January 2, 2010



I have often considered myself a relatively sane, level-head person. Well I did until I started having children. I cannot blame my instability completely on the fact that I have children, however, I can pinpoint some of my irrational behavior to an eight year old girl and a soccer field. Yes, I am sorry to say that I am/was that guy. "Isn't that raving maniac over there Amanda's dad?" "He used to be so...I don't know, sane...shield the eyes of the women and children." I do not know how I ended up in this place. What is the definition of insanity--doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different outcome?! Every game I attend my intention is to just watch and enjoy the game, but instead I am possessed by a crazy man. Short of stripping naked and beating myself with a small sapling, while saying hail Mary's knelling and whipping myself as I crawl on my knees over each broken glass covered step. I try, or should I say I attempt to check myself. I say, "Self, let's try not to embarrass your bride or your daughter or the city of Esko this time." But by the end of the game, as I awaken in a stupor from the latest breakdown, and witness the wreckage and realize that I failed again. So I have decided to do what all people with problems not easily solved…journal. My hope is to venture into my psyche over the next weeks, months, or whatever and address this quirk of character. I hope you will join me in this quest.

Filled with angst I walk up to the front of the hospital. It has been nearly a month since I heard the news of the accident. I should have come weeks ago, Chris was my best friend. Granted we had grown apart, Chris a year behind me in school and then into the Marines, I was muddling through my first years in college. The memories of all the crazy, stupid, sophomoric things we did in high school had created a bond between us that would never be broken. . .

Chris watched my left leg for any hint of a twitch as we flew down Douglas Drive, I drove a stick, Chris shifted, while I worked clutch. He never missed. We were between classes and heading for lunch, when Chris's eyes became as big as saucers as we broke the crest of the hill. Unfortunately, so were the police officer's, who was sit in a turn around, just over the crest of the hill, taking a sip of coffee. He quickly reached down to grab the radar gun. The abrupt movement caused him to spill his coffee between his legs. You could see him shifting around seeking a momentary reprieve from the hot liquid as he attempted to point the radar gun in our general direction as we sped by. . .

The V.A. hospital was a monolith created 3 or 4 wars ago. The long sidewalk leading to the old red brick building was line by hundred year old oaks and cottonwoods. As I made the walk I realized this place was not created with the comfort of the visitor in mind. I stepped inside and found it dungeonesque. It was dark, dank and quiet except for an occasional groan heard somewhere off down one of the long cave like hallways. I wandered down the cavern looking into each room as I passed by. . .

Glancing into the rear view mirror I notice that our friend with the radar gun is very unhappy and in a hurry to make this point very clear too us as fast as humanly possible. However, as with many of the the situations Chris and I found ourselves in, fate again was smiling down on us. Just ahead, a moving truck pull out of a side street temporarily obscuring the vision of our pursuer. "So how are you going to get out of this one? Sensing something was about to happen." Chris wondered out loud. . .

The nurse point in the general direction of the hallway when I asked her where Chris's room was, as I peered into each room walking the Green Mile I felt a chill or a memory of our resent family trip to London. We were on a bus driving under the London bridge. There were rows of benches and several sets of empty eyes gazing out at passers by. Eyes full of regret and loss, minds of little old men lost or consumed by too many pints or years. . .

Without hesitation I turned left. Normally, this would not have surprised Chris, but this left turn happen in the middle of the block. Airborne over the curb, we fly between a brick split-level and brown two story. I missed the clothesline and the swing set, swerved around the sliver maple as we passed between the houses on the other side. Our radar gun friend would have to wait and catch us another day, wondering where we disappeared to. Chris just laughed and shook his head wondering how he ended up in another predicament with the likes of me. . .

As I made my way to the end of the hall I wondered why the nurse had sent me this way. All that were there were little old men with empty eyes staring off in the direction last left. And then it hit me, three rooms back was a bald little man in a wheelchair. The tears weld up as I cautiously made my way back down the dark hallway. I looked back into the room and my heart shattered as I looked at this little old man with acne, it was my friend or the shell of my friend, the accident took his mind and left him gazing in my direction with empty eyes. . .

