Beautiful wife, 2 daughters, house, pets, PTO… How did I get here?

OK, so as a younger version of myself, had someone told me that before I was forty, I would be married (for the second time!), have two gorgeous daughters, a nice house (that has a seemingly never-ending list of improvements to be done), six (yes I said six) dogs, a kitten, and be a member of my daughters school PTO, I would have probably burst out into despairing laughter, while bitch-smacking you for trying to make fun of me! Yet here I am, not even 39 yet, and all of the above is now part of my life! Now don't misunderstand, this is not a post bemoaning my life, quite the contrary, it is a celebration of where my life is. I asked myself this rather poignant question as I found myself becoming excited about taking over my daughters' PTO Box Tops For Education project, while simultaneously creating my PTO's Facebook page… I know, it's kinda disturbing isn't it?
Now before you all start saying that I've lost any concept of what a well-adjusted adult's life is, I will say that this last weekend I spent 24 hours working security at a large event in Terre Haute, IN. Wait, I'm not sure if that justifies my well-adjusted adult comment or not, but that's what I've been up to. And yes, I am an odd man… I spend my work week embroiled in servers, switches, and SANs… then spend some of my weekends doing physical security, and by physical security, I'm not talking IT security, I'm talking the sweating your ass off, running down dipshit drunkards, and bouncing them off the property kind. Any of you that know me in person can probably understand why security companies LOVE me for these type of events…. 6'6"+, 360#, 55" chest, and a really intimidating presence tends to resolve most disagreements long before any kind of physical confrontation even enters the drunks mind! But alas I digress.
I was creating the first status update on my newly created PTO page when it hit me… I am now, minus the whole security thing, a modern middle aged man…kind of… You have to also discount the whole constitutionalist, conservative minded, second amendment supporting, personal liberty loving things… well hell I guess that puts me squarely back in the Middle Aged Madman category doesn't it? By the way, in case you haven't figured it out, I absolutely love sarcasm! :)

 
Anyway, this song popped into my head as soon as I posed my internal question to myself:

 

 
I really do not know how I managed to end up where I am… I'm fairly sure most people would have considered me one of those that would end up dead at an early age, or incarcerated! To be honest there were a few situations that either of those situations were very nearly the case. I can only attribute my successes to some incredible luck to have found my wife, and then everything else is her doing! I don't think I would/could have been as successful as I have become without her!

 
Live your life to the fullest, because you not getting out of it alive, and you might just end up asking yourself "How did I get here" ;)

Older, wiser, (?) and mellower classmates

As I prepare for my twentieth (dear god I'm getting old!) High School reunion, I have found that a lot of my former classmates have become far more "normal" than I thought they were. In my high school, like all high schools I suppose, there were the normal cliques. There were your jocks, your preps, your prep jocks, nerds, freaks, band geeks, choir peeps, the uppity goodie-too-shoes, and all the others. Now some of you may be shocked by this, but I probably fell more into the freak category than anything else, I know, I know I'm sure you are saying to yourselves, "Jason, this can't be, you are such a "well-adjusted" adult!" Utter sarcasm aside, I was a freak, I didn't fit in well, rebelled against authoritative rules, etc… I attribute part of this to my home life, and part of it too just not giving a damn what people thought of me after a while. You see I was one of those teens that now a days would probably end up expelled and arrested for my "hobbies". I mean it's not every day that a high school junior or senior brings fencing foils and swords to be stowed away in their locker until after school for fencing and swordplay. Yes, I was one of those! I played Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (none of that babyish regular D&D for me!), Magic the Gathering, watched the Highlander more times then I care to admit (even with the cheesy 80's era graphics it was a damn good movie!). I took part in some very, very questionable pranks, some of which may still get me in legal trouble if anyone ever knew the details! In short, I was a school administrator's worst nightmare… not to mention I know I caused my parents many nervous evenings of listening to the police scanner wondering if I was involved with what they were hearing about the police discussing!

