I was just thinking...

Today's post is for a good friend, who for the past 17+ years has always
been there for my family. She knows who she is and if she is reading
this at work everyone else probably will to when they hear her talking
out loud to her computer, which is probably not a good thing to be
doing when you work in a medical building. (ixnay on the alkingtay to the computer)

Although I have only been knowing her for the last 17 years, my wife
has had the privilege of growing up with her and they have been best
friends for most of their lives. I envy them sometimes the way they
have managed to stay so close over the years, even when their paths
seemed to go in different directions, when they reconnected, it was as
if they had never parted.

As I look back over the years there are a lot of faces that pop in and
out, but she has been there consistently through the good and the bad,
fortunately we have had more good than bad.

For those that know me well, you are probably aware that years ago I was struck by a car, ran over and left for dead at the side of the road. It took
a lot of hard work for me to recover. During that period it was a
challenge to not be depressed and feel sorry for myself. What you
(and this friend) probably don't know is that she treated my wife and I
to one of the best nights of my life, that ultimately gave me a boost and helped speed up my recovery.

It wasn't a fancy dinner or a night on the town...it was a late night
invite to a friendly game of badminton. Through one of her many
connections (she's got people) she managed to get us access to the gym
at the junior high school. Initially I went along to do something
different with the wife so I had no expectations one way or the other,
but I have to tell you that I had never had so much fun before in my
life. I had so much fun, even now I can't help but smile thinking
about how I was adding sound effects every time I returned a serve. It
was the most exercise I had engaged in since the accident.

I had so much fun that night that the wife and I ended up purchasing a
badminton set shortly afterwards and I am sure that we used to keep the neighbors on
the military base entertained with our weekly grudge matches. I truly
believe the exercise contributed to an even faster recovery...it
definitely helped keep me from being depressed.

We have since been on many adventures with this friend, like our trips
to Stinson Beach and Lake Tahoe, and my children wont let us forget
about their sophisticated mornings with her complete with their own
little cups of coffee or the Pokeno games and eggnog shots (non-alcohol of course). I'm
still trying to repair my videotape that actually managed to capture a
few of our summer trips together when all of our children were still
small.

Even after we moved and bought our first house in Missouri, she flew
from California and braved the cold weather, to spend the holiday with
us, and it was my pleasure to keep her up way past her bedtime telling
her and my wife stories making them laugh until their sides hurt.

So what does all this have to do with Brenda? No that is not her
name...it is however the name of some lady who we didn't quite meet on
one of our adventures with this friend. Let me explain...

The three of us were sitting in the car talking. We were picking up
her daughter from a friends house. While waiting, we were just sitting
and chatting enjoying each other's company. While we were trying to
talk to each other we couldn't help but overhear someone talking very
loud, which was odd because there was no one near us. We discovered
the loud voice coming from several houses away. There was a woman
sitting in a new truck talking to several people.

This woman was talking sooooo loud we weren't trying but we could hear
everything word she said. We knew where, when and why she got her new
truck and even how much she paid for it. For several minutes this
woman went on and on. Finally having ran out of things to tell she
began to pull away from the curb. The group of people she was talking
with all waved and said "Bye Brenda!"

From the backseat I could see "Brenda" driving in our direction, and
just as her truck was passing us, our friend said "Bye Brenda!"
prompting Brenda to come to a stop and then proceed to back up her
truck. I take it that one of the benefits of being friends for such a
long time is the ability to communicate telepathically (either that or
perhaps they have done this type of thing before) because before I knew
it both my wife and friend we down on the floor of the car, leaving me
to appear to be the only person in the car.

By now Brenda had backed up her truck and was leaning out of the window
trying to see into the car. "who Dat Know Brenda in there? she asked.
I pretended not to hear her and remained looking forward hoping that
she had vision like a T-rex, and that if I remained perfectly still she
would not see me and would then move on. "Is that somebody Brenda know
in there?" "Brenda heard somebody call her name!" She kept trying but
I was not moving nor responding, I just sat not moving doing my best
crash test dummy impersonation.

The entire time my wife and friend were down on the floor snickering as
they watched the show. Brenda was either a little bit slow or was
excited at the thought of someone knowing her, because she sat there
inquiring for several minutes...and I will never forget how our friend
just casually popped back up into her seat as is she had been
teleported there, but even more so she pulled a jedi mind trick on
Brenda and convinced her that she must have been hearing things.

Of course on the way home there was comedy at my expense as they
laughed at me and my pretending not to be there, I had to laugh along
myself but now I know better so I stay prepared when I am in the car
with those two.

So this one is for you "Friend", my small way of saying thanks. Thanks for all of the fun adventures, thanks for my list of "firsts" First home made enchiladas...First trip to Stinson Beach...First Late night Badminton Game...First trip to the "Big Slide Park" to name a few. Thanks for the early morning cups of coffee and conversations and thanks for the "tough love" when I needed it. Thanks for treating my children as if they were your own...thanks for being there when we needed you..but most of all thanks for being there for my wife all these years...you should see her eyes light up as she talks fondly of how you looked out for her and kept her on the straight and narrow...I am blessed to enjoy her as the fine woman she has become and you were instrumental in that, and for that I will be eternally grateful.