Chris was in a motorcycle accident while in the Marines. He died about a week after our visit.

Regret is a dish that is prepared in your youth, served during middle age, and digested thereafter. It festers within during the wee hours and is laid open like a seeping wound during those quiet times when your thoughts are your own. When my thoughts or regrets consume me, my one reprieve is my children and the hope that they will not be haunted in the same way, by there past. Unfortunately, children, like ourselves, need to come to this realization on their own terms and without complete frontal lobe development. . . When I was a child I would often pray for wisdom. I would love to go back and add to that prayer; I would pray that my children would have wisdom instead. Please understand that it is not that I feel that I am wise, but rather the heartache I feel from my own indiscretions and also the folly of others. It breaks my heart to see so many people make bad choices, and not have the wherewith all to choose something better for themselves or for their family. It in turn spreads like an oil slick to their children and sticks to all they come in contact with. The disintegration of the family in this country will be its demise. I was given all the tools to make good decisions and I still made bad choices. What about the kids of kids having kids. Where is their tool box of wisdom? I guess all we can really do is help out anyway we can, and work hard to create a "tool box" for our children and possibly slow the oil slick?!

When I was 19 I spent a summer in Wyoming. I was a trail cook/wrangler. Part of my job was to coax semi-wild horses to leave the lush green meadow, and come up to the barn, where fat old men would get on there backs and force them to carry them up the mountain to fish in the mountain streams. This was kind of a hard sell to these horses, and most of them wanted no part of it. Redman was an older horse that loved oats. Sometimes he would come if you had a handful of oats. The trick then was to jump on his back and ride him bareback back to the barn. If you could do that the other horses would usual follow. On one occasion Redman was being particularly evasive. Luckily, I convinced Thunder (one of the younger horses) to come to my handful of oats. Now, Redman was a short squatty bay, and a relatively easy horse for this short and squatty wrangler to get onto. Thunder, on the other hand, was quite tall. His back went almost to the top of my head. Somehow I managed to get my chest on the top of his back, but before I could swing my leg over his back, I found out why they called him Thunder. He bolted like he was possessed by demons straight toward a little patch to woods on the edge of pasture. By the time I was able to get my leg over his back, and situate myself, he had made his way into the woods. He planted me on the first low hanging branch he could find. I hit the branch and spun like a wind toy, flipped and landed on my face. Redman witnessed this fiasco and slowly walked up to me shaking his head (I could almost hear him saying, "you sad, sad little man"). He walked up to me and stopped, He gave me that, "get on before you get killed look". Time was wasting, so I reluctantly got on his back and guided the other horses up to the barn. I hated that horse.....

There once was a bird who fell out of its nest. A gnarled old woman came upon the wounded bird and ask the bird, "If you could be anything you wanted, What would you be?" The bird was tired, scared, and confused. It had hurt a wing and lost a few too many feathers (if you know what I mean). At first the bird said, "I wish I could be back in my nest, all warm, cozy and safe. Everything right where I need it. Yes, that would be my wish, to be back in my nest and be back to the way things were before." The gnarled old woman sadly shook her head and said, "sorry you can't go back there. When the wind blew you out of the tree, it also blew the nest. It is gone. You cannot go back." The bird mourned his loss. How could the wind allow such a thing to happen? I did exactly the things that every good bird is suppose to do. I never carelessly wandered to the edge of the nest or ventured recklessly out on the branches. I stayed within the parameters of the nest and kept it and myself clean. I took good care of my nest home. Others before me walked on the edges of the nest and even out on the branches. Nothing this bad ever happened to them?! I wish I would have been more like those birds. At least then I would have been able to spread my wings a little, and had an excuse to be in this kind of predicament." The Gnarled old woman gazed at the bird and said. "Do you know what happened to those birds? Many of them did not survive the fall. Some survive the fall, but were soon swallowed by predators below. Still others survived, but were ashamed that they did not stay in the nest until it was there time to leave. They were never able to reach their full potential. Others were able to soar, but at a tremendous cost to the other birds around them." The little bird was perplexed. "So what then should I wish for?" The Gnarled old woman replied, "you have lived a long and blessed life. I know that you are scared, tired and confused, but you have many friends and family members who love you. And even though you will never be able to go back to the nest, you have grown strong and have been given the chance again to soar anywhere, and anyway that you decide. You have done all that has been asked of you, now you just need to allow yourself to soar." The bird replied, "Then I guess I will soar to even greater heights now that the wind has granted me the freedom to fly wherever He feels I am needed."
Charlie allow Him to continue to lead you and again you will soar.

