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Bazooka-Joe's Incoherent Ramblings

Sunday, February 06, 2005

The Naivety of My Adulthood

I wrote that first chapter in 1999 as part of a college assignment for a Tech school English class. English classes in Tech schools are funny things. They’re necessary for official accreditation however, it’s not exactly their prize-winning roses, either. It’s a bit like grabbing the steamed carrots in the buffet line to make your selection look well-rounded; even though you and I both know the cafeteria ladies are going to get a kick out of disposing of our untouched bowl of steamed carrots along with the cheesecake and fried chicken remains. This English was particularly a funny thing. The teacher broke her ankle in a “skiing accident” within the first three weeks of class and insisted on wearing shorts to class and then sitting in a rather inappropriate matter (long story and a rabbit trail not worth expanding upon). Anyway, shortly after she began taking a collection for some sort of charity fund. I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention at the time so I couldn’t tell you what the fund exactly was. She raised quite a bit of money I understand. One student was so touched she gave $300.00 to the fund. One morning a student accidentally left her purse in this teacher’s class. The teacher took the money, the purse and fled to Canada in a Hertz rental car. I guess the point I’m trying to make is maybe we should all pay a little more attention to those steamed carrots….or not bother putting them on our tray in the first place.

My perspective on life has changed some since that first chapter (which I fully intended to be the last without losing a wink of sleep). Despite her minor character flaws (dishonesty, theft, indecency among what I hope is not too many others) this “teacher” may have been on to something with requiring the class to start their auto-biography. So, with some minor reluctance, I’m going to expand a little bit on this thesis and see where it goes.

My fiancé and I both agreed that October was entirely too long to wait. So we got married on July 20th, 1999. It was a Saturday and the nearest to glitch-free I’d ever seen a wedding accomplish. Aside from the stage nearly catching fire by an over zealous candelabra, it went relatively smoothly (sounds worse that it was). The reception was great. I think. I honestly don’t remember as much as I thought I would about the whole day. The reception was held in the acre backyard of an elderly woman from the church. My dad played bass in the wedding band and enthusiastically led the party in “Don’t Gimme No Lines and Keep Your Hands to Yourself”. Cute. The cake was overkill and the ice cream was a huge hit, typifying the July wedding.
When we returned from the honeymoon I began looking for a job. I had an internship in college with a local government agency working on their computer networks. And although they had offered me a permanent full time position, I turned it down and took a job running the computer network of a small, 10-branch, local credit union. My boss, as I came to discover, was a smug, formal, homosexual, spineless guy trying to talk himself out of his receding hairline. He made promises he did not keep. He made commitments and committed others to more than he/we were capable of fulfilling. He never once stood up for those under him and always caved and took the side of those providing the pressure. He took credit for our work and lied to upper management about our progress. I was there one year before I accepted a position at the local hospital running the computer network systems there. I like it there. My boss is great and I think I’ll stay and work my way up the ranks, despite the fact that one of my cow-orkers is a pimple on the face of progress and refuses to get out of her chair and do anything. But that’s for another chapter. I’ve been very happy with my marriage thus far. We’ve had our fair share of disputes, arguments and yes, even fights. But so did Ricky and Lucy, Ronald and Nancy, Papa and Mrs. Smurf, and on and on and on.

Bazooka-Joe made it so at 8:28 PM | 0 class clowns in the back of the class were bored from throwing pencils in the ceiling and paused long enough to comment on this post

