The Sound Track To Your Life

Right Click n Play, Mazzy Star

I wish I came up with that phrase above but no. JB105 constantly uses it to promote their 80's retro to their audience. How can the 80's be retro? But there you are..it's been over for 30 years!

Shit...30 years...

I spend an undue amount of time cruising Youtube for songs I haven't heard in years, then find a flac recording of them and steal them, or if not that, then to joggle some memories of my life when a particular song was hot. I'll tend to post them on Facebook to the very few fans of that song that give a rat's ass. Many times my memory and the song's placement on the hit list don't jive. But there it is, dated and stamped...I guess my memory isn't what it used to be. To be honest too, there are gaps in time back then when my life wasn't producing any significant signposts. You work, sleep and slog along and those months become a blur. Why would you remember redundancy? Any songs that were popular then were not paired to any remarkable event in my life at the time. And then there are the “Holy shit..I had forgotten all about that song!” flashbacks.

Mazzy Star's “Fade Into You” was hitting it's highest peak in September 1994. The girl singing it was Hope Sandoval,. She was pathologically shy and would only do live stage work IF the lights were not shown on her. She'd also refused to engage the audience or give them eye contact and instead stared at the floor while immersed in darkness. Very rarely would she do any work and be easily seen doing it w/o some coercion. To this day she hides. Hence the expression, “shoe gazer music” came into being. It was popular for a bit back when alternative was really about alternative.

Sept. '94 found me unemployed and typing off resumes like a bandit. I had finished up a year long battle with a former employer after hiring three, yes, 3 lawyers to make their lives shit. Boy, when I have a vendetta, I sure go balls to the wall doing it. Don't worry about me now, I am old and too tired to mount such a offensive. AND...looking back on it all, I now see I should have not wanted their heads on a platter and just settle for the cash buyout. But hindsight is always that, hindsight.

I didn't know it but in a month's time I would be hired by a place that dealt with the deaf population on the East Bay. I didn't know I'd be learning ASL either. It's amazing how you don't know anything really about the future and how it'll steer your life in a different direction. You can make plans, point your life a particular goal and still be surprised at that new details you have to deal with. You can't anticipate everything! And this is happening now still. When does it ever stop?

I didn't know I'd meet a girl there who was sort of similar to Hope Sandoval, extremely shy and had protective walls three feet thick and 20 feet high. Funny how sometimes, and maybe just barely, a song dovetails into your life just a bit. More likely, you MAKE the song your own even though it's lyrics may have very little to do with your life at all. “OMG...That's about ME!” (say that with a teen girl's shrill voice)

So how do you approach a shy girl like Sandoval or Beth as I'll call her? You go very slowly and you carefully worm your way through the cracks in the wall. But, since her radar was on it's highest setting, she saw any attempt to “reach her” as a breakdown in security. But, there were times I manage to have her lift that protection and see what I knew was there, a too sensitive heart that at one time, or more likely, many times, was dragged across barbed wire. So she did the only thing she knew, she walled up to protect it.

I never managed to get through though for any appreciable amount of time. Her fear was too great to allow it. After some months, she quietly quit that job and moved back into her Mom's house in Bristol I was told. Gone forever. Perhaps now after years, she has managed to trust...somewhat. It's too bad, she was one of the few people I knew whose heart was “good,” even if it was a bit banged up.

That month also had me driving a Dodge 400 convertible that was falling apart. I had salt and pepper hair at 30 and was dying it. I also thought then that being 30 was “old.” At that point in you life it is because you are expelled forever from the 20 Something set. Expelled from waking up hung over in your car in a beach parking lot. Expelled from making rash decisions that can haunt you for years. Expelled from taking last minute road trips to “we don't know where yet”. Being 30 demands you act like an adult. Just the sound of that number alone will do it. You brag to those around you then about how mature you are, and your just 30 friends brag right back. You talk of careers, first homes, marriage and buying “sensible” cars. Sensible meaning a 90's “mini van.”

At 56, 30 now seems to me just a more sober version of a 20 Something, but still not knowing life well enough yet and winging it as best as you can.

Ask me, if I make it to 70, what “56” really means...and life will still be doing what it always does, not showing you the future at all and surprising you...and there will be a hit song to mark it.

