Watching and Learning

Whenever the older brother would do something not to the liking of my parents, he would get into trouble with them.  By trouble, I mean my brother would get spanked with a belt.  Spanked, not beat.  There is a difference.  These parents that believe in diverting a child's attention, that crap never works.  The child's attention keeps getting drawn right back to the source that is attracting them and they won't quit until they discover what the source is all about.  My parents used to have friends that would bring small children over and when they did, the parents of the small children proceeded to pick up and move all the things that were reachable out of the way.  My mother finally had enough of the shit and said, "If I want my stuff put away every time an irresponsible parent brings their children over, I'll do it myself.  If you don't have the good sense to control your child, don't come over here rearranging my stuff to suit your child".  Either those too arrogant enough to take control would stop coming over, or the ones that felt responsible finally took a hand and their brats sat down and left things alone.  So, when my brother would get spanked, I would say to myself, "Shit!  I don't want any of that!"  So, Whatever it was, I didn't do it.  Sometimes that meant I would miss out on some of the fun that others had.  Fun.  As a teenager trying to find myself, I began hanging with an undesirable group of guys away from school.  We would go up to the new local multi-screen theater on a busy night when the parking lot was full.  We would find cars with nice wheels, lift them up and slam bricks underneath.  A couple of guys would spray freon on the wheel nuts while another came behind and hit them with a good, heavy hammer.  It didn't matter if they were wheel locks or not, the nuts would come flying off and the wheels came right off.  Quick easy money.  Then for some peculiar reason, I had a stroke of good sense.  Here I was stealing wheels from some poor sap that had worked damned hard to buy these things and here I was taking them and selling them for less that they were actually worth for some quick money.  I wasn't actually doing it for the money.  I did it because I thought it was fun.  If the shoe were on the other foot, how would it effect me?  So I quit doing it before my parents found out and before the police came along.  It wasn't too many more times after I quit and the guys got busted.  Talk about the timing being right.  Conscience.  Having a conscience.  I felt bad after a while, when I got a real job and I had to work.  I had to work damned hard for the money I earned in those days and now I was in the other person's shoes and I didn't like it.  I turned to another avenue, detailed in my book, "The Train Runs No More". I turned that way because at least no one was putting me down with every other sentence being said like my brother would do.  Constant humiliation.  I would drink and drug with the boys because it was fun.  But then the fun stopped being fun.  When I eventually got married to someone I really should have never married in the first place, I decided that when having a child, it's time to stop druggin'.  So, I did.  My brother never could figure out that if even alcohol is taking over your life, just quit.  He couldn't quit.  He had to turn to that entity called GOD.  What a weakling.  That's just like all the convicts in the joint.  They get in and all of a sudden they find GOD.  Why didn't they find HIM before it was too late.  Now, with my brother, one so much as treats a wound with alcohol, they are an alcoholic and sentenced to HELL forever.  He is such a fucking hypocrite for turning to Christianity and yet acting like the shitty ass person he remains to be.  If one just steps outside their box and looks back at themselves, maybe they might learn something and change what they are, what they do, and who they do it with.  Like I said.  I quit the drugs.  I still drink, but only when all of my other responsibilities are taken care of first.  Do I miss the drugs.  Yes.  I miss that physical feeling I used to get.  But, with drugs, it's different from alcohol.  It has a harder effect and a wider effect.  I haven't done drugs in twenty five years because of all the responsibilities that I have had and still have.  Once all of those are rendered then I'd like to do it again.  But by that time, I will still have a responsibility to myself in that I will be older, I need to be mindful of the effects it will have on my body and if anything detrimental happens, I have to be mindful of the responsibility that I will be leaving behind for someone else forced to take care of at that point.  So, I guess your answer would be, no.  I won't be doing drugs anymore since I'm a responsible person.  It's all about growing up, becoming an adult, attaining and maintaining responsibility, learning from one's mistakes.

Trying to find myself

Being that my brother was nine years older than myself, and I invaded his territory right from the start, I was never appreciated by him.  As I said earlier, whenever he escorted me to school amongst his friends, I either had to walk in front or in back; never with.  Whenever he was having conversations with his friends and I came around, it got quiet until I left.  I don't recall ever being included in anything.  So, I had to find my own entertainment.  I had to invent one person games or play with my HO scale race track by myself.  I was able to be amongst the neighborhood boys, but I don't think I ever felt I was "with" them.  "Mr.  Mischief'" always was able to turn a nice game amongst the boys into a game of mischief and always someone wound up getting hurt, and always he would run home like he had nothing to do with it.  Sometimes the mischief would even wind up getting me into trouble with my own parents, so I learned better to play alone than with because I was tired of getting into trouble.  Since there was little association with the brother, there was little discussion about how to act amongst others or how to approach girls.  As a family, we didn't talk about things like that and if we did we were teased to no end.  There is a difference between being teased and being harangued to death.  I was harangued to the point that I grew up not liking to be teased.  I later in life had to teach myself that some teasing is okay and that I needed to accept some forms of teasing.  As a young teenager, my brother was doing something "special" for my parents in the back yard.  He had his friends over to help and I was allowed to help to a point, but then when the conversation turned, the teasing began.  In front of his friends, the teasing turned to being humiliated and I had just about had enough.  To find out the detail of what really happened read The Train Runs No More.

During my upbringing I had to attend catechism every Saturday and go to Catholic Church on Sunday.  That was in the days of the mass being said in Latin.  In those days I learned that the priests were alcoholics.  Even some of the nuns were also.  The nuns I had in catechism for teachers, if they caught you disrupting the class or not paying attention, they would walk up and whack you across the knuckles with a ruler.  If you cried out, you got whacked again.  I suppose that that was there idea of teaching respect.  Today, the Catholic priests are legalized child molesters.  Later in life, I "tested" other religions and found that the preachers of those religions were nothing more than fakes, womanizers, and money launderers.  Needless to say when someone comes to me and announces that they are a Christian, a red flag goes up like a penalty flag thrown at a football game.  This is digressing away from the story at hand though.  As stated earlier, I had to learn how to approach girls on my own and I did not learn to be successful.  What I did learn was that several of these girls were trying to save my soul through the works of God, but funny how they would discover them in the back seat of a car with their boyfriends.  I don't think they were preaching the word of God though.  I ascertained that these women that I approached and tried to show some likeness to, were nothing more than hypocrites.  And as far as the guys I hung around with, they must have been about as dorky as I was because they allowed me to hang around with them and we fed off each one's energy.  I mostly watched and listened so that I might learn from them what to do and what not to do.  I was trying to find myself in this path of which I had to follow.  My mother used to tell me when I would hang with someone that wasn't quite of  desirable character to her she would say, "If you play with trash, it will fall in your eye every time".  How right she was and I didn't listen.