Swinging for the Fences

     Full disclosure on this--it's been a long day, I'm tired, emotionally drained, and just a little bit drunk, so if this doesn't make any sense, I'm sorry.  I'll probably read it tomorrow and delete it.  Or I'll leave it as it is for posterity--it's honest.  I've been sitting in front of a blank computer screen for nearly 3 hours now, and only the last 15 minutes have I been able to type anything that I didn't back-space into oblivion immediately thereafter. 

     I've been watching Marek play baseball again the last few weeks.  At the end of last season I didn't think he would play again, so I'm glad he decided to.  It's a genuine joy to watch him.  But here's the thing--when he's gotten up to bat the last few games, he's been particularly choosy about the pitches he wants to swing at.  Often those pitches are strikes, and its frustrating, because I know that he can hit them.  I've seen him step up to the plate and knock the snot out of the first pitch he sees.
     I was talking to him about that after his last game, and he had every reason under the sun why he didn't swing; the wind kicked dust up, the pitch was too high, or too low...  and maybe he's right, to a degree.  But when the umpire is calling them strikes, they're strikes.  No instant replays or reversing the ruling on the field in baseball.  So I told him to swing at anything and everything close.  Because I know he can hit them, even when he doesn't think he can.

     Been thinking a lot the last couple of weeks about my own metaphorical at-bats.  I got thrown a curve ball or two, and I had my own excuses as to why I struck out looking--wanting the perfect pitch, and not seeing them when they were thrown.  But the reality is that I when I stepped up to the plate, I wasn't swinging the bat the right way (get your minds out of the gutter--I'm still talking baseball, sort of).

     So, dear reader, you may be asking, what's my point?  I guess it's that I'm hoping for another pitch; that there can be joy in Mudville again.

Gray's Sports Almanac

     You know how they say that about the only thing less interesting to discuss with other people besides the weather is one of your dreams?  I'm gonna step all over that social boundary with this one, just because it got me thinking about a question I wanted to pose to the occasional reader.

     I dreamt that I'd walked into my old job, about 12 years ago.  The catch is that I knew that my mind wasn't from the past; everything that has happened in the last twelve years, everything I know now, I was aware of.  It was like my present-day mind had traveled back in time to my 28 year-old body.  In this dream, I walked past a friend at work, and he asked me if I shouldn't have more gray hair (I started going gray in my 20's, but it's gotten exponentially more so in the last two years).  He was the only other one besides myself to realize that I wasn't in my current time, and it validated my dream-self that I really had time-traveled in thought.

     So I spent the rest of the dream weirded out by the idea of reliving the next twelve years again, and trying to figure out how to do it while fixing or avoiding the mistakes I've made in that time, while making sure I didn't f*ck up the good stuff in the process.

     And then I get to thinking that it would be really handy if I could remember what teams had won some of the major sports events in the last (next??) twelve years so I could make bets on them and not have to worry about money anymore.  You know, like Biff Tannen did in Back to the Future II with Gray's Sports Almanac, (without creating a dystopian future in the process).  But I'm not a sports guy--I don't remember who won the Super Bowl or World Series in 2013, let alone anything further back.  It was pretty frustrating, for a dream (I did come to the conclusion that I needed to invest in Starbucks, Apple, and Google, maybe create Facebook--that stuff I do know about).

     So here's the question--and you can answer on here or FB if you want, or you can just ponder it in the car or while you're on the toilet after a night of particularly spicy Thai food.
     If you found yourself back in time, with all of the knowledge that you have now, and could change one, single thing--what would it be, and why? 
     Speaking for myself, I don't have an answer to my own question, but I think I have a couple of ideas.



    

A kiss to build a dream on...

Going to go on a bit of a ramble here.  You can try to figure out where I'm going with this, or what I'm referring to, but I promise that you'll probably be wrong no matter who you are or what your guess may be.  So good luck with that--analyze away.  It's just an exercise in writing anyway....

There are about a million references to kissing in our society:  You can blow a kiss, kiss and make up, or kiss the dust.  You can be kissing cousins, or kiss and tell.

You can follow Clark Griswold's directive in Christmas Vacation: "kiss my ass, kiss his ass, kiss your ass."
You can kiss off, seal it with a kiss, "do you kiss your mother with that mouth?" and kiss (fill in the blank) goodbye.

