"I'm not perfect!!" If you are visualizing me saying this, then you are probably heading to your calendar to write it down, including date and the time you read it. Another likely outcome is you have read all you need to read and will disregard the rest. I accept that, because, yes I deserve it, but, we've all used that statement to hide behind at one time or another. Sometimes this statement is used to get out of an argument or hide behind when things didn't quite go our way. I'm not perfect. Nobody is of course, for the most part(I'll get to that later). Yet we all believe we are perfect. I've seen the people that believe they are perfect, I've believed I am perfect. We all believe we are perfect because as a general rule we believe our way is the right way to live and act as a human being. The only time we don't believe this is when we get caught not being perfect. The reason is we all think we know what perfect means. We can label our lives as perfect, relationships, golf game, and dogs. All perfecto! The stretching and reaching for perfection has plagued mankind for his entire existence. It's a need for everyone of us to display an outward appearance of perfection. We've got our shit together. Some might be reading this and thinking that I am being a sanctimonious ass. True, I am, because I am just as guilty as the rest of humanity. Just look at facebook. It's littered with the endless parade of "look at me", "look at what I chose for dinner", "look at all of the perfect things I have displayed for you to make up a story in your head on how I am living my life. I'm a perfect spouse. I'm a perfect parent. My kids are perfect. My parents are perfect. My Fantasy Football team is perfect(you drafted Romo? Come on. I don't need to be perfect to know that was stupid.)We all groan a little when we see a picture of this or that, and I'm sure I've posted stories of this or that, that have caused eye rolls. I accept that, but it's all superficial surface feelings that I don't need to be Professor X(I am required to have one geek reference per blog) to pick up on.
Now, people might say, "But, I don't think I'm perfect." Honest answer? B.S. If at any time you have believed that your answers on an abstract subject are unequivocal, you have believed you are perfect by the default your opinion is the correct one. I'm not saying ditch every thing you believe to be a truth. Innately, we will all cling to the core of our belief structure, just be accepting that their are people who have a different belief system(Yes, I know, sometimes I go for the throat on this myself). There are moments of honesty and truthfulness where people let themselves be vulnerable, that are straight out beautiful to read or know. I do love those moments and I do celebrate them. I would like more of this connection between people, more of the honesty. "Dan your an ass! And this is why....." That's perfect, of course then you think you are perfect! "Traffic was so bad on the way home from work today, I shit my pants. LOL!" includes a pic. When's the last time you saw that on a Twitter feed? That would be honesty on a whole new level and letting people in to say, I'm not all that perfect. It's difficult to let down that guard of your perfect public persona. The one that let's others know everything about how you look and nothing about how you feel. I hear the voices again saying "But Dan you comment on a lot of stuff and try to impose your thought processes on me!" True. I'm not perfect, also it's good to bear in mind, I quite literally hold back 95% of the things I want to say, it used to be 25%. I'm working on it, I know I used to say pretty much whatever I wanted with little thought of caring what people thought of me. That's not true though. The people who say they don't care what other people think, usually care the most. Otherwise, why research 15 stories, share 10 other posts, and 45 memes all supporting a personal position? Because they don't care right? We've built ourselves up so much in our lives, our passions and our own personal stories, we have difficulties accepting other viewpoints that aren't in harmony with our own. Part of this is our inability to accept our own imperfections in an effort to remain in our concept of perceived perfection. Great right? Only the price we pay is this prevents us from moving forward with the changes we truly desire in life. In short we can't get to know people, especially the ones we love, if we don't accept where they operate from emotionally. If we can shed all of that and work towards a true life-balance with our surroundings and literally just drink it all in. Life-Balance to me is an achievement of the entire person that moves a person forward emotionally with the rest of society with the least amount of conflicting energy that is possible while maintain a changing sense of self. With a true Life-Balance there is enough positive energy in life that generating any conflict should become non-existent. In short, get along, find out what stuff is about, and in general be open. Following this can create a path of multiple individual successes, when joined together can create a direction of infinite possibilities. Does this mean I won't call out a clearly biased story or lie that is presented as truth? Of course not, but I will try to respect your belief structure as long as you respect mine. I can discuss everything with a clear head, as long as another person does as well. Does this mean I am perfect? No, of course not, my buttons can be pushed as easily as anybody else's can. The anger that anyone displays when their belief structure is put to the test is perhaps one of the most frightening and puzzling aspects of being a person. It's so tough to say after 10, 20, 30 or whatever amount of years...."I'm wrong. I'm not perfect.I have to change now."
Pretty heavy stuff for a Sunday night Ogre. Sometimes I still wonder if Dog really spells Cat(google it Nerds). On the other hand I don't know if this is brilliant or regurgitated hippy crap. I do know the expectations of perfections is a deep seated issue in our society. Therapists make a pretty good living off of it. The truth is we all have achieved our own level of perfection that we have allowed ourselves to reach, and that's where we all will remain. Unless we break through our individual "perfection"ceilings and come together as a human race we will remain in a state of "perfection is bliss" and It's hard to let that guard down and just say "hey, by the way I shit myself on the way home from work today. LOL!" But. maybe we should all try it just once instead of posting pics of today's egg-salad sandwich, which incidentally, might have caused you to shit your pants on the way home from work.
(Once again...I am not a therapist, I am in no way accredited in any way, shape or form other than I probably think too much. This advice is strictly for your amusement, if you decide to incorporate it into your own life. Be careful: It may increase thinking, cause questioning of who you are in the universe and cause you to get "lucky" at least 1.5 more times a year)
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
Fear. It's a tough emotion. It can grip you and hold you down. Rob you of rational thought, passion, and of course confidence. We all have our little fears. Some are little, like spiders and clowns. Some are huge, like spiders and clowns. Some fears will drive us forward into success and passion. Others will hold us back and keep each of us from fulfilling a part of our lives we always wanted to be successful. Sometimes we need help from others to get over our fears.
The other morning while driving to work, the local DJ's were discussing moments of their greatest fears. People were calling in and sharing their stories. Moments where they didn't face their fears and turned back. It's not too hard too imagine how every single person's life could be different if they had faced their fears. I easily thought of my own greatest moments of fear. Let me take you back in time to 1991. It was magical time the Simpsons were on T.V., a Clinton and a Bush were running for President, Jurassic Park is King in the theaters and we were just finishing up a war in the Middle East....wait-a-minute.......anywho.....
My initial military training was loaded with fears. I was a 17 year old kid from a small town in South Dakota. I was cliché as it gets. I was handed a ticket and a time I had to be in Atlanta, GA for basic training and advanced training. My family and a few friends saw me off at the airport in Sioux Falls SD. At the time, the furthest I had ever been was Omaha to the south, Minneapolis to the east, Aberdeen to the north and Devil's Tower to the west. I had never ridden in an airplane. The first two I would land like a normal person. The third one was an experience altogether different.
The military was a whole different world for me. I knew no one. Mostly, everybody was in the same boat. When in high pressure and tension situations like this, bonding and working together come together quite quickly. The fear of failure was always in the back of my mind. What would it be like to go back, never having completed training? It pushed you to try harder. Firing rifles all night and all day long might seem fun to some people, do it while someone is screaming over top of you alongside a few hundred others who had never had any sort of gun safety courses while growing up. Visions of Full Metal Jacket danced in our heads. The good news is nobody died during my training, there were drop outs, people who couldn't cut it physically or mentally. It happens, they aren't bad people, they just weren't made for it. Fear drove me the whole time. Fear of being singled out, fear of punishment, all of it. It would seem that a guy like me, who had spent his fair share of detention and probation officer conferences, would have somehow gotten in trouble. I didn't. We were identified by individual numbers on our lockers and helmets. Drill Sergeants called you by that number until they learned your real name. they usually learned your real name after you screwed up a lot. The last week of training the Platoon Drill Sergeant asked me my name because he hadn't learned it and asked what platoon I was in. I told him that I was in his platoon with a wide smile. Fear. I had laid low and stayed off the radar. It was my only goal the whole time I was in training to make it out of there without being brutalized mentally or become the whipping boy for the Drill Sergeants. Fear can be used to push you forward, it also can lock you up.
