Not From My School

Because of the issues of being treated like the gum stuck to the bottom of someone's shoe all of the time, I made it a point not to find any girlfriends from my own school.  I didn't need anyone to tell my potential girlfriend just how uncoordinated I was or how ridiculous I could be, or even the world issues I was concerned about that no one else was.  I could do all that on my own and with grace instead viciousness. So, of the ones that did show any likeness toward me, I ignored.  I was friendly, but I ignored their "advances" if you will.  I found one that I became quite attached to.  Unfortunately, if you want to know the full detail of that relationship, you will have to either read my book, The Train Runs No More, or download the Kindle version.  I can tell you the relationship did not turn out to be a happy one.  Afterwards, I went through several stages in my life.  Some were fun, memorable stages, all done without the so called "friends" from high school.  Why travel down the same road with someone that was not desirable to me or me to them?  Sometimes I turned off the road and took a different avenue which lead me either to a dead end or one with disastrous results.  But, I would find my way back.  I eventually found two other women, one of which I wasn't ready to get married, the other that when I was ready to marry, she finally came out and told me that while her husband was out having a good time with other women, she was doing likewise with me.  The one thing I was able to leave her with was a memory.  She became pregnant, but tried to brush it off as not mine.  I know better, because all the parameters added up just nicely.  However, I wasn't able to get her to divorce her husband and marry me.  I had to move on rather than dwell on something I couldn't have.  There was also one that was looking for a husband to be father to her daughter.  She wasn't looking for a husband she could love.  She was looking to be financially taken care of.  End of story.  She saw that maybe I was too weak for that so she moved on.  Just as well because when I ran into her, she was one from my high school that I was not good enough for then and still wasn't.  She had just divorced from a husband that couldn't greet her any other way but beating the hell out of her and then raping her.  I'm glad that relationship never worked out because I eventually realized that it would not have been good for me.  Not from my school.  I finally settled on one.  She had all the things I was looking for, except for her family.  There was just something about her family that was not right.  I just couldn't read the signs.  Refer to the blog spot, Signs.  After all was said and done, I was speaking with a counselor to help me get back on track and he explained that by all accounts, she was a victim of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder that knew how to hide her affliction very well.  She also was one that wanted to be taken care of.  In this day and age, one can't be taken care of because it is simply too expensive to live.  It takes two salaries to make a relationship work unless one wants to continue living in the dump they came from.  I also became my own entertainer.  Everyone else had brothers and sisters to run around with and party with.  Mine hated me to the point of having little association with me.  But then, I look at other people's brothers and sisters.  They were all closer in age group.  They grew up together.  I was nine years apart from my brother.  I infiltrated his little domain.  I was imposing.  Needless to say, the relationship was not close with him.  I even received a letter one day from my dying father telling me to watch out for him because even he did not trust him anymore.  Being that the ol' bro was the stronger of the two, more calculating than the younger, and had a larger "army", I lost the war.  There's one thing I have that my brother will never have.  I have my father's love, I have my father's trust, I have my father's blessing of my current beautiful wife, and his wishes that we do well.  That is something the brother will never be able to have nor will he ever be able to take that away from me.  And THAT is what pisses him off the most!  He has been trying to break me emotionally, ever since, and it hasn't worked yet!