I worked with a particular young woman at Starbucks when I lived in New York.  She was incredibly cute, and had the most amazing smile.  No kidding--she lit up the room when she smiled.  I was instantly attracted to her, and was lucky enough to have a friend that advised me to ask her out (we'd both told this friend about the mutual attraction--saved a lot of time given how slow I was at asking women out).
So we went on our first date, something simple actually; I think we just had dinner and walked around for a while.  When I dropped her off at her house at the end of the night and she was getting ready to let herself out of my Jeep, when we should have that awkward moment people sometimes have of wondering if they'll have that first kiss, we actually just both leaned toward each other, and proceeded to completely miss each others lips.  Not sure I'd even qualify that as a kiss, honestly; more of a collision.  Our second try was better, by far.  I remember that kiss very fondly--it was one of the good ones.

My first kiss from a girl was when I was about 8.  My brother had come home from the playground at school and told me a friend of mine was there, so I went out to see him.  My friend wasn't there, but one of the girls from my class was there with one of her friends.  They cornered me on what we called the jungle gym, and the girl from my class kissed me before I could get away.  I went home totally grossed out, rinsing my mouth out and scrubbing my lips at least a half a dozen times.  That was one of the bad ones.  I think the classmate's name was Nicole, which probably isn't accurate.  Maybe it's better if it's not; change the names to protect the innocent (or guilty).
I would have preferred if it had been Tracy, the cute blonde girl that sat across from me in class.  I'd done the slow skate with her at Skate Land a couple of times, holding hands as we took the loop around the rink.  I'd have been happy to let her corner me in the playground, even at the ripe old age of 8.

I waited 5 years to kiss a woman once.  We'd gone out a few times, and I moved before I (or she) had made the move.  It was only when I saw her again that we kissed, and it was so sudden, intense, and passionate that I figured it must have been simmering inside me for that whole 5 years.  Didn't even know.

I dated two women a single time each, years apart from each other.  I'd gone out with each of them under some pressure from mutual friends far more than any interest on my part, and both times they kissed me in the car on the way home.  I appreciated the gesture, but it was like being 8 years old on the playground with "Nicole" again.  Only with tongue.

I was engaged once, and broke it off.  I don't remember the first time we kissed, or the last.

I was with a woman once that didn't let me kiss her the first time I tried, even though I'd been wanting to for years.  Felt like a damned fool afterward.  Hard enough to build up the nerve to do it--even worse when she turns her head away as you make the move.   Second time I tried weeks later, I didn't get shut down, and it was better than the 5 year wait I mentioned earlier--all the passion, love, and intensity of the wait, but this time I had known how much it had been simmering inside my heart.  That one was at the top of the list, by a mile.  Ironically, I remember many of the times I kissed her, but not the last.  Life is strange some times.

There's the kiss of death, or the kiss of life, a first kiss, a last kiss, a kiss from a rose on the gray, the rock group KISS, or Hershey's Kiss.

Some kisses are better than others.  If you're in the kissing cousins camp I don't want to hear about it.

Some of you reading this blog are referred to above--more than one, in fact.  All I'll say is that none of you are in the "Nicole" group.  Hope no offense is taken....


       

Milestones

I'm not going to bury the lead on this one. Today would have been my 12th wedding anniversary.

I really wanted to write something deep and profound about milestones in our lives--how significant dates can commemorate the good and the bad--but all of the thoughts I had seemed to be pale and weak compared to the emotions that were behind them, and I knew that whatever I wrote wasn't going to be relevant or even interesting to anyone but me anyway.  So I'm going to write this for my own sake.  No childhood memories here, or moral to the story at the end--just me getting some stuff off my chest because I want to say it, even if I shouldn't any more.  It's how I feel, and I've had enough of holding that back.

I was never going to be one of those husbands that forgot his anniversary; July 28th was as important to me as my own birthday, maybe even more so, because it symbolized to me that someone was invested enough in me as a person to commit to being with me "as long as we both shall live" and all that jazz.  I didn't always have the greatest ideas for a gift, or activity to celebrate the occasion of our anniversary, but I always remembered, and always did something from the heart.  So even given the new circumstances of my life, I have to acknowledge the date in some way.

I wasn't home on our 10th anniversary, because I had to be out of town for work.  I know it probably wouldn't have changed anything, but even to this day I still wish that I'd been with her that night.  It bothered me then, and does so even more now, knowing that it was a milestone in its own right, and one of the last we'd have together.

I won't get into all of the drama of what happened to us, or who was at fault--we both hold our own share of the blame, and some of my own has been revealed on here before.  I know I can't go back, or start over--the papers are signed, the deed is done, the die has been cast, blah, blah, blah.  There are no do-overs in things like this.  There are too many moments that I'd have to go back and fix anyway (they keep me awake at night), but if it was at all possible, I'd sure as hell try.