Bugs...

I hadn't tried lobster till I was 30 years old. Yeah, that's right, 30. Up until that point, it was fried scallops for me. In my mind, nothing beats them, well...maybe baked scallops would take second place.

Why did it take so long?

As a kid, the family, after visiting Scarborough beach would go over to Galilee to eat at the Portside restaurant. Half the time we'd go to that take out window, order clam cakes and chowder and sit on the picnic tables and eat it. Once in a while my Dad had the patience to wait 30 minutes in that line and we'd all get a booth instead. Their chowder was the color of used dishwater and I had to be told it was the Rhode Island version, just clam stock. I was too young to know there were three versions; red, white and “Rhode Island.” To me, it looked like the RI kind was just watered down garbage fed to tourists. It came barely warm or scalding hot.

My Dad would order the lobster and every, and I mean every time the waitress brought it, I just saw a GIANT BUG on a plate. Anything that has an exoskeleton is a BUG in my book. I would eat my scallops and watch my Dad tear apart this...thing and I'd be secretly disgusted by it. Food you have to post-butcher yourself was NOT food. It looked like you were tearing apart an entire cooked cow to eat it.

He'd go on about how great it was and then my Mom and Dad would discuss if there was any “green stuff,” or roe in it. That was when the lobstermen could take pregnant females. Regulations then didn't really care about lobster populations. “Green stuff?” are they kidding I thought to myself. I did see my Dad eat that goo once, it looked like baby seagull shit.

Quietly I thought...”You're gross..”

**

In my 20's, when we all had jobs and money, I'd see friends order lobster as well. Again, I'd be ordering scallops. I'd get ribbed for being cheap bastard for NOT getting the lobster but any protests from me about that not being the reason were shot down. I couldn't convince them that I didn't like it nor the idea.

“But EVERYONE likes lobster” was the reason I was given as to why it was good.

“I don't.” I told them. Oddball I was...just leave me alone to enjoy my damn scallops in peace, would you?

**

Finally, in Johnson & Wales, we ended up having to cook lobsters. They brought in this crate of 30 of them for each of us to work on. Ok...I have to do it..but I don't have to eat it later. We did all various kinds, steamed, fried, Newburg, lobster rolls, Diablo, Thermidor....you name it we did it. Afterwards, when we all sat down to eat it, I finally told myself I had better find out what all the hoopla was all about. I picked a simple, steamed lobster to try. I wanted to get that base flavor w/o any other ingredients confusing my tongue.

I had told the guys I sat with that this would be my first time trying it. One guy, a Navy guy, who was from Arkansas had tried it long before me and was goofing on the fact he was raised in a state not near to any salt water and he had had it before I did, a Rhode Islander.

So I tore off the claw, busted it open and pulled out that meat. I dipped it in the butter and I was expecting to see Jesus because EVERYONE saw Jesus when they ate lobster. It was that kind of experience to them. I popped it into my mouth and chewed...

I chewed...then swallowed it and I thought...

“That's it...that's all?” I was not impressed at all, Jesus had NOT returned and I was NOT impressed at all.

“OK, it's a seafood...” I could taste the ocean in it. Then a few seconds later I said to them.

“Big.Fucking.Deal...That's it? That's ALL there is? Where's Jesus? Everyone acts like it's the Second Coming when they eat this!”

Know how many lobsters I”ve eaten in 56 years? Less than the fingers on my hand. Know how many scallops, sea and bay ones in the same time? Way more than 10 and I counting in pounds.

Another Form of Social Distancing

I was schlepping my six empty two liter bottles of Coke out to the recycle bin when someone walking by on the sidewalk shouts, “Hey!”

I look up and it took me a second or two to recognize him...Jack from down the street. When I knew him he was a good 10+ years younger than I and didn't run in our circle but being a neighbor at one point, he was still familiar.

I walked over to him and thought, “Yep, that's him...I recognize the eyes.” When I was close enough he fired out his life's story at me in under twenty seconds, and part to explain why he was back in the old neighborhood.

“...and then I walk in to see my wife banging a guy about your age!” When he said it like that I kinda felt guilty...but for what reason? I have to defend every guy in their 50's?

He goes on.