After my initial training I went on to Jump School. 3 weeks of training to teach soldiers how to properly exit a military airplane alongside a couple hundred other soldiers at the same time. I'm not sure who pitched this idea to the military during WWII. I assume it was Don Draper who had sold them this idea as a good one. If you had a fear of heights, you learned pretty quick. Thankfully by this time I had turned 18 during Basic and I was still young and stupid enough to buy in to this idea. Fear was still there everyday as we learned to fall and roll to minimize the damage to our knees(and heads). Every exercise was designed to build confidence. Finally the last days of training we loaded onto C-130 planes and headed up. There were about 50 soldiers in my plane. Fear. A plane full of people who had never jumped out of airplanes that were flying in a roller coaster like fashion, because the Air Force pilots think they are funny. The third plane I had ever rode in, I didn't plan on landing in. Failure to jump, as we were told could lead you to be tried by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. At least that's what they told the wide-eyed idiots that were about to fill the air over a drop zone near Ft Benning GA. This is where trust comes in. Trust your training. Trust that the Jumpmaster lets your Stick(that's the line of soldiers on one side of the plane that run out the door when told to like camouflaged lemmings)jump out over the Drop zone rather than in the trees. Trust the guy in front of you not to get hung up. Trust yourself. When the time came for us to go out the door that was now open. The wind and the sound of the planes engines roared, even through the earplugs we all had in. I followed all of the instructions, repeated them loudly in unison with the entire Stick so every soldier could hear what was going on. I could see nothing but the parachute on the back of the soldier in front of me. I stood there with my tether line in hand. We had hooked all of our tether lines to the cable running lengthwise of the airplane. The tether line would stay connected to the line and would pull the parachute out as gravity took you down. 3 bad things could happen as you fell out of the plane: You could fail to hand the line over correctly to the Jumpmaster and your arm could become entangled in the line and it would rip your bicep down to your forearm making you look like Popeye(Google him if you are under 30 years old). Hope your parachute opens after that because, I'm pretty sure you instantly go into shock as you fall. Or the line could get caught up and you could be dragged behind the plane. At this point the Jumpmaster will try to dislodge you and hopefully the chute pulls out. Failing that, they will cut you loose and you are on your own to pull your emergency chute, which has it's own inherent set of dangers. The last really bad thing that could happen is your chute fails completely and you plummet with only a low 1500 feet between you and the ground to deploy your emergency parachute. Fear at this moment in my life may have been running quite high. The green light came on and we were issued the command of "Green Light Go!". The line of soldiers shuffled forward each handing their lines carefully and quickly to the jumpmaster and then exiting the plane in short swift steps and placing their hands on the exterior of the door then jumping out. I kept my eyes forward looked the instructor in the eye and handed him the tether. Took the steps like I was trained, turned my body, placed my hands outside the edge of the door and looked out. Fear. I froze there in a haze of adrenaline. I had locked up. All the preparation all of the talking myself through it. And then I felt it. The swift kick of freedom, or at least of my Jumpmaster's boot. That son of a bitch had just kicked me! Out I fell. I'm pretty sure a choice swear word escaped my lips as I felt the jolt around my shoulders as my parachute deployed. I opened my eyes. There we all hung in the air drifting slowly to the ground, as safely as a spores blown free from a dandelion. It was amazing! Adrenaline like I had never felt in my life. When we all got our parachutes wrapped up and hauled back, our Jumpmaster walked up with his own chute. He eventually walked up to me and told me he wouldn't let me fail. I told him I had no idea what he was talking about.
The lesson to be taken is that we can focus through all of our fears and come out the other side. Sometimes when it grips us so badly we need help from other people that care about us to make it through. Last, sometimes when we see that fear has gripped people we care about so much it freezes them, a well intentioned kick in the ass can help them move forward when they least expect it. Except for spiders and clowns, it's best just to shoot them and explain your irrational fear of spiders and clowns. Most people understand that.
In all my glory prior to one of my last jumps......
(Unfortunately Spiders and Clowns were not harmed in the making of this Blog. Ranked in order of which famous clown or famous spider you should kill first if attacked: IT(Because IT is an alien space clown spider), Shelob, The Clown from Poltergeist, The arachnophobia spider, and Bozo).
The other morning while driving to work, the local DJ's were discussing moments of their greatest fears. People were calling in and sharing their stories. Moments where they didn't face their fears and turned back. It's not too hard too imagine how every single person's life could be different if they had faced their fears. I easily thought of my own greatest moments of fear. Let me take you back in time to 1991. It was magical time the Simpsons were on T.V., a Clinton and a Bush were running for President, Jurassic Park is King in the theaters and we were just finishing up a war in the Middle East....wait-a-minute.......anywho.....
My initial military training was loaded with fears. I was a 17 year old kid from a small town in South Dakota. I was cliché as it gets. I was handed a ticket and a time I had to be in Atlanta, GA for basic training and advanced training. My family and a few friends saw me off at the airport in Sioux Falls SD. At the time, the furthest I had ever been was Omaha to the south, Minneapolis to the east, Aberdeen to the north and Devil's Tower to the west. I had never ridden in an airplane. The first two I would land like a normal person. The third one was an experience altogether different.
The military was a whole different world for me. I knew no one. Mostly, everybody was in the same boat. When in high pressure and tension situations like this, bonding and working together come together quite quickly. The fear of failure was always in the back of my mind. What would it be like to go back, never having completed training? It pushed you to try harder. Firing rifles all night and all day long might seem fun to some people, do it while someone is screaming over top of you alongside a few hundred others who had never had any sort of gun safety courses while growing up. Visions of Full Metal Jacket danced in our heads. The good news is nobody died during my training, there were drop outs, people who couldn't cut it physically or mentally. It happens, they aren't bad people, they just weren't made for it. Fear drove me the whole time. Fear of being singled out, fear of punishment, all of it. It would seem that a guy like me, who had spent his fair share of detention and probation officer conferences, would have somehow gotten in trouble. I didn't. We were identified by individual numbers on our lockers and helmets. Drill Sergeants called you by that number until they learned your real name. they usually learned your real name after you screwed up a lot. The last week of training the Platoon Drill Sergeant asked me my name because he hadn't learned it and asked what platoon I was in. I told him that I was in his platoon with a wide smile. Fear. I had laid low and stayed off the radar. It was my only goal the whole time I was in training to make it out of there without being brutalized mentally or become the whipping boy for the Drill Sergeants. Fear can be used to push you forward, it also can lock you up.
After my initial training I went on to Jump School. 3 weeks of training to teach soldiers how to properly exit a military airplane alongside a couple hundred other soldiers at the same time. I'm not sure who pitched this idea to the military during WWII. I assume it was Don Draper who had sold them this idea as a good one. If you had a fear of heights, you learned pretty quick. Thankfully by this time I had turned 18 during Basic and I was still young and stupid enough to buy in to this idea. Fear was still there everyday as we learned to fall and roll to minimize the damage to our knees(and heads). Every exercise was designed to build confidence. Finally the last days of training we loaded onto C-130 planes and headed up. There were about 50 soldiers in my plane. Fear. A plane full of people who had never jumped out of airplanes that were flying in a roller coaster like fashion, because the Air Force pilots think they are funny. The third plane I had ever rode in, I didn't plan on landing in. Failure to jump, as we were told could lead you to be tried by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. At least that's what they told the wide-eyed idiots that were about to fill the air over a drop zone near Ft Benning GA. This is where trust comes in. Trust your training. Trust that the Jumpmaster lets your Stick(that's the line of soldiers on one side of the plane that run out the door when told to like camouflaged lemmings)jump out over the Drop zone rather than in the trees. Trust the guy in front of you not to get hung up. Trust yourself. When the time came for us to go out the door that was now open. The wind and the sound of the planes engines roared, even through the earplugs we all had in. I followed all of the instructions, repeated them loudly in unison with the entire Stick so every soldier could hear what was going on. I could see nothing but the parachute on the back of the soldier in front of me. I stood there with my tether line in hand. We had hooked all of our tether lines to the cable running lengthwise of the airplane. The tether line would stay connected to the line and would pull the parachute out as gravity took you down. 3 bad things could happen as you fell out of the plane: You could fail to hand the line over correctly to the Jumpmaster and your arm could become entangled in the line and it would rip your bicep down to your forearm making you look like Popeye(Google him if you are under 30 years old). Hope your parachute opens after that because, I'm pretty sure you instantly go into shock as you fall. Or the line could get caught up and you could be dragged behind the plane. At this point the Jumpmaster will try to dislodge you and hopefully the chute pulls out. Failing that, they will cut you loose and you are on your own to pull your emergency chute, which has it's own inherent set of dangers. The last really bad thing that could happen is your chute fails completely and you plummet with only a low 1500 feet between you and the ground to deploy your emergency parachute. Fear at this moment in my life may have been running quite high. The green light came on and we were issued the command of "Green Light Go!". The line of soldiers shuffled forward each handing their lines carefully and quickly to the jumpmaster and then exiting the plane in short swift steps and placing their hands on the exterior of the door then jumping out. I kept my eyes forward looked the instructor in the eye and handed him the tether. Took the steps like I was trained, turned my body, placed my hands outside the edge of the door and looked out. Fear. I froze there in a haze of adrenaline. I had locked up. All the preparation all of the talking myself through it. And then I felt it. The swift kick of freedom, or at least of my Jumpmaster's boot. That son of a bitch had just kicked me! Out I fell. I'm pretty sure a choice swear word escaped my lips as I felt the jolt around my shoulders as my parachute deployed. I opened my eyes. There we all hung in the air drifting slowly to the ground, as safely as a spores blown free from a dandelion. It was amazing! Adrenaline like I had never felt in my life. When we all got our parachutes wrapped up and hauled back, our Jumpmaster walked up with his own chute. He eventually walked up to me and told me he wouldn't let me fail. I told him I had no idea what he was talking about.
The lesson to be taken is that we can focus through all of our fears and come out the other side. Sometimes when it grips us so badly we need help from other people that care about us to make it through. Last, sometimes when we see that fear has gripped people we care about so much it freezes them, a well intentioned kick in the ass can help them move forward when they least expect it. Except for spiders and clowns, it's best just to shoot them and explain your irrational fear of spiders and clowns. Most people understand that.
In all my glory prior to one of my last jumps......
(Unfortunately Spiders and Clowns were not harmed in the making of this Blog. Ranked in order of which famous clown or famous spider you should kill first if attacked: IT(Because IT is an alien space clown spider), Shelob, The Clown from Poltergeist, The arachnophobia spider, and Bozo).
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Happy Father's Day to all friends, family and aquaintances! Happy Father's Day to people I don't even know, that may have stumbled across this blog on accident. In the past it seems I am always working on this day, rather then relaxing. Years in the restaurant business taught me one thing: We're going to be busy so put your own plans on hold. Not this year. A career change has suddenly given me these weekends off. So, this year I spent most of my day reflecting on many wasted Father's Days, and how it came to be that I could even consider my parenting skills worthy of such a day.
