Archives for May 2012
Blogging With Passion and Purpose
If You Put It Against My Head You Better Pull The Trigger
Make no mistake about it, I never enjoy getting hit. I am not one of those guys who wishes that I could be an MMA fighter. I don’t need to prove my masculinity by stepping inside the ring to see who is the last man standing.
That is not because I am a pacifist or have any moral issues with hurting another human being. I don’t. Never have. Don”t go out of my way looking for trouble but if it finds me I am not always good about turning away.
I should be. It would be the smarter move to walk away. It would have saved me a lot of trouble but I am not that guy. I don’t play consciously think about it. I just do it and when I do it is without concern for consequences.
Last Saturday night I went out for a drink. Didn’t have a particular destination in mind or a need to be with friends. I just wanted to have a beer and watch whatever ballgame might be on the television.
It wasn’t a night for small talk nor was I an angry or upset. I just felt like being among people but not with people.
I chose local college bar. It fit the bill of what I wanted and was close enough to my place to not worry about how to get their and back. All I needed were my own two feet. That suited me just fine. Human powered transportation. Environmentally friendly, reliable, steady and safe, mostly.
Most nights it would have gone down exactly as I expected it to. I would have walked over, ordered my beer and burger and eaten my meal in quiet. This time I pulled the Joker out of the deck.
And I knew it.
Hadn’t been there more than five minutes when one of the kids bumped into me and gave me a glassy eyed stare that told me he was too drunk to recognize that there are some people you just don’t mess with.
I didn’t say excuse me. He had bumped into me and frankly I wasn’t in the mood to kiss his twenty-something ass. I saw his two buddies and the girls they were speaking to. I knew that he was going to act like an asshole. I knew that an apology would have defused the entire situation, but when trouble comes looking for me I don’t flinch.
So when he called me an asshole I punched him in the face and watched him crumble. If this would have been a movie I would have been worried about his little friends who most certainly would have joined in, but it wasn’t and they didn’t.
I finished my beer and I walked out of the place. Not because I was asked to leave or was afraid of getting arrested but because the little prick soured me on the place.
Two blocks south of the joint a man stepped out from between two cars and pointed a gun at my head. He didn’t look like the speed freaks you sometimes see roaming around the edges of society. Didn’t look like any of the junkies I have seen at all. His eyes were clear and his hands were steady.
“Give me your wallet.”
His voice was flat and there was no intonation in it.
“I don’t have a wallet.”
For a moment there was a flicker of something in his eyes and then it was gone. He walked up to me, put the gun against my head and repeated “Give me your wallet.”
Make a note, don’t ever point a gun at me unless you intend to use it. I don’t take kindly to it and I don’t appreciate being threatened. I am not afraid of dying. I am afraid of being crippled by some jerk off who can’t shoot straight.
And when I get scared I tend to get angry.
So I reached up and wrapped my hand around his wrist and pulled the gun away from my head. When he didn’t shoot I realized what had just happened and I really got angry. One quick twist and a small step to my left and that gun wasn’t in his hand anymore.
Smarter men would have taken the gun and run away. Smarter men would have gotten out of there, but I proved not to be that smart.
Instead of running I took the butt of the gun and hit the guy in the head with it twice. “Don’t ever put a gun against my head unless you are going to pull the trigger.I hope that hurts motherfucker.”
And then I dropped the gun next to where he lay in the street and resumed walking home. Probably would have gotten there without incident, but he shot me. Clipped me on the  left side and put me on my ass.
Maybe I should taken the gun with me or fixed things so that he couldn’t use his hands, but I didn’t. Remember when I said that I pulled the Joker from the deck that night, well I think getting shot qualifies as one hell of a reminder.
A Letter To My Children-2012
Dear Children,
It is May 7, 2012. We’ll celebrate my 43rd birthday on Wednesday and I have to let you know that I haven’t made as much progress as I would have hoped or liked to. It is not quite like last year but it is not where I want it to be either.
If you asked me to try and describe what things are like for me I would tell you that there are moments where I feel like a gladiator. It is just me against whomever and whatever is placed in this cage.
There are moments where I feel like you are all standing on my shoulders and I am walking underwater, fighting to keep your heads above the flood waters that are rising. Don’t feel badly about this and don’t praise me either.