All I can do is try to move on and forward as she has/is.  I'm a little behind the curve when it comes to that, and truth be told, a huge part of me didn't (still doesn't--let's be honest) want to.  At least not when it comes to letting her go.  As much as we've hurt each other emotionally, it hasn't changed what's at the core of me.

I have and will always love her. 

Bleating Heart

It was dark and cool in the building, but it was far from quiet.  Among the rows of cages stacked two and three high, dozens of dogs were whining and whimpering with manic intensity as a rapid scratching came from one of the larger cages on the floor.

None of the cages could be seen—there were no lights on in the long, rectangular building, and any moonlight that normally would have filtered through the window of the single door at the end of the building was blocked by the dark clouds that were dumping a heavy rain onto the tin metal roof, thrumming over the top of the nervous sounds coming from the animals inside.  A monsoon that had moved into the area in full force had already turned the dirt floor of the desert into an ocean of mud.

Over the top of the sounds of the dogs, a baby goat could be heard bleating incessantly in the darkness.  The goat was not in a fully enclosed cage; instead it was inside a small, portable wire fence that had been set up inside the shed to keep the goat dry from the rain that poured outside.  The fence was 3 feet high, and lightly built.  The only thing that kept it standing up was the octagonal shape that it had been configured into, the angle of the corners acting as the sole support.

The scratching coming from the cage continued; a constant and rapid scrape-scrape-scrape-scrape that was punctuated by the rattle of a thin metal door as the head of the dog inside smashed into it on occasion while it tried to find purchase on the stainless steel floor with the long nails of its paws.  With each crash against the cage door, the semi-circle of the latches that kept it locked wobbled and shifted, loosening minutely with each blow.

The scrape-scrape-scrape continued as the bleating from the goat and whining and barks from the pack of caged dogs grew louder and more frequent, until, with a small snap, the lower latch of the cage popped loose as the vibrations that had been assaulting it finally took their toll.  The Doberman inside pushed its head through the small opening at the bottom of the thin metal door, still not able to make it through the gap, but now using its whole body to push and pull against the door, shaking the remaining latch with more and more intensity, until it too popped free. 

The door of the cage flew wide with the force, slamming against the front of the cage next to it as the escaped Doberman raced across the room, toenails now scratching the worn wooden floor instead of the smooth metal they had been scratching at moments before.  The dog reached the low wire fence that enclosed the restless goat, and slammed into one of the wire panels, knocking the pen out of the octagonal shape that had been keeping it upright.  The baby goat bleated again and again as the Doberman pawed and bit at it through the unstable fence, until the small pen collapsed under the weight of the dog. 

The goat tried to run, but had been tangled up in the wire of the fence as it buckled to the floor, and could not get away from the snarling, snapping jaws of its attacker.  Among the roar of barking from the full kennel of still-caged and fevered dogs, the goat’s bleating gave way to inhuman screams as the Doberman ripped it to shreds.      

Inside a small house that stood many yards away; the rain and distance prevented the sleeping family inside from hearing the frantic sounds emanating from the building that housed the animals.

          The next morning, a thin sixteen year-old boy slept in the top of the bunk bed in the room that he had until recently shared with his younger brother, who had moved out to live with their older brother.  The bedroom had been built by the sleeping boy himself, one of two additions to the previously one-bedroom home that his family had moved to four years prior.  The roof leaked into a bucket that sat on the bare cement floor, and the heavy, solid door to the room led out into backyard where a cinder pavestone path connected the bedroom to the back door of the main part of the house.

The door slammed open, smashing against the small shelf that held the teen’s stereo; a cheap shelf system with a turntable and dual cassette deck that he’d saved for years to buy.  The young man woke up to the sound of the crashing door, sitting up straight and staring wide-eyed at the doorway where his mother stood, yelling his name.

Even though he had woken quickly, his eyes were still blurry from sleep, and he could not see what his mother was holding in her hand as words were spat from her mouth; ‘cage, not locked, dead, stupid’.  He’d barely had time to register what she was saying, or what she was holding in her hand when she threw the object at him.  Shock and disbelief paralyzed him as the gory projectile came hurtling across the room toward him, landing squarely next to him in his bed.

He looked down into the dead eyes of the baby goat’s head that was now his bed-mate as his mother spewed another blue-streak of hate at him before slamming the door shut again.

