My favorite teacher in high school was Mr. Rowe. He was my sophomore English teacher, during the first year Lake Havasu High School opened its doors. The last year he taught at Lake Havasu High School, before he retired, he was my son’s English teacher.
Dean Rowe taught us more than English—he taught us how to think. I remember the day he told our class the school had decided to start requiring its students to wear school uniforms. This was back in 1969 or 1970, when girls wore mini skirts despite our dress code, and our generation was not receptive to the idea of school uniforms in public schools.
We spent that entire period brainstorming ways to stop the new rule. But just as the class was coming to an end, Mr. Rowe revealed there were no plans to require us to wear uniforms. It had all been an exercise, designed to make us think critically and work together toward a common goal. Before we left for our next period, we all promised not to tell the next class, so we wouldn’t spoil the exercise for them.
I remember him teaching Shakespeare and mythology. He told us stories about his life that inevitably segued into a teaching moment. One I specifically recall involved his time in the Navy. Dean’s students all knew he had been in the Navy. There was at least one vintage Navy recruitment poster hanging on our classroom wall.
On this particular day, he brought up the topic of his time in the Navy, which turned into a lesson on marketing and advertising techniques, specifically the one that involved triggering the target’s emotions to get them to react in a certain way; either buy the product or enlist in the military. I believe it was that vintage poster that did it for Dean.
There was another one of his lectures I always remembered. I thought about it yesterday, and I had something of an epiphany, making me realize it described many voters today.
I suspect the intent of the lecture was to teach us things are not always as they appear, AKA don’t judge a book by the cover. Yet, my new takeaway from that lecture, has nothing to do with Mr. Rowe’s original intent. As I recall, Mr. Rowe was sharing with us an experience he had in college. His class was taken to a mental facility and were required to interact with some of the patients there, and then later Dean and his fellow students would analyze their interactions with the patients to deduce why they were in the facility.
There was a patient—let’s call him Hal—who Mr. Rowe spent some time with that day. Hal was a nice, softspoken, friendly young man. Mr. Rowe couldn’t understand why he had been institutionalized. Later he learned Hal had been on a farm where someone was operating a hay bailer. Out of the blue, without warning, Hal picked up another man and shoved him in the running hay bailer.
Had Hal intended to murder someone that day? No. Hal was simply curious as to what would happen if someone was put in the hay bailer. His intent was never to kill anyone. But his brain was unable to think ahead and mentally work out what the consequences of his actions might be.
While Dean’s intended lesson that day might have been never judge a book by its cover, the delayed lesson I learned 55 years later is that some people are unable to mentally work out the consequences of their actions. They must live those consequences before they understand. And yet, for some, even that may not teach them. I don’t think it taught Hal anything.
Since the presidential election I’ve seen a lot of MAGA supporters cheering on Trump when he talks about things like taking over Greenland, Canada, and Panama, without deference to the citizens who live there, or the fact they are our allies.
To them, in this moment in time, they relish that bully behavior, believing it shows strength and will demand the respect of the world. He’s their guy, and they love what they perceive as toughness.
However, they fail to have the ability to look into the future and use their critical thinking skills to see what this will actually do to our country—how this thing might end.
But gee, Bobbi, you say, no one can predict the future. To which I disagree.
Just look to history for the answer. And it doesn’t end well. Not even for Trump.
This new administration keeps telling us DEI is responsible for subpar employees. It prevents employers from hiring the best.
Yet by Trump’s own cabinet picks, the recent confirmation hearings are disproving that claim in a spectacular fashion.
Let’s look at the current nominee under consideration, Robert Kennedy Jr. to head up the Department of Health and Human Services. Let’s overlook the reported brain worm and get to some of the more disturbing aspects of this nominee.
During the recent hearing, Kennedy made it clear he had no idea what Medicaid was, especially after he expressed his opinion that those who used Medicaid were dissatisfied with the high fees and deductibles of Medicaid.
If you don’t know what is wrong with that statement, then you too know nothing about Medicaid.
He also said the American people didn’t want the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and preferred private medical insurance. As someone who believes ACA saved her life, I’m not asking you to share my opinion that he is clueless on this topic, but you might consider the reaction of many Americans after the killing of the UHC CEO, and the outpouring of horror stories shared by Americans about private medical insurance companies.
Kennedy was also credited as responsible for the measle outbreak in Samoa when he pushed his anti vax view over there.