“Three kids! Three different whores! I'll never get with a girl again...it's not worth it!” he complains.

I was sort of half listening because I was focused on his beard, his VERY gray beard.

“How old are you now?” I ask. I had to ask twice to break him from his obsession with his three failed relationships.

“45” he tells me.

“You're 45? I say with some surprise.

“Yep!”

I then remind him of when he was 15...and the age I'll probably always remember him at. Around the corner, M had his garage and he fixed people's cars there. It also served as a bar and we locals would sit around in it getting drunk. Up comes Jack on his ten speed, trying to fit in with us older guys and we give him a beer, then two, then tree and two hours later we have him good and soused.

He then feels it's time to go home and he gets on his bike and then pedals furiously out of the drive way onto the street. He probably got about 40 feet before he lost control of the bike and went SPLAT right onto the tarmac. He was wearing just summer shorts and when we got to him, he had a nice minor grade road rash up and down his face, back and right leg. He sat there, bewildered about what had happened. We got him to his feet and wormed a promise out of him to NOT tell his Mom where he got so drunk at, should she wonder why her son was bleeding all over and smelling like Michelob.

“God....I remember that.” Jack tells me.

He goes on to tell me other woes besides cheating wives, moving back to Rhode Island and why his foot was in a brace.

As I hear this, I hear a past conversation I had with Barn as he commented on a similar story I had told him about another guy I had known whose life had hit the skids.

“See what you missed Ron?” “See all the bad marriages, the bad bankruptcies, the bad kids you NEVER had?” he says. “All that shit other people get involved with and crash and burn with...you avoided. Hell, you were far enough away from some to even avoid any splatter!” After reminding myself of that conversation something else occurred to me due to his awful luck...

The other thought I had was...”Does Jack have covid?” And I stepped back a bit.

So I wished Jack luck and watched him limp to his childhood home. He came home to save money to restart his life once again, with hopes of opening a new business.

I dump my Coke bottles finally, and wonder again all those I have known who have lived their lives bouncing off one wall then the other, making their way down life's hallway getting bruised and bloodied. Personally, I hate messes. They're hard to manage and clean up and can divert you from your intended direction that day, or in life. I'm not saying I was a perfect navigator, hell, I SUCKED at it when much younger but after a while you learn NOT to put your hand into the fire...repeatedly.

Yet I see people do this again and again.

**

I once got the ire from a 20 Something girl I was talking to a while back. I had admitted that I reject 95% of the girls I meet because I had learned something about their Smash Up Derby lives. Hell, these girls admit it like it was a Badge of Honor. What tips me off is when the girls tell story after heroic story of surviving these crashes in life. “Story after story...Uh Oh! Why the repetition?” I think.

She became pissed with me because my view had touched a raw never in her...she was one of those people who repeat fuck up after fuck up in their lives.

“You think your SOOO perfect!?” was her response.

“No I don't. I have some deep scarring on my back from bad sunburns and teenage acne. I can be a skinflint when it comes to money. I can become cold blooded and walk away from 20 year friendships should they go sour and not feel bad 5 years after about not wanting to patch them up.”

“But I try look before I leap. And there's too much other people's shrapnel out there and I learned to duck.” I finally said.

And that old admonition chimes in my head...”See what you missed Ron?”

Squirrel Tales

Around 1990 or So...

Lee was an animal rights activist and a vegan. I had met her in 1988 when she joined our crew in the group home I first worked in after college. She was a sparkler, one of those zippy personalities that made itself the focus of a room easily. I liked that. I liked the animated ways she had.

One day, she was driving the company van and it was one of those big ass “church” type vans you see heading down 95 on Sunday mornings, loaded with the faithful and I was in the passenger seat. I was NOT wearing a seat belt either.

Olney Arnold road in Cranston had a speed limit of about 25mph but no one ever obeyed it. If anything, most did 40 to 50 mph on it as it was one of those country roads you could do that because you could see a half mile down it to respond in time to anything. So Lee and I were zooming down it headed to Rt 37.

I must've been daydreaming or something as I paid little attention to what may be up ahead. The last thing I remember seeing clearly was Lee's face as I had turned to look at her. I then heard a skid and felt my entire body become airborne and head straight for the windshield and monster sized dashboard.