Through time I have learned a lot of methods of being a parent while watching different people with their own kids. While growing up, I learned parenting from some of my friends' Dads. Most every Dad I know, I have stolen some of their techniques and ways of handling things. When your own dad had maybe 5 or 6 rules for you, it always stuck out more when other parents would put additional rules on your friends. Come home at midnight? What's that all about?
Even my own Dad with some of his worst moments of parenting, I at least gathered some sort of "What to do..." or "What not to do..." for every situation. His anti-drug talk always stuck with me the most. "If I ever catch you doing drugs I'll break both your arms". Be very clear here, my father had no capability to break any arms, he was 5'3" and 140 lbs after eating and still wearing boots. To be fair with all the posturing and veiled threats my Dad had made over the years. I don't think he ever even cuffed me in the back of the head, when I did something that truly deserved it. These messages however stuck with me. Dad evidently felt strongly enough about drugs he would wish bodily harm upon his kids rather than see them fall into that abyss. Not, a bad thought actually if you see the destructive nature of so many narcotics. It's not an approach I take, but I know it's important to let your kids know there might be consequences. This would be one of his rules for me. The rest of the rules Dad deemed important entailed don't break any laws, and don't get anyone pregnant. That's pretty much all he asked for and I pretty much tried not to break most laws(there have been instances), and nobody got pregnant before they were supposed to(there were no instances). So, in a way his style of parenting was a success with me.
I have watched all of my friends and brothers raise their kids and have marveled at the job they do. I look at their kids and I hear their dad's in their voices and see the mannerisms they have emulated. I try to integrate what I think works, and I ask questions.
Mostly, I learned about being a Dad from two brothers who had done their own fair share of helping raise me when no one else was bothering with the idea of it. I learned a lot of what not to do from their advice when I was 8, after all they were both only 11 and 14 at that time. They had some pretty bad advice. Mostly I have learned a lot from them over the past decades as they have raised their own crews of incredible kids, who are now going on to make families of their own. Those are the two guys I admire the most.
Personally. I try to keep my own opinions on raising kids to myself unless someone asks. I have learned one thing in this life about parents. When you give unasked for advice about raising kids to other parents: They don't like it. So I keep it to myself and observe, every once in a while I ask a question or just talk about how I handle some things with my own kids. If someone wants to know something I usually answer.
Some might think my parenting skills as....well.....less. So, not a lot of people probably hold me up as a "This is how you should parent guy". I enjoy the free-range parenting more than most. It's how I grew up, I just like to add a few more rules, but probably not as many as I should. I want them to learn on their own too, develop their own way of solving problems and interacting with society. So, far my children have amazed me every step of the way. I hope they get jobs soon, we had our own paper routes by 7. Graham's almost 8, he's falling behind. I guess that's the difference between then and now. Mostly, nobody reads the paper anymore. I also used to light fireworks off when I was 4, I now hand the kids their sparklers. Wheee! Probably a good thing since I remember looking down the barrel of my lit Roman candle to see what was taking so long when I was 6. Luckily, my Mom moved my hand causing the candle to be aimed in the sky just in time before I would have gotten the nickname of Cyclops. Good times! So there's some parenting advice right there: Never look down the wrong end of a lit Roman candle. See, we can help each other.
Everyday of parenting is a growth process and I try to be a little better than the day before. I wouldn't be the Dad I am without all the other Fathers out there. Being a Dad takes a lot of doing things on the fly. We are supposed to fix things, bikes, footballs, homework, hearts and minds. It's a tall order. We all do our best, and sometimes we don't lean on each other like we should, it wouldn't be as macho if we asked another dad for advice. Sometimes we come through with an 'S' on our chest, other times we just fall short. We were supposed to know all this stuff by the time we had kids right? Yeah, right.
So, I'll end it like I started it. Happy Father's Day to all the family, friends, and even the guy in Walmart losing it a little bit in the toy section. Thanks for all the coaching you didn't know you were giving me over the years! I sorely needed it.
Through time I have learned a lot of methods of being a parent while watching different people with their own kids. While growing up, I learned parenting from some of my friends' Dads. Most every Dad I know, I have stolen some of their techniques and ways of handling things. When your own dad had maybe 5 or 6 rules for you, it always stuck out more when other parents would put additional rules on your friends. Come home at midnight? What's that all about?
Even my own Dad with some of his worst moments of parenting, I at least gathered some sort of "What to do..." or "What not to do..." for every situation. His anti-drug talk always stuck with me the most. "If I ever catch you doing drugs I'll break both your arms". Be very clear here, my father had no capability to break any arms, he was 5'3" and 140 lbs after eating and still wearing boots. To be fair with all the posturing and veiled threats my Dad had made over the years. I don't think he ever even cuffed me in the back of the head, when I did something that truly deserved it. These messages however stuck with me. Dad evidently felt strongly enough about drugs he would wish bodily harm upon his kids rather than see them fall into that abyss. Not, a bad thought actually if you see the destructive nature of so many narcotics. It's not an approach I take, but I know it's important to let your kids know there might be consequences. This would be one of his rules for me. The rest of the rules Dad deemed important entailed don't break any laws, and don't get anyone pregnant. That's pretty much all he asked for and I pretty much tried not to break most laws(there have been instances), and nobody got pregnant before they were supposed to(there were no instances). So, in a way his style of parenting was a success with me.
I have watched all of my friends and brothers raise their kids and have marveled at the job they do. I look at their kids and I hear their dad's in their voices and see the mannerisms they have emulated. I try to integrate what I think works, and I ask questions.
Mostly, I learned about being a Dad from two brothers who had done their own fair share of helping raise me when no one else was bothering with the idea of it. I learned a lot of what not to do from their advice when I was 8, after all they were both only 11 and 14 at that time. They had some pretty bad advice. Mostly I have learned a lot from them over the past decades as they have raised their own crews of incredible kids, who are now going on to make families of their own. Those are the two guys I admire the most.
Personally. I try to keep my own opinions on raising kids to myself unless someone asks. I have learned one thing in this life about parents. When you give unasked for advice about raising kids to other parents: They don't like it. So I keep it to myself and observe, every once in a while I ask a question or just talk about how I handle some things with my own kids. If someone wants to know something I usually answer.
Some might think my parenting skills as....well.....less. So, not a lot of people probably hold me up as a "This is how you should parent guy". I enjoy the free-range parenting more than most. It's how I grew up, I just like to add a few more rules, but probably not as many as I should. I want them to learn on their own too, develop their own way of solving problems and interacting with society. So, far my children have amazed me every step of the way. I hope they get jobs soon, we had our own paper routes by 7. Graham's almost 8, he's falling behind. I guess that's the difference between then and now. Mostly, nobody reads the paper anymore. I also used to light fireworks off when I was 4, I now hand the kids their sparklers. Wheee! Probably a good thing since I remember looking down the barrel of my lit Roman candle to see what was taking so long when I was 6. Luckily, my Mom moved my hand causing the candle to be aimed in the sky just in time before I would have gotten the nickname of Cyclops. Good times! So there's some parenting advice right there: Never look down the wrong end of a lit Roman candle. See, we can help each other.
Everyday of parenting is a growth process and I try to be a little better than the day before. I wouldn't be the Dad I am without all the other Fathers out there. Being a Dad takes a lot of doing things on the fly. We are supposed to fix things, bikes, footballs, homework, hearts and minds. It's a tall order. We all do our best, and sometimes we don't lean on each other like we should, it wouldn't be as macho if we asked another dad for advice. Sometimes we come through with an 'S' on our chest, other times we just fall short. We were supposed to know all this stuff by the time we had kids right? Yeah, right.
So, I'll end it like I started it. Happy Father's Day to all the family, friends, and even the guy in Walmart losing it a little bit in the toy section. Thanks for all the coaching you didn't know you were giving me over the years! I sorely needed it.
Saturday, May 16, 2015
Find your passion. Three words that somehow evoke fear, panic, doubt, even denial. The passions have always been there in my head. Everything I've wanted to do, every little thing I've wanted to achieve. But the programs of your hardwiring in your brain can kick in pretty fast "Can't make any money at that?" "What will people think of that?" "What if it fails right away?" or worse "WHAT IF IT SUCCEEDS RIGHT AWAY?" These are just a few roadblocks running through at any given moment. I'm not looking for just success. I think just about anybody can do that. I am looking for individual success in something I am passionate about, not what you or anyone else is passionate about.
The old saying goes, find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life. I've worked a lot of days, then, I think everyone has. There are those and you see them and read about them, that truly have no idea what year it is. They are having so much fun fulfilling their lives in a manner that they have a passion about. Just, think if the whole world was doing something they were truly passionate about. Wouldn't the world be something truly great? I hate to go to far into alternate realities, but how much less hate in the world there would be had Hitler truly pursued a career as an artist and kept working at it? Would there even be an atomic bomb? Could the greatest scientists ever assembled have come up with something far more useful to the benefit of mankind than the ability to dispose of it? The butterfly effect is crazy in that one specific scenario. Now, I'll get back on task.
Pursuit of a passion is a pursuit of happiness. The journey is the goal. Every single one of us goes through it. The hardest part of every journey towards any goal or dream is the people that surround you. Some are good, some are bad. For sure I have rested squarely on the "bad" at more times than not, for some people. More than likely if there was a story about my influence it would be more like the grasshopper than the ant (no literary or cartoon reference left unturned). It's hard to keep everything upbeat and moving forward, it's hard to turn that around. Eventually, you can look around and you have attracted what you are going to attract for like-minded people. Some you keep, and some you don't. When you do turn it around(a little)you find the people that were like you, become fingernails on the chalkboard. Just listening to them agitates you and drives you back to where you don't want to be anymore.
