I grew up with my two male cousins (A & B) who were very competitive. Everything was a game: a test of physical and mental endurance and trying to win. This was the 70s and 80s and wining meant winning: there is one winner and two losers. It was brutal and little did I know it would shape my personality and who I am and where I am trying to go even today.
Winning was winning not the watered down "everyone is winner" you see now. I perfected my profanity skills at age 8 because of Monopoly. Monopoly ALWAYS ended in crying, a fight, profanity, and/or the board game being thrown across the room with us. I was the only girl but that did not matter here. There was no room for being a girl growing up from age 4 to 13 in a household with competitive boys. I remember taking off my pink nail polish around age 9 before Monopoly games because I did not want to be mocked as being "soft."
I learned from an early age to be very demanding and a little aggressive. My best friend reminded me this weekend when we were five y/o, I told her I would "punch her in the face" if she didn't get out of my neighbor's plastic green swimming pool. The plastic pool wasn't even mine but I was attempting to control the swimming pool and the sandbox at an early age.
We would play a game called "seat back" growing up. My grandfather has relatives in South Carolina which meant a yearly road trip for us. There were three of us in the back seat and only two windows. Do you know how many bloody noses and wrestling matches were started and ended in the backseat because there were only two windows? I am not talking about a pinch or a slap but all out mortal combat type fighting with the sounds from punches and jab.
We developed something called "seat back" which allowed the person sitting by the window to reclaim his or her seat. But you had to call seat back before you left the vehicle or you forfeited your seat next to the window. Do you know how many fights I had because I loved my Pepsi (even as a child) and therefore would be the first one running to the restroom when my grandfather FINALLY stopped at a rest stop (after passing 8 rest stops driving down I-75) and I forgot to call seat back?
There is no seat back in real life and there is certainly no seat back with the State Nursing Board in complaint investigation and adjudicative matters. You cannot submit a 50 page response with exhibits to a complaint and then when things:
a. Go Sour;
b. Take a road you didn't expect;
c. Take a road you thought about but did not really consider;
d. Take a road you were told about online but did not think applied to you;
e. Take a road which looks, feels, and tasts like the worst case scenario; or
f. do not go the way you want it to go
you say "Seat Back" and you return to the beginning or where you initially started.
If anyone finds a seat back button for life and nurse licensure matters let me know.
Until then I have to cherish my memories of screaming seatback to Cousin A & B on road trips which then transferred to daily driving. I still laugh when another male cousin C drove "down South" with us one year and he was confused and bewildered by "seat back." I took his seat by the window because I told him he forgot to say "seat back" twice and this was a rule. He cried and I smiled. My grandmother looked at me and rolled her eyes, Cousin A laughed because he had a window. Cousin B said I cheated because he was sitting next to the "hump" in the middle and he did not have a window. He called me a cheater so of course, we had a back seat slug fest for 30 seconds until my grandfather opened the car door.
When you are deciding whether or not to represent yourself before the State Nursing Board talk to at least 2-3 attorneys on the cost of representation before you decide to represent yourself because there is no seat back before the State Nursing Board in a disciplinary investigation or in licensure matters.
Oh and for you softies, my Cousin C didn't want the window seat anyway. I later told him the back door could fly open up anytime. Therefore he agreed to sit in the middle of the back seat and not participate in Seat Back with us.
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