The boy jumped from his bed, his bare feet landing on the cool cement floor, and quickly changed from his pajamas to a pair of jeans that he’d grown too tall for, and a t-shirt that had begun to wear thin in many places.  As he put on a pair of socks and the Red Wing boots that he’d been given for his Boy Scout hiking trips two years before—the only pair of shoes he owned—he forced himself not to look up into his bed, at the grisly wake-up call that he’d received….

                                                              *****

Author’s Notes:

I wrote this for two reasons beyond the expected cathartic benefit of getting it out:

1) I mentioned this event in a very vague way in a previous blog post, and felt like I needed to tell the story for that reason.

2) I simply wanted to try a writing exercise of building tension in a scene—hopefully I did OK.  I’m trying to develop my skills as a writer and storyteller, and they tell you to write what you know.  This was something I know.

I obviously wasn’t in the building when the dog attack occurred, but I had seen the very dog that killed the goat that night rattle its cage door loose in this same way before.  It was my “job” or “responsibility” during most of my teenage years to tend to my parents’ 30+ dogs morning, noon, and night, so I knew only too well how they behaved—it’s easy for me to imagine what happened.  And I don’t remember why the goat was in the building with the dogs, but the monsoon rains were usually the reason my parents did something like that, so it’s a safe bet.

My bedroom door slamming open and my mom accusing me of leaving the dog’s cage door open as she threw the head of a dead goat at me did happen, although I have to admit that I don’t recall the details of what she said, only the general content.  I also don’t remember what happened after I got out of bed and got dressed—at some point I’m sure I had to dispose of the goat’s head, but how and when are blocked from memory.

Neither of my parents believed me about the dog being able to shake its cage door open; just one of many instances of them not hearing the truths I told them.  Making up stories became easier--it didn't hurt as much as telling the truth and not having it believed or understood.            

"If everyone is special, then no one is." ~The Incredibles

So here's something that I've never told anyone before, ever. 

Not my ex-wife, not my best friends, not my counselor.  Nobody....

Alright, so it's not going to be that big of a deal--nothing earth-shatteringly revelatory--but it is something that I think reflects my thinking and expectations thru most of my life.  Truthfully I really haven't thought about this specific night for almost thirty years--not until the last six months or so.  Won't mean anything to anyone reading this, but I wanted to get it written down while I still remember it, and how it relates to how I've been feeling lately.

I was about ten years old; the only reason I know this is because I remember that the house I lived in when Return of the Jedi came out (this makes it 1983, for those non-nerds) is where the concept I'm getting to first hit me.

I had a bedroom that was supposed to be shared with my brother; it had been converted from the garage, and we had bunk beds built into the room, but never had the ladders to climb up.  It was kind of removed from the rest of the house, and most importantly we didn't have a TV in the room.  I didn't like to sleep out there, and very rarely did.  Not that these details makes any difference, except to set up the environment I was in.
We never lived in one house longer than a year from the time I was five until I was fourteen--I went to five different elementary schools by the fifth grade, and for the year or so we lived at this house I would sleep on the couch in the living room instead of out in the converted garage.  My family would go to bed around nine or ten every night, and I would lay awake on the couch, waiting for everyone to go to sleep so I could turn the TV on and watch Twilight Zone, listening to the occasional jet fly over the house on its path to Sky Harbor in Phoenix, and the clock we had tick its pendulum back and forth.  That clock in particular is a sound from my youth that I actually remember with fondness--you could really only hear it late at night when the world had finally settled, and I felt like I was the only one around to appreciate it.  There was an air of possibility in that almost-silence.

I don't know what got me thinking about this idea that night, maybe it was the girl I had a crush on at school, maybe I'd seen a movie.  Maybe I wanted to see the girl I had a crush on in a movie--who knows.  But I do remember very vividly what I was thinking.  I lay there on the couch, listening to the clock tic, tic, tic (it didn't make a tic-toc sound--it was a single note over and over again), and fantasized about rescuing a damsel in distress.