So again Ta-Ta, Thanks for being such a good friend, and if you see Brenda...tell her I said hello. :)

There is one thing I have come to learn about my house...there is no such thing as a quick repair. It would appear that even simple jobs like replacing a faucet always seem to turn into something major with several trips to the hardware store.

This weekend I tried to get a few of the honey-do's done. The list included switching out the basin faucets and drain spout, and replacing the tub and shower fixtures. My wife had found a lovely brushed nickel set and all I had to do was switch them out.

I began with the basin faucets which to my surprise went fairly easy, it was a bit awkward trying to get the old ones disconnected...but other than annoying it went fairly smooth. The ease of the first job, tricked me into forgetting that there are no easy jobs around here. I was all happy and feeling accomplished as I began to tackle the shower fixtures. My ego was quickly deflated once I began trying to remove the old fixtures.

Apparently the last person to work on the plumbing was so confident of his work that everything was sealed behind a fiberglass shower enclosure without access to the plumbing. I'll spare you the details of all the agony and brainstorming I had to go through, let's just say that by the time everything was done I ended up with new plumbing and am now in the process of remodeling the entire bathroom, which isn't a bad thing. While I was finishing up my wife and I were joking she had the spigot in her hand and said, "I want you to build me a bathroom around this" and it looks like I will be doing just that.

On the brighter side we now have a new window in the bathroom (I will have some pics available later)

As I was working on the pipes, it reminded me of something stupid I did as a kid. When I was about eight or nine I had a bad habit of waking up around 1:00 in the morning and going exploring around the house. I also had a bad habit of swinging on the exposed plumbing in the basement. One morning I was swinging on the pipes and the copper pipe bent under my weight and sprung a leak.

I saw the leak and panicked. I tried sticking things on it to patch it, I even tried the soap trick, rubbing a dry bar of soap over the hole in an attempt to clog the hole. Nothing I tried worked. They say that misery loves company, and they are right, not wanting to panic by myself I woke up my brothers and told them what happened. Somehow I managed to convince them to pray that the leak would stop, which I suspect that they half heartedly did because the leak didn't stop in fact it became worse.

Seeing that their prayers were useless I left the infidels and went looking for a different solution. While searching around I found my dad's tools, and among those tools were his propane torch and some flux and solder. I knew exactly what I needed to do, I had seen my dad do it hundreds of times.

I grabbed the torch and the other tools I needed and proceed to repair the pipe. I turned off the water, prepared the pipes lit the torch added the flux and began trying to sweat the solder into the small hole...again I was unsuccessful. I think it might have worked if I had remembered to drain the water out of the pipe first.

Looking back I'm kind of glad it didn't work. If it had, I think I would have ended up doing even more stupid things and trying to cover them up. Eventually my dad heard all of the commotion and came to investigate and I received a physical reminder of why I should not swing from the pipes...although I must admit it wasn't as brutal as I thought it would be...I think he might have actually been impressed with the fact that I almost fixed the leak LOL

Fortunately my plumbing skills are better and my days of wandering around early in the morning have long since passed. :)




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Now playing: Flame, FUTURE & Iz-Real - It’s All Gon’ Pass
via FoxyTunes

Lately, I have been working on some articles that I need to get published. A few of those articles deal with some of the latest incidents involving young kids doing "bad things", young boys in particular.

For a moment there I was about to make the same mistake that many adults do and react to these incidents like "Oh My God! What is this world coming to?!" "What's Wrong With Kids These Days?!" However the more I have been researching and writing I don't think these recent occurrences are that much different than any other generation, with the exception that these kids seem to be more creative when it comes to getting in trouble.

Don't get me wrong...I think that there is a problem and something really needs to be done...but it isn't bleak and there is hope...and trust me I know. When I wrote about Latarian Milton, and how he stole his grandmother's car so he could go do hood rat stuff with a friend, I ended up changing and re-writing it. My first piece was kind of hard on the kid, but I kept feeling convicted as I was writing.

I mean it was easy for me to sit in the comfort of my chair in my home, all grown up (not) and be judgmental...After all I'm a responsible adult, registered voter, pay my taxes on time and drive the speed limit...but that is now, what about back then when I was a little Latarian, looking for hood rat stuff to do? Well actually I wasn't trying to do hood rat stuff, the only hood rats I knew were the ones that kept trying to burrow in my backyard. Although I wasn't trying to do hood rat stuff, I do remember some of the stupid things I did as a kid...fortunately for me those things never made it to the media back then. I shared a few of those stupid things, in my article, 40 Random (but true) Facts About MMOG37.


I mentioned earlier that I think the kids of today are probably more creative when it comes to finding trouble to get into, and I am willing to bet that this is mostly due to the kinds of images they are exposed to like movies, videos and video games.

