My sister Amie, the summer in question, and the house I was trying to get home to

I began these stories by telling you:  For whatever reason, sometimes we have the opportunity to be thankful in spite of the most horrific circumstances.  And I fully intend to illustrate this by the end of the story, but not at the beginning of the end.

I was so tired of the trip taking forever and being scared of gang wars or driving through Thunderstorms or being hit by other cars and almost running out of gas. I just wanted to be home.  Of course this was the first time I would ever live at this home, as my parents had moved from Ohio to Arizona on the same day as they dropped me off at college, but that didn’t matter.  Not now. I was simply read to be done with this journey.

By the time I woke up from my 3 hour nap, I was a bit refreshed and ready to talk to my fellow travelers, Kim, Jon, and Allison.  We laughed and talked for the rest of the day, starting to forget about the proverbial rain that poured into our trip.  Around 1:00 pm (or late lunch time, as I like to call it), we decided to stop into a Dairy Queen restaurant to eat.  After lunch, we waddled back into our car and drove off into the New Mexico border.  Then it happened – quite suddenly – Jon said, “I’m not feeling very we….(blahhhhhhhhhhhhh)!”  And he spewed all over the seat in front of him.  For those of you who don’t know, spewed is yet another term for vomit or barf or puke or hurl or blowing chunks.  And when I see puke or even hear it actually, I get sick too.

So we drove into a rest area that conveniently was only about a mile away and cleaned up the car thoroughly so we could reenter without wanting to spew ourselves.

Eventually we got back in the car and drove steady into Arizona.  Allison was driving about 4:00 pm when an older couple in a Cadillac decided not to pay attention to our car being on the road next to them.  They just crossed over literally while I was eye to eye with the driver in the passenger seat so I yelled, “Allison you’re gonna have to get over.”  She responded, “I can’t, there’s a ditch over there.”
“Then you have a choice to make” was the last thing heard out of my mouth as Allison drove into the ditch off the side of the road, and the white Cadillac drove off into the sunset, literally.

We just laughed.  No one said a word, but just laughed until we cried.

After we found ourselves about an hour a way from the Tucson suburb where my family lived, I pulled the last drive responsibility before my house.  I drove proudly through the desert, excited to see my new home and be with my family.  Approximately 30 miles from Tucson, the car died.

I don’t mean it sputtered or moved slowly or hacked up a motorized lung, I mean it died.  So my dad and a tow truck came to get us, and eventually Jon and Allison and Kim rented a car and continued to drive west.  One to Phoenix.  One to Mesa.  And one to LA.

I guess you could say that on the trip nothing good was ever accomplished, but eventually good things do happen, though sometimes we don’t expect it.  Because 3 years later or so two people who had never met each other before were married.

Congratulations Jon and Allison!

I am friends with 3 of these people on Facebook. I have occasional facebook conversations with one of them.  But in 1984, these people were a major part of my life.

At some point I had to make an adjustment.  I had to be able to meet new people, say hi even when I didn’t feel like it, and open myself up to people even when it wasn’t comfortable.  With the meeting of new people came opening myself up to new ideas.  New ideas were not looked on positively by the community I was a part of in 1984, but they were important for my growth.

I think we grow fastest and best as people when we separate ourselves from our present communities for a time, and then come back to it for a time, like hopping back and forth through the middle of a river on rocks,  each side bringing a new and fresh perspective of the entirety of the river.

I grew up in Fremont, Ohio and have lived in Tucson, AZ; Pensacola, Fl; Atlanta, Ga; and Massachusetts. Each community bringing its own fresh perspectives and the ability to help me see things more clearly (and sometimes less clearly) as I continue on in life.

Sometimes I’m thrilled to have lived in all of these places and known all of these people and gathered all these perspectives, and sometimes I just want to be the little boy again.

I had way more hair back then.

“So it finally happened. I got caught.  I had expected it for some time, living in the shadows, and hoping no one would see me doing it.  But alas my time had come, and I had no one to blame but myself.  I made the bad decisions. I lived as I pleased.  And now I would pay dearly.”

In August of 1997, I was a college graduate that loved to have fun and who had just gradauated from a college where I could not make my own decisions.  This did not make for a very good combination.  I tried to figure out what I wanted to do as far as work was concerned, but it wasn’t easy.  I wanted to be some sort of half pastor/ radio DJ/ politician. Like a mix between Rush Limbaugh (he was “in” back then) and Billy Graham.  Instead I chose to be a high school history teacher in Atlanta.  Pretty cool, huh?  I thought so.  I remember loading up my new car – a 1993 cherry red Nissan Sentra, and began the drive from Tucson, Arizona where my parents lived, to Hotlanta.

After leaving Tucson at 9:00 pm on Friday, August 1st, I finally arrived in the “land of sweet tea” on Sunday, August 3rd at around noon.  The friends I was temporarily living with in Atlanta had called me and told me they would be away.  They left a key underneath the flowerpot or something, and I could make myself at home.  They were at some camp with kids and I was in Atlanta until next Friday by myself.  Cable television kept me busy until around 5:00 pm until I got bored and decided to drive around the suburb I would be living and explore.  On that drive, I discovered Chick Fil-A. But it wasn’t open on Sunday!

Then I received a call from my friend Ruben.  Ruben was a crazy man who loved to stretch me in all things adventure and this conversation would be no exception.  He confessed he was in Massachusetts, having a great time,and since I had a week before I had any responsibilities, I should come up.

Now remember I had just driven 35 hours or so to get to Atlanta and had only arrived hours before. But something about Ruben the adventurer always made me say yes.  So around 7:30 pm, my car hit the highway again to drive to the northeast, a place I had only visited once before.
I share this story with you because this was the way I lived my life.  Adventure and fun drove my decisions.  No one dared to tell me what to do any longer.  I could drive to Massachusetts if I wanted to drive to Massachusetts on an hour’s notice. I could go to bed when I wanted to go to bed. (I know that is a funny thing to say for a 21 year old, but the college I attended had a bedtime of 11:00 pm)  And I would from now on make my own decisions.  I was free!  You might even say I was my own king.

By October of the same year, I had hit my stride.  My students loved me.  I taught not only in school, but also a “singles class” at the church I attended.  Don’t worry, I was not teaching people how to be single, I was teaching life, a subject I was certainly qualified to teach, right?.  In short, I was on fire.

The only thing I didn’t have was money, but that would come sooner or later, now I was serving and having a blast with a bunch of people around me – peers, parents, students, and whoever else wanted to come around.  I remember walking from one class to another one day telling myself how invincible I was becoming. Life couldn’t get any better than this!

But it could get worse.

Thinking your invincible is a little like thinking you’re the best at the game of basketball because you hit a shot from 3 point land while you’re shooting around by yourself.  No one can prove you’re not the best, and of course that’s where the burden of proof lies.  So when you hit the shot, you smile smugly to yourself about how good you are,and how the Celtics deserve to have a guy like you on their team.  Basically what I’m saying is, it’s ludicrous to think that way…

This was part of an rough draft introduction to a project I recently started working on entitled,”The Worst Story ever told and a few really bad ones too.”