    I began to notice I was "different" very quickly after starting Plymouth High school in the fall of 1989 (damn just typing that makes me feel like an old fogey!) I didn't really seem to care about the same stuff as most of my classmates. It also didn't help that over the summer between my 8^th grade year and my freshman year I grew around 8 inches, (my knees still hurt from that) my eyesight was beginning to betray me, although at the time I didn't realize it/was in denial, I was of course skinny, I mean I was a teen ager who grew 8 inches in a 3 month period, what did I expect? Anyway, I didn't fit in with the jocks because I had no interest in most sports. I didn't fit in with the preps because I was poor. I didn't fit in with the Band and choir folks at the time, because I was about as musically talented as a cat in heat with its tail caught in a door. I didn't really fit in with the geeks because I didn't care enough about grades to bother trying… after 8 years of elementary and Junior high with good to decent grades and a father who only ever saw the negatives (at least to me at the time it was the only thing he ever saw) I just quit bothering to try and get good grades, I could do it, fairly easily even, but I just didn't try. Now I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but I'm a fairly intelligent person, in some ways it could be stated that I'm brilliant in a savant'ish sort of way, but I just didn't see the point. At that particular time in my life I couldn't see past the next few years of my life, too be brutally honest I didn't think I'd live this long, but that has been touched on in a couple other posts.

    So there I was, a freshman that didn't fit in anywhere well, I know it's the most original story ever, right? Any way I made some friends, made a few enemies, some accidentally, others, not so much, but I had people to talk to. As I grew older and we all began advancing through the grades I noticed that some, a very small few, in my eyes at the time, of the more prep'ish group seemed to be growing more tolerant of my freakish ways. Some of the Jocks started to pay more attention to some of us freaks, and not the "we are going to kick your ass for being a freak type of attention". By the time we reached senior year, most of my class had already graduated to the "just don't give a shit" phase of our youth. It was a good time to be an angst ridden teenager, I mean we had the grunge scene exploding all over, people like Kurt Cobain telling us that we really weren't bad, or wrong in our ways, that it really was "normal".

 

    My senior year I had study hall first thing in the morning for the second half of the year. In the infinite wisdom of our study hall teacher, they placed all of the seniors above everyone else on two or three tables on the "stage" of the cafeteria. Now this meant that there were one of two or three activities going on during study hall; Sleeping, I personally took advantage of this activity on a fairly regular basis, (sorry to all my classmates who had to listen to me snore!) what I like to call the Exchange (more on this in a moment) and then there was the listening to music and sending out underclassmen to get donuts and McMuffins. Now the Exchange activity was a rather perfect setup, one that I'm sure almost every high school in America has. What would commence during the "exchange" portion of study hall went something like this: "Who did the econ assignment?" some of the others at the table would respond in the positive or negative, and on more than one occasion "What econ assignment?" Then we would all run down the list of the other assignments, and "exchange" what we had done for what others had done. This activity is where I began to see glimmerings of some of the caste system breaking down, with some of the "preps" happily exchanging homework with a freak like me, sometimes even chatting and bantering about classes and what not. Now I was, and still am, a rather untrusting, suspicious kind of person (This comes from a long history of getting smacked down by life, seeing my father get screwed over time and time again by being overly trusting, etc…) I was extremely cautious about these interactions, as I was always waiting for the vicious teasing and ripping to begin. After a while I started to get the sneaking suspicion that maybe, just maybe they weren't all out to make my life more hellish than it already was!

 