It’s common knowledge Kennedy was a heroin user for years. But my issue is not with Kennedy being a recovered drug addict (assuming he is recovered). My issue is the fact he has made public statements about how before the drug use, he was struggling in school, but with heroin he went to the top of his class.
A while back Trump talked about implementing an anti-drug program in our country that reminded many of us of Nancy Reagan’s Just-Say-No program. Not sure how the Secretary of the Department of Health sharing with the world how heroin improved his grades in college will help keep young people from trying drugs. It might even tempt some who never considered heroin to give it a try.
Kennedy isn’t just a subpar candidate; he is a woefully unqualified candidate for the position. But so was Hegseth for the Department of Defense.
They are two white men who have abused substances and have been creditably accused of sexual abuse. And aside from those two moral deficiencies, just like Hegseth does not have the experience or qualifications to head Department of Defense, Kennedy does not have the experience or qualifications to head the Department of Health. And if either man was guided by character as opposed to white man ego, they would decline the positions offered them, for the betterment of our country.
And yet we are told, it is DEI that prevents the qualified candidates from landing the job.
Growing up I didn’t attend church with my parents. Occasionally my sister and I would go to Sunday School, yet we didn’t have a church family but that was okay, because I had my family.
My immediate family included my older sister Lynn and our parents, Walt and Caroline. We also had grandparents, although technically our two grandfathers were step-grandfathers, as my mother’s father had died when she was a little girl, and my father’s parents had divorced when he was a child, and I never met his real father, despite the fact he died when I was about thirteen. But our step-grandfathers filled the void, and I loved them both.
We had aunts and uncles, and cousins that we got together with for the holidays, like Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter. I felt loved.
Growing up, there was also our schnauzer, Fritzy, and our three cats, Mother, Gypsy and Walter (named after my dad), and our canary, Dicky. The cats were outdoor cats, but Mother Cat did make it her life’s mission to come inside to see Dicky.
I turned seventy this last November. My parents, grandparents, all the aunts and uncles, and some of the cousins have moved on. I keep in touch with a few of the cousins, but it’s been years since we shared a holiday.
As a child I used to idolize my sister, Lynn. She’s four years older than me. We were roommates during my first year of college, sharing an apartment our parents paid for. I was her maid of honor when she married, and she was my matron of honor when I married. I had children first and it was around the time my eldest was born that I stopped idolizing her. Instead, she became one of my best friends.
Growing up, she was always Dad’s favorite. In our family, she was called the Princess. Oh, it didn’t mean he loved her more, but as my paternal grandmother once said, Lynn was easier. I was a persistent, relentless child. My mother’s best friend, Aggie, told my parents, “Only tell Bobbi no if you absolutely have to.” In other words, pick your battles.
Had Dad embraced the practice of spare the rod and spoil the child, I probably would not have survived childhood. But Dad was not a violent man. That didn’t mean I disrespected him. Dad didn’t need to hit me for me to respect him. I simply never feared my father. I knew he loved me and wanted what was best for me.
Both my sister and I grew up never wanting our father to be disappointed in us. That would have been far worse than being hit. In truth, both my sister and I had Dad on a pedestal from childhood until adulthood. He eventually fell off the pedestal, but that’s okay. No one belongs on a pedestal.
I was close to my mother my entire life, until she passed away three months ago. She, like my sister, was one of my best friends. When I was younger, maybe during college or later or sooner, Mom nicknamed me the Dutchess. I think it was her way of compensating for Lynn being called the Princess for most of her life. For clarification, Princess and Dutchess weren’t nicknames used on a daily or regular basis. They were simply titles used during random conversations throughout our life.
During my childhood our parents always presented a solid front. They freely expressed their love for each other, and Lynn and I always knew they were a team. They were not parents that manipulative children could pit against each other.
Having never been part of a “church family” I never truly understood the concept of a patriarchy. That was something I was exposed to about three years ago when I first joined TikTok and started watching videos from young women deconstructing from a strict Christian upbringing. For me, it was like watching people from another culture. I suppose that is exactly what it was.
While Mom was a stay at home mom up until we moved to Havasu Palms when I was thirteen, my parents always approached their marriage as if they were a team. They managed their money together; she helped him run his general contractor business. While Mom clearly did most of the domestic labor during this time, Dad often did the grocery shopping, and he enjoyed cooking.
