Reminiscing

 It's only natural, I feel, that when you lose someone close to you, that maybe you start to ponder your own mortality.  Even more so now that you realize that you're just a few short months away from 50.  Half a century.  To be totally honest, I didn't think I'd make it this far.  Oh, I don't mean I expected to have gone to the great beyond just yet.  But maybe I hadn't really planned on what life was going to be like this far along.  I mean, as a kid you think 50 is just so far out in the future, who has time to figure out what you're going to be doing then?  After all, at different stages in life, I just assumed certain things were going to happen, develop, life was going to lead me in a different direction.  And to be totally honest, I never expected to be where I am today because of it.  

As a child, I loved the idea of flight.  I was obsessed with aircraft and flying.  I was in Air Force Junior ROTC in high school and I just "KNEW" I was going to head off into the military.  Going even further back, I was all about space travel and my 6th grade career day report was about being an astronaut.  TV production was just a hobby because dad bought a couple of VCRs and a video camera.  If you're old enough to remember the shoulder mounted camera with an umbilical cord to a separate recorder and massive batteries for each.  I would stage small scenes with my brother and cousins.  Stupid little shit that kids would do but who knew something like that would eventually become a 30+ year career?  

2005

 

2018

And thankfully, this career has given me the opportunity to travel, see more of our country.  I am forever grateful I've gotten to visit New Orleans, Washington D.C., and Philadelphia to name just a few.

Capital Building, 2010

Looking for the basement, 2016

Jefferson Square and St. Louis Cathedral, 2012

Pike's Market, 2017

Rocky Statue, 2018

But even discounting my professional career, there's so much that I'm truly appreciative of in my personal life.  But first off, let me openly admit, and this kind of touches back on the surprise that I'm still alive...  There were plenty of times that we didn't get into more trouble than we could have/should have in our youth.  That time we somehow ended up with 8 guys trying to cram into Paul's little Mustang II and I was the most sober one so therefore, I'm driving.  Driver's seat fully pressed up into the steering wheel, 5 in the back, two in the passenger's seat next to me, too much body heat that the windows started to fog over... and oh look, there's a San Bernardino County Sheriff coming in the opposite direction.  Danny started singing, "Yes Jesus loves me, yes Jesus loves me, the bible tells me so."  We were coming back from our youth services meeting at the church if the cop stopped us.  

I don't recall if it was the same night or within a few weeks of that when Paul, Danny and I were dropping off a buddy of theirs when the buddy got into a heated argument with his wife.  In the middle of their apartment complex.  At nearly 2 in the morning.  Naturally the neighbors called the cops.  And oh, the wife pulled out a gun!?  Paul managed to talk her down from it, got the gun away from her and handed it to me to clear it.  I made sure it was safe and gave it back to him and he quickly tossed it into the bushes when he saw the Riverside PD officers coming up the footpath.  

Another night I'll never forget was after staying out late drinking and shooting pool, I was dropping off Cory at home and since we were all hungry, stopped off at Del Taco on 14th, right there next to the old Evergreen Cemetery.  Cory, despite living near there for a little over a year wanted to see it up close.  I drove into the middle of the cemetery, parked along the side of the road and the fog was thick enough to only see maybe 50 feet in any direction.  As soon as I stopped, Cory grabbed his bag of tacos and jumped out of the Goose, wanting his own little picnic amongst the tombstones.   Dude, dude, DUDE?!  Pawel, who had been following us, came up to the passenger side window, "Where'd he go?"  Cory finally wandered back after finishing his dinner and when I mentioned some of the headstone markers had Pagan symbolism on them, he wanted to go see.  Dude, this is a pretty sketchy neighborhood and shit's always going down here.  We've got protection!  He took his bike padlock and wandered off again to see the headstones I mentioned.  Fuck, man...  
We managed to locate a few in the dark and before too long, an RPD patrol car pulls up and lights up their wigwags.  Fuck man, just try to explain this one away.  3 dudes in the middle of the night in a cemetery, bike padlock on one of them, this is NOT going to end well.  
Fortunately for us, the officer was a really nice lady who told us to get back in the van and go home.  Yes, MA'AM!  and we were gone before the backup arrived.  
It's funny, another friend has often said that he's glad he didn't know us back in the day.  We all lived in Riverside at the time and are in the same age group, so it's likely we could have been friends.  But he's repeated often that if he had been friends with us and all the stuff we got into back then, he would be dead.  Wouldn't have been able to keep up with us, much less how much we were drinking back then.  OMG, the house party at Timmy's the night of the blackout.  No, we didn't get blackout drunk...  Well, not all of us.  But the power went out in the neighborhood and just came back up as I was pulling up to the house with my date.  Wild Thing was unstoppable, drunk to the point he started "surfing" on a coffee table.  Someone managed to get him down from there and take him outside to cool off and not even a minute later he comes RUNNING back into the house, belly flops on the wobbly coffee table and starts to "swim" on it.  

Anyone who's followed me or been friends for any length of time knows all too well my history of REALLY bad dates.  Are they out of the ordinary or do I just have a better memory and recall them better than others?  I mean, does everyone go through such ridiculous stretches like I have?  I've had 2 relationships that lasted 6 years each, although neither of them were that length of time consecutively.  And one relationship that lasted almost 2 years.  We even moved in together for a time.  And that was a giant clusterfuck right from the get-go, we should never have dated, it was literally only going to be a hook-up that somehow got dragged out and extended and she ingratiated herself with family and friends.  Seriously, that girl, right after we met, sent flowers to my mom and my sister for Mother's Day.  She hadn't even met them.
When we finally broke up, it got even more awkward.  She begged me not to make the news public, some bullshit about if her parents found out, they were going to not move to Florida.  Turns out, she used my silence to wedge a divide between my friends and I by playing the victim in our relationship.  Which was made more awkward when she kept trying to sleep together in the same bed as me.  My bed, to be clear.  Until one morning I woke up snuggled up next to her, my hand cupping her... Odd that I had never woken up like that before with her.  I moved out to the couch the next night and for the remainder of the time we lived together.  

What sort of life have you led, any accomplishments you're most proud of or maybe there are some regrets along the way.  And as the song goes; Regrets, I've had a few.  But then again, too few to mention.