There is a story I have heard on several occasions, it only made true sense to me a few months ago when told from a perspective I was ready to accept. Most people know it as the crab mentality. If there is a single crab in a bucket, it will surely escape. If there are several crabs in the bucket, every time one crab tries to escape the other crabs in the bucket pull it down in the bucket with them. If they are left to their own devices all of the crabs would die(well except maybe the last one)as they prevent each other from achieving a goal in leaving the bucket.
In my head I was always the crab trying to escape and reach the goal. As it turned out, I was the crab trying to make sure no one else was getting ahead, because life in the bucket was supposed to be hard. That's what I had told myself, and that is what everyone had told me. Luckily someone talked me into trying to turn that around. She pulled me out of the bucket with her. I am very thankful for that(love you honey!). Seeing the world with a different perspective is a lot more fun than it used to be.
Yes, the crabs in the bucket are still there and some of them will always be there. I am doing my best to pull them up and out. I'm not perfect. I slip, I question, I peek back in the buckets and see what is going on. I get angry with the crabs in the bucket. I get angry with the crabs outside of the bucket. All of the above. No one said it was going to be easy. It takes leaps of faith in people, to know when they are done with just "making it through the day." I try to help those crabs when I can, in turn I hope it helps me. If none of that makes sense, then just think that nobody likes crabs, of any sort.
Every day begins with the potential to be as great as the effort I put into it. If I pull a few people up and out with me in that effort, not such a bad thing.
(No crabs were hurt in the writing of this blog. As far as I know they will all be released eventually and free to live out their lives as they deem fit. If you weren't thinking of crustacean crabs while reading this blog please get your heads out of the gutter. I am in no way, shape, or form a licensed therapist or even a reasonable person at most times. Taking any advice from me can be enlightening yet somewhat disturbing to some who viewed me as the guy in the back of the class just trying to make it through.......)
The old saying goes, find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life. I've worked a lot of days, then, I think everyone has. There are those and you see them and read about them, that truly have no idea what year it is. They are having so much fun fulfilling their lives in a manner that they have a passion about. Just, think if the whole world was doing something they were truly passionate about. Wouldn't the world be something truly great? I hate to go to far into alternate realities, but how much less hate in the world there would be had Hitler truly pursued a career as an artist and kept working at it? Would there even be an atomic bomb? Could the greatest scientists ever assembled have come up with something far more useful to the benefit of mankind than the ability to dispose of it? The butterfly effect is crazy in that one specific scenario. Now, I'll get back on task.
Pursuit of a passion is a pursuit of happiness. The journey is the goal. Every single one of us goes through it. The hardest part of every journey towards any goal or dream is the people that surround you. Some are good, some are bad. For sure I have rested squarely on the "bad" at more times than not, for some people. More than likely if there was a story about my influence it would be more like the grasshopper than the ant (no literary or cartoon reference left unturned). It's hard to keep everything upbeat and moving forward, it's hard to turn that around. Eventually, you can look around and you have attracted what you are going to attract for like-minded people. Some you keep, and some you don't. When you do turn it around(a little)you find the people that were like you, become fingernails on the chalkboard. Just listening to them agitates you and drives you back to where you don't want to be anymore.
There is a story I have heard on several occasions, it only made true sense to me a few months ago when told from a perspective I was ready to accept. Most people know it as the crab mentality. If there is a single crab in a bucket, it will surely escape. If there are several crabs in the bucket, every time one crab tries to escape the other crabs in the bucket pull it down in the bucket with them. If they are left to their own devices all of the crabs would die(well except maybe the last one)as they prevent each other from achieving a goal in leaving the bucket.
In my head I was always the crab trying to escape and reach the goal. As it turned out, I was the crab trying to make sure no one else was getting ahead, because life in the bucket was supposed to be hard. That's what I had told myself, and that is what everyone had told me. Luckily someone talked me into trying to turn that around. She pulled me out of the bucket with her. I am very thankful for that(love you honey!). Seeing the world with a different perspective is a lot more fun than it used to be.
Yes, the crabs in the bucket are still there and some of them will always be there. I am doing my best to pull them up and out. I'm not perfect. I slip, I question, I peek back in the buckets and see what is going on. I get angry with the crabs in the bucket. I get angry with the crabs outside of the bucket. All of the above. No one said it was going to be easy. It takes leaps of faith in people, to know when they are done with just "making it through the day." I try to help those crabs when I can, in turn I hope it helps me. If none of that makes sense, then just think that nobody likes crabs, of any sort.
Every day begins with the potential to be as great as the effort I put into it. If I pull a few people up and out with me in that effort, not such a bad thing.
(No crabs were hurt in the writing of this blog. As far as I know they will all be released eventually and free to live out their lives as they deem fit. If you weren't thinking of crustacean crabs while reading this blog please get your heads out of the gutter. I am in no way, shape, or form a licensed therapist or even a reasonable person at most times. Taking any advice from me can be enlightening yet somewhat disturbing to some who viewed me as the guy in the back of the class just trying to make it through.......)
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
The two stood at the edge staring down. In the 10 foot diameter circle of lacquered wood sat the object of their attention a pond of infinity. It swirled in the cosmic dust of purple, gold, silver, and blue in all different hues surrounded by a shroud of black, speckled with pinpoints of brightest whites. It was a tapestry of the universe built into a basement floor. How difficult is it to explain what would be considered a horizontal gateway into space that looked like an outer space rabbit hole. Well.......
"Holy fuck." said the visitor.
"That's an understatement." replied the other.
A moment ago the two had pushed the large bookcase out of the way revealing the hole and the flight of stairs leading down. The owner of the home flipped a makeshift light he had set up. Not too, bright, he had done that on purpose. When they got down to the bottom, he clapped. The lights, flipped off.
The visitor raised an eyebrow, he was about to make a joke, then it caught in his throat and the swearing came out instead.
He had tried to prepare his visiting guest with anecdotes and innuendo. How did one prepare another when showing him the cosmos locked in his basement? Cosmos for Dummies was sold out. He had tried to find some such book at Barnes and Noble. Closest he came to it was something called Dr. Strange graphic novels, books by a few theorists of incredible intelligence with convoluted ways of explaining the fabric of the continuum, and horror stories by Lovecraft. He tried to read them all. He actually enjoyed the Lovecraft. The homeowner hoped a many tendrilled things was not going to reach through the infinite and tear reality asunder. So far the whole thing had just sat there mesmerizing, like a lava lamp. It was intense, yet relaxing. He could stare at it all night, perched in the great black leather furniture he had found around it. Neither Science nor Science fiction was ever his thing...until of course, it now was.
It all started when he had purchased the property a year ago. It had been a fairly easy purchase of a rather ancient property, locally speaking. The previous owner, a college professor from the area, had simply disappeared. No family, no heirs. An investigation by local authorities turned up nothing.The house came up on auction. It needed some fixing, which of course, the new owner was somewhat good at. He had purchased it for way below it's value.
It was a great house. Three stories and a finished basement. It was Victorian or Gothic, or a combination of both, the owner always told people. Sometimes he'd just scratch his head, shrugging his shoulders and answer "Dunno, it's a house." Either way the square footage to dollar ratio made it a no brainer for him. It was only crazy in the sense that he really didn't need a house. He was past owning a house for living out his days. He had explained to the visitor upon it's purchase that it was a hobby to occupy his time and purely an investment to flip. Just to take his mind off of things. The visitor had been over a few times, dropping by with his daughter, who loved running through and getting lost.
"How have you kept this a secret?" questioned the visitor.
"I dunno," shrugged the owner,"I just have."
"There are a million questions here. What have you done so far to investigate this thing?" he tipped a beer up and swallowed the bitter fluid from the bottle. It was at that warm stage, where you knew it was kind of gross but he drank it anyway. He waited for an answer.
"Nothing. What could I do? I have no idea what I have here."
"Well....was it here right away when you purchased it? How was it missed pre-auction."
The owner, tipped his own beer, then scratched beneath the foam and mesh hat that spoke about a preference for fishing over everything else. Then he unfolded his tale of unlocking the secrets of the house he had built. Measurement-wise the home never meshed. The exterior versus the usable rooms and where plumbing and electricity should have matched up, never quite did. It was a head scratcher and most people would have let it lie, just chalking it up to the overall size and twists and turns within the home. He would not. He had desperate need to know how things ticked, how things were put together. Take things apart and put them back together. Years of working at the local plant in the maintenance department had made him that way. Eventually, from city hall floor plans and careful measuring he took a 10 pound sledgehammer to the wall behind the built in shelving in the 2nd living room. It took him about a morning but it revealed the hollow and the stairway down to the center basement that had escaped so much notice in all the years the house had existed. So, with the largest flashlight he had he began a trek down a set of stairs that had been built to head into the dark heart of his home. Like Batman or Van Helsing maybe? He didn't know it was going to be more like Scooby Doo and Shaggy. Eventually.
