Mar21

My Cognitive Dissonance

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My step-nephew had his birthday party yesterday. It was pretty much an awesome event with 25 friends from his private school, soccer, and tennis clubs in attendance at a very nice sports training facility. I watched from the sidelines as members of my wife’s family — my inlaws — interacted.

Budge’s father met his second wife in the waiting room of the ICU where her husband lay dying of the same pancreatitis that was taking the life of Budge’s mother. After both spouses passed within days of each other, Dad and Sandy began dating. They married the November after Budge and I married in August.

Dad married up.

Budge’s stepsister, who loves Budge very much, married up even further. My step-brother-in-law, who I adore, is the son of the man who started the first real telecommunications firm in this neck of the woods. Chuck’s dad then sold that company for several (many several) millions of dollars. Budge’s blood related older brother spent 20 years in the US Navy and made some very wise investments during that time. Since his retirement from the Navy, he’s gotten a job doing what he did in the Navy, but now as a civilian contractor for the same US government that famously paid $10K for a hammer. That’s in addition to his service retirement check and his service related disability check.

Let me sum up. My inlaws are freaking loaded down with dough. Chuck’s father’s sole concession to the recession was selling the family’s private Leer jet. Times are hard when you have to sell the plane.

Now, I want all two of my readers to understand something. I love these people. I would fight to my last breath and give the last drop of blood in my body to each of them is they needed it. They are to a person kind, sweet, and loving people. My two step-nephews are two of the finest children you will ever meet.

BUT, and you know there would be a but, my life experiences and education have not prepared me to interact on equal footing with these people. I grew up in a 15′ x 50′ single wide trailer with faulty wiring and no heat. My childhood home, my present home, my elementary school, AND the church I attended as a child could fit in my brother and sister-in-law’s house . . . with room to spare. They drive a new Land Rover. Chuck’s dad owns a TOWN in coastal Alabama. A TOWN.

No matter how much I care about them, I have no frame of reference for dealing with these people.

Just a for instance, yesterday after the extravagant-by-my-standards-but-par-for-the-course-by-their-standards birthday party, “the family” decided to go eat at one of the most expensive restaurants in town. Budge and I were therefore more or less obligated to attend. This is a swanky place where Chuck and Melissa eat on a regular basis. Have I mentioned that I don’t have a job at the moment?

Anyway, by eating salad and the free bread and ordering the cheapest items on the menu, Budge and I managed to get out of there without washing dishes. The rest of the family was ordering bottles of ten year old wines. I saw two of their bills. It was more than I spend in a month on groceries. A MONTH.

I love my wife’s family, but I don’t understand them. To make matters worse, they don’t understand me either. It’s never been said or overtly implied, but I get the strong impression that Budge marrying a schoolteacher at 18 wasn’t part of the plan Dad and Sandy had for her life. She was supposed to go to a “good” college, get into a fun sorority, have a wonderful college experience, then get her Mrs. degree. Instead, she fell in love with me and we got married.

So, for 14 years I’ve tried to understand people who have never had to worry about lights being turned off, who’ve never had to price shop, and who will never know what an empty fridge looks like once its out of the showroom. For the most part, we do just fine. We look at each other and scratch our heads a lot, but I don’t feel hated or anything.

Simply put, I just don’t understand them and they just don’t understand me.

Mar16

Remembering Sam

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I like chicken biscuits for breakfast. Around here, the best chicken biscuits for my money are to be had at one of the local chain gas station / store / deli / video stores. For five years, at least three or four times a week, I’d stop at the Spinx on state highway 418 and grab a biscuit and a Diet Pepsi Max on my way to school. Every morning for five years, except one week when he was on vacation, Sam checked me out. He was the store manager and a really neat guy. He was slightly build with an unruly shock of dark brown hair and a mustache and goatee to match. Kind brown eyes peered out behind “birth control” glasses.