This is what I do. This is what I signed up to do. I crossed the t’s and dotted the i’s. I signed my name and jumped feet first into the fire knowing full well that I knew everything and that I knew nothing
When I told you that we were going to sell our house you both cried and begged me not to do it. You yelled at me and said that it wasn’t fair. You told me that there had to be a different way and asked why I wasn’t crying. You told me that because I wasn’t emotional I didn’t care.
I Did Care
That wasn’t true. I did care and I do care. It hurt to sell that place more than I can tell you. I have been back there twice. I drove there at night and sat outside. I stared at it and remembered a million things.
I don’t have to list who was made in that home or how many first memories there are. You won’t really appreciate some of this until you get to be a bit older and I am ok with that. Truth is that I am not writing this part for you as much as I am for me.
That is because your old man is frustrated. I wish that we would have sold it sooner. I think that we could have avoided some of the crazy moments that we have been through now but I also know enough to know that I can’t say that with any certainty.
It is like when you ask me whether I could have been a doctor or a lawyer. I could have and I still could. Forty-three isn’t old. I have a lot of time but that is not how I want to spend it.
And that is the lesson for this moment.
You can’t control everything that happens to you. You can’t ever plan for everything. That old line about “shit happens” is more accurate than anyone likes to admit.
Go read My Great Sadness and or Four Generations & A Wedding. Read Eight Years Later or Streets of Philadelphia. Those posts talk about burying one of my best friends, the time I had to fly cross country because your grandfather lay dying on a ventilator and the time I had to tell my grandfather that my uncle has died.
You can’t possibly imagine how hard it is to tell a parent they have lost a child. You never forget that. I only wish that my grandparents were still here to see you two. I only wish that grandpa and I could sit on the porch and talk like we used to.
Forever Young
You may look at the first section of this post as being self indulgent but that isn’t the purpose or reason. This is me, this is dad trying to reach out to you from across time and say that there is so much to learn in life that it never ends.
It never ends and I never want it to- neither should you. There should always be a list of thing you want to learn about. It shouldn’t be a list of things that I want to teach my children but things you want to learn.
Find your passion and go after it. Figure out what makes you want to wake up and go get it. Remember that life is a journey and don’t get caught up in the spiderwebs of muck and mire.
Yeah, things are hard now. It is not a secret but they aren’t as bad as they could be and they will get better because we are making it happen. Don’t expect the cavalry to save you. You know that I will always be there and that if you need me I will find a way to help but don’t rely upon it.
Rely upon yourselves and lean on each other. Trust in your ability to figure it out. That is part of how I know things will get better because I have seen it happen. I have made it happen.
Get a little more life experience under your belt and you’ll see. You’ll also see that time takes on new meaning. A year or a few bad years won’t be as big a deal. It is not great but it doesn’t have to define you.
You define you. You set your own rules. You figure out what you want and go get it.
One More Thing
I don’t know where we will be or what we will be doing when you gain access to this but I know that we will be different. I hope that one of the differences is that we have all become who we want to be and are not what life made us be.
I love you more than you know and I always will,
Dad
This is part of Just Write, #34 and Yeah Write #56.
7 Songs On A Monday Afternoon
There are bills to be paid, questions to be answered and plans to be made but I am not doing any of those things. That is because my gut aches and the hair on the back of my neck is raised and I am not quite sure why.
Maybe it is nothing more than something I ate or maybe it is a premonition. Maybe it is something different altogether, but whatever it may or may not be it doesn’t really matter because I am taking a moment.
Said moment is designed to try to capture, contain and correct whatever it is. I feel like I can see something or someone out of the corner of my eye. It irks me. It is like trying to catch smoke with my hand, I can’t quite wrap my hand around it. I can’t quite grasp it.
For some reason I feel a bit like I am in that scene in Ghostbusters where they are advised not to cross the streams. So I am taking a moment to share 7 songs with you. They are the first seven songs from my Google Music library. I should add that I have shuffled the deck so I don’t know what I will get. Can’t say if it will be representative of anything or significant.
Here they are. Take it however you will:
- Home To Emily (Theme To The Bob Newhart Show)
- Generations- Immediate Music
- No Limit– 2 Unlimited
- Your Song– Elton John
- What Would I Do Without You -Ray Charles
- Crystal Ship– Duran Duran (frankly I would have grabbed The Doors version, but this is what came up. Weird.
- I’m So Bad– Oingo Boingo
And just because I am curious to see what will come up here are some more from the shuffle.