What was revealed the first night by a flashlight was a very nice space framed with dark hardwood trim and matching flooring. Great pieces of leather furniture stood sprawled around the center. The walls lacked decoration, but clearly were built for great portraits with the eyes cut out behind them for watchers in secret passages to spy upon poor souls that entered the space. In the center of the room with high ceilings was a large circular frame surrounding what the new owner had thought was some sort of LED display. Maybe the original owner had worked for the local display sign manufacturer. If so he had done a bang up job, it was all so real. The floor mounted screen had amazing depth. The display played a single picture of what space looked like in outer space. The true outerspace without the glare of the city streetlights and neon. The kind of pictures you see while laying on the hood of a car out in the dark of a midnight gravel road. He approached the screen carefully, but in the darkness he missed a small step up and he tripped forward, falling on the hardwood. Pain shot up his knees and hands as he caught himself. When he opened his eyes in a grimace, he saw the flashlight sitting on top of the screen, then it simply fell through the screen with a small popping sound. He stared in wonder and fear as the flashlight slowly turned in the space the light revolving and then winked out. He knew it wasn't a screen and thanked nobody in particular for falling forward at the right time. He had felt humming vibrations through his palms at that time. He also smelled the hot electricity in the air. The portal was powered somehow.
He had spent many nights just staring at the portal to everywhere. Eventually he had to show someone.This brings him back to now. They had moved closer to the portal, the owner kept a respectable distance and urged the visitor to do the same.
"Wow." Breathed the visitor. he had polished his beer off, leaving nothing but the empty amber glass clutched in his left hand. He paused and looked at it. He was more than a little tipsy at the moment. They had split a twelvie before coming down the steps. His life and everybody else's lives in the whole existence of whatever he was looking at played in his mind. The bottle flew from his hands without consequence.
"NO!" Cried the owner. Not sure why he yelled. He had seen the results with the flashlight. Yet, somehow he felt they shouldn't push their luck. Welp, they were in it now!
The bottle landed on the cosmos' contact lense. The owner hoped the giant eye wouldn't blink. The bottle sat there, on it's side. Serenely afloat on what would be considered the Holy Grail of Stephen Hawking. A small ship bottle, without the ship, waiting to see the infinite. Then it did. It sunk slowly as if pushing through a thick gelatin. Then POP! It was on the other side. It fell. They both stared in amazement as it floated away from them. It kept falling away towards the colors of the cosmos. It was the most beautiful moment of galactic littering ever seen. Then the owner of the house emptied his beer bottle and threw it at the surface of the portal as well. It repeated the same process. They stared.
The rest of the evening they repeated the process with all sorts of objects: full bottles, full soda cans, sticks, light bulbs, milk jugs, batteries, turned at flashlights that twirled with the lights of the gods. They laughed with each success or each failure of creating beer and Mountain Dew asteroids. Could there really be a failure? It wasn't their experiment. They had happened upon it, to them it was fully functional entertainment. Eventually the visitor had to leave., it was late. He promised to not speak a word of what they had done until they decided what to do with it. He stumbled out into the night. He prayed a sigh of relief when he got home safe. His wife rolled over an arm flung across him as he nodded off, the moon and the stars laughing at their own show as they peered through the half turned blinds of the slumbering homes across the night.
A month passed by and just about every night the two conspired around the cosmic hole in the ground. It was an endless source of fascination and entertainment. The two bonded over the whole thing and came out the other side closer than they had ever been. It was....fun! Lots of fun!
Most of the time the owner of the house thought of the visitor and the great times they had while hovering around the hole. This was not one of those times. he sat in the doctors office. He knew what was going to happen. He knew the man in the white jacket was not going to walk through those doors with amazing news. There were consequences to a way a man lived his life. He knew that. He knew it all along. He began to sob quietly to himself. He closed his eyes as tears, long held back, now flowed. The door opened and the doctor stepped through the man ignored him and continued to cry. Nothing would happen to change the results he already knew. Nothing could happen.
One day the owner of the cosmic portal showed up at the door of his visitor from so many nights. He walked in the door. It was pre-planned a birthday for the daughter of the visitor. The mother of the birthday girl was so excited and hugged her husband's guest. The two exchanged pleasantries, as they always had in the past. Eventually the other kids showed up and the celebration began. They ran around all over, there was shouting, screaming, cake and ice cream. It was standard party fare. The birthday girl hugged everyone when the goodbyes came, especially the friend of her father. She knew he was special, even at 2.
Eventually the party dropped off. The two men met in front of the house. The owner stood short in the front of the small ranch home of his usual guest, the snaps of his plaid patterned shirt twitched as he dug in his breast pocket for his cigarettes. He pulled one out and balanced it in his lips. He lit it quickly from years of practice, his hand still shook though.
"I have a plan." He puffed looking down at the hard cement walk.
"A plan?" answered the other man.
"Yep. I have a plan. I found it this morning." again a volume of smoke escaped his lips as he exhaled. "I'll get a hold of you later this week. Should arrive by then."
"Ok." the other man acquiesced. He was tired from managing the events of the Birthday party. What was the point of discussing it any ways? They parted. The owner of the universe walking away with out a care in the world puffing on the cigarette. The visitor smiled as he watched the old man strut down the sidewalk, he would show up and see what the plan entailed.
Later that week the visitor received a call and showed up at the residence of the owner of the cosmos. The visitor pulled up to the 3 story house, he had received a call to drop by and let himself in. The house was teal. The trim was a burgundy, and there was white in other places. It was truly an idyllic home. He would have liked to grow there he thought, seemed like a kid could have gotten himself into a lot of trouble with that much space to explore and make stories up about. Such stupid facts he hadn't really noticed until this moment. The visitor swallowed hard, and with trepidation, stepped towards the home. He visualized one lonely man and what appeared to be the entire cosmos in a static wormhole of some sort located in the found basement of this house. It sounded official to the visitor's ears. He wasn't a scientist, so what the hell, let's call it that.
He walked through the house. It had pictures of them both on the wall. Both in younger states. He loved looking at those pictures, always had. It was time caught in the proverbial bottle. They had arms around each other, or had conquered something that seemed unconquerable. Here they stood again on the edge of the unconquerable.
He walked through this room and that and came to the knocked down brick wall in the second living room. Sidestepping, he angled through the sledgehammered entrance and made his way down the makeshift stairs the previous owner had made to his altar to the heavens.
The owner stood there at the bottom. Looking up at him. Only difference was he was looking through a domed face shield of a helmet. He wore an astronaut's suit. A space suit! The whole scene was so surreal, the visitor lost his footing, slipping down several steps and then catching himself.
"This is your plan?" He cried. He didn't know whether to laugh or throw up!
"Yep."
"Ridiculous you can't do this!" The visitor spoke in hard assertive tones.
"Oh..I think it's happening." the owner had the face-shield flipped up. He was smoking. It was that look. A mixture of alcohol and determination. The visitor knew this was not going his way.
"Where the hell did you get this thing?" the visitor stalled for time.
"Ebay."
Ebay! Of course he bought it on Ebay! Who knew the owner of the house even knew how to use the internet. That alone was sci-fi enough for the visitor, and the books he had noticed scattered around the old house as of late.
"Is there an MTV Flag with it?" The joke would have been old for most, the owner of the house would not have gotten it. The owner had never understood his generation, or music for that matter. The visitor kept throwing out questions and statements in hope of talking the homeowner out of his plan.
"You can't leave us now! There is too much left to do for us here!"
The owner smiled and pointed his silver white astronaut glove at the cigarette in his other hand.
"I think the risk has already taken care of me." His grimace spoke volumes about his health. His eyes were old, older than ever.
As usual his explanations for everything had fallen short. The two looked at each other. Finally, the visitor looked away. The owner smiled and turned towards the cosmic oblivion at his feet. He slammed the shield shut, the cigarette inside the helmet with him.
"Dad. I don't think I can do this without you.", whispered the visitor. He had always felt like a visitor in his Dad's home.
The man in the suit smiled, not daring to look back. It would have changed his mind.
"Of course you can. You have been for years." The voice was muffled through the shield of the facemask and the words floated around his back to the man. Yet, the son heard it clear as a bell. It tolled.
With the last of his words the father stepped forward. His body began to sink through the thin veneer of all time and space and with a pop he was on the other side. His son watched him fall away, the silver of the suit reflecting the lights of the cosmos. A peaceful swirling of the universe around a man as he contemplated his final place within. He waved to his son as he somersaulted towards nebulas far and away. The son stared over the cosmic pond, his tears landing on the surface,then popping through to the other side instantly transformed to ice. It was weird that his tears would carry enough weight to sink, but they did. They glittered as snowflakes blowing in the imagined solar winds. He watched until he could no longer tell his father from the picture of the universe. The son turned and trudged up the stairs. Tomorrow he would brick up the wall and sell the house. He walked outside and looked up at the sky, blinking back more tears coupled with a brief smile, he shuffled off into the night, heading home. The moon and the stars enjoying their cosmic show as he walked.
(Happy Birthday Dad! There isn't a day that goes by.......)
"Holy fuck." said the visitor.
"That's an understatement." replied the other.
A moment ago the two had pushed the large bookcase out of the way revealing the hole and the flight of stairs leading down. The owner of the home flipped a makeshift light he had set up. Not too, bright, he had done that on purpose. When they got down to the bottom, he clapped. The lights, flipped off.
The visitor raised an eyebrow, he was about to make a joke, then it caught in his throat and the swearing came out instead.
He had tried to prepare his visiting guest with anecdotes and innuendo. How did one prepare another when showing him the cosmos locked in his basement? Cosmos for Dummies was sold out. He had tried to find some such book at Barnes and Noble. Closest he came to it was something called Dr. Strange graphic novels, books by a few theorists of incredible intelligence with convoluted ways of explaining the fabric of the continuum, and horror stories by Lovecraft. He tried to read them all. He actually enjoyed the Lovecraft. The homeowner hoped a many tendrilled things was not going to reach through the infinite and tear reality asunder. So far the whole thing had just sat there mesmerizing, like a lava lamp. It was intense, yet relaxing. He could stare at it all night, perched in the great black leather furniture he had found around it. Neither Science nor Science fiction was ever his thing...until of course, it now was.
