It's A Small World #2

I graduated from high school in May of 1980, just over a whopping 27 years ago.

I worked at a couple of jobs, and to make things shorter, by 1986 Lovely Wife and I and Number One Daughter moved to the Dallas / Fort Worth, Texas area.

We lived there from 1986-1989 and I was working for Delta Air Lines.

I can't tell you how much I loved that job and that company, but in the beginning it was pretty hard. The work was very physically demanding and the heat in Texas in the summer can be quite incredible. Add to the heat having to work outside on concrete and it was a wonder that we didn't all end up with heat exhaustion.

At the time, Delta hired all employees as temporary part-time employees. After a couple of years, they would generally offer you a position that was "permanent full-time" with all benefits and a small raise, etc. Becoming "permanent" was the holy grail of all temporary part-time employees.

In February of 1988, several of us tpt's with the most seniority were told that we would be moved into Cabin Service in March of 1988 and made permanent employees.

On one of my last days as a tpt, temporary part-time, I had worked a day shift on the ramp. We would work our shift on one gate and unload and then reload cargo and luggage on the plane and send it out on it's next leg. In an 8 hour shift, we would typically work five flights on our gate.

Anyway, on this one day, as I was leaving to go home after work, I decided to cut through the flight attendants staging area and break room to get to the air trans that would take me out to the employee parking lot we had to park in.

Just a few days before, in addition to finding out that I was to finally become a permanent employee (with health insurance!), Lovely Wife had found out she was pregnant with Number Two Daughter. So I was pretty happy, things were looking up.

I opened the door to the flight attendants big break room where they waited for their next flight and as I cut through the room, a young lady stood up and stepped toward me.

Could have knocked me over with a feather. It was a girl that I had graduated from Neville High School in Monroe, Louisiana with.

She had seen me walking toward their break room through the windows and had recognized me.

We stood and talked for ten minutes or so, catching up. I hadn't seen her since the night we graduated from high school almost eight years earlier.

See, Linda was one of the beautiful people in high school. Very sweet, but way up the social scale from me. Dance team, gorgeous, the total package. (That's a pic of her from our high school days.)

After we caught up with one another's lives, I went on my way.

In thinking on things, I was totally amazed that two people from another state crossed one another's paths years later and in such a strange location.

Linda had been a flight attendant for Delta for a number of years, and was still single.

If I remember correctly, she wasn't even based in Dallas, which made our encounter even more unlikely.

I know that stranger things have happened, and that stranger meetings happen all the time, just not to me.

A few years later, when talking to another friend who had attended my graduating class's tenth reunion, he told me that Linda had attended and that she was living in California and was married.

So I hope that Linda has had a good life. I remember being amazed at all the time had passed since graduation, but my chance encounter with her in the bowels of DFW Airport was NINETEEN YEARS ago now.

Incredible.

Well, that's my story. It was just one of those rare "It's a small world" things that actually happened to me. Like I said, I was reeling from the thought of eight years having gone by since I had last seen her, and now nineteen years has gone by since then.

Have you ever chanced upon someone you once knew, years later, and in an unlikely location?

Why I Blog

Twice in the past couple of weeks, and several times over the life of this blog, folks have left comments wondering about my claim to want to be invisible, yet having this blog out there, and putting personal things on it.

Over time, I've pretty much bared my soul on this blog. I've talked about the dichotomy of wanting to be an invisible wall flower, yet putting some very personal things on a blog for all the world to see. But like I said recently, I think that even the most introverted poeple in the world, at some level, want to have something out there that says, "I lived!" or "I was here, and my name ain't Killroy!"

But most of the time, I just want to put down some stories of my life. When the family is all together and say, watching TV, that's not the time to relate to them a story from my past. The right time for certain stories never seems to come around, yet the original reason for this blog, for me, was to put some things down in writing so that if I got hit by a bus or something, at least some of my thoughts and some of the things I have experienced in my life would be there for my family to read.

I'm shy about opening up, even to, and sometimes especially to, the ones I love the most.

