Do it again

You know, there is the old cliché of the ancient old man lying on his bed.

He has the covers pulled up to his chin and a pained expression on his face

“Oh why!?” he laments

“If only I had it to do over again! I would give my very soul to have my life to do over again! I would do everything so differently!”

Not me though

While I made so many mistakes. Maybe I am not a complete failure but it is so close I can smell its fetid breath (smells like pastrami)

Nope I would not give my soul to do it over again

I don’t need to be there to witness my senior year of high school

Or the time I played the troll in the 3 Billy goats gruff in the 1^st grade

I don’t need to be there for my first kiss or to see Star Wars for the first time.

But I would give my very soul to do my kids life over again.

But to see my kids first step? Yeah in heartbeat.

To be able to read to them a bedtime story again or tickle them into submission?

Dressing up for Halloween or picking out the right valentine for a school mate (Should we get Hello Kitty or Kim Possible?)

Big hugs and little kisses, scared cries and silly giggles, messy shirts and holding little hands

Oh hell yeah.

Please?

Age is just a number

I’ve been silent on here more and more. I don’t think I have lost my muse though, it’s just my brain is not working the way it should. You know how in your computer you have 2 kinds of memory? You have RAM and ROM.

ROM is for your programs. It is your hard drive that holds everything you save. It keeps the machine running.

RAM memory is the things you do when you use it. It is continually changing and updating to what you are currently using and erases everything when you power off.

Well in my brain computer it seems like everything is RAM. I can’t seem to make a memory.

My recall has gone from having an eidetic memory, to the point where I could walk into a memory and see everything in it. I have full recall of everything I ever watched. It was easy to recall this actor was in this movie with this person.

Now it is a struggle. I can’t even recall a movie I watched a couple months ago.

I think it was the ADD medicine I was on a couple of years ago. Scrambled my synapses.

Maybe it is onset Alzheimer’s even? There are times I seem to be able to get confused and I not know where I am on a drive I have made every day for the past 30 years.

I thinks its the continual stress from money woes that just wont go away.

Maybe I am just getting old.

Probably all 3.   um...4

The Last Time

Im not crying. YOURE crying.

Random synapse fire

Back when I was a kid on Halloween my dad would take the stereo speakers and hide them outside and we had this record of spooky sounds. I can still see the orange album cover with the haunted house and black cat on it. It had all kinds of ambience sounds with chains clanking and wind moaning and screams and groans. All the good stuff.

He would be sitting in his easy chair with his Budweiser in one hand watching TV when some poor unsuspecting toddler would waddle up to our door. Once he heard that tell-tale rap on the door he would spring up and drop the needle. Today’s kids probably wouldn’t even flinch but in 1978 seeing a miniature Darth Vader bolting for the sidewalk leaving a little trickle the force behind his was glorious.  Even preteen to teenage were not immune to the scares and screams my dad would inflict on them. He would always chuckle and open the door and give generous handfuls of candy to the survivors left standing.

I think seeing my dad enjoying himself and getting into the whole thing, this is probably where my enjoyment of Halloween came from.

My White Whale

When I was a boy of maybe 8 we went to Disneyland and when we were leaving my sister and I all got to get one item.

This was mine.

   I loved Herbie and this was so cool. It was die-cast metal and while heavy it rolled really swell. There was even a switch on the side that, when pressed, made Herbie separate into two pieces. Just like in the movie.

I played and played with this car. I'm pretty sure I even slept with it.

For not even two weeks.

  I had a friend named Chris from church. He lived with his Grandma and spoke really loud sometimes but he was my friend.

He came over once and we played with Herbie in my room for hours. Then when it was time for him to go he asked if he could borrow Herbie.

I was hesitant obviously, I mean, this was my Herbie we were talking about.

  Then I remembered he didn't have a lot himself. He was being raised by his Grandma and while we were by no means "rich" I had a lot more things then he did. I thought that it was a "good" thing to do, the church thing to do.

I made him promise to take good care of it and his face lit up and he promised.

The next day his grandmother brought it back over inside of paper-bag. She brought back this mangled ball of scarred metal wrapped in rubber bands.

Seems Chris had spent three hours the other night just rolling Herbie up and down the driveway and not necessarily using the wheels either.

My beautiful car was virtually unrecognizable.

They had tried to fix it with glue and rubber bands but it was pointless.

Herbie was dead.

They offered to replace him but as far as we knew they could only get him at Disneyland. I said it was OK and I understood that accidents happen.

This hurt more than I would let anyone know. 

 Oh we eventually went back to Disneyland a couple of years later and I went back to the same shop with some boyish notion that everything would be the same and I could just replace my Herbie.

 I left in tears with a "Big Al" patch.

I've been looking for Herbie on and off now for, oh some 35+ years. I see him occasionally on E-bay. He runs anywhere from 200 to 500 dollars.

Sometimes I find him but don't have the disposable income to get him and sometimes I have the disposable income but he is nowhere to be found.

This toy would not complete my life, I have 2 kids that do that.

If I ever were to get it I would probably just set it on a shelf.

But I would still have Herbie back and every time my eyes fell on his curved white hood the eight year old in me would smile.

Hitting the hot spots

The flag is the flag. People have bled, fought and died for it. The colors do not run and, unless the country falls and is taken over by another country, it does not change.

The confederate flag is a piece of our history. It needs to be flown as a remembrance of who we are and what we have gone through to get where we are.

Vaccinate your kids. If not for their sake then for the kids they come in contact with. If you don't want to then please move to the Appalachians and live with the hillbilly's.

Racism is wrong in every form

Discrimination is wrong in every form. You cannot deny someone just because you don't like what they like.

The President is the President. They all have sucked from George Washington on down but that's what we signed on for when we ditched Britain. The next one will not be any better. You may not like the man but respect the office.

No one in politics should be able to continue to hold their office longer than 10 years. That part of our system is broken and needs to be fixed immediately but who is going to vote their job away.

Corporations exist to make money. They will care about every aspect of their bottom line before they care about you. That's commerce. That's the way it works. Get over it.

If you are in a country illegally you have absolutely no claim to any benefits of that country. If you do not like it then leave said country.

Dont hurt your kids. Love your family and be excellent to one another.
OK I think that covers everything.
Did I miss something?

the end is nigh

I used to think that the world wasn't spiraling down the drain. That the reason we heard about so much crazy going on was just because, due to the internet and modern tech, we had more access to more information. That the world had just grown smaller because we knew everything about every little corner and knew it instantly.
I was wrong.
The world is spiraling down the drain. Morals are a rare commodity and common sense isn't so common. They say that, as a whole, the human race is smarter now than it has ever been but on any given day we fail to prove the fact.
We need a reset. An apocalypse that thins the herd and sets us back a decade or two because without it we are running downhill face first into an armageddon of our own design.
I'm not trying to be a bleak Bennie here, I am just scared to death of what is around the corner.
Something has to change.