    Fast forward five years after graduation. I saw somewhere that there were plans for a 5 year reunion… I personally thought that 5 years was nowhere near enough time to make me want to spend time with most of my classmates again, I mean the ones I wanted to associate with I still talked to, and the ones I didn't, well, I didn't like them then, why the hell would I want to spend my free time with them now! I didn't even respond; IIRC the reunion ended up canceled for lack of response, leave it to the grunge generation to not even bother responding to reunion invites. I took this as a sign that the rest of my classmates must be in agreement with me that 5 years was just not enough time. Fast forward a "few" more years I, like everyone else in the known world, spend too much of my time on Facebook. I start seeing some of my classmates on FB, start friending some of them, find out that they too have the same crap going on that I do, too much work, not enough time, children, houses, pets, spousal nightmares, etc…. I start to cautiously friend some of those that I always assumed looked down upon me, thought me to be below them, etc… Well what do you know, some of them were actually happy to chat, share experiences, opinions, and everything else you could think of… in short they were normal people. Now I'm no social butterfly, but at the same time I'm not a pariah either, and I have a myriad of friends and acquaintances, but I just never thought that my high school classmates would ever change, I know, that's a narrow minded, short-sighted way to think, but sometimes even the most enlightened people stumble around in the dark because they are too damn stubborn to turn on the light! I have found that many of my classmates share many of my personal political beliefs, not all of them, some are diametrically opposed to my views, and that's OK (OK, OK, it's really not, it shall be my viewpoint and my viewpoint alone! Yeah, I know, I'm an ass! LOL just kidding with you all, if we all agreed on everything life would be boring as hell.) Most of us have all grown, learned from our experiences, and some have even realized that they were not very good people back then, hell, I know that 90% of the time I was just a pissed off punk, who would sooner take a dump on you than talk to you as a normal human being. I'd like to think I've grown and matured since then, now don't get me wrong there are still some people that I'd sooner shit on then talk to, but for the most part I'm a mellow middle aged mad man! A few months back I login to my FB wall and low and behold I've got multiple invites to our 20 year reunion. My first thought, was nah, someone must have made a mistake, and surely it couldn't be twenty years, could it? My steel trap mind quickly did the math, triumphantly I knew there was a mistake, it had only been 10 years… then I remembered the year was 2013 and quietly sobbed on the inside! I clicked on the link and did a quick recon of the posts that were there… looking for the tell-tale snobbish remarks, the uppity "I'm better than you and always will be" tone, and the dreaded everyone is welcome except for you mentality. To my shock I found none of that, I found some of the people I had friended over the years saying that they were going to go, some that I had only just recently started talking to, finding out that they had been reading this little slice o' mental masturbation that is my blog, and generally people just wanting to reconnect. I discussed attending with my wife, which meant I basically just told her that my 20^th HS reunion was coming up and being as vague as only a middle aged madman can be. I thought about it, I stuck it in the back of my mind and would poke at the idea of attending, as if it was some odd, unknown creature that you poke with a stick to see if it is alive and if it wants to eat your face off for fun! Around this same time, our foreign exchange student from my senior came back to the states, now since I hadn't seen her since graduation, and I had very strong feelings for her, I had to go and meet her back in Plymouth. It was a delightful time, and I found it very relaxing and somewhat therapeutic. In talking with her, the idea of this blog actually came into being, she inspired me to give it a try, as she has a couple of blogs that I had perused in the past. That experience, coupled with the beginning of this blog and the responses I had received from writing it compelled me to take the why not attitude and decide to attend my high school reunion.

    

    Now as the event draws near there are of course the normal mundane issues to deal with, do I just drive up, attend the reunion and drive back? I'm thinking not, as it's a 3 hour drive one way, and it would make for one very tedious day. OK, so I'm going to stay overnight, great, except for one little problem… My home town has a very large festival every year… guess which weekend the reunion is on? Winner, winner chicken dinner! It is on the same weekend, now I fully understand the reasoning for this, as it is a two bird's one stone issue, but it makes trying to get a hotel room within a 30 mile radius a real bitch! Now I could easily get a room if I wanted to spend $200 – $325 for a single night, and while I've been mildly successful in my life, I refuse to spend that many clams on Plymouth Indiana, sorry to all that stayed there and love it, but hell no! I didn't spend that much a night in Vegas, I'll be damned if I spend that much on Plymouth! Then there of course was the initial logistical decisions, what to do with children, going solo, or wife attending, etc. etc... In the end it was decided I would be going solo, that then negates the childcare dilemma and simplifies life. On top of those issues are the other more emotional issues, will I still be the outsider looking in? Will I still fit in as well as a hunchback at a chiropractor's convention? Will anyone remember me? Will anyone talk to me? How long do I have to endure the uncomfortable silences before I snap, and start drinking heavily (Oh, forgot to mention that of course there will be a cash bar to socially lubricate the situation, methinks I will be bringing one of my flasks, otherwise I may go broke!)? Oh well, I guess I'll get the answers to these and other breathtaking questions in eleven days!

 

Till then, Live your life to its fullest, 'cause no one gets out alive!

The Life and Loves of me as a teen ager, or Crushes. Part 3

So my third major crush in my formative years was, I think, the one that molded my personality and character more than any single event in my younger life.

My crush was during my Senior year of high school.  I had noticed the object of my crush at nearly the beginning of the year, however it was not in a crush fashion, just noticing the new girl who was different from the others... Now she had very good reason to be different, having lived her entire life up until then on the other side of the world tends to produce some significant differences then a teen age man-child living in Northern Indiana!  You see my crush was a foreign exchange student, which, as I'm sure you can figure out will, 99% of the time, not end well, what with the inevitable departure back to her home!