It was a very dramatic event to be sure--she would be my age, flying in a small jet over my house with her wealthy business-man father on their way back home from some very important trip and the engine would blow up.  I'd be lying on the couch, ready to fall asleep and I'd hear the explosion, so I'd run outside in my pajamas to see what was going on.  The girl, her father, and the pilot would all have jumped out of the plane to parachute to safety; only in the darkened sky she would get separated from the others, and would come down to land in my street without them.  But since I was the only one awake (the night was my home, and in my imagination even the neighbors were all asleep by ten), I would be outside to see her come to earth, and being the dashing ten-year-old hero I was, I would help her land without hurting herself and get out of the parachute before it entangled her in its fabric and chords.
We'd get inside, and I'd make her a hot chocolate in the microwave while she'd use our little yellow wall-phone to call her mom to let her know that she was safe (remember cell phones were a thing of science-fiction back then--even the big brick cell phones of the '80's were still far away).
And of course she was pretty, and grateful to me for helping her--we'd sit on my couch, wrapped in my blanket and drinking cups of hot chocolate while we waited for the fire department and her father to arrive.

We'd become best friends and be together forever after that.  Her dad would hire me out of high school (doing what I didn't know, and didn't care--as long as it wasn't raising animals for a living), and we'd live happily ever after.

                                                                          ****

So there are obviously some issues with all of that fantasy, and how it relates to the real world.  No doubt a psychologist would be able to dig into all sorts of things about me in that recollection.  Hell, my life in general could probably be someone's doctoral thesis in psychology.  

The notion of being the hero was born out of a life of reading books & watching movies where extraordinary things happen to ordinary people; men and women overcome insurmountable odds; the nice guy always gets the girl despite everything in the world being against him. 

I think maybe that fixing my mind from the age of ten on how I wanted my life to be filled with the amazing and fantastical had set me up for failure, so much so that I didn't realize it, or would forget when those extraordinary things did happen... when I did get the girl against the odds....

I watched a movie tonight (Special) where the lead character believed he had super powers, altho in the story he really didn't, and at the end he finally realizes it (sort of--watch the movie; I don't want to give spoilers).  Here's the quote as the main character narrates before the final scene:
"...the truth is, with so many billions and billions of people on the planet, most of us can't be unique or important in any meaningful way. We go to sleep, we wake up, we go to work, we eat, we spend time with friends, we watch TV, maybe we even fall in love, but we don't have any magical powers and we don't have any great battles to fight, no evil forces to defeat, and no mysterious men in suits chasing after us. We just have reality - and believing anything else is just... well, believing anything else is just crazy, isn't it?"

If my life were like a movie, I guess I'd be at that mid-point where the protagonist thought everything was good--until the antagonist killed the hero's partner or kidnapped his kids and he has to go and face the bad guy alone.  But I've never woken up being faster than a speeding bullet--more powerful than a locomotive--able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, and my antagonists are only regret & loneliness. 
In the grandest scheme of things, that's pretty pathetic of me given the real battles people in this world--people even in my own city--face on a daily basis; not having a job or food to eat, fighting disease or prejudice that could take their lives or those of the ones they love.  I get that. 

I never wanted to be famous or rich--I just wanted to make a difference in people's lives, to have what I do actually matter, and that's where feel like I've failed myself, those around me, and the world in general.       

Deep inside my heart and soul, I'm still that boy lying awake at night, wanting to save the day, but not knowing how.....  

    

Be merciful to me, a fool....

This pretty much sums up how I feel lately.

THE FOOL'S PRAYER
by: Edward Rowland Sill (1841-1887)

HE royal feast was done; the King

Sought some new sport to banish care,

And to his jester cried: "Sir Fool,

Kneel now, and make for us a prayer!"

 

The jester doffed his cap and bells,

And stood the mocking court before;

They could not see the bitter smile

Behind the painted grin he wore.

 

He bowed his head, and bent his knee

Upon the Monarch's silken stool;

His pleading voice arose: "O Lord,

Be merciful to me, a fool!

 

"No pity, Lord, could change the heart

From red with wrong to white as wool;

The rod must heal the sin: but Lord,

Be merciful to me, a fool!

 

"'T is not by guilt the onward sweep

Of truth and right, O Lord, we stay;

'T is by our follies that so long

We hold the earth from heaven away.

 

"These clumsy feet, still in the mire,

Go crushing blossoms without end;

These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust

Among the heart-strings of a friend.

 

"The ill-timed truth we might have kept--

Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung?

The word we had not sense to say--

Who knows how grandly it had rung!

 

"Our faults no tenderness should ask.

The chastening stripes must cleanse them all;

But for our blunders -- oh, in shame

Before the eyes of heaven we fall.

 

"Earth bears no balsam for mistakes;

Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool

That did his will; but Thou, O Lord,

Be merciful to me, a fool!"

 

The room was hushed; in silence rose

The King, and sought his gardens cool,

And walked apart, and murmured low,

"Be merciful to me, a fool!"