Living Alone

  Living alone sounds exciting to some and distasteful to others. It just depends mostly on your personality and perspective. My own circumstances are well known to most of you, and I now find myself living alone. Here’s what I’ve noticed so far. It’s quite lonely. Well, that’s obvious you might say. But have you ever lived completely alone for any extended period of time? I haven’t really. I grew up in a family with six of us kids in a two bedroom house in Port Arthur, Tx.  My four brothers and I slept in one bedroom and my parents in the other. My sister slept on a hide-away-bed in the living room. It was not the best situation in the world for her, and I often felt sorry for the poor girl. But it was crowded to say the least. And don’t even get me started on the one bathroom routine in the mornings. It was extremely hard in those circumstances to have a moment’s peace. Privacy was something you could only dream about. And I did…a lot! I also escaped into books which was the only place I could ignore the hubbub of my surroundings. I read about Henry David Thoreau and started making plans to find my own Walden Pond.  I used to beg my mother to admit that I was adopted and send me back to the family I was supposed to be with…you know the one with maybe one other kid and a bedroom for each of us. But it was to no avail. Mom claimed me no matter what. And I guess that was a good thing in the long run as I ended up living with her a couple or three times when I suddenly found myself homeless due to failed marriages or relationships. Good ole’ mom always kept me from landing on the streets when my rollercoaster life dumped me unceremoniously on my keester.

  When I graduated from High School, I joined the Army. Not because that’s what I had in mind to do, but because my good old Uncle Sam didn’t want me to be lonely, and he insisted I be all I could be. Growing up in my kind of family was good training for the Army Life.  In basic training I got to share a room with three other guys, a latrine with two hundred, and a mess  hall with several hundred. In advanced training, and the first year in The Republic of Panama, I shared a barracks with fifty to two hundred other guys. Privacy was out the window. Being a shy, reserved, and very modest kind of guy back then made those times traumatic for me I assure you. But I adapted. And I survived. It was a blessing when I came home on leave and got married to the love of my life. When my darling wife joined me in Panama City, it was just the two of us. Those were blissful days. It was hot, steamy, and our apartment didn’t have air conditioning, but still just two people sharing all that space…I thought I was in heaven. It wasn’t long though before the kids came to join us and privacy was again something you gave up bit by bit.

  Now I live alone. The quiet times can be good for a while. It gives you time to really think about things. Time to think about things can also be a curse when you don’t want to. In the mornings I go out and sit on the deck to drink my coffee. It is peaceful around here in the morning. Birds singing and an occasional dog barking in the distance are the only things that might keep it from being totally silent. In today’s modern world, total silence is not something that most of us tolerate for very long. We turn on the radio in the car, the TV in the house, the stereo headsets while we’re walking or jogging. Quite time is a foreign concept to most people these days. But not to me. When I’m driving alone in my car, I don’t turn on the radio. I prefer to let my mind wander and see where my thoughts might take me. I’m not bored with my self as my only company as most folks are. Many of you, through this blog or my works of fiction, have seen that my mind can be very fertile territory with enough going on there to keep me entertained. But here’s a few things that I’ve noticed that are different now that I live alone.

  First of all, I talk to my pets a lot these days. I didn’t before. My wife often talked to them using baby talk. I always thought that was amusing…like talking in baby talk would help them understand what she was saying better. I don’t baby talk, but I do talk to them from time to time. They don’t seem to mind. In fact their tails really start to wag when I do.  When I’m outside in the evenings watering all the plants, fruit trees, and my garden, I often talk to the plants now. I know…crazy right? They seem to not mind either. Today, I went out to eat lunch, and it was the first time I left the house all week. I didn’t have to guess where I would eat or argue about it. I just stopped at the first place that sounded good. I went to Wal-Mart afterwards, but I was only in there for about 10 minutes. Got what I needed and got the hell out. That's way different. I stay up as late as I want to these days and get up in the morning when I feel like it, or when the cats really get to meowing outside wanting to be fed and will not be ignored any longer. I don’t have a daily routine, other than the previously mentioned coffee ceremony first thing in the morning. I don’t have a Honey-Do list. I do the chores around here when I feel like it and when I don’t … I don’t. Just to be clear, this is not the way I like it. I loved the way my wife and I did things together. I liked going shopping with her and watching her "grazing" over everything available. Her enthusiasm for life was infectious. It infected me. Her way of doing things was different from my way. I liked her way. I miss her way. My way is boring and always has been. That's what I found so irresistible about her. She was never boring.  

