International Student Identity Card: Blog # 4

Almost all my most valuable possessions are pictures. Pictures of family and friends, with ‘family’ leading both the words ‘and’ and ‘friends,’ but not because of any priority or principle I might have.  No, my only reason is simple. Ninety-nine percent of all my precious pics happen to be pictures of my family. Notice my use of the verb happen. I do not, in any way, mean that my alliance with my family is greater than the one with my friends; no. It is simply that my family took pictures at most family occasions of note and my friends, mostly guys, didn’t. I’m 99% sure none of my junior-high and high school buddies have any pictures with me anywhere in them. Why? Because, I don’t recall one moment in my teen years when I posed for a picture with a friend for any purpose other than for our high school yearbook, and then almost always because of our membership in the same club, participation on a sports team, or some other school-oriented activity.

The verbal preference second only to the order of ‘family and friends’ is that I’ve always referenced any image of family & friends as a ‘picture’ versus a ‘photograph.’ Picture has forever been my go-to term of choice. Why? Well, once again simplicity trumps everything else. You see, many years after I first pronounced the syllables ‘pic’ and ‘chur’ I grew the teeth and developed the dexterity to properly place my tongue inside my big mouth in order to pronounce the 3-syllable mouthful known as ‘photograph.’ So, of all the pictures - not computer images or any image other than a photograph on legitimate photograph paper - I possess today at my advanced age of 65, ninety-nine percent plus are of family. And, over half of those family pics are black & white. The earliest in my ‘collection’ are from before my father’s birth year of 1926; and every one of those early shots are of my father’s parents’ families - his adoptive dad’s Rowlee clan and adoptive mother’s Smith family. But, the fact that neither the Rowlees nor the Smiths were our ‘blood relatives’ never mattered to my two sisters and me and continues not to matter today. Family is family, period; adoptive or natural.

However, the matriarchal head of the Rowlee Family displayed a radical change of mind and loyalty after Grandpa Rowlee died in a car accident with Grandma the lone survivor. Clara Smith Rowlee, through her attorney, decided to write my sisters and me out of her will, for what reasons we had no clue. However, it became apparent to the three of us that “Gram,” as she instructed us to call her, felt that her adoptive son’s children were not quite…. her grandchildren, after all. So, after Grandpa was out of the way, Gram had her lawyer send us a document in which we would release ourselves from Grandma Rowlee’s last will & testament so that “Justice will be done.” WTH?
It turns out that the money Dad thought he’d been gifted to get us started out west in California, Grandma maintained had been a loan. So, let me ask you this question, Gram (or whatever nickname passes your muster now, because that might’ve changed, too): After your husband / our now-former grandfather passed from this life, you saw fit to have three of your grandchildren not only written out of your last will and testament, but you requested - through a total stranger / your lawyer - that each of us sign a document releasing us from your family so that “justice will be done”? All I can say in response to your “Yeah, but” answer is this one syllable that says it all – a syllable not even considered a word, but an anagram nonetheless: “huh.” Just plain old “huh.”

So, you ask - with annoyance rising in your voice: “How does any of this background information have anything to do with blogging about your international student travel ID?”

Well, let me just state this: I will reveal the “rest of the story” on my next blog. In the meantime, my blog-ees, eat your brightly colored veggies, floss daily, and avoid all the pollution and other stressors you can to decrease your chances of contracting the dementia type known as Alzheimer’s Disease.   

Until then, be good to yourself and everyone else as long as you can.
Be good, fail, repent, repeat.