The World Is A Small Place

When one enters high school, that will be the period of forming who one is, who one becomes.  It not only begins to take on this mold with your academics, but also the type of friends you select, or that select you.  Your personality, your thought patterns, your image, and your friends all begin to take shape.  One doesn't really think about this when they are in high school.  All they think about is the clique they can join, the friends that they want to select so that they will make them look good, and the clothes that they wear.  For me, it was the Vietnam War years.  The Vietnam War was and undeclared war.  We were over there beginning in 1950 only as advisers to the French because the French didn't know how to fight a jungle war.  Our military had already fought many skirmishes in the Pacific Islands with the Japanese.  So our military had experience that the French needed.  In the early sixties, the French gave up, cut and ran leaving our military holding the bag.  Then we had a president whom was not paying attention to any of his Generals and the war escalated with sending more and more of our troops to their death.  I was paying more attention to this than my high school mates and I began communicating with radical groups protesting against the war.  In speaking with some of my classmates, they were more involved in the back seat of their boyfriend's cars, or trying to help me get "saved".  I didn't want to get saved.  I wanted some of that ass in the back seat just like everyone else was getting.  But, I was different.  I vowed I would never date anyone from the same high school that I was in.  I didn't need any gossip.  I didn't need any humiliation that might arise from it should a break up occur.  Shit!  I was already getting enough humiliation from my older brother.  I passed out an "underground" newspaper in high school trying to bring awareness of the Vietnam war.  The problem was the paper was not a local paper.  San Antonio had their head shoved too far up their ass to pay attention to anything like that outside the city limits.  So, while others were in the back seat banging it out, playing football to make a big impression on the next piece of ass they could get, or trying like Hell to be a hypocritical Christian, I was communicating with groups like the Black Panthers, the Yippies, the SLA, and so forth.  I even got removed from class several times because I refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.  The only allegiance I had at the time was to help stop sending our boys overseas for a death march.  Being in a small "head in the sand" town like San Antonio, Texas, I protested where I could, described in The Train Runs No More.  I gave up real quick on my conversion of other classmates to become more aware of our politics.  I even had issues with my parents because of the posters of Patty Hearst and the SLA, Abbie Hoffman, and Bobby Seale on my bedroom walls.  I was in  my own world on this one.  So, here I was doing the protesting that I could where it made the most sense which was no where in the city of San Antonio.  And there were my classmates.  After high school ended and I began looking for real work, I had run into employers where my classmates had already gotten a job.  When completing the employment applications, I referenced those classmates that were working there.  Because of my reputation that I had formed in high school with those classmates, I never got the job.  So.  Always remember.  The world is a small place.  Be careful of whom you piss off.  You just might need them some day.  In today's world with computers, the world has become even smaller.  I had a boss at Lockheed in Marietta, Georgia that I became very close with.  He needed someone to perform a certain job on a C-5 one Saturday.  He needed someone that was going to work.  Detailed in my book, The Train Runs No More, he called me up and asked me to come in.  I asked how he was going to get around the union.  He told me, "Fuck the union!  I want somebody that wants to work and I know that you know the job and when you go in there, you're going to work on the job until it's done.  Now.  Do you want to work or not?"  I was at work within a few minutes since I lived right down the street from Dobbs, A. F. B.  In a crew meeting one day, he was explaining working as a team.  One of the things that he said and that I will always remember, "Be careful of who you piss off.  They just might be your boss one day".  He was right.  But I didn't adhere to that philosophy until after the fact.

Taking A New Avenue

While in high school, I managed to get my first job at the local multi-screen theater.  That is where I encountered extra money to be made out in the parking lot.  I would hang with a group of guys in high school that weren't able to belong to some clique like myself and they allowed me to hang with them also.  A couple of the guys came to school one day bragging how they got hired at the theater.  I thought to myself that if guys like them could get a job there so could I.  So I went up there, applied, got hired, and started working there expecting to see the other guys there.  In reality, they didn't get hired.  I came to school and told them that I got hired and they didn't take it too lightly, but I was still allowed to associate with them.  After a year, I moved on to a local grocery store called Handy Andy.  While working there, I had my eye on a blonde with big breasticles, but I just didn't know how to approach her.  I wasn't able to learn from my brother because he and I had little association with each other and we didn't talk about things like that to start with.  This blonde had her eye on me as well because she made things a little easier for me to talk to.  The one thing I told myself that I would never do is to date someone from the same high school I was in.  For those reasons why, read, "The Train Runs No More".  I didn't want any testosterone levels to increase, I didn't want gossip, I didn't want any of that crap.  Eventually, she and I were together every night of the week.  And my hormone levels were rampant and so were hers.  After working there a while, I had injured my back to the point that one day while at work, my legs just fell out from under me.  I had to be carried to my car and I drove home.  The pain was so bad that by the time I got home, my legs would not move.  I was taken to the hospital and eight surgeons were looking at me all chanting, "Let's cut!  Let's cut!"  Only my orthopedic surgeon explained that I was too young to have my discs removed.  He started me on physical therapy for three weeks and then released me from the hospital only to continue therapy for the next year.  I wasn't even able to drive a car.  After six months of doctors care, I was walking on my own again and the doctor told me that I need to get used to living with mommy and daddy from here on out.  I didn't cotton to that too well, so I began riding a bicycle.  I started off with an eight mile trip, increasing to ten.  I moved on to twenty and then after a while, I was riding fifty miles a day.  In the meantime, I kept reflecting on my girlfriend and how good looking she was and where I would be in life with mommy and daddy's support.  My mother also had made a statement that this being my first girlfriend, how did I know she was the one.  After all of my reflection, I stupidly sent my girlfriend on her way.  Mistake.  BIG MISTAKE.  From that point on, I took a new avenue, being bored with nothing to do and I fell into the wrong crowd by being introduced by one of my so called friends from school.  Because I had chosen to get closer to that element, my friend was no longer.  But, the things I would do for them, my repayment was in something I enjoyed and kept going back for more.  My mother always said, "If you play with trash it will fall in your eye every time".  I played with trash and it fell in my eye.  So when you choose an undesirable path, be ready to lose all the friends that you know.