The Naivety of My Youth

“What’s Love Got to Do With It?” It may seem odd, but the first memory I can recall having is hearing that song by Tina Turner. I must have been about 3. I don’t really know why this is my first memory that I can still recall (and actually understand it), but it’s only fitting that it has to do with music. Music has become a fairly big part of my life. Not the biggest, but I definitely couldn’t write a paper without mentioning it. For the sake of this blog, I’m going to remain anonymous. But let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that my name’s Joe.
I was born in Jacksonville, FL on September 28, 1979 in Orange County Hospital just a few minutes before September 29th. My dad, was in the Navy at the time and my had just been medically discharged due to foot problems that she still has to this day. Because I was a military brat, we moved around a lot from Naval base to Naval base. I have lived in Jacksonville, FL; Norfolk, VA; MD; Long Island, NY; San Antonio & Corpus Christi, TX; Louisville, KY; New Orleans, LA; Vancouver, WA and came very close to living in Anchorage, AK and Buffalo, NY. My dad later transferred to the Coast Guard when his term with the Navy was up.
My love life consists of inconsistencies. When I was 6 years old my best friend was Nicole. We called each other boyfriend and girlfriend, but really had no clue. When I was 9 I thought I was in love for the first time with Michelle, a curly headed girl in my third grade class. We were as serious as 2nd graders get for awhile, until she found a cuter guy in the 3rd grade, then suddenly the feeling was not mutual with her. In 5th grade my infatuation was with Jennifer, 6th grade it was Tiffany (only lasted a few months and don’t remember her last name). Hang on, I’m almost done, there is a point here. When I was in 7th grade, 13 years old, I met my future wife. We started dating at a Christian Music festival with our youth group. We attend the same church. On June 21st of this year in Astoria during a gorgeous sunset on the beach and fireworks in the background, I did the whole down-on-one-knee thing and proposed to fiancé. Her first father who died when she was 5 years. She’s the most wonderful person in my life. I don’t know where I’d be, or what I’d do without her. I just can’t imagine my life without loving her. Anyway, she is a missionary’s daughter and after we had been dating for about 9 months she moved to Budapest, Hungary and was there on and off for 5+ years. She came back to the states roughly once every year for about a month or two each visit. And we Emailed daily and phoned monthly so we kept in touch pretty well. She came back for good last May and I am glad she did. Many people react quite surprised when I explain we’ve been dating for 5 years since we were 13 and 14 years old and that it has been a long-distance relationship for over half of the 5 years. Our marriage date is set for October 23rd, 1999 (a week and a half after my college graduation).

When she first left for Budapest, I needed something to fill this enormous void in my life. I took up the guitar that summer. I spent all my time, energy and efforts on learning how to play and spent all my money on new and better equipment. I now have quite an array of guitars and guitar-related toys. It has become the ultimate form of expression for me. My creativity comes out in my song-writing. Through it I reveal my feelings for my fiancée, project my desires, complaints, aspirations, share my religious beliefs and let out my frustrations. If I could do all my writing assignments in the form of a song, I’d enjoy writing that much more.
My belief system is a very big part of who I am. I am a Christian and strongly devoted to the gospel of Christ. However, I realize that projecting this view on people many times just frustrates and annoys them more than convinces them to think as I do. However, if asked, I can go on and on about it. And my political beliefs follow my religious beliefs as well. I’m a conservative. Not a radical one, and I do not claim to be a Republican. But I am very conservative and it may show in some of my writings.

The most exciting thing that has ever happened to me was when I was 14 years old. I played hooky from the 8th grade one day and wasn’t the least bit prepared for the consequences of this action. I told my mother I felt sick and after much arguing she allowed me to stay home. Around 10:30AM that day I was still in bed when a knocking at the door woke me up. The dog was barking like crazy at the door and I have no doubt that Rocky was actually what awoke me. I lugged myself out of bed and waddled my way to the door of my room, roughly 10 ft. from the front door where a balding man was knocking at the door. I just stood there, suffering from “not-a-morning-person” hair. Suddenly he opened the screen door and checked the door handle to see if it was locked, which it was. I remember thinking “This guy’s got a lot of nerve!” But I just stood there with a stupid looking “Chuck Norstadt” kind of blank stare. Right about then Albert Finley began bashing his shoulder into the door. Now, the dog’s going nuts. After 3 attempts, he does not open the door, but breaks the door jam and it flies off the hinges of the house and falls to my mother’s kitchen floor sending my fearless dog whimpering to the back room. He made it about 3 feet in the house when he saw me just standing there bad hair, morning breath and all! Then he looked at me. Terror became a glaze over my eyes. Would he come after me? Could he have a gun? Should I say something? It was a bit like a first date. I kept waiting for him to say something. But what? Sorry??? After about 4 whole seconds that seemed to have lasted hours, I swallowed my fear and yelled at the top of my lungs…”Get the hell out of my house!!!” I was bluffing. “Please run away” I thought to myself. The gamble worked. As he stumbled to his ’78 Mustang II (ugly cars) I ran to the window and jotted down the license plate number. The police came and we arrested the guy about 2 hours later. I refer to that story as the worst wake-up call I ever had.