A moment may appear, a metaphorical parting of the clouds, and instead of taking advantage, I keep my trap shut, and the moment passes. I've missed my opportunity to share something of my life. That not only hurts me, but it leaves my family with less of me than they could have.

If I could state one and only one reason for having this blog, I'd say it was because of something Don C. (my father) once said to me.

See, he was a quiet man too. And he died in October of 1994.

Many, many times over the years since his death, I've not only had lots of things I wish I could tell him; a joke, something one of the girls did, etc., but I also have had so many questions come up that I'd like to ask him about his life.

Once, years ago, this would have been in the early 1990s when the Summer Olympics were held in Barcelona, Spain, Lovely Wife, Numbers One and Two Daughters and I had come to Louisiana from Georgia to visit with both of our families.

When we were at my parents house, I was telling Don C. about some of the funny things that a room full of men at work yells at the TV during the Olympics. It was like being around teenage boys again, everyone feeding of each other, trying to "out funny" each other.

For example, one guy turned the air in the break room blue with his cussing when he was told that the man on TV right now was the King of Spain. He didn't believe it. "Where's his ^*&%^*$&&^ crown?! I want to see his %^##(_)*) crown!"

Anyway, so Don C. and I were talking about the Olympics, and they were showing various parts of the city of Barcelona on TV.

That sparked something in Don C. and he started talking about Barcelona. Turns out that when he was in the US Navy in the mid 1950s, the destroyer that he was on was one of the first US ships allowed into a Spanish port in X number of years.

He began to talk about what it was like for a country boy from Louisiana to be in the Mediterranean and what Barcelona was like from his point of view.

There was a story that he used to tell us from time to time about something funny that happened between he and some ship mates and some British seamen aboard an adjacently moored ship.

Turns out that story happened in port in Barcelona.

Anyway, I don't remember a whole lot of detail about what he said about his experiences in Barcelona, I was just revelling in the fact that Don C. had opened up and talked to me about some things in his past. A rare occurrence, believe me.

I know that I don't open up and unload all of my memories on my family, the time is rarely right, but by putting myself and my stories out here on this blog, which I eventually told my family about having started, they can come here and read what I've said about things that are important, funny, sad, and personal to me.

Yeah, it's 180 degrees out of phase with my desire to be anonymous, but I don't want my wife and daughters to not have many of my childhood memories and thoughts on important subjects just because I couldn't open up to them.

And that, my friends, is why I do this.

It ain't easy. And I don't care if my spelling is perfect, or if I want to use no-no words like ain't or to spell something phonetically instead of correctly. In the end, grammar and spelling matter so little when compared to truly important things in life, that it's hard for me to believe anyone cares about them. At least where blogging is concerned; it's easy to miss a mistake with things like affect vs effect and things like that, so I just do my best, and don't worry about the mistakes I miss.

I'm hoping that, one day when I'm gone, that my family will appreciate the fact that I just wrote this stuff out at all, and will forgive me the occasional misspelled word or grammar mistake. Heck, language changes all the time anyway, so why get riled up about something with so little meaning?

Plus, what one person in this world doesn't have things going on within them that are at odds with one another?

The answer is, there isn't a person like that.

WE ALL HAVE THINGS OPERATING IN OUR LIVES THAT ARE OPPOSED TO ONE ANOTHER. ALL OF US.