It all started when he had purchased the property a year ago. It had been a fairly easy purchase of a rather ancient property, locally speaking. The previous owner, a college professor from the area, had simply disappeared. No family, no heirs. An investigation by local authorities turned up nothing.The house came up on auction. It needed some fixing, which of course, the new owner was somewhat good at. He had purchased it for way below it's value.
It was a great house. Three stories and a finished basement. It was Victorian or Gothic, or a combination of both, the owner always told people. Sometimes he'd just scratch his head, shrugging his shoulders and answer "Dunno, it's a house." Either way the square footage to dollar ratio made it a no brainer for him. It was only crazy in the sense that he really didn't need a house. He was past owning a house for living out his days. He had explained to the visitor upon it's purchase that it was a hobby to occupy his time and purely an investment to flip. Just to take his mind off of things. The visitor had been over a few times, dropping by with his daughter, who loved running through and getting lost.
"How have you kept this a secret?" questioned the visitor.
"I dunno," shrugged the owner,"I just have."
"There are a million questions here. What have you done so far to investigate this thing?" he tipped a beer up and swallowed the bitter fluid from the bottle. It was at that warm stage, where you knew it was kind of gross but he drank it anyway. He waited for an answer.
"Nothing. What could I do? I have no idea what I have here."
"Well....was it here right away when you purchased it? How was it missed pre-auction."
The owner, tipped his own beer, then scratched beneath the foam and mesh hat that spoke about a preference for fishing over everything else. Then he unfolded his tale of unlocking the secrets of the house he had built. Measurement-wise the home never meshed. The exterior versus the usable rooms and where plumbing and electricity should have matched up, never quite did. It was a head scratcher and most people would have let it lie, just chalking it up to the overall size and twists and turns within the home. He would not. He had desperate need to know how things ticked, how things were put together. Take things apart and put them back together. Years of working at the local plant in the maintenance department had made him that way. Eventually, from city hall floor plans and careful measuring he took a 10 pound sledgehammer to the wall behind the built in shelving in the 2nd living room. It took him about a morning but it revealed the hollow and the stairway down to the center basement that had escaped so much notice in all the years the house had existed. So, with the largest flashlight he had he began a trek down a set of stairs that had been built to head into the dark heart of his home. Like Batman or Van Helsing maybe? He didn't know it was going to be more like Scooby Doo and Shaggy. Eventually.
What was revealed the first night by a flashlight was a very nice space framed with dark hardwood trim and matching flooring. Great pieces of leather furniture stood sprawled around the center. The walls lacked decoration, but clearly were built for great portraits with the eyes cut out behind them for watchers in secret passages to spy upon poor souls that entered the space. In the center of the room with high ceilings was a large circular frame surrounding what the new owner had thought was some sort of LED display. Maybe the original owner had worked for the local display sign manufacturer. If so he had done a bang up job, it was all so real. The floor mounted screen had amazing depth. The display played a single picture of what space looked like in outer space. The true outerspace without the glare of the city streetlights and neon. The kind of pictures you see while laying on the hood of a car out in the dark of a midnight gravel road. He approached the screen carefully, but in the darkness he missed a small step up and he tripped forward, falling on the hardwood. Pain shot up his knees and hands as he caught himself. When he opened his eyes in a grimace, he saw the flashlight sitting on top of the screen, then it simply fell through the screen with a small popping sound. He stared in wonder and fear as the flashlight slowly turned in the space the light revolving and then winked out. He knew it wasn't a screen and thanked nobody in particular for falling forward at the right time. He had felt humming vibrations through his palms at that time. He also smelled the hot electricity in the air. The portal was powered somehow.
He had spent many nights just staring at the portal to everywhere. Eventually he had to show someone.This brings him back to now. They had moved closer to the portal, the owner kept a respectable distance and urged the visitor to do the same.
"Wow." Breathed the visitor. he had polished his beer off, leaving nothing but the empty amber glass clutched in his left hand. He paused and looked at it. He was more than a little tipsy at the moment. They had split a twelvie before coming down the steps. His life and everybody else's lives in the whole existence of whatever he was looking at played in his mind. The bottle flew from his hands without consequence.
"NO!" Cried the owner. Not sure why he yelled. He had seen the results with the flashlight. Yet, somehow he felt they shouldn't push their luck. Welp, they were in it now!
The bottle landed on the cosmos' contact lense. The owner hoped the giant eye wouldn't blink. The bottle sat there, on it's side. Serenely afloat on what would be considered the Holy Grail of Stephen Hawking. A small ship bottle, without the ship, waiting to see the infinite. Then it did. It sunk slowly as if pushing through a thick gelatin. Then POP! It was on the other side. It fell. They both stared in amazement as it floated away from them. It kept falling away towards the colors of the cosmos. It was the most beautiful moment of galactic littering ever seen. Then the owner of the house emptied his beer bottle and threw it at the surface of the portal as well. It repeated the same process. They stared.
The rest of the evening they repeated the process with all sorts of objects: full bottles, full soda cans, sticks, light bulbs, milk jugs, batteries, turned at flashlights that twirled with the lights of the gods. They laughed with each success or each failure of creating beer and Mountain Dew asteroids. Could there really be a failure? It wasn't their experiment. They had happened upon it, to them it was fully functional entertainment. Eventually the visitor had to leave., it was late. He promised to not speak a word of what they had done until they decided what to do with it. He stumbled out into the night. He prayed a sigh of relief when he got home safe. His wife rolled over an arm flung across him as he nodded off, the moon and the stars laughing at their own show as they peered through the half turned blinds of the slumbering homes across the night.
A month passed by and just about every night the two conspired around the cosmic hole in the ground. It was an endless source of fascination and entertainment. The two bonded over the whole thing and came out the other side closer than they had ever been. It was....fun! Lots of fun!
Most of the time the owner of the house thought of the visitor and the great times they had while hovering around the hole. This was not one of those times. he sat in the doctors office. He knew what was going to happen. He knew the man in the white jacket was not going to walk through those doors with amazing news. There were consequences to a way a man lived his life. He knew that. He knew it all along. He began to sob quietly to himself. He closed his eyes as tears, long held back, now flowed. The door opened and the doctor stepped through the man ignored him and continued to cry. Nothing would happen to change the results he already knew. Nothing could happen.
One day the owner of the cosmic portal showed up at the door of his visitor from so many nights. He walked in the door. It was pre-planned a birthday for the daughter of the visitor. The mother of the birthday girl was so excited and hugged her husband's guest. The two exchanged pleasantries, as they always had in the past. Eventually the other kids showed up and the celebration began. They ran around all over, there was shouting, screaming, cake and ice cream. It was standard party fare. The birthday girl hugged everyone when the goodbyes came, especially the friend of her father. She knew he was special, even at 2.
Eventually the party dropped off. The two men met in front of the house. The owner stood short in the front of the small ranch home of his usual guest, the snaps of his plaid patterned shirt twitched as he dug in his breast pocket for his cigarettes. He pulled one out and balanced it in his lips. He lit it quickly from years of practice, his hand still shook though.
"I have a plan." He puffed looking down at the hard cement walk.
"A plan?" answered the other man.
"Yep. I have a plan. I found it this morning." again a volume of smoke escaped his lips as he exhaled. "I'll get a hold of you later this week. Should arrive by then."
"Ok." the other man acquiesced. He was tired from managing the events of the Birthday party. What was the point of discussing it any ways? They parted. The owner of the universe walking away with out a care in the world puffing on the cigarette. The visitor smiled as he watched the old man strut down the sidewalk, he would show up and see what the plan entailed.
Later that week the visitor received a call and showed up at the residence of the owner of the cosmos. The visitor pulled up to the 3 story house, he had received a call to drop by and let himself in. The house was teal. The trim was a burgundy, and there was white in other places. It was truly an idyllic home. He would have liked to grow there he thought, seemed like a kid could have gotten himself into a lot of trouble with that much space to explore and make stories up about. Such stupid facts he hadn't really noticed until this moment. The visitor swallowed hard, and with trepidation, stepped towards the home. He visualized one lonely man and what appeared to be the entire cosmos in a static wormhole of some sort located in the found basement of this house. It sounded official to the visitor's ears. He wasn't a scientist, so what the hell, let's call it that.
He walked through the house. It had pictures of them both on the wall. Both in younger states. He loved looking at those pictures, always had. It was time caught in the proverbial bottle. They had arms around each other, or had conquered something that seemed unconquerable. Here they stood again on the edge of the unconquerable.
He walked through this room and that and came to the knocked down brick wall in the second living room. Sidestepping, he angled through the sledgehammered entrance and made his way down the makeshift stairs the previous owner had made to his altar to the heavens.
The owner stood there at the bottom. Looking up at him. Only difference was he was looking through a domed face shield of a helmet. He wore an astronaut's suit. A space suit! The whole scene was so surreal, the visitor lost his footing, slipping down several steps and then catching himself.
"This is your plan?" He cried. He didn't know whether to laugh or throw up!
"Yep."
"Ridiculous you can't do this!" The visitor spoke in hard assertive tones.
"Oh..I think it's happening." the owner had the face-shield flipped up. He was smoking. It was that look. A mixture of alcohol and determination. The visitor knew this was not going his way.
"Where the hell did you get this thing?" the visitor stalled for time.