Unlike Latarian and today's kids, we didn't have to worry about the negative influences of video games like Grand Theft Auto, no we were safe watching things like Bugs Bunny and Tom & Jerry. In fact we loved Bugs Bunny so much that we often paid homage to him in our daily activities, like the time when my little brother, who was tired of being picked on took a coal shovel to the back of the head of another brother...it was kind of disappointing not to see the little stars or birdies floating around his head...thinking that maybe he didn't hit him hard enough he took another whack at it...BANG! still no stars or birdies...oh well that myth was busted.

Then there was the time we wanted to test the theory of the traveling flame. Bugs Bunny was always blowing someone or something up...it was amazing to watch him leave a trail of gunpowder and then light it and watch the sparks travel along the trail he had left, then reach it's destination, blowing up his intended victim. We looked everywhere but we could never seem to find any gunpowder...so we settled for the next best thing...gasoline.

We decided to conduct a few experiments, we selected one of the garbage cans, poured some gas into it, and then made a trail of gas a safe distance away, and then lit it. Nothing happened, so we started back at the beginning and added some more gas to the garbage can and re-poured the gas on the trail. We tried to light it again and still nothing happened.

We figured out that since the trail was so long, the gas on the trail was drying up before we could get a chance to set it on fire, so we came up with a solution, the trail became a trench, we dug the trench several inches deep, so that we could pour enough gas into it to give us time to be able to light it before it dried up.

It took us a few minutes, but once we were done we couldn't wait, we anxiously poured some more gas into the trash can and even more into the trench. We were now ready to test our theory. We hid behind a tree as we prepared to light the trail...we lit a match, tossed it into the gasoline trench and success!

The flame traveled quickly along the long trench we had built, we braced ourselves in preparation for a big explosion as the flames raced toward the garbage can, and once reaching the garbage can, the flames raced up the side. The flames appeared to go down inside the garbage can and just when we we ready to hear a loud bang...Nothing! Nothing at all! Nothing happened...we paused, waited a few moments...still nothing...not a single sound.

We waited for what seemed like a really long time and it appeared that nothing at all was going to happen. Figuring that our plan failed we decided to go and investigate.

We walked slowly toward the garbage can, I keep calling it a garbage can, but it was more like a fifty gallon barrel, we had to stand on a crate to look inside of it. My brothers and I were all perched on tops of buckets and crates, peering down inside a potentially loaded barrel. We began moving things around inside the garbage can, we could smell smoke, and even saw what appeared to be a little trail of smoke coming up from the middle of the garbage can.

Just as each of us had our little heads stuck inside that barrel, we reached down to grab a smoking piece of cardboard, and just as we lifted it up...we heard and felt a loud bang and flame like that of the exhaust from a jet plane came rushing past all of our faces!

The heat was intense but lasted a second, the blast knocked all of us backward off of our little perches. After the ringing stopped and we weren't dizzy anymore we managed to get up and checked to see if we were all okay...after passing the finger and facial feature checks, we returned to the scene of the crime to figure out what just happened.

As it turns out, every time we poured gas into the trash can, (which actually had trash in it by the way,) the gas was trickling down into the bottom of the trash can and collecting inside a jar. When we lit the gas trench, the flame did make it inside the garbage can, but the trash was packed so tight that the initial flame was smothered, leaving only a few smoldering pieces of cardboard in the middle of the garbage can, when we began lifting things up out of the garbage can, the oxygen in the air ignited the flames which then reached the fumes from the gas collected in the jar at the bottom and WHOOSH! there you have it...an instant Pillar of Fire!

Fortunately, for us the extent our injuries were, the loss of our eyebrows, the tips of our afros singed and turned grey and minor burns on our faces causing them to feel extremely tight and shiny. The real injuries, however, came after my dad came home, as this was back in those days when a parent could still measure out a dose "butt whipping" without worrying about going to jail...and although as a kid I was against it...I have to admit in that case we really needed it...who knows what other kinds of stuff we would have been trying to blow up.

These days the closest I come to trouble is when I tell my own children of the bad things I did as a kid. Most of the time they think that I am making this stuff up to amuse them...until their grandmother confirms that I actually did those things.

I share those stories with my children for several reasons. One of those reasons is because I want them to know that I don't just make arbitrary rules for the sake of making them...I make them because I have been there and I know the kinds of trouble kids can find to get into...especially when they have a lot of idle time, no direction and no one there to tell them where the line is and when they are crossing it.

Looking back at my own experiences, there is one conclusion I have come to, regardless of generation or even culture and ethnicity; kids and trouble are like strong magnets being attracted and pulled toward each other, the more distance and/or obstacles you put between the two of them...the lesser the pull will be.

Ironically you can also cause a magnet to lose it's magnetic properties by banging it with a hammer...however it is not recommended that you try this with kids as it could be very messy and earn you a vacation in prison. What I do recommend is that you put as many things as you can between kids and trouble, especially when dealing with boys.

Keep em busy, give them some sort of creative outlet, but most of all spend some time with them even if it's only a little bit..and lastly don't be a superhero...enlist the help of friends and family or people who also want to see your children do well, to help serve as that cushion between your kids and trouble.


...but you don't have to pay any attention to me...I was just thinking.






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Now playing: ShadowFacts - Maternal Instinct ft. Keandra Ayers
via FoxyTunes