Thursday Thirteen #40

13 Top Google Searches For "John Needs _____" Idea shamelessly stolen from Our Seven Qtpies. Go to Google, type in "your first name needs" and report the results. The meme is supposed to be the first 10 results, but I'm making it a Thursday Thirteen by taking the first 13 results. 1. Strange News: 'John' Needs Operation After Hooker Bites Penis For Non-Payment. It wasn't me. I swear. 2. John needs your bone marrow. I hate vampires. Blood is never enough for those suckers. 3. John nees to get his patootie back here. From a forum post. I hate the word "patootie." It's forever linked with Rosie O'Donnell, and therefore stained. 4. My Life's Work: John needs… Another blog doing this very meme. Go figure. 5. John Needs Help: AnimeNation Anime Forums A guy named John who has a Ask John thingy on an anime forum, is himself asking for help. Even egg heads need help now and then. 6. Vimeo / John Needs More Paper. A video of a guy trying to use newspaper and duct tape to cover his patio table. Oooo-kay. 7. Sex, Lies, and Scandals, The Private Life Of John C. Wu: Some guys old blog. No recent entries. 8. See Me As Your Brother…John Needs Your Help Please: Kind of like the Nigerian Lottery Email Scam, only different. A dying man wants you to help him distribute his fortune. 9. Flickr: Photos from John Needs New Ideas. A guy's Flickr photo site. I'm not a big fan of Flickr, the pics are too small. 10. OH-16: John Boccieri Called To Service Again / Buckey State Blog: Best I can tell, an Ohio state senator being put forward to run for US Senate. Snore. 11. 'John' Needs Operation After Hoooker Bites Penis For Non-Payment: Same story as #1, on a different site. It still wasn't me. I swear. 12. Late For The Sky, John Needs, John Wants, John Gets: A guy named John's blog post about this very meme. 13. Berwick Today News - John needs help to find late mother's ring: Cool story. A guy in England buries his mother's ring in the place where she used to love to sit and enjoy a view. Apparently someone with a metal detector found it an dug it up, he went to the place and there were holes dug all around, and the ring was gone. He appeals to have it returned. Yeah, that'll happen. The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

8 Things Meme

I was tagged by Lady G at A Glance Into My World to do the 8 Things About Me meme. I do memes in my own way.

I recently did one of 7 things, but here goes.

Here how this works:
1-Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.

2- People who are tagged, write a blog spot about their own 8 random things, and post these rules.

3- At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names.

4- Don't forget to leave a comment and tell them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

Remember how I said I do memes in my own way? Well, I don't tag people. If you want to do this one, consider yourself tagged and have at it, OK?

1. I think pineapple on pizza is an abomination.

2. I hate it when I answer the phone, and a computer tells me I'm on hold because all of their telemarketers are busy. OK, moron, YOU called ME. Yeah, like I'm gonna hang on hold for that. I hate talking on the phone anyway.

3. I try to always chew with my mouth shut. If alone, I sometimes break this rule. I then punish myself with something difficult like taking a nap, or…

4. I still like to open the car door for my wife, IF she doesn't beat me to it. (She's quicker than me.)

5. I make it a point to leave the toilet seat down when I'm through. I'm not perfect about this, but darn close. But I've always wondered, what's the big deal? One flick of your finger and gravity will do it for you if you happen to find a toilet seat up. How hard is that? And it only takes about 3/4 of a second.

6. When I was young, I liked to draw, and could copy things really well, but couldn't make the leap to, say, drawing a real person's face.

7. I have to use Sensodyne toothpaste for my cold/hot sensitive teeth. Even though the other brands supposedly have the same active ingredient, Sensodyne is the ONLY one that works for me. Every time I've tried other brands, my sensitivity comes back within two weeks. Grrr.

8. My paternal grandmother, whom we called Mamaw Eunice, loved to eat calf brains in eggs, and also ate squirrel brains. Hence, I NEVER, EVER, EVER ate eggs at her house.

If you want to do this, then you're tagged. Blame me. I'm used to it.

A Sleep Report

Warning: Boring Sleep Number bed report.

It's still too early to declare total victory, but Lovley Wife and I are loving our sleep number bed.

We usually only spend that kind of money on luxuries instead of something useful, we're true Americans in that regard, but Lovely Wife keeps saying while laying there, "This bed is SO comfortable." I feel the same way, and for the first time in several years look forward to going to bed.

One of the main reasons we chose this bed is it's ability to be two beds in one, I can dial in my side to be pretty firm, "80" is my setting so far, and Lovely Wife can have her side softer, "55" is her number so far.

We chose the middle-of-the-line 5000 series, and it has a pillow top, something we've never had in a mattress.

I can have my side nice and firm, and yet feel like I'm laying on a cloud as well. Kind of a wierd thing, but true.

I usually feel pressure on my hips and shoulders but I don't with this bed. I think I sleep much longer in certain positions because of this. Before, pain in my hips or shoulders would wake me and I'd turn over, and although I still turn some at night, it seems to be because I want to, and not because my hips or shoulders demand it.