Yet looking back, I realize in many ways it was a patriarchy, yet not as rigid as those portrayed in the videos I watched, where women described men who treated their wives like children, telling them what they could or couldn’t do. But it was a patriarchy in the sense it was Dad’s dreams our family ultimately pursued, not Mom’s.
Dad was born in 1928, so he naturally held some old fashioned views. Yet he never once made me feel boys were inherently superior or smarter than girls. Although when I mentioned wanting to take shop in high school, he thought it was ridiculous. I suspect it wasn’t really something I wanted to do, because considering how persistent I was growing up, when I wanted something, that would have not been the end of that conversation.
Mom once told me Dad thought girls should pursue more feminine sports, like snow skiing, water skiing, swimming and skating, as opposed to sports like baseball or basketball. Looking back, I find her observation amusing and inaccurate. Those happened to be all the sports Dad enjoyed. Dad built a swimming pool in our first Covina house, making sure it was deep enough for the diving board he installed. Both my sister and I took swimming lessons, and Lynn went on to water ballet. We had a boat when growing up and went on water skiing trips along the Colorado River and Lake Havasu, before moving to Havasu Palms. Dad took us snow skiing, and as a kid we went to the ice skating rink in West Covina. I don’t remember Dad ever watching football or baseball on TV. Although one season Mom got hooked on the Dodgers.
Mom also used to tell us Dad never wanted a son, he always wanted girls. As an adult, I began to doubt that too, considering how close he was to his nephew, Rod, and how he adored his first grandson—my eldest child.
I don’t recall my parents ever telling me it was my duty or destiny to marry or have children. In fact, Mom told us to never have children for her. While she was a doting grandmother who adored and spoiled her grandchildren, I think her message was that having children was a choice, and not something a woman had to do.
Although my father may not have totally shared Mom’s sentiment on the possibilty we might decide not to have children, considering how excited he was to become a grandfather. While I haven’t really patterned Walt from my Haunting Danielle series after my dad, although they share names, there is one way Walt Marlow is like Walt Johnson, and that is how Walt Marlow wanted children, and how he would likely react to grandchildren, and how protective he is with the women in his life. That’s my dad.
My parents also never told me I needed to go to college, yet for some reason I always knew I was going to college. Always. And my parents paid for it, as they paid for my sister’s college. They weren’t rich, and they hadn’t started a college fund for us. But this was pre-Reagan era, when college tuition was affordable in this country.
After watching many of those TikTok videos I mentioned—many of which were made by women the age of my own children—it made me realize there were many parents from my generation who actually taught their daughters they had a specific role in life, one different and subservient to their sons’.
On one hand, I was shocked at my own generation—I thought we had progressed. But then I remembered an incident I had with my boyfriend when I was fourteen years old. And then I realized, ahh….he probably grew up to be a father to one of those daughters whose videos I’ve watched.
The incident occurred at my parent’s home at Havasu Palms. Close friends of my parents were visiting, and the wife started up a conversation with me while my boyfriend was off somewhere. What neither of us realized. He was close by, eavesdropping.
She asked me how school was going, and then one thing led to another, and I found myself sharing with her my dreams for the future. About going to college, about wanting to be a writer, all sorts of things.
I’m not sure how much I said after opening up to her, but what I remember most is my boyfriend later taking me aside and scolding me. He told me he had overheard the conversation, and found me being very full of myself, uppity. And in his own way was attempting to put me in my place and squash my dreams.
How did I respond? I’m not really sure if I said anything. I probably thought he was a jerk. This was the same guy who once told me, “No girlfriend of mine will ever have her own car.” I didn’t respond that time either, I just remember thinking, “I guess we’re not going to be dating when I’m 16.”
Over the years I’ve often thought most young girls date at least one jerk. Either they learn from it and move on to date better guys or get stuck in a bad cycle. I am happy to say the guys I dated after that were nice guys. And I don’t mean “nice” in the negative connotation way some women on social media use it when describing men.
I’m seventy now, grateful for having parents who always made me feel loved and gave me the freedom to be whatever I wanted.
As for that friend of my parents who I shared my dreams with, if I’m not mistaken, she is the same friend of my mother’s who reads my Haunting Danielle series today, and whom I occasionally exchange emails with.
(Banner Photo: From left to right, Walt and Bobbi; Caroline and Bobbi; Walt and Caroline; Bobbi, Lynn and Fritz)