Every morning as I left, we told each other to have a good day. It was a comforting morning ritual. Then in June, I lost my librarian job and I didn’t have a chance to go by and get a chicken biscuit or talk to Sam. Yesterday, I went down to Mama’s and since it was early enough, I stopped by Spinx to get a biscuit and see Sam. He wasn’t there but I recognized one of the cashiers so I asked her if Sam had the day off.

She looked at me very sadly and said, “Hon, Sam got sick and passed away in January.” I nodded and thanked her for checking me out. Then I went out to my car, pulled over to the end of the parking lot and cried for a stranger who wasn’t a “perfect” stranger, but just one of the hundreds of people I’ve met in service jobs who seem genuinely cut out to make the world a bit better place.

I looked up his obituary when I finally got home and saw where he’d had a small memorial service here and then he’d been taken home to his favorite Tennessee mountains to be buried. Sam was gone and I hadn’t had the chance to say goodbye. Just one more thing losing my job has taken from me.

So don’t wait to thank the people on the fringes of your life if they make your day brighter. Thank your regular waitress or grocery store cashier. Have a quick chat at the bank if you still use a regular teller. It’s amazing to me how someone I thought had such a small part in my life could leave such a big hole when they were gone.

Feb16

Attention. Salute. Pledge.

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I’ve been watching the Vancouver Olympics with TRIGUPITM for the last few nights. She loves figure skating, I love the luge and skeleton, and we both LOL at the curling. I’m always moved by the athletes’ faces on the medal podium as they watch their country’s flags raised and hear their national anthem played. That flag raising on that huge stage means so much to them and the millions watching in the stadium and at home.

This post has nothing to do with that pomp and ceremony.

This is about something I saw this morning.

I was at my local unemployment office before 8:00 this morning queuing up with several hundred other unfortunate souls who, like me, are out of work, broke, and worried about what tomorrow was going to bring. The day was crystal clear and the wind was sharp and cold as death. We huddled and shifted from foot to foot en masse, no one meeting another’s eye unless to ask the time. It wasn’t a place for small talk.

One guy across the courtyard from me caught my attention. He was dressed shabbily in sweat pants, a sweat shirt, and an old faux leather jacket. He had on grubby high top sneakers and a hunting hat with the wool flaps dangling loose over his ears. He might have been anywhere from forty to sixty and I could tell life had be unkind to him. Still, something about him made me smile. He looked like a survivor. The world had beat on him, but it hadn’t managed to beat him just yet.

One of the bureau’s office workers came out to raise the flag for the day. The wind snatched his sensible tie out perpendicular to the sidewalk and you could see the chill shake him from crown to soul. He held Old Glory clenched in his fist and I could tell from my vantage point that whoever had taken it down the night before hadn’t bothered with properly folding it into the correct “tricorn hat” package. For some reason, I looked up at the grubby fellow across the courtyard and he had locked on to the worker and the flag he carried.

The morning was bitter cold and as I watched him remove his gloves, I could only imagine how palpably painful the frozen brass of the flag clips on the lanyard must have felt to the man’s flash frozen fingers. He fumbled with the clips and the folds of the flag as the wind conspired mightily against his ever effort. At that moment, my buddy across the way stepped forward smartly and quickly and said, “Sir, may I help you please?” Coming from him, it seemed more of a command than a request.

Without waiting for a reply, my unkempt friend took the flag, snapped it out straight, and with obviously practiced hands seemingly unaffected by the arctic blast, he clipped the Stars and Stripes to the lanyard and ran it up the flagpole with an ease born of repetition. The office worker smiled at the man gratefully and turned to go back inside. I watched the man watch the flag now cracking in the breeze and it seemed to me that he’d probably saluted a flag just like that one many times on a myriad of bases or ships around the world. It looked to me like he hadn’t forgotten how to salute either. With a smile and a nod, he stepped back into line.

About ten minutes later, another worker came out and called for all military veterans to come forward to the front of the line and present their paperwork. Sure enough, my grubby friend stepped out of line and joined his battle brothers and sisters around the officer. After he turned in his forms, I watched him walk back towards his car — a mechanical duplicate of himself if ever there was one — and he spared another glance and nod at the flag.