"Ebay."
Ebay! Of course he bought it on Ebay! Who knew the owner of the house even knew how to use the internet. That alone was sci-fi enough for the visitor, and the books he had noticed scattered around the old house as of late.
"Is there an MTV Flag with it?" The joke would have been old for most, the owner of the house would not have gotten it. The owner had never understood his generation, or music for that matter. The visitor kept throwing out questions and statements in hope of talking the homeowner out of his plan.
"You can't leave us now! There is too much left to do for us here!"
The owner smiled and pointed his silver white astronaut glove at the cigarette in his other hand.
"I think the risk has already taken care of me." His grimace spoke volumes about his health. His eyes were old, older than ever.
As usual his explanations for everything had fallen short. The two looked at each other. Finally, the visitor looked away. The owner smiled and turned towards the cosmic oblivion at his feet. He slammed the shield shut, the cigarette inside the helmet with him.
"Dad. I don't think I can do this without you.", whispered the visitor. He had always felt like a visitor in his Dad's home.
The man in the suit smiled, not daring to look back. It would have changed his mind.
"Of course you can. You have been for years." The voice was muffled through the shield of the facemask and the words floated around his back to the man. Yet, the son heard it clear as a bell. It tolled.
With the last of his words the father stepped forward. His body began to sink through the thin veneer of all time and space and with a pop he was on the other side. His son watched him fall away, the silver of the suit reflecting the lights of the cosmos. A peaceful swirling of the universe around a man as he contemplated his final place within. He waved to his son as he somersaulted towards nebulas far and away. The son stared over the cosmic pond, his tears landing on the surface,then popping through to the other side instantly transformed to ice. It was weird that his tears would carry enough weight to sink, but they did. They glittered as snowflakes blowing in the imagined solar winds. He watched until he could no longer tell his father from the picture of the universe. The son turned and trudged up the stairs. Tomorrow he would brick up the wall and sell the house. He walked outside and looked up at the sky, blinking back more tears coupled with a brief smile, he shuffled off into the night, heading home. The moon and the stars enjoying their cosmic show as he walked.
(Happy Birthday Dad! There isn't a day that goes by.......)
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
An open letter to Northern State University, the City of Aberdeen, the SDWCA and the South Dakota Wrestling Community
There are no selection show Sundays. There are no office pools on Cody Pack's chances at the Championships. Wrestling is difficult arduous sport from the time you pick up a headgear to the day you hang it up. There is little glory. Stands are usually empty with just the cheering of families and a few friends. Lessons are learned with your face in the mat or counting the lights. I often found the center of the mat was the greatest solitude I could find. The quiet muffle of the crowd making it through my headgear to my ears. A zen quality of thinking of your next two or three moves and the simultaneous reaction of the body putting those into action while processing what an opponent is currently doing. The delirious feeling of giving it your all, and sometimes your arm not being raised despite all your effort. It is living in the moment while thinking of the future and forgetting the past.
In recent years, the sport has taken a bashing, sometimes even by me. It has gotten better in aspects that shouldn't be part of the sport but have been integral to it's past and the old school ways of thinking concerning nutrition. It has fought it's way back from extinction from an Olympic Committee that would rather put more obscure sports in action than a rich history of tradition.
In our own microcosm of the world the wrestling community has been setback by the recent decision of Northern State University to halt the program for "study". I don't believe anyone is buying that. However, the quick reaction for consideration of the SDWCA is to cancel the State Youth Tournament in Aberdeen, SD next year. The tournament was a request by the NSU wrestling to have as a fundraiser for it's scholarships. Think about that! A university reached out to a youth program in order to save it's program. Smartly(can't remember if that's a word, but I wrestled.), the SDWCA agreed to do that in order to protect the sport it nurtures in youth across our State. What a great idea! Unfortunately the unfortunate happened, the NSU program was put on the chopping block. At least it got a courtesy excuse, unlike University of Nebraska-Omaha which was just summarily executed alongside it's football program. UNO had a very successful program, so the NSU excuse of 2 bad years doesn't hold much weight with me either.
Now, I have laid the ground work of the problem. I can see why the SDWCA is thinking about the decision to remove the tournament from Aberdeen. On the surface this looks like a reasonable request. However, wrestlers and their communities are tougher than that. We can not simply take our headgears and go home when things get tough. If the University is serious about a "courtesy study" then a committee of concerned wrestling parties should be formed. Frame the beliefs that wrestling deserves to be part of the University still. A solution should be found. If this wrestling team is that important then we should be looking to help still run this tournament in Aberdeen and as a complete community raise funds to help with scholarships to maintain the continuation of the program. Not just NSU, but all the colleges in the state maintain a program. I do not know where all the funds go for all the clubs, but combined we should be able to create some sort of scholarships for our South Dakota Wrestlers to attend university in pursuit of knowledge and to compete. This could help us retain the best of our wrestling talent instead of them leaving the state to represent other colleges. Should the tournament be held in Aberdeen and NSU fails to reinstate the program then funds raised should be disseminated in a fashion that benefits the sport as a whole in the state.
Facebook posts and petitions are nice, but funding is funding. Coaches in every sport and at all levels of education know this to be true. To protect this sport that so many of us grew up. Now we are passing on to our children, because we know it to be one of the purest sports out there. No ball, no pads, we all weigh the same(in theory anyways), just skill, desire, determination and work. We must truly combine the talents we all forged through wrestling and have taken into our adult lives and come up with a better solution than "let's just move the tournament". NSU may be the first shot fired, there are more Universities and more programs at stake. If we retreat in the face of this adversity, then every college knows that we are not just measuring our support with the number of facebook likes and twitter reposts. True support is measured in dollars whether through funding or butts in the seats. A hard truth, brutal but true. Wrestling is very much like life, you reap what you sow. The wrestling community cannot afford to let another program shutdown with barely a fight. Simply moving the tournament is barely a fight and will sow the thought process that this is alright. Supporting the sport needs to happen with calm, reason, and viable solutions.
(I decided to use this blog for an editorial opinion piece, which is really not it's purpose per se. It is to work on my writing ability, so I kind of hit the objective. Also, I'm not a narcissist so I can't always write about myself. )
There are no selection show Sundays. There are no office pools on Cody Pack's chances at the Championships. Wrestling is difficult arduous sport from the time you pick up a headgear to the day you hang it up. There is little glory. Stands are usually empty with just the cheering of families and a few friends. Lessons are learned with your face in the mat or counting the lights. I often found the center of the mat was the greatest solitude I could find. The quiet muffle of the crowd making it through my headgear to my ears. A zen quality of thinking of your next two or three moves and the simultaneous reaction of the body putting those into action while processing what an opponent is currently doing. The delirious feeling of giving it your all, and sometimes your arm not being raised despite all your effort. It is living in the moment while thinking of the future and forgetting the past.
In recent years, the sport has taken a bashing, sometimes even by me. It has gotten better in aspects that shouldn't be part of the sport but have been integral to it's past and the old school ways of thinking concerning nutrition. It has fought it's way back from extinction from an Olympic Committee that would rather put more obscure sports in action than a rich history of tradition.
In our own microcosm of the world the wrestling community has been setback by the recent decision of Northern State University to halt the program for "study". I don't believe anyone is buying that. However, the quick reaction for consideration of the SDWCA is to cancel the State Youth Tournament in Aberdeen, SD next year. The tournament was a request by the NSU wrestling to have as a fundraiser for it's scholarships. Think about that! A university reached out to a youth program in order to save it's program. Smartly(can't remember if that's a word, but I wrestled.), the SDWCA agreed to do that in order to protect the sport it nurtures in youth across our State. What a great idea! Unfortunately the unfortunate happened, the NSU program was put on the chopping block. At least it got a courtesy excuse, unlike University of Nebraska-Omaha which was just summarily executed alongside it's football program. UNO had a very successful program, so the NSU excuse of 2 bad years doesn't hold much weight with me either.
Now, I have laid the ground work of the problem. I can see why the SDWCA is thinking about the decision to remove the tournament from Aberdeen. On the surface this looks like a reasonable request. However, wrestlers and their communities are tougher than that. We can not simply take our headgears and go home when things get tough. If the University is serious about a "courtesy study" then a committee of concerned wrestling parties should be formed. Frame the beliefs that wrestling deserves to be part of the University still. A solution should be found. If this wrestling team is that important then we should be looking to help still run this tournament in Aberdeen and as a complete community raise funds to help with scholarships to maintain the continuation of the program. Not just NSU, but all the colleges in the state maintain a program. I do not know where all the funds go for all the clubs, but combined we should be able to create some sort of scholarships for our South Dakota Wrestlers to attend university in pursuit of knowledge and to compete. This could help us retain the best of our wrestling talent instead of them leaving the state to represent other colleges. Should the tournament be held in Aberdeen and NSU fails to reinstate the program then funds raised should be disseminated in a fashion that benefits the sport as a whole in the state.
Facebook posts and petitions are nice, but funding is funding. Coaches in every sport and at all levels of education know this to be true. To protect this sport that so many of us grew up. Now we are passing on to our children, because we know it to be one of the purest sports out there. No ball, no pads, we all weigh the same(in theory anyways), just skill, desire, determination and work. We must truly combine the talents we all forged through wrestling and have taken into our adult lives and come up with a better solution than "let's just move the tournament". NSU may be the first shot fired, there are more Universities and more programs at stake. If we retreat in the face of this adversity, then every college knows that we are not just measuring our support with the number of facebook likes and twitter reposts. True support is measured in dollars whether through funding or butts in the seats. A hard truth, brutal but true. Wrestling is very much like life, you reap what you sow. The wrestling community cannot afford to let another program shutdown with barely a fight. Simply moving the tournament is barely a fight and will sow the thought process that this is alright. Supporting the sport needs to happen with calm, reason, and viable solutions.