- Goodnight My Love– Benny Goodman
- A Foggy Day– Frank Sinatra
- Poker Face– Lady Gaga
- I Melt With You– Modern English
- Hallelujah I Love Her So– Ray Charles
- Intro (Dream Sequence)– Alice Chains
- Bushfire– B52s
- Soul Deep– The Box Tops
- Artibeus– Batman Begins soundtrack
- I Will Survive– Gloria Gaynor
And there you have one of the oddest collections I have seen.
What Fathers Want For Mother’s Day
Sometimes this whole parenting thing reminds me an awful lot of the scene below. Â Hell, a lot of things remind me of it but at the moment Mother’s Day has me thinking about it.
Ask me what fathers want for Mother’s Day and I’ll to cancel the whole damn thing. Other dads will say other things, that is ok with me. I don’t need or want everyone to agree with me. The world would be dull and lifeless.
My mother isn’t going to read this post, at least I don’t think she will. She knows that I have a blog but she hasn’t ever been invited here. That is because I used to be an anonymous blogger and now I am semi anonymous.
Mom could read these posts but I prefer that she doesn’t. I don’t feel like having the conversation that some of them would create. It is not that I couldn’t because I could. Hell, I could do a lot of things but just because you can doesn’t mean that you should.
My issue with Mother’s Day is simple. It irritates me. That is not because I don’t think moms deserve recognition but the day gets crazy. There are too many players to deal with and no way to make everyone happy. Most years I feel like someone is irritated with me because they feel like we fell short.
Reminds me of playing a carnival game. You rarely beat the system. Most of the time you are lucky to win something small and cheap. Except this carnival doesn’t come with rides, cotton candy, peanuts and popcorn.
Ok, it occurs to me that there is a chance that my mom might read this one day, so just in case I better write her a letter. Feel free to read along.
Dear Mom,
It is your favorite son writing you a letter. I know that this isn’t the of letter you prefer. It is not handwritten and it feels a bit impersonal especially since a billion people might be reading along with us, but let’s pretend that is not the case.
Let’s pretend that this is handwritten and that you can actually read my writing because you know that my teachers never liked my penmanship. And let’s skip the part where you tell me that I can be your favorite son but not your favorite child. I know I am the only boy and I am good with that. Not like I have a choice. That is one thing that I can blame upon you and dad.
I was desperate to get a brother and then you brought home twin sisters. Well, it is almost forty years since they came home so I suppose that it is fair to say that I accept them now. Mom, don’t roll your eyes at that. You know I love all of my sisters but did I really have to wait until what’s her face got married to get a brother. He is a brother-in-law and not a little brother.
Ok, skip all that brother crap. It is done and there are other things to talk about. I don’t know what month you’ll read this during or what year so I’ll try to provide some context.
If Mother’s Day approaches you know my birthday is within a few days. I am going to be 43 and to be honest my forties have been less than inspiring. Matter of fact you could say that they have sucked. Thirty-six months of crap and crazy.
That shit gets old. I know, I probably shouldn’t curse. I have a very large vocabulary and I am capable of using it but think of it as being similar to a fork- it is optional. Sometimes words are like finger food and well I am old enough to decide when I feel like getting dirty and when I don’t.
Anyway, I am working on being a writer but not in the way that you remember. I loved being published in the newspaper and that whole journalism bit but I am chasing other game. I am like a million other dreamers- I want to be a novelist.
I keep writing and talking about it. Part of me says that this is foolish and that I might embarrass myself. If I fail to succeed I will have announced to the world what my plans are and then shown myself tumbling down a staircase ass over elbow.
But you know me. I go for broke and sometimes it works. Remember that time when I was 12 and playing little league. It was the game where I knocked over the catcher at home plate.
He was much bigger than I was. I had no business going for home. I should have settled for a triple but I rounded third base and smashed into him with all that I had. I knocked him down and I was safe.
That wasn’t a calculated risk. It was just your son following his instinct. I won that time. It worked.
But that is officially 31 years ago and I can’t live off of 12 year-old glory. Nor can I accept that things have been so damn difficult. It is not all my fault but some of it has to be. But I am not really worrying about that. I am just trying to round third but this time my goal to break the catcher in two or to scare him into moving.
I suppose we’ll find out soon enough if it works. Between you and me I hope he moves because it takes bit longer to recover than it used to. Anyway, I have got to run now. I expect to see you in a few days. I told your grandchildren that I need to make a card for you and I plan on finger painting. They think I am crazy, but that is the joy of having me for a son/father/
From your favorite and most loving son,
Jack