So, he was a veteran. Many of us barely noted the flag, trapped as we were in our own personal miseries, but I suppose once someone has been shot at for marching or sailing under that piece of cloth, he or she would tend to regard that bit of waving fabric a little more closely. I found myself feeling extremely proud of Mr. Grubby.

So, as you watch the Olympics the next two weeks, pay attention to who salutes their flag during its presentation and who seems simply blase’ about the whole thing. You might find that those who salute may have a story in their background . . . a story similar to the grubby veteran at the unemployment office.

Feb13

Southern Snow and French Toast

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It doesn’t snow much in South Carolina. As a result, any MENTION of snow by one of the local meteorologists puts Palmetto natives into a straight out panic. It’s been that way ever since I can remember. Once as a student, my school was sent home by snow flurries at 9:00 AM and by noon, the sun was out and all the snow was gone!

The craziest symptom of southern snow fever, however, is the run on the dairy aisle at the Bi-Lo. I don’t know why, but people buy three items and pretty much only three items as soon as snow is forecast. They buy eggs. They buy milk. They buy bread. Why? You can’t make much of a sandwich out of those ingredients. Even fried egg sandwiches won’t go far.

So, all I can figure is everyone who is afraid of getting icebound in Carolina has one thing in mind — French Toast. We may be frozen solid; we may not get to leave the house for weeks, but if the power goes out, we’ll be able to make French Toast on the Kero-Sun kerosene heater. Why? I’ll never know, but it’s just one of the joys of being a Southern native.

Jan27

Snakes in a Jon Boat

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When I was a teenager, one of my favorite recreations was fishing on the local farm ponds around my hometown. A buddy of mine named Scott had unfettered access to a nice fourteen foot jon boat and we had permission from several farmers to get in their ponds whenever we wanted. Mostly, we fished at night for three reasons. First, this is the Southland in the summertime. Fish have sense even if people don’t and they lie deep and don’t bite much, if at all in the heat of a July day. Second, I am about half a gene from being an albino. Sunshine is not my friend. Finally, if you ever once hear a five pound bass explode through the surface to take a Heddon’s Hula Popper on a still night under the stars, you can say you’ve lived a good life whatever may come from then on.

This particular Wednesday night, Scott and I were joined by another of our buddies, Wishbone. We got on the pond just as twilight was turning into full dark. I was seated in back of the boat because I cast right handed side armed. Wishbone was in the front seat because he also cast exclusively side armed. Scott took the middle because he was a lefty and could cast very well with a traditional overhand motion. The arrangement worked quite well and we spent an hour catching and releasing small, strong bass and an odd bream or two with more guts than sense.

We’d worked our way around the edge pond and had reached the “neck” where the stream that fed the pond flowed in. Several large water oaks and a willow or two hung out over the water and at times we passed underneath these outstretched limbs to cast to the undercut banks that were home to the real lunker bass in the lake. All had gone nicely when I heard a distinct “thump” in the boat between Wishbone and Scott.  Scott whipped around and shot me a desperate look in the light of the gibbous moon. I nodded wordlessly that I’d heard it as well just about the time the thing we’d dreaded most came upon us; Wishbone wailed out plaintively, “What just hit the boat?” Now Scott and I knew quite well what had made the noise. It was most likely a brown or “yellow bellied” water snake that had dropped out of the overhanging tree into the boat. They are big eyed nocturnal serpents and about as harmless as cold blooded, scaly kittens.

At this point, I need to tell you three things of great importance. One, we were in ten or twelve feet of water. Two, I’m five feet ten inches tall on a good day and I can’t swim a LICK. Some of you may have heard an old wives’ tale about how us fat people “float well.” Now I can’t speak for anyone else, but personally, I float like a ’54 Studebaker Conestoga station wagon. Third, Wishbone was mortally, morbidly, and totally terrified — nay, freaked completely out beyond all rational thought — by snakes. Any snakes. At this point, the night got quite interesting.