Bazooka-Joe made it so at 8:28 PM | 0 class clowns in the back of the class were bored from throwing pencils in the ceiling and paused long enough to comment on this post

The Naivety of my Parenthood

Seeing a theme are you? Not sure when I started chapter 2. But tonight I’m writing in the heat of a late August evening in 2002. We’ve been married three years and our 6 month old son is having a difficult night. He’s teething. The wife’s in the living room with him in her lap, as she reads the “bug squasher” medical encyclopedia seeing how we can appease him. It’s pretty much bedtime and since we’re all awake I figured I’d pay the bills since they really need to go out tomorrow morning. In doing so I received a late notice on one and tried to look up the account online, but couldn’t remember my password for the web access. Started a Search on my computer and somehow pulled up this silly excuse of an auto-biography. How this file came up from a search on “Citibank” is really beyond me. I just switched to Windows XP. I haven’t decided if I like it or not yet. *Rabbit trail* Anyway, my son has been quite a delight. He smiles quite often and everyone who meets him falls in love. Up until recently I’ve been able to dodge all of the really bad “#2” diapers. Not tonight. I happened to be holding him, trying to get him to say “Dad” when his entire face contorted into this look of severe concentration. As if he was psychically trying to peal the paint off the interior walls. My mind raced for rhetorical excuses for that look. But I knew. Deep down in a place I didn’t want to admit to….I knew. What followed was a smell that nearly did peal the interior paint off the walls. And then it was finished. “Finally!” my wife was secretly thinking to herself. “You’re holding him, you change him.” How could something so large and composed of purely disgusting material come out of such an innocent, cute little boy. And how in the world did that all fit in him, anyway?! I begged, I pleaded, I offered up to a thousand dollars cash if she would just take him and let me know when she was through. No dice. This was an experience she had obviously been waiting to put me through. Two diapers and a couple dozen wet wipes later I had him successfully changed. And to my chagrin I’m quite sure there’s many more to come. Potty training just got bumped up several notches on my exhaustive list of priorities. See, we’re trying to buy a house. Mortgage brokers, financial consultants, banks and anybody else in the world that tries to estimate your approximate appropriate monthly mortgage payment amount without actually looking at your monthly expenditures, needs to go back to second grade and learn remedial subtraction. I’m bitter. We want a house, everyone tells us we can afford one, but when I check their work I realize just how they came to their conclusion. With imaginary numbers. That’s right. Let me pull an “estimated monthly grocery bill” out of my posterior for you. There you go! You don’t need more than $50.00 for food, do you??
Did I mention how cute my kid is? Watching him being born was the most amazing thing on earth. I’ve gone from wanting 2 to possibly 4 kids after this experience. He’s been a real joy. But, man, if he didn’t have us scared out of our minds when he was first born. 5 weeks eager, as a co-worker at my new job calls it. Oh did I forget to mention? The hospital didn’t work out. Anyway, being 5 weeks early comes a whole host of “Oh my God, what’s that tube going into his for?” kinds of questions. He had wires, and tubes and at one point he had to wear these sunglasses that covered his forehead to his nose and went ear-to-ear. They called it “jaundice”. Seeing your brand new son go through the kinds of torture you only see on the medical channel is like……..is not describable through any analogy that I can come up with. Never before then have I truly ever fallen to my knees, gushing in tears that came between gasps for air, yelling and screaming my pleas that the life of my new son be spared and that he be allowed to live a life that I take for granted. Never before have I asked, and absolutely without hesitation meant it when I begged God to allow me to trade places with someone in a condition like my son was. Never before that moment did I truly understand the kind of pain I must have put my father through. And the kind of pain I put my God through, everyday. And never did I appreciate more the sacrifice He made when His son died on that cross. And if that was not hard enough, then comes the realization that Christ died, and God gave up his son…..for me. The unworthy, ungrateful, unclean individual that I am, with unmentionable and innumerable flaws.
Perhaps I will expand upon this chapter later. Or perhaps, 2 years from now (hopefully sitting in a house I’m buying back from a bank) I’ll simply jump back in with Chapter 4. Or perhaps this concludes my auto-biography. In which case, I need to go finish my bill paying. So goodnight and God bless.

Bazooka-Joe made it so at 8:28 PM | 0 class clowns in the back of the class were bored from throwing pencils in the ceiling and paused long enough to comment on this post