On Turning 42
I woke up and found I had turned 42…for the second year in a row.
All last year Kathi and I were telling people I was 42 when in fact I was 41. Huh.
I’m sitting here typing as my 1 year old Wynnie is dancing to ‘Adult Education’ by Hall & Oats. She smiles at me in that special way she does–telling me that daddy is loved so much.
I’m grateful this morning, if for nothing else, than because my heart is still beating and I get to be with my family for at least one more day. Reflecting on my life, I found my blessings have outweighed my troubles, making me once again…grateful.
I’m married to my dream girl.
Read MoreGames Children Play
Our kids are spoiled. Look at all the toys, games, electronic devices and media saturated environments they are involved in? Most youth nowadays could probably break down a computer and design software if they were motivated, but can’t figure out how to have a verbal conversation with their own parents in a social setting that doesn’t allow texting.
Do you remember our lives as youth?
Hell, if I was lucky, I got to spend 20 minutes trying the cutting edge game called PONG!
I had tinker toys, leg-gos and ever-cool lincoln logs. It’s when the best football games were the ones you played live, with friends, and come home with the trophy scars of war. You remember those days, don’t you? The adults wanted you to play touch football or flag football, but as soon as the adults turned their heads long enough or left the field, the rules went out the window! Yeeeeeaaah baby!! Knees, elbows and bloody lips were the call of the day as the pig skin rolled across the ground and you dove at it to save the day.
Now the only bloody lips are from the fights of who gets the playstation controller.
What happened to creative games? Creative game play?? Using your brain to come of of new, fun ways to spend time!?
So many of us are wasting our time on things of no consequence. Crap, even business men play games of doing business, thinking it’s some kind of achievement to create a business in the realm of ‘moneyville’ while their work suffers in real life [or they could become ever more productive].
I have a lot of find memories from when I was a child and the games I played.
…ok, they were actually games other kids played on me.
…ok, they aren’t really fond memories.
…ok, they sucked actually, but I survived.
Bugger this. I’m gonna go play Mafia Wars.
Read MoreDon’t Squirt Your Local Police.
I made sure mom and dad would never notice what I took from the garage. After all, it would take all the fun out of your success in deploying your diabolical plan, only to come home to a belt strap on your butt, right?
I took a little gasoline from the lawnmower, some paint thinner, an egg I had been baking in the ground out back for a month or so and some of moms wood stain. Mixed it up in a soup can. I told Christian what I planned to do with my ‘melt-in-a-bottle’ creation and being the sweet little demon he was, he eagerly joined right in.
Placing the finished concoction into the water bottle of my cool, plastic covered motorcycle bike, we road away to see if cop cars were indeed invulnerable to creative nine year olds.
We found a good corner in our neighborhood, but far enough away so mom and dad wouldn’t stumble upon us if they drove their regular route. The location had enough trees and bushed for me to hide behind and move about without being easily detected. I stashed my bike around the corner within the trees and made sure it was completely invisible. I planted the demon I called my brother on his skateboard just to the right of the corner street sign, which forced any passerby to pull over against the bushes, where I would be hiding. If it went as planned, I could cover the side of a car and get away without notice.
We were in place, armed, and ready for action.
It was a little wait, but as soon as we saw a patrolman, Christian did his thing. What a master of BS emotions he was, tears flowed like rivers down the small cheeks that looked so sweet you got cavities just looking at the little crapper. The cop noticed him as he sank his face into his hands and sobbed, his little frame delicately centered on his massive skateboard, shuddering in despair.
The cop pulled into place, perfectly in front of the bushes where I was hiding and rolled down his window.
“What’s the matter fella?” the cop said.
“I just moved here and I’m lost,” cried Christian, fussing loudly. “Do you know where I live?”
Before the cop responded I went to work, uncapping my water bottle and squirting my eye watering liquid/gel all along the side of his car, completely covering the police insignia’s.
The two talked for a couple minutes, Christian staying on his board, darting an occasional glance my way from time to time. I emptied the full contents of my bottle and watched the paint melt down the side of the vehicle before my actions were even complete. Once done, I quickly gave a thumbs up and backed into the bushes. Christian instantly perked up with a smile:
“Oh! I remember where I live! Thank you so much for the help!!” and he dashed off in the opposite direction from where we lived.
We never got caught for damaging the image of a fellow citizen. It was wrong to take advantage of someone, especially unaware. It was back handed, sneaky, destructive, irresponsible and not very nice.
I did, however, feel I had a great future in chemistry.
Well, that…or politics.
Read MoreEven Brothers Have a Use
My brother Christian always had this annoying skill. He could cry at the drop of a hat. Pissed me off. Not that the skill was bad. Pretty cool actually…he just had this huge success rate of getting me blamed for all sorts of crap when we were young. I didn’t have to be in the room, but I’d get a swat later on.
I did however, find a great use for this twisted skill he had. We were young (I believe we were 9 and 7, but not positive) and had moved to a new home. In the garage, dad had all sorts of cleaning liquids. They were flammable. I know, I lit most of them on fire over the years, melting toy cars, plastic army men and making the every popular barbarian torch out of my sisters doll head, stuck on the end of a stick. Christian and I had new bikes which included water bottle attachments. Now I never knew of any friend that actually used their water bottle. At least not for water anyway. You’d be a sissy. It was used to carry contraband, like lighter fluid or gas to start a fire, rotten eggs to squirt on Sissy Hamleton as you raced by at top speed, or any other liquid you wanted to transport without the interference of a parent.
Now, in the city of Diablo, California, the houses were posh. Even by todays standards, this would be a beautiful area and the residents had their own police force patrolling the neighborhoods. Trees were many, lush and perfect for hiding in when a kid didn’t want to be seen. The combination of these facts hit me one afternoon and gave me a brilliant idea.
What would happen if I created the greatest concoction of all time, put it in my water bottle of destruction and then found a way to introduce it to the local police? They were always yelling at the kids to stay off the grass, chasing up from the golf course and bringing us home in the middle of the night because toilet papering a house just wasn’t proper. It was time for some payback. I could take my annoyingly cute and volatile little brother, plant him on the side of the road as a distraction and then introduce my mad scientist concoction to the first cop car willing to stop for the fake tear kid.
I was always quite creative as a child.
So I made a plan…
Read MoreThe Heavens Sighed With Relief
On May 27th 1969 I think the great heavens above breathed a sigh of relief as I was promptly shoved into a body and sent here to Earth. Now that I’m 40 years old and have experience as a father myself, I’m pretty sure my personality in Heaven drove my family there to the verge of insanity. They couldn’t wait to have at least a tiny break from the teasing, the opinions on everything and the constant chasing of my future wife Kathilynn to get a kiss.
I’m not so sure about that last part, but I chase her all the time now, so it tends to reason.
My religion teaches me that our lives in Heaven before we came here [Earth] were very similar; with close family associations and personalities such as we have here. That’s incredible in one respect, but it gets me wondering: how much trouble was I in up there?
I have a hard time imagining my Father in Heaven running behind me while I marked up the clouds with a stray black bull nib screaming “THAT’S IT! I’M COUNTING TO FIVE YOUNG MAN!”
The more I think about it, the more I start wondering if Father in Heaven is bald. The stress I caused had to be horrible.
So I was sent to Earth and was born in Oakland California to Daniel and Rosina Buckley.
…who unfortunately had no idea what they were in for.
Good thing we’re all born [relatively] cute.
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