Wishbone guessed the noise had been a snake and he snatched what must have been a WWII antiaircraft spotlight from his tackle box and ,before we could stop him, cut it on and began searching for Zeros and Val bombers in the bottom of the boat. The ten million candlepower flashlight had the very real effect of blinding the three of us instantly, which sent Wishbone straight to fifth gear of panic. Poor Wish. He only knew two things at that moment: all he could see was red and yellow splotches AND he was in a fourteen foot aluminum jon boat with — to his tortured mind anyway — a Titanaboa. He lost all control. Still, IF the very bright flashlight had been the ONLY non-fishing item in Wishbone’s tackle box, we might have made it out okay.

It wasn’t and we didn’t.

My vision cleared just in time to see Wishbone stand up, pull a Charter Arms Bulldog five shot .44 Special double action revolver from his tackle box and point it at the bottom of the boat where he figured the anaconda had taken refuge. I managed to squeak “NOOOOO!” in a rather pathetic way before the calm night erupted in a thunderclap not once, but five times. The boy emptied the gun into the bottom of the boat. How none of us fell out of the boat in the midst of the confusion, I’ll never know, but what I do know is this — .44 Specials make BIG ‘OL HOLES in aluminum.

I guess the report of the gun cleared Wish’s head because he plopped down into his seat with a sheepish look on his face and watched the five .44 caliber geysers jetting up from the bottom of the boat. Scott calmly reached over and took the gun from Wish and said, “Well, Wish, now the boat is going to sink and we’ll be in the water with REAL dangerous snakes like water moccasins and cottonmouths.” At this point, I chimed in, “Remember fellas? I can’t swim. AT ALL.” What Scott and Wish said next, I won’t print but it would have made Samuel L. Jackson proud.

In the end, we found out the boat’s “solid” seats were packed with styrofoam or some such floatant and, with a combination of bailing like mad and some Olympic class rowing, we made it to the take out point with two whole inches of gunwale still above water. All three of us were soaked to the bone but we’d saved the boat, saved the tackle, and, most important to my mind anyway, saved my fat rear end. Apparently, our reptilian interloper had made good his escape sometime between the shooting and the paddling. In any event, we never saw it. Once we got everything loaded up, Scott walked over and patted Wishbone on the back and said, “Wish, I love you like a brother, but frost will form on the Hinges of Hell before you EVER go fishing in a boat with me again.”

Now, that story is one of my favorites ever, but I didn’t tell it to get a laugh. I told it to point out a real problem in school, homes, and society in general today. Lots of people have a mentality of “That’s not my Problem” or “Why should I worry about her situation.” Well, the fact is, we’re all in the same boat. Wish put five holes in the boat on his end, but I came within a hundred yards of drowning. Wish panicked, but Scott got just as wet. When there’s a hole in the boat, it doesn’t matter what end the hole’s on; everyone is going to get wet and if the water’s deep enough or cold enough, everybody is going to be in a world of hurt. Remember this, the Titanic hit the iceberg with her bow, but the people all the way back at the fantail drowned too. A teacher’s problem is YOUR problem. A kid’s problem is YOUR problem. If you are a Republican, a Democrat’s problem is YOUR problem and vice versa. WE ARE ALL IN THE BOAT TOGETHER.

Try to keep that in mind, y’all, before you decide what you are going to ignore.

Keep those feet dry and clean, y’all.

Love y’all and see you soon 🙂

Jan25

We Live in a Mad World

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I get really saddened when I read about lack of funding for schools and especially lack of funding for libraries.

We have money to send our children off to fight and die in foreign countries, but we don’t have the money to educate them in modern fashion. We’ve chosen between guns and butter to our detriment.

