Maybe it is appropriate to begin this tale with The Highwaymen singing Ghost Riders In The Sky because if I had to tell my old man about how I got into certain kinds of trouble I always wanted to try and distract him.
The idea was it was better if he wasn’t focused upon whatever thing I had gotten myself into but it never worked as I hoped.
Dad would gladly sing a few lines of Ghost Riders In The Sky or Who Shot The Hole In My Sombrero at a volume well beyond the whisper he should have used.
Did I mention whisper is me being charitable and that his best song work was conducted silently.
Anyhoo, I digress from sharing with you what you came here for, How I Got Arrested & Other Tales You Have Never Told.
Surely you are looking for a good story and I have plenty of them and can assure you some of them even happened but getting arrested isn’t one of them though I have written multiple pieces about it.
I have bits and pieces of fiction I have put together over the years that I have played around with turning into something bigger like the one in the block quote below.
That one has always played well because it ties into universal ideas and truths. We all have experiences in life with lost loves and choices we made that may or may not have turned out as we hoped they would.
Building a Future
The 198,383th time I heard that pride goeth before a fall I made a face and pretended to hang myself. Blame it upon the arrogance of youth.
I hadn’t yet learned that life has a way of humbling us and that it was the sort of education that wasn’t very pleasant.
You see I fell in love with a girl and I loved her fiercely. I loved her madly. I loved her passionately. I loved her in every way that the poets wrote of, spoke of and dreamed of.
I loved her with all of my heart and all of my soul. I loved her desperately and somewhere in that madness I lost her.
We were much younger then and no one could have predicted that things would go as they did. I wasn’t her type and she wasn’t mine. Not unlike so many other couples on paper we had everything in common and nothing in common.
I can’t tell you if there are soul mates or things are meant to be but I can say that if there is a master chemist they created the perfect mix of magic. It wasn’t just because there was a ridiculous amount of lust but because we liked each other.
++++++
It is just before dawn and we are lying in bed. My flight leaves in five hours. In a few minutes you’ll wake up and we’ll engage in some early morning exercise.
Midway through my shower you’ll join me and try to convince me not to leave. I’ll look down and we’ll make eye contact and I’ll think I am crazy to leave, but I’ll force myself to be strong.
“I love you baby, but I can’t pass this up. I have to give it a shot and I can’t ask you to wait for me.”
Tears well in her eyes and she tells me that it is a mistake. She says that I should wait a bit longer and she’ll be able to come with me.
I smile and hug her.
“I want to get things started. It is for our future.”
She nods her head but I miss the look in her eyes. This isn’t her being understanding. She has already decided that if I insist on going she will too. She is ready to build a life and wants to start now.
Years later I see clearly what I missed then. The future I wanted to build disintegrated that day.
I made a mistake.
Ray Is Right
I can’t remember if I shared here that I met Ray Bradbury when I was about 12. He spoke at a local public library and I got to attend.
Forty some years later I can’t tell you exactly what he said but I remember appreciating it. I can tell you I would have very much liked to have spoken with him as an adult because I have so many questions about writing stories that I would have liked to ask him.
But I didn’t think to ask those questions then, probably because I had no idea that I would have any interest in writing.
Though I liked stories I didn’t like typing and my big dream was playing for the Dodgers. It seemed a lot more fun and far more lucrative.
The good news is that some dreams aren’t hemmed in by age so my interest in writing a book which came after the dream of playing left field is still a real opportunity.
You don’t hear about fifty something year old men playing in the major leagues but you do hear about them getting published.
And if I have learned anything about writing it something you need to do every day, especially when you feel your muse sitting upon your shoulder.
So that is how you ended up with two posts on this particular blog today.
If you are looking for past pieces you can try these:
- How I Slapped The Devil & Slept With His Wife
- Endings Always Come Too Fast
- Writing My Way Into The New Year
- When Adventures In The New Car Met Gratitude
- 500 Things You Learn In Therapy & From Blogging
- Don’t Bite, It’s Not A Hot Dog
- He Is A Placeholder
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