  I've had many guys tell me lately that my present situation sounds pretty darn close to Nirvana. Most guys say they would love being left the hell alone. But I’ll let you in on a little secret. They’re lying. I don’t do alone very well. I always liked being married. And I liked having the kids around. Single guys are used to at least having a few of their good buddies around a good bit of the time and spend many of their nights in crowded places with lots of other single people around. I don’t have good buddies anywhere close to me. I’m too old for the night life.  So it’s just me here. Living alone, talking to the dogs, cats, gold fish, plants, and anyone else (you guys) that will listen and trying to make the best of it. The prospect of living this way for many years to come frightens me half to death. The prospect of not living this way and including someone else frightens me even more. So I will continue to live alone. And I will pray that the rest of you out there don’t have to.

Follow the Leader

  Leaders. Ever wonder why we have them? Or what does it take to make a leader? Are they different from the rest of us? Sometimes we idolize our leaders. Sometimes we revile them. Sometimes we write books about them. Sometimes we kill them like dogs in the street. But we always have one around. When one steps down - or is killed - there is always another ready to take his place. Do we just like having someone to blame when things go wrong? Can’t we find our own path without them? Are we so lazy that we would turn over all our own personal sovereignty to someone else in order to not have to make our own decisions? I remember reading in the Bible about the early Hebrews. They were a nation without a secular king. They looked around and saw that all the other nations had kings. So they clamored to God for a king so they could be like everybody else. God advised against it. He told them they were better off without a king. And if they had a king, they would open themselves up to all kinds of new problems. Abuse of power is one that comes to mind. A vainglorious king might be easily insulted and bring the whole nation to war over some perceived slight. An ambitious king might embark on generations of expansionism causing his people to suffer and die in great numbers in the process. A paranoid king might spy on his own people without their permission or knowledge. The Hebrews didn’t listen to God. So, God gave in and anointed them a king. And the nations of the Hebrews have been in turmoil ever since.

  In this country we go through a long process to elect our leaders. Supposedly it’s a democratic process where anyone can run and has the chance to win. It doesn’t really work that way. And every four years someone is “elected” to be our new leader. They say he or she is elected by the majority. But the majority of eligible people in this country don’t vote. So that means our leaders are elected by a small minority to lead us all for at least four years. More people vote for the next “American Idol” than they do for president sometimes. With today’s technology, why couldn’t we set up a system where everyone could vote instantaneously on every issue?  Need a new road built through your state? Everyone in the state votes electronically and bam…the people in that state let you know if they are willing to pay for the project. Then they vote on who gets to build it if the project passes. And they must decide how to pay for the project. Voila! A leaderless society that is truly democratic. But then who would we have to blame when the road didn’t get built correctly? Or who would we blame if it cost way more than the original estimate? Whose head would roll? We like to blame our leaders when things don’t go the way we think they should. But we rarely do anything about it. Sure we bitch and moan. We might even write nasty things about them in the newspapers. Or ridicule them on the late night talk shows. But we don’t usually go further than that. After all, leaders sometimes have the power (that we gave them, by the way) to make you have a very bad day if you bitch and moan too loudly.