That’s not what saddens me most, though. What bothers me most of all is the emphasis schools place on grades and test scores. We expect our students to come to school ready to learn and be all attentive when, in fact, a whole lot of them don’t know where their next meal is coming from or where they will lay their heads tonight. I remember getting to school at 6:45 AM and sneak kids into the library against school policy because they had been running the streets all night. Some do it by choice and others by necessity but in any case, they aren’t ready to learn.

The problems children face today are beyond anything most of us older folks ever saw. All the baggage, all the issues that they carry to school with them in their lunch boxes and book bags take up too much space on their desks and in their minds to allow the knowledge and skills we are supposed to teach them to seep in. I submit as proof that the world has tilted from its axis this story from a Dallas suburb about a FOURTH GRADER who committed suicide by hanging himself in the school restroom.

What have we come to as a society when a nine year old child no longer can find a reason to go on living? We are worried about test scores in the face of this blasphemy? Yes, I said blasphemy because the suicide of such an innocent can be described accurately by no other word that I know.

If a story like that cannot move the politicians, what about the “diligent mother” in Georgia who insisted her son do better on his report card and reinforced the lesson by having him bludgeon his beloved pet hamster to death with a hammer. Some neighbors are claiming the boy made the whole thing up because he has “emotional problems.” Well, if he didn’t, you can bet your sweet bottom he does now. I have long maintained that it is ludicrous in the extreme that one must pass a battery of test just to earn the right to drive a car but any two fools with active gametes can conceive a baby.

I don’t have any easy answers. To be honest, I don’t even know if our broken educational system and our wrecked social system can BE fixed. We may find out that nothing short of a revolution will change what needs changing in our country. If that were to happen, let me ask you: would you be stood against the wall or would you be one holding the gun? It may be a far fetched idea, but I don’t think it’s any secret that something, somewhere, somehow is going to have to give. God only knows where it will be.

Until we take to the streets in bare feet, my lovelies, keep those tootsies clean and remember that GS Feet loves y’all and just wants everyone to “do right.”

Take care, y’all.

Jan20

Movie Review of “The Book of Eli”

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Budge and I went to see The Book of Eli yesterday on her day out of school.

I was impressed and moved by the film. Before I go any further, let me say that I will avoid spoilers in this post, BUT if you found out Bruce Willis was dead in The Sixth Sense before you saw it or if you learned of Brad Pitt’s dual identity in Fight Club before the DVD came out OR, going way old school, you knew the twist in The Crying Game before the kissing / toilet scene, GO SEE THE BOOK OF ELI BEFORE YOU TALK TO ANYONE ABOUT IT!! Don’t read Wikipedia’s article, don’t go to IMDb or any other such sites because if you know how the movie ends, A LOT of the mystery and “amazingness” gets killed quicker than the cat in the opening scene.

This is a good movie for my money. I enjoyed it; Budge enjoyed it, and all our friends who’ve been to see it have enjoyed it. Denzel Washington is excellent as the “Man with No Name Until the End of the Movie Unless You Are Paying Close Attention Towards the Middle.” Gary Oldman is a thoroughly despicable and reprehensible villain. Even the minor characters are well acted and, from the looks of it, they really bought in to the movie’s message and feel. I just thought it was a powerful message about one man’s drive to fulfill a mission he believes to be of divine origin.

The movie is filled with enough action to appeal to the action adventure freaks out there. It has plenty of mystery and you don’t realize until the end just how much mystery it does have. Finally, just like a cherry on top, it’s got philosophy and I like my movies to make me think. One thing I thought about and noticed is that even in this day of political correctness and toleration in America when every faith but Christianity is accepted and embraced, the book that Washington’s character goes to such awesome lengths to protect and defend isn’t the Analects of Confucius, the Tao Te Ching, or the Qu’ran. It isn’t even on Oprah’s Book Club list. It’s a Holy Bible.

Now, if you don’t like Christianity or if you even happen to be an atheist, that’s fine. What book would you want to use to try to direct a slowly rebirthing civilization down a good path? Personally, I think the choice Denzel makes is a good one.