WHAP!

I felt like we had come to a dead stop and I managed to crawl up from the floor as I had collapsed into it after smacking the windshield. My right shoulder was complaining like I had overextended it and I gripped it some as I lurched myself back into the seat.

“What...What happened?” I asked her.

“I nearly hit it!” she said.

“Hit what?”

“A squirrel! I almost hit a squirrel!” she tells me

A couple of seconds go by as I process that information.

“You...sent me into the windshield because of a squirrel?” I said.

“But I nearly hit him!”

“YOU threw my body into the windshield over a fuckin' squirrel?” I protested.

As I told her this, she kept looking out the window to see if there were any injured squirrels.

I was surprised/not surprised by this. I had come to expects these sudden things from her, thought this was the heftiest thing she had pulled on me to date.

We start moving again and I quickly put on the seat belt. I then ask her what was more important, a human life or a squirrel's? She said the squirrels because...humans are evil and malicious.

“When was I ever malicious to YOU? I ask.

I get no answer because she couldn't back that up at all.

**

I never told Lee this story, it would've proved she was right and I was malicious.

In our teens, M and I used tear through Slater Park with our air rifles infringing on the rights of squirrels. It hadn't started like that. We just brought the rifles with us to snap off shots at cans, beer bottles we found from previous parties the older teens had in the woods and just kill time because we were bored. We were bored enough to plug holes in various tree trunks that morning.

Now, we both thought we were well hidden enough by the forest cover from the neighborhoods that surround the park's north side. The report from an air rifle is really pretty pathetic. At best, it sounds like a dry branch breaking cleanly in two, nothing like a powder powered real firearm.

But as teens do, we got bored of shooting trees, water and rusty cans we found. We walked further on to the north, getting pretty close to the nearest homes and we spotted a squirrel jumping from branch to branch and he seemed in a damned hurry. Of course M and I start pumping up our guns and fired pot shots at him as he flew. We also started shouting tactics as we tried to cover both sides of his escape.

The problem with most air rifles is that their accuracy really sucks. You try hitting a small target beyond 50 feet and chances are you will miss easily. So we both are pumping, loading and firing as fast as we could. Now we were about 75 feet from the roadway.

I was aiming my gun up into the tree when I heard the sound of tires on the road...and then come to a stop. I have turned my head from the sights and saw this green truck parked right there with this stenciled on it's door.

RI Department of Environmental Management.

A man had come out of the truck and was wearing that goofy Ranger Ted uniform you would see in old Disney flicks about Yellowstone Nat'l Park. It was the first time I have ever seen a real game warden. When do you EVER see one of these guys in the city? You don't.

I turn to M and yelled, “RUN!!!!”

Lucky for us, we knew, like the back of our hand, all the trails, streams, slopes and everything about that park as we had explored it since we were kids. I didn't look back to the road way but had heard the truck door slam, it's engine fire up and that spitting of dirt and gravel as the truck, I'm very sure, started to chase us.

Like I said, we knew the place better than he so we managed to zig zap our way through the wetlands and up a slope and over to the others side by Newport Ave where we quickly collapsed our rifles and started to cut across the road like we were just out of a morning walk.

We managed to out run and out maneuver Ranger Ted. We surmised one of the neighbors nearby had heard or seen us doing what we were doing. We wondered why DEM and not the Pawt police showed up. The police would've told us to “beat it” had they caught us. I'm sure DEM would have up on charges instead.  Someone had called earlier, complaining we were firing on public lands NOT intended for that at all. 

**

There once was a fad toy in the late 70's called a Squirmel. It was sort of worm/snake like furry thing with two googly eyes and if you pet it, it would deform, twist due to whatever weird rubber material made up it's insides. They were popular for a week and a half like all fad toys are.

Kimberly was in our 7^th grade class and we all being around 13....are just starting to encounter puberty, though Kimberly wouldn't reach that for another two years. RJ, a boy of the same age wasn't there yet either but being a boy, was far more bold than most of the girls we knew.

Kimberly was an only child and a shy one at that. You could turn her face beet red by saying words like, titty, ass or sex to her. Not that we did that a lot to her anyway, unless we boys were in a rambunctious mood and wanted to make Kimberly squirm a bit.