My crush was a friend before a crush.  You see there was a group of us in our Intro to Psychology class that got along famously!  The group was very diverse, multiple classes, backgrounds, and beliefs made up our group.  Now many people would not think that a screwed up kid from the poorer section of town would do very well in psychology, but, for whatever reason, I excelled in the class.  I was rather well known in my class for being able to divert the attention of our teacher, Mr. Shockney, from those pesky, mundane activities that are the bane of high school students; tests.  This is how a typical test day would go in Psych class at PHS... Me, or one of the other two "OK, who actually studied for this one?" Various responses varying from "I'm ready" to "Oh dear god I forgot all about it!"  This typically invoked a very quick and quiet round of debate, until our group, and most of the rest of the class would decide if a delay was needed, and how long of a delay.  This would then invoke a quick discussion of which one of the 2 or 3 of us that were skilled at sidetracking our good teacher as too which one of us was going to take up the cause that day.  What would follow would be various questions regarding current news items, on-the-spot generated questions concerning hypothetical situations, etc... typically we would buy anywhere from ten to thirty minutes of time for the joyous activity known as the "mad cram".  Our best record was delaying a midterm for nearly 3 weeks!

Now I went into this as some background of my relationship with the object of my affection.  At times during our class, our teacher would attempt to catch us not paying attention, because to be honest, most of the time we didn't pay close attention to what was going on in the class.  99% of the time, we kept just enough of our attention focused on Mr. Shockney that we would know the generalities of what was going on in the class to be able to correctly answer these questions.  I can think of a couple of occasions that we failed, and failed miserably!  It was one of those failures when we were separated from each other (there were 3 of us that were as thick as thieves, and we were the ones that got busted... go figure!) that I came to the realization that I really, really missed being close to her.  I think that this is when my interest was piqued. I began pursuing, and to be honest, I don't remember a whole lot of the second half of my senior year... this is due, in part, to my activities the summer after my senior year...  That was the summer I learned what "Wake-n-bake" was, let's just leave it at that.

Now I have several memories, including hanging out with a group us at a friends house watching the Animaniacs, and another member of the group was shamelessly flirting with my sweetheart.  Now, to be fair, he had no idea that I was interested in her at the time, I had not directly declared my feelings to her, and I have apologized to him for what I did, which I will detail now.  He was lounging on the floor, I was on a couch to the right of him, and my desire was, IIRC sitting to my left in a recliner. She excused her self to go to the restroom... as soon as left the room, I raised my rather large and heavy leg, and sent it crushing down on my friends upper thigh.  Now I know good and well that had to hurt like hell!  He of course yelled bloody murder and asked what the hell that was for... again, IIRC, a couple of my friends quickly explained the situation... now of course he wasn't happy, and didn't talk to me for a while, but we got over it.

This went on for awhile and I finally worked up the courage, with some cajoling from friends, to ask her to the prom, now again, I was (and really still am) a screw-up... I was odd, and ungainly, and had no money...  So, the prom was a big freakin' deal to me... lots of $ to scramble to beg, borrow or steal.  I did it, I don't even remember how I did, but I did.  Much of that evening was a blur, I know we went out to eat somewhere... went to the prom, and then hung out at various friends houses, afterwards.  For once in my delinquent youth, there was no drinking, or shenanigans to be had, as well as none of the "traditional" after prom activities!  I remember being sooo nervous, and thinking that I must have looked like a complete idiot!  Of course now looking back I can realize that she was almost as nervous!  There were more than a couple of uncomfortable moments when others in our group were sharing more intimate times, nothing like having a hellacious crush on someone, and having your friends all kissing their girlfriends!   I remember after everything was done, and we were all back at our homes (By this time in my life, I was no longer living at home, but that's a different post for a different day!) thinking that it would be nice to do that again, only without so many nerves and expectations involved! 