Jan11

Happy B-Day, Granny and RIP

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Granny Wham, 1978

Had she lived, January 11, 2o1o would be my Granny Wham’s 90th birthday. Mrs. Martha Ellen Willis Wham missed her nonagenarian years by two when she passed away just a month after her 88th birthday. She was a pretty awesome woman.

Granny was the poster child for a woman of Tom Brokaw’s Greatest Generation. She grew up on a small family farm in the rural Upstate of South Carolina. She had a younger sister (Aunt Mary) and two older half-brothers (Uncle Gordon and Uncle Henry) but as she said, “We loved each other wholly and no halves involved.” Her teenage years were in the brutal heart of the Great Depression and even an already poor area like post-Civil War South Carolina wasn’t spared.

Granny brought home the real trials of the era when she told me how her daddy, Papa Willis, had gotten a WPA job for the princely sum of $9 per week. As she put it, “we thought we were wealthy.” Like many of her co-sufferers, the deprivations of the Dust Bowl ’30s left their mark on Granny. She saved tinfoil by washing it clean and she had a full 12 place setting of Kraft Cool Whip salad bowls should the need have ever arisen.

As I related earlier, she married Papa in December 1945 after The War and they started a family. She was a homemaker until Aunt Cathy started school and then she went to work in the shoe department of Belk’s Department Store on Main Street in Fountain Inn. For the first 13 or so years of my life, every pair of shoes I owned was bought with Granny’s discount.

What Granny truly excelled at in my eyes, however, was in being a grandmother. To say she doted on me as her first grandchild would be a criminal understatement. She, with PLENTY of help from Papa to be sure, spoiled me, and later her three other grandsons, completely rotten. I loved every minute of it. She saved me from several well deserved punishments, but for the sake of space, I’ll just relate this one.

Granny had just bought a nice new corded rug to put down over the hardwoods in the den. It was a beautiful rug and she was proud of it. I, at the tender age of about three, was sitting in the middle of this brand new rug playing with a bottle of jet black liquid shoe polish that Papa had just used to shine his Sunday shoes. This is one of the few memories I have of Mama and Daddy before the divorce, but I distinctly recall each of them having told me more than once to put this bottle down and stop fiddling with it. Of course I kept right on and as you’ve probably guessed, the top popped off and jet black liquid polish met brand new beige rug. Mama started from the north end of the room as Daddy started from the south end of the room. As luck would have it, however, the room was a rectangle and Granny was in her rocker on the short eastern side so she got to me first, scooped me up over her shoulder, and stopped both my parents by saying, “It’s just a rug and it scared him to death. He didn’t mean it. He was just being mischievous.”

“He’s not bad, he’s just mischievous,” was Granny’s stock answer to any mishap any of her four grandsons might have. Lord knows how many times she could have worn us out or at least put us in time out for eternity, but instead, she just gave us a hug, asked us not to do it again, and usually gave us a piece of her homemade pound cake to reinforce the lesson.

Granny Wham, age 88 at Martha Franks Baptist Retirement Home.

To be completely honest, Granny Wham was one facet of my life I took for granted would ALWAYS be there. To me, she and papa were like the mountains or the ocean or even the blue sky above. They would always abide with us. Nothing could ever take them from us.

I was wrong. So very, very wrong.

Granny suffered a medium serious stroke in July 1995. It was the beginning of a long, long decline. She rallied. She even rallied upon learning two days after her stroke that Papa Wham had died. She had an indomitable will and for a few more years, it kept infirmity at bay. In the end though, a diagnosis of mini-strokes put an end to her living alone and driving. Aunt Cathy did the duty of a dedicated daughter selling her own home to move Uncle Larry, Zach, and Blake in with Granny so Granny wouldn’t have to leave the home she and Papa had built together in 1953.