For some reason, the girls sitting near one another were busting one another on their “experience” with boys which was probably nil, At best, maybe a quick kiss in the dark where each had managed to click their teeth hard against one another's. Again, it's the usual kid's attempts to seem soo grown up to the others and therefore hold that social status.

The girls knew that Kimberly had NO experience whatsoever, that including even seeing a penis in real life or even in an porno magazine their older sisters may have had. So of course they ribbed her again and again till she broke down and admitted she had never, ever seen anything like one on a real boy.

RJ, who was sitting next to them heard the whole conversation. He then whispers to us boys that he's going to stand up, undo his zipper and “whip it out” in front of Kimberly's face. He was that kind of kid who would do the outrageous. 
 

So he stands up but is very secretive about what he's doing and we boys can't really see much either. He then turns his head to Kimberly and says, “Kim...wanna see mine?” and he turns around in a quick fashion and stops, about two feet from her face.

There is nothing louder in the world than a 13 year old girl's shriek. They really should include then in operas as their voice can penetrate carbon fiber truss beams used in the Space Station.

The poor girl got up and ran out of the classroom. The other girls start guffawing about it and finally, RJ turns around facing us boys, holding what we thought was his dick still.

But it wasn't his dick, it was a Squirmel toy had had snuck into and out of his zipper, where it hung down somewhat into his hand. 

Kimberly, the poor, poor girl, probably thought, for a second anyway, that THAT is what a real penis looked like. No wonder she ran, it was looking RIGHT at her. 

Where was our teacher? Well, this being Goff Jr High, a lot of teachers were blowing off class time in the coffee room.

The Japanese Man has Six Faces

Back in 1980 (B.C. to you Xer's), there was a tv movie called Shogun. It was a loose account of a genuine English captain, Blackthorne, whose ship Erasmus was swamped on the Japanese coast back in 1600. After oddly being befriended by Jesuits, the Catholics enemy to the Protestant English. The Jesuits arrived in Japan first and had the lead.  Blackthorne learns to assimilate himself and rise politically within Medieval Japan's samurai clans.

Stay with me...the history lesson ends soon...

Another captain of Catholic persuasion, alerts Blackthorne to the very real danger of trying to stay alive in Japan. At the time, there were various warlords vying with one another to achieve that title, Shogun. The Military Governor of ALL of Japan. They weren't beyond murdering one another in grisly ways to attain that either.

So, upon departing Japan to sail back to Spain, the Catholic Captain says to Blackthorne: “English! A final warning to you, though your false heart doesn't deserve it! The Japanese man has Six Faces!”

I sat there as a 15 year old boy wondering what the hell that meant? “Six Faces? Is this some Buddhist tricky mental exercise? Is it just a weird Zen saying?”

I had no idea but certain phrases stuck with me throughout the years, filed away in my brain as: “Well, if we find out what it meant...we'll find out. Priority Level: Very Low.”

Yeah, until I was about in my very late 20's when I saw what it really meant. It couldn't have been simpler but it's one of those things where you have to live life, be scarred up by it, for years, to “get it.” You learn this after working for a while and you're first real lesson in it is usually navigating the politics of high school.

Girls learn this one far quicker and at a younger age though.

All of us, I, you, all present a “face” to each and every person. And that face is adjusted according to the information we have and what the political climate is a work or in the lunchroom. To successfully pull this off, you have to be “every thing to every one.” It's a nasty fence sitting, middle of the road tactic but as long as there is no hot war going on, you can survive. The other trick is the poker face. Never react to any information you may learn that actually surprises you. Watch some Japanese faces, they'll betray NO emotion even if you tell them that, with genetic proof, they descended straight from the Chinese, who they HATE with a passion.

Now in a hot situation, that's when you have to choose sides at the last minute, get off that fence, take temps and see who you think will win. Bingo! Join that team. Blackthorne joined and stayed with Tokugawa Ieyasu, one of the two most powerful warlords in Japan. Tokugawa fought a battle and won then purposely decapitated 40,000 enemy samurai. Afterwards, he “reluctantly agreed” to accept the title of Shogun from the Emperor. Blackthorne became his political advisor and died of old age in Tokyo.

Do I have Six Faces? Fuck yeah, probably more.

