Look, kids, it’s a mini me
Tanya got in my ride-share car with her two girls, and exclaimed “Look, kids, it’s a mini me,” after noticing my short stature. I smiled at Tanya and said nothing hoping she’d get the drift.
This interaction wasn’t off to a great start, I thought, wondering if I should have corrected her and explain how now-a-days we use the politically correct term, “little person.” But as I listened to her conversation with the social worker — how she was planning to move into a hotel because she’d lost her Social Security benefits — I began to feel a little more empathy for her.
When she got off the phone, she explained that she’d lost her benefits because she’d worked more than the 20-hour-a-week limit. Over the years, she’d earned around $30,000, and now she was on her way to the Social Security office to try to straighten things out.
Somehow, the conversation shifted, and she mentioned that she had a mental illness that qualified her for Social Security benefits. She explained that because of her father — who was a Navy SEAL — and her mother, an Army reserve, the PTSD they both suffered had caused her a lot of trauma. Because of that, she was able to claim Social Security.
I didn’t even know you could claim Social Security for trauma like that, so I said, “My dad served in Vietnam in the Army.” I declared thinking maybe I should pursue social security for the PTSD I faced from his anger towards his children after his service in the military.
“Oh yeah, you can get money for any kind of crazy trauma you experience,” she said. “My mom and dad — both of them — were angry as shit. Always telling me I did everything wrong. ‘You do this wrong, you do that wrong.’ Every time I turned around, I was doing something wrong.”
“Same here,” I said. “My dad’s favorite phrase was, ‘Stop crying, or I’ll give you something to cry about.’”
“Wow, another army brat,” she said. “Yeah, it’s tough, this childhood trauma stuff. I see my therapist, but I’m pretty tired of hearing about all the things I ‘can’t’ do.”
“Me too,” I said. “My therapist keeps telling me there should be something I’m doing for myself. I should see it as a good thing, like talking to a friend. But it’s hard to look at it that way when you’re being so vulnerable and talking about your personal stuff — like you have nothing left to hide.”
She paused for a moment, then added, “My dad left after a few years of raising me. Then my mom just left me with my grandmother. She thought it’d be for the best.”
“I get it,” I said. “My mom was always gone, and my dad did the best he could, but it was tough.”
She went on, “I’ve got five kids — two in their twenties, one eighteen, and these two,” she said, pointing to the two kids sitting in the back, who were around seven years old. “You know, I’m always the one saying whatever I want to say, doing whatever I want to do. My friends think I’m funny, but maybe I need to bite my tongue more.”
“I like that about you,” I said. “You’re loose, open. It doesn’t seem like you take things too seriously.”
“Yeah,” she said, “but that’s gotten me into a lot of trouble in the past. I’ve had to learn to keep my boundaries up.”