She would stay with Aunt Cathy through the week and spend some weekends with Daddy and Teresa. One early weekend morning, trying to fix coffee for Daddy before he got out of bed, she made a misstep and fell, breaking her birdlike hip bone. After a stint in the hospital, she went to Martha Franks Retirement home to undergo physical therapy. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, she seemed to grow more frail instead of regaining strength. Again, though, her indomitable will, along with a hearty dose of good Willis stubbornness, kept the end at arm’s length for another few years. After all, she had a family to look after.

In the end, though, the reaper comes for everyone, even tiny precious and greatly beloved grandmothers. Aunt Cathy held her hand as she passed from this world to the next. My two first cousins, my little brother, and I stood watch over her casket at the front of the church where she’d taught Sunday School and sang in the choir for over fifty years, then, when it was time, we closed the lid on her beautiful oaken casket with The Pieta of Michelangelo depicted on all four corners and let the ministers have their say.

Granny’s dust lies next to Papa’s now in the Beulah Baptist Church cemetery. Her soul, I imagine, walks hand in hand with his down golden streets and, even though I have no theology to back it up, I like to think she looks down on us every now and then — in afterlife, as in life — watching over the family she held so close to her heart.

Love you, Granny Wham and miss you very much. Tell Papa we love and miss him too.

Jan10

Is This Irony?

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I have a question for the masses, which means the four or five of you that check to see if I’ve written anything lately. Feel free to email me your idea or post it in the comments.

Is it ironic for a father to tell his son he loves him directly before AND immediately after calling him a “fat, lazy a$$ed self-pitying m*****f*****?”

Just wondering if I’m using the correct term or if I’m just being overly sensitive.

Keep those feet washed, y’all.

Love each of you.

Jan6

39 and Holding

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My guitar cake and I on my third birthday, January 6, 1974.

Okay, so I’m 39 today. As birthdays go, it’s been a pretty dull one. I pretty much stayed at home sending out the usual daily resume’ that will go unanswered and cleaning house. I did take a birthday trip to McDonalds and treated myself to $12.50 worth of heart attack on a bun just because I could. I mean, it’s my birthday, right?

It’s my birthday. I don’t know how many of y’all listen to the rock group Nickelback, but they have a song that pretty much sums up my thoughts on having reached 39. It goes, “I’m tired of standing in line at clubs I’ll never get in. It’s like the bottom of the ninth and I’m never gonna win. This life hasn’t turned out quite the way I thought it would be.” Nope. It sure hasn’t.

By the time Alexander was 30, he had conquered the known world. Augustus was first emperor of Rome by my age. Jesus had already come the first time, preached three years, redeemed the world, and gone back to Heaven by 33. I could go on. Believe me, I could go on and on. It’s never good to be a history buff and suffer from borderline personality disorder at the same time. You find all kinds of people to compare yourself to who make your paltry accomplishments look ever more sadder than you already know them to be.

No. Things haven’t gone according to plan — any plan, A, B, or Q — at all. Didn’t get in the Naval Academy. Didn’t go to an Ivy League school (BUT I did get accepted). I’m not even a teacher anymore and that was pretty much all I had going for me. I don’t care much about not having as much money as other people just because I’ve never used money to keep score. I’ve got a roof over my head and food on my table, thanks to The Reason I Get Up In The Morning, and that is enough as far as material possessions go. I was just hoping I would have accomplished a little more.

In any event, this is my last birthday. I went batcrap crazy into a serious depressive funk when I turned 30. I have no intentions of doing the same next year. So, since I can’t stop time, I intend to begin celebrating anniversaries next year. Therefore, next January 6th, I will mark the first anniversary of my 39th Birthday. It’s semantics I know, but when you’re fighting a black dog, you do what you can.

So, for all the members of the Class of ’89 at LDHS who voted me “Most Likely to Succeed,” I apologize. I pretty much let y’all down, but don’t worry, I let myself down even more. I hope you’ll all pardon the maudlin self-pity party. I try to limit myself to publishing only one per year . . . usually on my birthday. I appreciate all y’all bearing with me.

Love y’all.

Don’t forget to wash your feet.