The next couple of weeks were a flurry of activity, preparing for graduation, trying to keep myself from getting expelled due to a dumb-ass teacher pushing the wrong button at the wrong time (another post for a different day), rushing down the halls of the school to my Econ class to see if I actually passed or not; planning and executing an unauthorized prayer during the graduation ceremony, etc...  The day that my crush had to leave was miserable... it was as if the heavens themselves knew our grief, and made the weather act accordingly.  It was gray, pouring down rain, and much chillier than a normal Northern Indiana June day.  As we drove (actually my friend Rick drove, I rode in the back with her) there were numerous times when there was no visibility, and speed was reduced to 10 miles an hour on the highway.  It was a torturous drive, and as we arrived at the destination, I was a mess, too many thoughts running through my head to be able to focus on any one thing, the overwhelming feeling of utter loss, knowing that I would never see her again (luckily this turned out to be untrue) and generally turning into a 6'7" blubbering mass.  You see this is one of the other fairly rare times in my early years when I openly cried, and didn't care who saw.  I guess it was a "lucky" thing that everyone else there was crying as well!  I remember seeing her board the bus and feeling completely devastated, utterly alone for the second time in the space of a year. 

I learned a lot in this time, including her leaving, although it took years to realize how much I learned.  I have memories that will last my entire life, I have learned that trying to compress events, feelings, and emotions into a small amount of time does not work well; I have definitely learned how to cope with loss, and that no matter how much you want to hang on, it will never be the same as that original moment. I also learned that phone calls half way across the world are pricey, and that time zones are your enemy!


Remember all, that life is short, live it like you mean it!

A little introspective musing this morning

So I'm browsing my NSA watched Facebook feed this morning (sorry, gotta get the dig in where I can!) and I come across a story concerning Ashton Kutcher's acceptance speech at the teen choice awards.  Now any of you that know me, probably are thinking "Why the hell did he even pause at that, he's not into all the Hollywood BS?"  And you would be correct, I'm not; 99% of the time I could give a shit less about what most of the "celebrities" are doing.  My view on celebrities is the following, I (may) pay to see you entertain me for a brief time, after that, I don't give a good goddamn what you do, as I'm sure they would all say about me as well (I will say that I'm getting really sick of the hypocrisy in Hollywood, but that's another post all by itself!) Now what caught my eye was the fact that this article was from a very conservative outlet, and, on average, their opinion on Hollywood celebrities closely mirrors my own.  I clicked the link and read the story. 

The gist was that Ashton, who revealed that his first name is actually Chris, and that Ashton is his middle name, actually put himself out there with some decidedly un-Hollywood beliefs.  Ashton stated that there were 3 important things that he learned as Chris, that are still very important to him as Ashton:

1. Opportunity looks a lot like hard work.
   
2. The sexiest thing in the world is being smart, being thoughtful, and being generous, the rest is crap!
   
3. Create your own life, don't live in the world.
   

Now I've greatly simplified, and shortened this, and, I can almost not believe I'm suggesting this, but go watch the video, it is very worthwhile!

This got me thinking about how much we all try to take shortcuts in our lives, and how we, at least in this country, have forgotten that nothing, and I mean nothing, is "owed" to us by anyone. We have to work to get what we want. I also was reminded, that society's definition of beauty is completely ass-backwards, we need to remember to look at the character of a person, and not their physical appearance. Finally, Life is what you make it, not what other's make for you.

 
 

Then, I stumbled upon a post from a friend's
blog:

 
 

There are times when we find ourselves not knowing what to do next.

Sometimes, it is because there only appears to be one option - and it isn't at all a desirable one.

At other times, It is not for lack of options. Indeed, it is often because there are too many options.

In fact, it is only our perception that changes. The mind might be fixated on one thought, one reality. Or, it might be unfocused and unable to choose between the infinite paths that always lie ahead of us.

The practice, then, lies in being able to be fully aware of all possibilities while mindfully engaging with a select few.

The practice lies in this breath.

(I'm still practicing.)

To which I responded:

"breathe deep, keep calm, and live your life well."

As I wrote that response, I realized that the things I read and wrote, could help resolve almost all of anyone's problems… Now I'm not saying that I'm some Zen master who has reached some level of enlightenment, all of you that know me would end up with an aneurism from laughing so hard at the thought of me being "enlightened", but those words that I read, and the response that I typed, in my eyes, are very profound.

I think that all of us would be much better off, as people and as a society if we all slow down for a moment, reflect, and attempt to live our lives the way that we know that we should.

 
 

In closing, as I always post; Live your life to the fullest, as no one gets out alive!