Because of my back, the only ways I can sleep are on my left or right side, not on stomach or back. So not having pressure point pain wake me up to turn over is nice.

I think I'm sleeping a bit better overall too. I definitely feel more rested, though I still don't want to get up in the morning. That may be due to other issues though. I think I have sleep apnea and by the end of the day I'm dragging.

When we first got the bed, after only three nights of sleep on it, I could definitely tell that the nerve damage pain I usually feel in my left leg was greatly diminished. I just realized that I was walking more normally, and not limping nearly as much. Then we went out of town for a couple of nights, and the hotel bed had my back aching and my leg hurting with each step again.

Now that I've had another three consecutive nights on the bed again, I noticed much less leg pain again, and I can only guess it's the bed. It's the only thing different in my life right now, and otherwise the shooting leg pain was pretty much a constant thing, with every step.

I'll shut up about this now, but I hope that as time progresses, that I'll have at least a bit more improvement in my back and leg pain due to the bed. I'll let y'all know more as time goes on.

I thought about this bed for several years, but the price tag put us off. But like one mattress commercial says, you spend a third of your life in bed, so buy a good one. We finally have done that and are cautiously optimistic that it will have even more benefits for us in the long run.

For now, it's just nice to hurt less and enjoy how darn comfortable this bed is, oh, and to be off the floor after three years of sleeping there.

Memorial Day 2007

I've been going through one of those periods of life where I seem to be hanging on by my fingernails.

One day after another, just gettin' by.

The Bible has a verse which, when I was a kid confused me and never could figure out what it was trying to say. Jesus said, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

When I was older, it hit me. "Each day has enough evil of it's own. Don't waste time worrying about yesterday or tomorrow." (John's Louisiana Public School Literal Translation)

So here I am to try to write a Memorial Day post without having thought for even two seconds about what I was going to write. Instead of stressing and freaking out, this is one of my shoot-from-the-hip posts I've been having to do lately.

If you serve in the US military, or are in the family of one or more of our brave service men and women serving right now. God bless you, and thank you for your service and sacrifice for our country.

If you have served in the past or know or have a family member who was injured or died in service to America in the military, God bless you and thanks for your service and may God comfort you for your lost friends or loved ones.

God Bless America!

Photo: That picture up top is a slide I took in The National Cememtery Of The Pacific, in Punchbowl Crater above Honolulu in November of 1987. A very humbling day.

Picture Post, Sunday May 27, 2007

Love bugs are out in force in central Florida. Like the killer bees, they've slowly made their way from central America to cover the entire US Gulf (of Mexico) Coast. This was our windshield as Lovely Wife and I were returning from Zephyrhills to Palm Bay. I cleaned it before we left Zephyrhills. They are so sticky that the stuff in your windshield washer tank and your wipers are woefully inadequate to clean them off. Only scrubbing will do.


Love bugs on the front of our Camry after we arrived home yesterday (Saturday) evening. In some patches of highway, the love bugs were so plentiful that it sounded like it was raining on the car. An added bonus is that if you slap one that is on your clothes you will be rewarded with a really excellent black smear. I HATE these things.


Yellow water lotus as far as the eye could see in Lake Tohopekaliga in Kissimmee as Lovely Wife and I were making our way home (among the love bugs). I know what you're thinking, how in the HECK do you pronounce Lake Tohopekaliga. I have no idea. I follow everyone else's lead and just call it Lake Toho. That's a lot easier for my drawling southern accent to handle.


Another shot of the lotus in Lake Toho. Trying to show how many there were. This is just a portion.


One of the small palm trees up against the front of our house had bloomed and I took a photo. It's pretty when they do this; I like the shade of yellow they become. The blooms are green when they open up, but become yellow after a couple of days.


The night before our new Sleep Number bed arrived. We had cleaned out 2/3 of our bedroom and this was my last night on the floor (hopefully). So far so good on the Sleep Number bed. (My two nights in a hotel bed in Zephyrhills, Fl just about killed me though.)