  So who in their right mind would want to be a leader anyway? What does it take to step up and say, “Yes, I will show you the way.”  What rational human being would want to be the alpha male, the big dog, the head cheese, the decider? And why would they want to? Is it for the money? Most of them are rich already. The power? Most have power – hey they’re rich and powerful enough when they step out there – or at least you would think so. The Fame and Glory? Even knowing that if you don’t do what the public thinks you should, it might be your head rolling in the street. Is it worth the risk? And we’ve all seen the toll being the leader takes on most folks. Most of our presidents have gone into the job looking young and vigorous. Then they come out looking old and tired – if they manage to come out alive that is.

  So, raise your hand if you want to be the leader of the free world. Or even of the not so free world. I suspect not many hands went up. So what kind of person would really want to be a leader? Just stepping up there and saying, “I’ll do it,” makes me question, if not their sanity, at least their motives. And the fact that we have had leaders through most of our history and followed them even when we could clearly see the cliff up ahead makes me question our own sanity. Why couldn’t the Hebrews, and the rest of us, just listened to God in the first place? I suspect that if we had, history classes in school would be much more boring than they are already. So maybe that’s why we do it. Entertainment. After all, we all like to watch a fool dancing and prancing around up on a stage. They might be good for a few laughs. But is the show really worth the price of admission? I, for one, think not. 

Fly In The Ointment

  How’s that old saying go? The best laid plans of mice or men often go awry. My plans always go awry. That’s why I tend to not make plans. And in my life experience, there always seems to be a fly in the ointment. To start with – I hate flies! If there is such a thing as karma, I will probably come back as a fly. Or at least, I will get bugged a whole lot in the next life. I really do get a lot of pleasure out of smacking pesky flies with a fly swatter. It’s even better when I can get two at once. I can sit out on my deck and there won’t be a fly anywhere in sight. But bring one food item out there with you and they come like Hell’s Angels on wings. Those suckers either have the greatest sense of smell ever or one hell of a spy network. If the latter then, hey, there may be an opening for some of them at the NSA.

  Anyway, like I already mentioned, I don’t make plans. But I do have dreams and wish for certain things to happen in my life. No, I don’t dream about winning the lotto. No, I don’t dream about tropical vacations with suntanned voluptuous women. My dreams have always been simple ones. I dreamed of writing a book and getting it published. Did that. Twice. So far. The fly in that ointment is that I should have dreamed about them actually selling in a big way. But that’s ok. I can live with the not getting rich part. After all, I’ve been poor all my life and it pretty much seems natural to me nowadays.

  I always dreamed about having a quiet peaceful place to live in that I enjoyed and could be proud of. It didn’t have to be Buckingham Palace, or Graceland, or even a big two story home with lots of bedrooms and all the trimmings. I’ve lived in a lot of different places. Some of them better than others. Some of them were cozy. Some of them even felt like home – at least for a while. But the most peaceful, quiet, and beautiful place I’ve ever lived is where I’m at now. And it’s not much – not even close to being a mansion. It’s a modest three bedroom mobile home with a big covered deck in front, wooded, with a couple of friendly neighbors, in a quiet resort community. Pleasures here are simple and uncomplicated. But there’s a fly in that ointment too. This was my wife’s place. And before that, it was her mother and father’s place. It will be our children’s place. This was the place where she and I were to enjoy our golden years together. What did George Straight suggest? “There’s a difference between living and living well. You can’t have it all, all by yourself.”  Well, I live here now. But I’m not living well. Buzz, buzz. I hate flies.

  The best laid plans of our Forefathers were put forward in our Constitution. What a marvelous thing they hammered out and had the foresight to put down in straight-forward words that no one would have any trouble following and understanding. The fly in that ointment is that they allowed lawyers to get a hold of it and “interpret” it. Such a simple plan whose guidelines would make a great country even greater started going awry almost from the get go. And we ended up with a government we can’t trust and that doesn’t trust us. We ended up with a government that takes every penny it can get away with from us and then spends it lavishly on frivolous things, or unnecessary wars, and who knows what else for its own benefit and not ours. In fact, I would say that Washington, DC is looking more and more like a big pile of manure covered with flies.