(I decided to use this blog for an editorial opinion piece, which is really not it's purpose per se. It is to work on my writing ability, so I kind of hit the objective. Also, I'm not a narcissist so I can't always write about myself. )
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Life is full of coincidences. We all have them, some insignificant and some seemingly meaningful. These events are just occurrences to which we add our own stories. Still, what is life without a good story now and then? Pretty boring. We often look to our past to for signs of what we should do in the now. As long as we don't dwell on it and allow ourselves to move forward there is nothing wrong with that.
This last week my little girl turned 9 years old. It's pretty incredible to think in reality it was so long ago. Yet it seemed like yesterday. I realize this is cliché and everyone with kids says the same thing. There is a reason for that. It's true, these years fly by. The birth of any child is so embellished in your mind that it is so easy to pull up that memory because of it's intensity. So, yes, it seems like yesterday.
About 6 months prior to the birth of my daughter my dad passed away, and my grandmother passed away 3 months after him. It was a tough time to say the least. Stories are always thrown out between relatives at times like this where we remember some of the smart or dumb things the deceased did. My Dad was nowhere near immune to these types of stories. Dad had a workshop in my hometown, he was pretty good at fixing things, working on cars, etc.. It was full of part time projects he would work on after his day at the plant or on the weekends. His mechanical intuitiveness was always something I marveled at. His workshop was full of all the tools kids aren't supposed to touch today. Band saws, table saws, welding equipment, cutting tools, you name it. My brothers and I would screw around and try to play tag with welding masks on, inside this shop with all the machinery. Real safe stuff like that. Mostly, we wanted to learn how to use the equipment and maybe get to do something cool. I was 4 or 5 years old. I didn't get to do anything that required metal revolving teeth and electricity.
We also stored things inside the shop. In particular we had a bin of mostly sports equipment and some toys. It was full of bats, rackets, and various balls. I think we kept it there so we would have some other things to do outside the shop when we were hanging out and getting under foot.
Now, as most people know Dad had a pretty good drinking problem and more than once I'm sure he drank beer(I believe it was the 70's so Olympia or PBR was the brand of choice at the time) while working at his shop. In one very good instance he was painting something yellow. Well, he either overshot his target or aimed on purpose, he was known to do stuff like that in his alcohol driven jerkiness. Long story short, he painted the bin full of our toys. The end result was a bunch of sporting equipment painted half yellow. The other half was facing down or away from the spray and retained their original colors. We held on to many of these items for years, and always produced the story when asked why our tennis racket was half yellow. We thought it was funny after a while (That's called a coping mechanism)
Now we shoot back up to nine years ago and my daughter was being born. It hurt like hell that Dad would never see his granddaughter. Despite all of our differences and arguments, I loved him very much, even in his various states of being towards the end of his life. So, even in that joyous time, there was some sadness leading up to Lilly's birth for me. I won't bore you with the details of her actual birth. A few highlights: it was a back-birth, forceps were used, at one point my wife caught me watching Seinfeld (The English Patient episode), Apollo Ohno won another gold(USA! USA! USA!)and we had one of the best old school nurses to ever walk the halls of Sioux Valley Hospital(Karen you will always be a legend and will be missed! She always remembered Lilly whenever we saw her after that!) It all ended around 3ish in the morning, and we had acquired our beautiful baby girl.
The next morning I walked down to get a coffee from the stand in the cafeteria. I ordered the usual mocha, grabbed a newspaper and handed the lady my ten and waited for my change. She handed me whatever the change was and as I was about to put it in my pocket, I glanced down in my palm. Nestled among the coins was a dime, it was half yellow and the other side was the normal silver. I don't believe in much as far as a higher entity, but I took this as a good sign of things to come and maybe the old man had seen his grand daughter arrive in this world. Maybe....maybe not. I don't know if there is some sort of oxidization or science to explain why one half of the dime was yellow and the other was normal. I just know this is the only time I had ever seen, or have seen a dime like this. In reality as long as it means something to me, that is all that matters.I've held on to that dime for all these years. I never put it anywhere safe. It never gets spent. It has made it through 3 moves, including this last one as I'll explain in a minute. I let the dime have it's own journey just like the rest of us, and it always shows up so it won't be left behind.
Close to Now: Lilly just turned 9 last Thursday(as I have already mentioned). On Saturday I went back to Chamberlain to move some more of our stuff in a u-haul. As I was cleaning up and getting ready to leave I looked down on the floor of our bedroom and that half yellow dime was sitting there near a corner. I scooped it up and put it in my pocket. The drive from Chamberlain to Sioux Falls is a long one, if you've ever made it you know what I am talking about. It's a road that stretches as far as you allow your mind to let it, an endless landscape of snow, dirt and brown dead prairie. It was a nice time for reflecting on the coincidences of spray painted toys, the loss of my Dad, the birth of my daughter, growing up in South Dakota and the people(and things) I shared that journey with at the time and where I am going. I'd say that's worth a dime.
This last week my little girl turned 9 years old. It's pretty incredible to think in reality it was so long ago. Yet it seemed like yesterday. I realize this is cliché and everyone with kids says the same thing. There is a reason for that. It's true, these years fly by. The birth of any child is so embellished in your mind that it is so easy to pull up that memory because of it's intensity. So, yes, it seems like yesterday.
About 6 months prior to the birth of my daughter my dad passed away, and my grandmother passed away 3 months after him. It was a tough time to say the least. Stories are always thrown out between relatives at times like this where we remember some of the smart or dumb things the deceased did. My Dad was nowhere near immune to these types of stories. Dad had a workshop in my hometown, he was pretty good at fixing things, working on cars, etc.. It was full of part time projects he would work on after his day at the plant or on the weekends. His mechanical intuitiveness was always something I marveled at. His workshop was full of all the tools kids aren't supposed to touch today. Band saws, table saws, welding equipment, cutting tools, you name it. My brothers and I would screw around and try to play tag with welding masks on, inside this shop with all the machinery. Real safe stuff like that. Mostly, we wanted to learn how to use the equipment and maybe get to do something cool. I was 4 or 5 years old. I didn't get to do anything that required metal revolving teeth and electricity.
We also stored things inside the shop. In particular we had a bin of mostly sports equipment and some toys. It was full of bats, rackets, and various balls. I think we kept it there so we would have some other things to do outside the shop when we were hanging out and getting under foot.
Now, as most people know Dad had a pretty good drinking problem and more than once I'm sure he drank beer(I believe it was the 70's so Olympia or PBR was the brand of choice at the time) while working at his shop. In one very good instance he was painting something yellow. Well, he either overshot his target or aimed on purpose, he was known to do stuff like that in his alcohol driven jerkiness. Long story short, he painted the bin full of our toys. The end result was a bunch of sporting equipment painted half yellow. The other half was facing down or away from the spray and retained their original colors. We held on to many of these items for years, and always produced the story when asked why our tennis racket was half yellow. We thought it was funny after a while (That's called a coping mechanism)
Now we shoot back up to nine years ago and my daughter was being born. It hurt like hell that Dad would never see his granddaughter. Despite all of our differences and arguments, I loved him very much, even in his various states of being towards the end of his life. So, even in that joyous time, there was some sadness leading up to Lilly's birth for me. I won't bore you with the details of her actual birth. A few highlights: it was a back-birth, forceps were used, at one point my wife caught me watching Seinfeld (The English Patient episode), Apollo Ohno won another gold(USA! USA! USA!)and we had one of the best old school nurses to ever walk the halls of Sioux Valley Hospital(Karen you will always be a legend and will be missed! She always remembered Lilly whenever we saw her after that!) It all ended around 3ish in the morning, and we had acquired our beautiful baby girl.
The next morning I walked down to get a coffee from the stand in the cafeteria. I ordered the usual mocha, grabbed a newspaper and handed the lady my ten and waited for my change. She handed me whatever the change was and as I was about to put it in my pocket, I glanced down in my palm. Nestled among the coins was a dime, it was half yellow and the other side was the normal silver. I don't believe in much as far as a higher entity, but I took this as a good sign of things to come and maybe the old man had seen his grand daughter arrive in this world. Maybe....maybe not. I don't know if there is some sort of oxidization or science to explain why one half of the dime was yellow and the other was normal. I just know this is the only time I had ever seen, or have seen a dime like this. In reality as long as it means something to me, that is all that matters.I've held on to that dime for all these years. I never put it anywhere safe. It never gets spent. It has made it through 3 moves, including this last one as I'll explain in a minute. I let the dime have it's own journey just like the rest of us, and it always shows up so it won't be left behind.
Close to Now: Lilly just turned 9 last Thursday(as I have already mentioned). On Saturday I went back to Chamberlain to move some more of our stuff in a u-haul. As I was cleaning up and getting ready to leave I looked down on the floor of our bedroom and that half yellow dime was sitting there near a corner. I scooped it up and put it in my pocket. The drive from Chamberlain to Sioux Falls is a long one, if you've ever made it you know what I am talking about. It's a road that stretches as far as you allow your mind to let it, an endless landscape of snow, dirt and brown dead prairie. It was a nice time for reflecting on the coincidences of spray painted toys, the loss of my Dad, the birth of my daughter, growing up in South Dakota and the people(and things) I shared that journey with at the time and where I am going. I'd say that's worth a dime.
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