Renegade Issue 35

10-11 / 100

10
looking for hard to find Mopar parts, instead of easy to ac-
quire Chevy parts! I only spent $10 on a couple of Mopar
items. Gabe bought me a riding jacket for $20 and found
himself a posi for his Roadrunner. I have wanted a jacket
with armor in it for a while now. Gabe has one that we
got free from Motorcycle House when they were sending
me free products to test, review and keep. They had sent
me a woman’s leather riding jacket and the jacket that I
won through the Garage Girls Makeover was too small so
I gave both of them away.
My big white chicken Oatmeal that I got last winter ended
up dying. I went up to the cage the morning of the Throw-
back finale and found her dead. I missed that chicken so
much that for my birthday a few days later I came home to
find a new chicken- a red one that I have named Memphis
Raines! At first I thought the chicken was a damn dud, as
it just sat there, was small in size and made no noise. But
now having had Memphis almost a month, it now has its
own personality. Memphis will call back to me when I call
out, she likes to come inside and get on the back of the
couch, and it lays it’s
egg each day in the
iris bed, instead of up
in its cage.
The craziness of what
people say to me never seems to end. I was at the post
office a couple months ago when a guy commented on my
tattoos. I have learned that if the other person has tattoos,
to not say negative things and instead just mention to them
if they are looking for a new artist, that I have cards on me.
Well this guy said he didn’t have any tattoos but that he
thought mine looked to be good work. So I decided to go
ahead and tell him that my right arm is my 1956 Panhead
and my left is my 1939 Knucklehead. He was then flab-
bergasted and said “YOU have a Panhead????”. I guess
it is just not possible in some people’s minds that I have a
Panhead. I’m guessing he never heard of a Knuckle, or he
would have questioned it.
While I was making my rounds at the Drive-In, a guy my
age or younger, looked at me and said “Look at you with
your bandanna, turquoise mascara and pink hair”. He
then saw my arms, touched my shirt sleeve and said “Oh
and you even have tattoos”. He proceeded to tell me that
maybe he would see me at the event next month when I
promptly told him “Yes you will as I am the one running it!”
Many things were going through my mind at the time but
I decided that crushing someone with intelligence and the
facts would be the best way to roll. I don’t know if he was
trying to be funny or was making fun of me but whatever
the case, it didn’t work out too good on his end. The next
time I saw him I gave him a pen with my photo on it, cour-
tesy of CRO.
If you remember, I started wearing the turquoise mascara
as an inside joke because a “lady” at the discount store
kept asking me if I was 55 or older! A couple of people
know this and when they see me they tell me I don’t look
a day over 60!
Some of my antics and inside jokes are “award winning”. When
I was in college during my years as a PBL officer, staying at
fancy motels, I thought that everything but the furniture was
yours for the taking. The motel had these fancy soap dishes
shaped like seashells so I went from room to room gathering
them up. When the advisor saw them in my duffel bag, she
made me put them back and told me they were not for us to
take. At the honors banquet they gave me the “Soap Dish
Award”. Even though very few people knew what that meant,
we who knew were laughing!
When my old neighbors lived beside us they had a yard full of
goats, chickens and dogs. They never cleaned up after any
of the animals and it always stunk, especially when the wind
blew in this direction. We were having problems with them
because they believed that they could do what they wanted
and wouldn’t try to resolve any problems we had, mainly their
dogs barking ALL night and us not being able to sleep. We had
bought a cooler full of shrimp from the coast and after cleaning
them, we just let the water and shells sit. It had been sitting for
a couple months one
summer when I had
had enough. I saw
the neighbor leave, so
while she was gone
I dumped that stinky
cooler of shrimp leftovers on the edge of my property but in
the direction of her front door. The cooler stunk so bad that
I almost puked! When she got out of her car, she turned her
head trying to find out what that smell was. I was laughing in
the comforts of my own home thinking “Ya’ll been stinking for
YEARS, how you like me now?????” They moved shortly
after that!
I am currently dealing with a really bad burn that I inflicted upon
myself using tea tree oil. I only use essential oils and some-
times I use them “not as directed”. I have used the oil in the
past and it will remove skin tags, but it usually takes a week or
two of continuous application. I had two on my arm, and this
time I decided to speed up the process and used a Scotch-Brite
pad on myself. Well, needless to say combining the scour pad
with tea tree on very thin skin near my armpit didn’t turn out too
well. Gabe said I have become “famous” for doing those kinds
of “stunts”. One day he came home and I had just gotten out of
the shower. My back had been hurting so I decided to rub pure
cinnamon oil all over me. YIKES, I was beet-red and burning
for a long time. After that, the cinnamon oil left the bathroom
and went into the kitchen. Another time I put Ben-Gay into my
hot Epsom salt bath- really not a good idea.
A couple months ago I attended a cousin’s “getting off crank
party”. When I tell people that, they laugh but it is true. It was
a party to celebrate her getting clean and starting the rest of
her life. She was just turning 25, so I told her that I didn’t get
off of drugs and alcohol until I was 29, so she is WAY ahead of
the game! I hope that talking to her made a difference and that
my advice will resonate with her. She loves motorcycles and
doesn’t have kids, so there is a connection there, which is why
I made the effort to go and see her.
“The craz iness of what people
say to me never seems to end”
11
As far as dealing with my mother’s estate, I have had to hire
an attorney and my narcissistic brother hired an attorney too!
Both things that I knew would happen. Since he figured out
he couldn’t just TELL me that he owned part of HER estate, he
is now telling his attorney that he paid the taxes on ALL of her
property since 1996. Well, we know that isn’t true as I have
all of the receipts and Searcy County is MORE than willing
to help me in any way that they can as his reputation is quite
well-known. So it all boils down to money (just as it did a year
ago), and if he wants to keep the property, then he has to buy
my half. When money was mentioned a month ago through
the attorneys, all communication has stopped once again. He
may have strong-armed my mother and took everything she
had but I am not just going to lie down.
My mother dying left me with unresolved issues and I was in
a grief-stricken state for some time. One day while in town
it dawned on me that I was mourning the loss of something
that I never had; I really never had a mother and I sure didn’t
have the type of mother that one would go into a corner and
start crying about. It was at that moment that I realized how I
had been wasting time and energy over something that never
was. I liken it to the fact that I am grieving over not being a
millionaire anymore! If I walked up to someone and told them
that they would think I was absolutely stupid.
So I have decided to take my brokenness and transform it into
something positive. I never had grandparents growing up and
I never truly had a mother or father. What I’ve realized is that
there is no closure to mourning something you never had. I
have a cousin who is going through a similar thing. She had a
mother even worse than mine and she was having a hard time
coping with the fact that she didn’t feel “bad” for her mother
dying, that it was truly a blessing. Since I have had my dis-
covery, we have talked and I believe she now realizes we are
both better off. When someone wants to keep you down, you
have to move on, away from the negative. Though my story
is drenched with narcissistic abuse, of being a co-dependent
and of lots of gas-lighting, aka brain-washing, that is NOT how
my story ends.
Had my family supported my passions or had even gave en-
couragement where it was needed; I would have turned out
a different person. I believe that I went through all of this in
order to TELL my story to the world. I read so many stories
of parents teaching their kids, getting them into power sports
while they are young and I can’t help to wonder “what might
have been”. That is obviously not my story as I had a mother
who never even learned how to drive and a father that died
when I was 17, at the age of 73!
Although I cannot change the past and I am happy with who I
am as a person, I will keep on fighting the good fight. I will be
the light, I will treat myself better than my parents treated me
and I will SHINE ON!
Chris Gibbany
Old Iron Never Dies!