So.Do.You.

What Are YOU Looking At?

There's just one ventilator left. A Dr. looks at me, a 56 year old male with a familial predisposition for respiratory problems and in the next bed, a smoking hot 22 year old college girl who also has Covid-19. Utilitarian triage states that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” and so the Dr intubates the girl and then tells the orderly to wheel my ass out to the Sysco Rent a Freezer truck in the parking lot to store my ass in until this thing is over.

“But...but Dr! I'm not dead!” I may weakly say.

“Just you wait! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

Ok, black humor aside, covid is a Big Dog with a kill rate of anywheres from 1-10%. Regular flu barley eeks out 0.1% kill rate. Pussy flu!

**

Strange times...I've never seen anything like this. Chances are neither have you unless you were alive for the Spanish flu in 1918. Now that one liked killing 20 Somethings and left the old ones alone. Young, healthy immune systems were so powerful, so vigorous, that they went ballistic attacking anything in the lungs, including the lungs themselves.

So four scenarios for me. I get it and up I go to heaven. I get it an become an invalid for the rest of my days or I get it and walk away from it w/o so much as a scratch...and finally, I never contract it to begin with.

I don't think I get to choose which, only mitigate the odds a little.

What's struck me now is how every stranger looks carefully at one another. Before hand, I may have glanced at others, barely remembering them two seconds later. Now, I and they, scan one another for any signs of sickness. I was in Market Basket the other day and I swear most were doing that. You look for the kielbasa and suspiciously eye the women a few feet away from you.

“Who are you stranger...you look like you might mug me...will you?”

Then back home with the groceries and washing my hands, wondering of I touched my face 12 times on that mile and a half ride home.

Even friends. Today, I was out by the car an M came by. He's busy moving his trucking business from one location to a newer one and we both acknowledged each other's health at first. Also, social distancing was employed! After that, it was down to business...shooting the breeze about everything.

His business has or will slow but he opined that I was imminently employable as I work in healthcare. “They really need you guys now...more than ever!” he said. “You're still getting a check!”

“Uh...yeah, I guess that's a good thing. Though I'd be three feet away from a cloud of covid viruses should it show up in my place.”

Believe me, I have no Holy Mission to be on the front lines like the Dr's, nurses, CNA's or like that. I take no comfort in giving up my life/health for someone else's...when the else has pretty much lived theirs out to 80 or 90.

Now if I were working in pediatrics..that's a different story.

So...what the hell else can I say about this? Not much. You go day by day with it and hope for the best. That's Life's First Lesson anyway.

23 Years...

To put you into the right mood and time frame, click the above and loop it till you cringe. It was THE song of 1997

 

Warren RI to me at one time was just a dump to drive through to get to Christie's Landing wharf in Newport to day drink in the summer. You could people watch those who were from all over the country there, plus eye the girls in their summer dress. There were a few times driving home from there I should've been arrested. Drinking vodka in the summer sun creates a very definite, sillier high that doesn't lend itself for driving in a straight line across the Mt Hope bridge. But this was just before MADD went on their crusade against young partiers like me then...and you too if you fessed up.

On either side of 114, the main road through Warren, I saw timeworn homes, businesses that looked like they needed to have closed up in the early 70's because their 50's decor was deteriorating fast and flaking onto the sidewalk. The people on the sidewalks looked less appealing still. Old hags and devious looking blue collar workers littered the area.

Once you crossed into Bristol, things looked up! You could roll down your windows again.

That...until I took a job on Main st in Warren in the mid 90's. At first, I thought it a step down from what I was doing but I needed the money. A good chunk of my job demanded that I learn the town intimately as the clients I worked with lived there. I was a sort of ASL translator/Dad/Cop/Negotiator/Chauffeur/All-Around-Shell-Answer Man. (Kudos if you get the Shell reference, if not, your way too young!).