  I often hear people saying that someone needs to invent a better mouse trap. Mice can be tricky and clever, no doubt. But a good cat is God’s answer to that problem. Just maybe, a little more effort ought to go into inventing a bigger and better fly swatter instead. Lord knows, I could sure use one in my life. Let’s just pray that someone comes up with such an invention before the whole country’s plans and dreams go awry. Buzz, buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. 

Making Friends

  Making friends hasn’t always been an easy thing for me. Like I’ve mentioned before, I was a very shy kid growing up. I didn’t have many friends in school. I had one friend from the neighborhood where I grew up. And then I got to be friends with a friend of his in high school. But that was about it for me. Oh, occasionally other people would drift in and out of our little group. But none of them really knew me or even took the time to try to get to know me. That was ok. I didn’t need a lot of friends. I was pretty much a loner and always had been. Crowds made me uncomfortable. After high school, I joined the army. I had a couple of good friends in the service, but you make friends there knowing that you will, or they will, be moving on eventually. When I got married, my wife became my best friend and that was all I needed for a long time. My two friends from school didn’t live close by anymore, so I eventually made a new friend from the people I knew at work. We became very good friends and fishing buddies. But that didn’t end well. When my marriage ended, so did all the friendships I had. It’s not such a good feeling to be making your way in the world with no one you can call a friend. No one you can talk to when times are rough. Oh during this time I had what I call alcohol buddies. Our relationships only went as far as Ladies’ Night at the local clubs. We got drunk together and chased women. Not a part of my life that I’m very proud of. For a long time, I wasn’t willing to really let anyone in to get to know me well enough to call me friend. I had serious trust issues. I didn’t trust anyone anymore. It’s hard to make friends when you have that going on. Then one day, while I was still living in Tennessee, I opened up my mind and heart and let God in. I had a new friend. One I knew I could trust. I stopped fearing death, and I started opening up more to the people around me. After all the issues I had with trust seemed almost petty now. No one could ever really hurt me like I had been hurt before. I now considered the hurts of this life mere growing pains or learning experiences. I eventually made a few new friends, mostly at work. Then I met Becky, and she became my new best friend.  Unfortunately, as most of you know, that only lasted five years. Then in spite of all the odds, I got my best friend forever (bff) back again. Sadly that too was only for a short period of time.

  People come and go in your life. That’s just the way it is. Good friends tend to stay around a little longer. I like to sit out on my deck and watch the birds. I have several feeders, and I’ve noticed something about birds. Many of them come around daily when the feeders are full. And if I let them get empty, they still keep coming for a while. But eventually not so many will show up anymore. Friendship is like that. You have to feed your friendships regularly, or they will eventually not show up when you need them. Of course I don’t mean that literally. But keeping friends around does take a little effort on your part. In other words, to have a friend you have to be a friend. These days my friends are mostly family members. Family members can be friends too. Sometimes they are the best friends you will ever have.

  Now there is one other source of friendship that is becoming more and more common these days. Some of these friends you will never meet face to face. But more and more we are interacting with people online from all over the world. People that don’t get on the internet laugh and say, “Well, those people could never be true friends. You can’t really get to know them online.” I beg to differ. I have made some very good friends online. And yes some of them live too far away for it to be possible for us to ever meet in person. But with today’s technology, that doesn’t necessarily limit the friendship. I talk and interact with some of them on a daily basis; much more so than I do with friends closer to home. Some of my facebook and online friends have been a real comfort to me in my times of sorrow. I can foresee a time when most of my friends might be online friends. And I’m ok with that. Friends are friends no matter where you meet them or meet up with them. At this point in my life, I need all the friends I can get and will not let a little thing like distance get in the way of a good friendship. So if you have good friends in your life, consider yourself a wealthy person. And cherish them. Some of them are only here for a short time. Love them while you have the chance.