This is part of a story I once told. It changes each time I tell it. Even though is told in the first person, It is fiction, with elements of truth. It is not connected to It Wasn’t Worth Getting Arrested but it has some similarities to Sometimes It Doesn’t Pay To Answer The Telephone.
I was almost 25 when I left the city of my birth. It was time to go, time to move on and get away. There were new experiences to be had and the pain of what I had once been, what I had once had was too much. Everywhere I looked there were signs of the glory and the fall.
For most of my life I had been a scrapper, never afraid to fight, never willing to give up and not smart enough to get out. It was a self imposed punishment for sins that I had committed but was unwilling to discuss.
It is not much of a description, not very colorful at all. In fact it is rather ordinary, but that is ok, I am ordinary and I prefer it that way. If you stuck me in a crowd full of people you would be hard pressed to pick me out. It was like that in school, never did or said much in class. No need to draw attention to myself I did what I needed to do to get through and nothing more.
And for the longest time that had been enough, an average, nondescript existence. It suited me fine to be a guy who punched a time clock. But sometimes even the average man find himself in a situation that is beyond his control,a time in which he becomes something more than he has been.
But the question is not what he does to elevate himself but how he handles the elevation.
It was Friday night and I had just finished my shift at the plant. There was no rush to get home because there was no one to get home to, no wife, no family, no girlfriend, not even a dog. Just an empty house that was sparsely furnished.
Friday nights were not much different than any other night of the week. I’d go home, pop open a can of beer and stare blankly at the television screen content to let my brain turn to mush.
On this particular night I decided to stop at an ATM. I wanted to order a pizza and I had nothing but the spare change from the last time I had visited the liquor store. It wasn’t enough to buy a pack of gum, so I was forced to go to the bank.
There were two people ahead of me in line, a man and a woman and behind me there were a couple of teenage boys.
I didn’t see him approach. I didn’t notice anything about him including his presence until he was standing in front of us, waving a gun and shouting for our wallets. I have a bad habit of giggling when I am nervous. I don’t like being the center of attention and now was certainly a bad time to laugh, but laugh I did.
5’8 or so and about a buck 20 sopping wet with a bad haircut and a Judas Priest shirt, that is all he was, oh and he had a big gun and an even bigger attitude. He grabbed my collar and asked me what was so funny. Before I could answer he had grabbed the woman in front of me.
She cried as he pulled her in front of him and asked me if I thought that this was funny. I choked back a snigger and told him that it wasn’t. He told me that if I so much as smiled he would kill her. I wiped the smile off of my face.
It was the wrong thing to do, but I didn’t know it. The jackass cuffed me in the side of the head and laughed. It infuriated me, brought back memories of years of being teased and tortured by my older brother. So I just reacted. I kicked him in the balls and smacked him in the head.
In the movies the gun falls and the hero (there has to be a hero) grabs it. Not here, not in my world. In my world when I slap him there is a flash of light and a loud noise. I am splashed with something, but it feels like hours before I realize that he just shot the woman, and that he did it involuntarily. The wetness I feel on my face is her blood.
I stand there in shock, numb and not really aware anymore of what is happening. The guy she had been with is beating the crap out of the jackass, the Judas Priest shirt is stained now, but it is with his blood.
There is a cop speaking to me, but I don’t answer. The real hero is lying, telling the officer that I saved everyone’s life, that if I hadn’t hit him the guy would have killed us all.
I didn’t hit him, I hit Georgie. It was Georgie I saw in front of me. It was Georgie taunting me, I just snapped and reacted. But I guess that somewhere inside I began to hear and to believe that I had been the hero, that when the bell rang I had come out swinging.
And that was really the beginning of the end.
End of fiction, start of something else, read on if you dare.
Experience Hurts & Heals
I shared two clips about Desmond and Penny from Lost with a trainer at my gym. He is 28 and wanted to know my thoughts on whether you can get more than one great love in your life.
I told him experience hurts and heals and that I knew a few things about it but that what I know won’t necessarily make it easier.
I told him some loves last a lifetime and some change you for one. I told him sometimes you have to find out if meant to be means you end up with the one you think you most want or if you live out Garth Brooks Unanswered Prayers.
He asked if I am religious and I told him you could say I am more of an agnostic.
****
Most weekends I do my best to turn off my brain and do as little ‘work’ as possible because during the week I put ample time in.
Been more challenging lately because way too much is going on. Been riding a monster bull that has thrown me more than once and tried to stomp and gore me.
I have managed not to let it trample me, but just barely. I can tell you from experience it hurts when you punch the bull in the mouth. Can tell you when I wrapped my arms and legs around its neck I couldn’t choke it out, though I gave it everything I had.
But I managed to convince it I am not much fun to play with so for the moment I have taken advantage of its absence to catch my breath.
If things go as I have worked so very hard for I will have restored and recovered that which I lost a while back.
Time will tell.
They Resuscitated Me…Twice
I pushed the treadmill to over 7 so I could run and did my best to keep it up. Can’t tell you if I ran for 15 seconds or 3 minutes because I didn’t set a timer.
Can say it said I had my heart rate up around 160 for a bit and felt pretty good about fast I recovered.
I keep writing about my liver biopsy because it’s my way of reminding myself it is time to push myself. My father’s health was sketchy for the last quarter of his life and I don’t want that.
I remember him telling me about how they resuscitated him on the table and not being particularly appreciative of the story.
I remember when he was dying that I had a dream in which I fought death. I remember telling death that it would be a long time before he could beat me in single combat, but not sure I remember anything else after that.
Though part of me thinks I might have heard death say something about having ample time to wait. That might be imagination or recognition sooner or later I won’t be able to outrace time or manhandle the Grim Reaper into saying “Uncle.”
It also reminds me that today is my maternal grandmother’s birthday. She died 15 years ago on the night of my 14th wedding anniversary.
My grandfather hung on for about another 18 months and then decided he had enough and checked out.
After she died I remember him telling me that he spoke to grandma every night and how when I asked him what he said he smiled and told me that was between his wife and him.
Life is one hell of a ride and during my time on this planet I have learned on multiple occasions that what I think, want or expect to happen might not.
Some of those have been very hard and very painful lessons but some have also been the greatest moments of my life.
Stay awake my friends and remember the ordinary moments sometimes are the most extraordinary we ever experience.
If you want to catch up on past posts, click here.
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