What I came to find out was that Warren wasn't the shitheap I thought it was. Once you get into the side streets you learn that half the houses have placards on their sides stating they were built in the 1700's. Mostly built then by seafarer captains and the such who made enough money to give up the trade and become land lubbers. Add to that, a ton of little restaurants you'd never know were there unless you lived there. And bars, pubs and plenty of each. Aiden's comes to mind. Aiden's. The only disgusting place I think was the Blount clam processing plant right on the water. But even then, if you have ever lived near the ocean, the salty semi-stench just reminds you of clam flats that dissipates from your nose in time. What emancipates Blount's stink, was the fact that Blount also built ships and pleasure craft next door to the clam place. So there was an air of old money and respectability there. You could watch them build them as their main garage door, that was half the building, was open to the street. To know these things, you'd have to walk down Water street and I did many times then.

Warren is also pretty much surrounded by the Narragansett bay with many inlets and sandbars which made great blue fishing when they were chasing the menhaden. From the second bridge that crosses over into Warren by the American Tourister place, the old sandbar I found, and use to fish from, is still there. There were plenty of flounder and tautog there at the right times too.

**

I was in Warren earlier today and ran into a few of those who I worked with all those years ago. I hadn't seen them since 1997. I swear, after 23 years it was amazing how they remembered me as if it was yesterday and I them. Of course, we all look older, fatter and slower. The reunion was fun and we traded old stories. What I surprised to find out was that some of very clients I worked with were still there. Albeit they were more blind and/or deaf than before.

Driving home I was hit with many thoughts. I was a younger man then at 30. Then, I had a few dreams, hopes and a hell of a lot more energy. I couldn't help but compare that time with where I am today. Then, there was no way in hell I'd be able to predict where I'd be today. I think back then, I thought I'd have moved from Rhode Island, perhaps to Denver, San Diego or the such, making my life out there as I wanted change. That didn't happen. It didn't have to because many of the influences of my life then changed for the better and in a damned hurry. In short, I was relieved of caring for a sick relative I had cared for for years. Also back then, I thought I'd meet that someone who would save me (Ha! All guys I knew then thought this...it barely succeeds!). When I was in Warren, I was chasing this really pretty girl who kept me at arm's length. She had broken up with her boyfriend and seemed so available. Oh...how I tried! What changed was that she went back to him and eventually married him and his career with ARAMCO (A Saudi oil conglomerate. He became well to do, probably a good decision on her part). Well, finding that girl didn't happen but I had some fun along the way with some pretty interesting women in the 90's. IE: Roberta who I spoke of here before. She was far wealthier than I was and realized in time I was turning into a “kept boy.” But so what, it was fun for what it was.

I made mention of the fact to one of the ones I talked with today in Warren that I...we, have all changed but didn't. What I mean by that is that our core personalities are still the same. The differences are on the edges of that core.

So who am I today vs. that salt and pepper haired guy I was at 30 and who could fit into a size 34 jeans?

Driving home I knew, just knew that I had a hundred tons more confidence than I did then. Why? After 23 years of living life, a lot of it repeating itself, you file those experiences away for easy reference. Now I am bolder, more direct (perhaps insultingly so, but w/o malice) and that much more astute. That leads to increased self esteem as well. I know what I am capable of because I've had to “go through it” and pull it off. This isn't the loud, bragging pride so many guys I knew in my 20's. That kind of confidence was a “fake it till you make it” show. What's funny, those young blowhards I knew then learned, rather roughly, that life kicking them in the teeth time after time, that they had better sober up their inebriated and boisterous egos. “Glad you came back and put both feet on the ground! The Earth was always down here!”

A dignity that's based on solid rock and experience usually weathers the world a bit better than bluster.

There's a solidness at this age I didn't have then. I suppose you can't have it then. It's impossible. You haven't lived long enough to have acquired that. To get to this point requires baking for decades until you're “done.” 

The price of this is you have to get older, much older. Do I miss the youth I had in 1997? Of course, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that.  But the fact is this, then or now, here or there, you experience life pretty much the same at each point. Not a whole hell of a lot changes to that degree. People are people wherever you find them.   When I was 30 I was bitching and lamenting that "I didn't have this or that." At 56, I still can do the same. I see young 20 Somethings do this daily and they have youth and all the time in the world. Women, do this from the age of 3 till they're 99. Nothing seems "quite good enough."

This is natural. We all do it. The difference I find now is that you temper this complaint by trading ambitious impatience with acknowledging you're married to the World. To make that marriage work, you have to make compromises with this mate. It's not all about YOU.