When I was twelve our family went on a road trip to Boston. Charlie and I in the back seat of the Monte Carlo, and our parents in the front seat. This was before DVD players and hand-held electronic games, so entertainment was limited. There are only so many cows to count, state's licence plates to tally, and letters on signs to find. It was more than any eight and twelve year old boy could handle. This left only two things for us to do, fighting with each other and tormenting our parents. We were somewhere in the middle of Canada when my dad had had enough. He pulled over and left us on the side of the road. Normally, for a child this would have been pretty traumatic, and for my little brother it was, "what are we going to do?!" he asked, all teary eyed. I, on the other hand, was far more jaded than my naive little brother. "Come on Charlie" I said, "let's start walking the other way. We are in the middle of Canada, what's he going to do, leave us?" Lucky thing I had Charlie with me or my mother would have probably convinced my dad to keep on driving. Fortunately, he did come back, we poured back into the Monte Carlo and continued east. We were surprisingly well behaved and I had to learn to smile on the inside the rest of the way to Massachusetts.

I wake up with a start. I cannot breathe, and my eyes are burning. "What is going on?" I hit the floor running, and I thought to myself, "if I am going to live through whatever this is I better get out of the building." Out the door I run and down the hall. As I head to the stairs I notice that the fumes are significantly worse, I am having trouble seeing and my throat and lungs are burning. Frantically, I turn the corner and head down the stairs. The fumes have pooled at the bottom of the stairs and the air is unbreathable. I burst through the door at the bottom of the stairs expecting to find unspeakable carnage, twisted metal of an overturned semi-trailer spewing unspeakable toxins, killing all in its path. I land on my hands and knees gasping for one final breath of air. Then nothing. Inside total mayhem, outside nothing. People walking up and down the street, walking their dogs, minding their own business; well, except for the crazy man on his hands and knees crying and gasping for air. Where was the chemical spill? Didn't these people realize that Dinkytown was in eminent peril?! Then I began to realize that these people were not in peril, in fact, neither was I. What was going on? Now, I know I have plenty of character flaws and aspects of myself that I am not proud of, but the first thing I thought of during this near death experience was to go back into the building and save the neighbors. I took a couple big gulps of air and fearlessly headed back into the building. I bound up the stairs turned left into the wall of ammonia fumes that nearly brought me to my knees. I look through my tears to see that the neighbor's door was open. Slowly I make my way down the hall. Should I save them myself, or go back and call for help. My unflappable character goads me to press on. I dramatically make my entrance into their apartment, only to find one of my neighbor's, with cigarette hanging from his mouth chipping ice out his icebox. I attempt to to yell at him to leave the building. He just waved me off and kept chipping away at the ice. Now you have to understand that I am dying at this point the fumes are so bad. He, on the other hand, continued to chip away even though a steady gaseous stream of foul hideousness continued to pour from his refrigerator. It turns out that my rocket scientist neighbor punched a hole into the cooler core of his freezer. The concoction of ammonia and Freon had created a Venus like atmosphere in our upstairs apartment paradise. Tired of arguing and breathing foul fumes, I left him to his chipping, went to my room, opened the windows, and left for work early. Just another day in Dinkytown.....