Diana Darby ** "I V" ** Intravenous

Lessons In Swimming And Taxes

On Thursday,
I am going to go meet with a professional
to get help with my taxes.
I’ve never gotten help from anyone before.
For the last fifteen years,
I’ve done my taxes myself.
I’ve done Schedule D,
and Schedule C,
and Long Term Loss Carryover.
Schedule A
and Schedule B
and the dreaded 1040.
I’ve accounted for every receipt and expenditure.
And after doing them for so long now,
I can honestly say
I feel pretty confident about my knowledge.
Still,
given that this year is slightly different from the others,
I think now might be a good time
for a professional check-up,
a fine tuning,
just to make sure
I’m as good as I think I am.
It wasn’t always like this.
I didn’t use to do my taxes.
My mother did them for my sister and me for years.
Then one day,
out of the blue,
she walked in with all the tax forms, threw them at me, and said,
“Here, you can do them now. I’ve had it.”
No explanation.
No sitting down with me and telling me that she thought it was important that I learn to do these things myself,
no guidance as to what to do or how to do it,
just an avalanche of forms coming at me.
Just like that,
she had thrown me into the deep and asked me to start paddling.
I did the same thing to my dog, Trouble, once – threw him into the deep.
A lake.
He’d never swam.
For some reason he thought he didn’t know how.
We were out on this paddleboat in Michigan and we decided it was time he learned
what he already knew.
We picked him up and tossed him in the lake.
The moment he hit water,
he started paddling in a panic.
He was terrified.
He wanted out.
He tried to get back up on the boat,
But couldn’t.
Paws flying.
Crazed look in his eye.
I jumped into the water next to him,
to calm him down,
and his long black nails ripped into my thigh.
“That’s just punishment,” I thought, as I felt my warm blood seep into the water.
When we finally got to shore,
he shook the water off his coat
and just looked at me
as if to say, “How could you have done that to me?”
I felt awful.
I knew immediately what I had done was wrong.
At the time, I didn’t know then where my cruelty had come from.
But I do now.
It was taught.