Friends, I usually include this greeting in the email. But it pisses some (one) people off (Jim Latta), so suffer through it here now. As the above photo and caption relates, my life just took a hard left. For the good. Completely and totally out of the blue. I was just working my hourly shifts-cooking/serving/catering, writing a friendly Substack, appraising or inspecting real estate, and going to the jacuzzi at 3 pm every day. I’m tan.
Yeah, I know. Government Cheese=YUMMY. Don’t judge. This post hits on Saturday for you. I gotta adjust some timing. Maybe a late Friday? Maybe an early Saturday? Maybe, shudder, no regular schedule. Rudder-less? God forbid, hard no.
So I plan on talking about the road of my life before I travel down the road of my life. Kinda back to the future works in reverse kind of operation. Good news is, I am distinctly and precisely the one individual that is an expert on my life. And you are the only expert on your life. Tell it well.
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Why can’t I remember any details about my 3rd and 6th grades?
When I talk about the path of my life, I tend to focus more on recent events. Or at least in post-covid terms. You know, the time after all the shit fell apart. I’ve been rereading and rereflecting on past-posts. Rerealizing things in a way. I speak about my school life like it is normal.
It is if you’re an Army Brat. I was just a brat. I moved every single year between 1972 and 1982. Well beyond that I might add. That’s for another post. I thought it might be a fun detour on the hard road we seem to be enduring right now to jump into that memory-hole-filled-pool.
Before I take my road trip to New Mexico for my 40th High School Reunion, I’d like my readers to explore with me the nuances of nomadic life versus stationary life. When I say focus, I mean that I find that my writing references my childhood in terms that need to be ‘splained a bit. Not mansplained. Jus ‘splained.
I called The Mom a few months ago to ask a specific question that I didn’t know the answer to Why can’t I remember any details about my 3rd and 6th grades? She didn’t know. Living through tumultuous times sometimes erases the truly troublesome. Maybe something happened. Maybe it didn’t. I don’t know. Nor did she.
Those years are just complete memory holes. I remember Apache Elementary (F-town NM1974) 4th-grade teacher like it was yesterday. Ms. Sandy Conklin. David Lee Roth was right: Hot for Teacher. I distinctly remember a vision of her that is stereotypical of the 1970’s. Her classroom was filled with plants hanging in Macrame, psychedelic posters adorned the walls, and she dressed like a Disco Goddess.
Corduroy mini-skirts and cork-platforms. Form-fitting sweaters and tanks. Or as Ralph from Happy Days once remarked when describing an attraction of his interest
“I really dig intellectual girls, especially that one. I love the way her mind fills her sweater.”
She was amazing. Like halo over her head amazing. I did the grossest thing a 4GB9Y (fourth-grade, boy, nine years old) can ever do. I picked a booger and wiped it underneath of the desk behind me. In class. Cara Honeycutt sat behind me.
Cara was special-needs before we had that name. She was a gentle soul and the rest of us were savage animals. The booger was so big and gross that is fell right away on her thigh. And she was wearing a skirt. She screamed. Ms. Conklin came to the rescue. For Cara.
The teacher somehow knew instantly the offending act and offending idiot. It broke my heart. I don’t know or can’t remember who I felt I let down more: my classmate or my teacher. It was a major moral dilemma for me. In an sea of moral dilemmas that I swam in.
I apologized sincerely, as Ms. Conklin guided me in discovering. I wonder now if that empathy experience set a baseline in me. It did. The fucked-up times in my life have been when I blow off red flags and red lights. Hard to cross a bridge back after you burned it down on your way out.
So be it. We have to stop living in the past or in the future. We just are not built to live in three realities. Past. Present. Future. I lived in the past. But not now. And not anymore. What is the attraction to live there? It’s the Hypothetical Better Self.
When we debrief a life change, we insert our better selves into the past to change the outcome to give us more benefit today. That is a false hypothetical, my friends. Or Bullshit. What if your fantasy alternative choice produces a worse outcome than the one you're currently living? You’re more fucked.
We also do the same opposite. When we prosper at the pinnacle of power, we pervert it to predict our peril. We discard the pleasure of the moment to cherish the imagined suffering of tomorrow. Making decisions that will never be accounted for. Writing checks that will never be cashed. Expecting greatness without grind. And waking up empty and hollow.
That is the shallow end of the pool. We’re better than that. Way better. Collectively, our present moment crushes any shaken memory of yesterday. Better yet, it completely demolishes the illusion of future fantastical fabulosity.
Let’s live today. Let’s take it one day at a time. What possible advantage in our life today, at this precise precious moment in time, does it help you to think it was better or worse in the past? Or it will be so in the future? False choices and empty promises.
Let’s just stop that. Today. Thanks for being here. Thanks for choosing to live now. Take charge of who you are. Not what is going to happen to you. But how you are going to think about it and react to it.
My propensity to stumble and tumble in an upwards direction it built-in. It is not an option. I live today to live today. I slipped and tripped once on a loose brick conducting a real estate appraisal inspection.
Camera, clipboard and 100-ft tape in hand, I was descending the steps to the pool. That loose brick weighs heavily on my mind these days.
Narrowly avoiding the pool mere inches away, I somehow, by the Grace of God performed a perfect tuck and roll. The homeowner was petrified, embarrassed, and impressed. Simultaneously.
Where did I learn said tuck and roll? Farmington, perchance? Ms. Sandra Conklin taught me that tuck and roll act. So did Scorpion Wrestling.
mirabile dictu
Ric
Check this one out by Joe Walsh. Click on SongWhip below to select your personal (non-Spotify, whatever!) listening platform. Sigh. Not heavy tho.
Please, please put this playlist on when you drive. It’s fricking so cool.
Congrats on the new gig! Playlist looks great too. In a past life I dated a flight attendant that was based in Chicago. The dive bar around the corner from her crash pad had The Babys on the jukebox and they got played a lot. Took me right back to those smoke-filled booths and cheap beers.
Great post. I love the bugger story. Made me laugh.