room shared a story about going through an earthquake in San Diego, California. Her Navy husband was at work, and their baby slept through it all. It was a pretty good earthquake as she reported, like shaking the bed around the room. She obviously  loved him, or so I thought as I listened. I countered with all my Hawaii earthquake experience. At the 2d grade level of age, nobody thinks they can die, so an earthquake can be nifty. Now I suspect my Mom and Dad may have thought otherwise.

            Same idea applies to the tidal wave we went through, now called a tsunami. In this case we evacuated to the ridge above where we lived on the beach, and what I was disappointed in, I suspect my mother and father were relieved in. And I shared this story, too.

            Now I could go on, but choose to stop. There was a lot of storytelling going on.

            Anyway, you just never know what will happen when an old lady asks you sit down, and listen.