My Dad meets his future Step Dad.

Ok. My friend Mark , who suggested I do this blog said I should put it in some sort of order.. ( he has insane plans of publishing this thing and making money on my misery.) So I've decided to start in the beginning. Which I suppose would be my Dad.
I don't have any stories of my father as a child. I know next to nothing about him as a boy. In my Family's lore he seems to of sprung full blown as a (very) angry young man. Why I don't know much about Dad as a child could stem from the fact that both of his parents are now dead. My only source now is his Step-Father Woody.
Back in spring time 1951 my father had just turned 17. His parents were splitting up, and from what I understand it upset him greatly. His parents, Leo and Agnes, were trying to divorce without too much fighting for the sake of the children. Grandma had already started to date Woody before the divorce was final . At times Leo and Woody would see each other at the local bar in the town square of the small Iowa town where they lived in. When they did ,they were , if not friendly with each other at least polite.
Until one night when Leo had too much to drink . He went over to where Woody was and started trying to pick a fight. Woody knowing he was in a no win situtation got up to go home. Before Woody could leave the bar, Leo threw a punch and politeness was thrown out the window, along with Woody. Leo was in his early 40's and Woody was 27 and just out of the army. Leo was Very strong man ( once having been a strong man or a wrestler in the circus. ) but not a great fighter while drunk. They fight rolled out into the street with a large crowd cheering them on. Woody, with his army training, eventually got the upper hand and put Leo in a leg lock until he could get him to calm down.
While Woody had Leo in the leg lock he was upside down , and all he could see was the upside down crowd cheering on the fight. It was at this point the crowd got very quiet. Woody could see crowd begining to part to make way for a dark haired , dark eyed , angry looking young man.
It was my Dad. He had come to the town square to get a drink with some friends , and found his dad in a fight with the man who was the cause ( as far as he was concerned )of his parents splitting up .
It's at this point the story ends from Woody. All I know is my father beat Woody so bad he sent him to the hospital . Dad had to leave town and take his senior year somewhere else. It was over a year before he came back.
My first memory of my dad? Let's just say he was still an Angry man.( No he never beat me or abused me. )I won't say what that first memory is just yet. But I will say that to this day I can't look at white kitchen cabinets without a feeling of dread.
Now why do I even write any of this? Next time I mention I thought my Dad might be the devil it will be a little easy to understand.
And when I eventually write what my father did with his life and that I admire him more then any other person I know, you might understand that as well.

Isaac's first haircut...From me.

I'm a dead man.
Yesterday while my wife was at work, I was downstairs cleaning up a mess left by my children. My soon to be 4 year old, Isaac was upstairs. He was playing quietly so I wasn't to worried. Big mistake on my part. When Isaac's too quiet , part of my house is usually being destroyed.
Isaac found a pair of scissors in the bathroom , and decided to give himself a haircut.. I found out when he ran downstairs to show me.
A huge chunk of his hair was missing in the front.
Now that's not the bad part.
The BAD PART came when I decided to fix it. I thought," Ok. I'll take the hair cutting kit my wife has and trim it up."
Big mistake.
Catastrophic mistake.
I now have a nearly bald child.
It just wouldn't even up. I panicked and instead of stopping, I plunged ahead.
Good God there should be a warning on those things!
I'm talking cancer treatment bald here.
My oldest suggested we super glue the hair back on, and for one insane second I considered it.
"NO" I told Ethan." there are times when we just have to face the music, and take what's coming to us. There are times we have to admit we screwed up." He agreed.
Which is good, because the minute my wife wakes up I'm telling her that Ethan did this to Isaac.
One day I hope, they will both forgive me.

Sad fact about myself 2

Back in the early summer of 78 my Dad bought the paperback novel of the movie OMEN 2. When he was done with it ,I read it. In the book it said one way to tell the son of the devil was his mark . The mark was the numbers 666 either on his hand or his head." Cool " I thought.
I went over to my telescope and removed the eyepiece. (It made a effective little magnifying glass)I slowly scanned my hand with it, and to my amazement thought I saw a little 666 on one of my fingers.
"I'm the son of the devil." I thought. Now this is much more believable if you know my Dad. The man's got a meaner stare ( and remarkably looks like him as well)then Saddam . I looked out the window at my dad , who was changing the oil in his car. Dad looked up and saw me. He glared at me , no doubt trying to figure out what foolishness I was up to now.
Yup that's the Devil I thought. This explains much.
I thought of my 3 older brothers and 1 sister. It became very clear they were adopted.
I finished reading the book. ( I wanted to see what my powers were.) When I was done my path was clear. The son of the Devil shouldn't have to share his room with 2 (adoptive) brothers. Nope I was meant for better things.
I was going to take over my sisters room.
I spent the next couple of weeks trying to use my demonic powers to get rid of my sister. I tried to summon birds to attack her . The birds just stared at me and pooped on my bike. I tried to mentally blow her head up. That just back fired and gave me a splitting headache. I tried to make her cat attack her. Damn thing just clawed me instead.
Rose it seemed was far more well versed in the dark arts then I was.
Finally after a couple of weeks of this I concluded that the 666 on my hand was in all probability a 999 or even more likely dirt.
That's when I decided being a Jedi was way cooler then being the son of the Devil.

Submarine warfare


Awhile back I went to the video store with my wife and oldest child. When I took my movie and video game to the counter the clerk said I owed a late charge. " For what " I asked.
The girl looked a little nervous and said, what I thought was Sub Mission. I looked over at the video games and couldn't see one submarine game.I told the girl in no uncertain terms that I had never ever rented any submarine games from them and doubted they even had such video games in the store.I said that the store should be ashamed for trying to rip off the hard working moral people who came to rent movies from them.
The girl then informed me that it was an adult movie called Submission. I now suddenly remembered renting said movie, so I forked over the late charge and slinked out of the store.
Every time the Hunt for Red October comes on my best friend now calls and laughs at me .
True story.
Except for the hard working moral people thing. I added that to spice it up.

.Wow. It's been over 4 months since I posted anything here. I think that's because I understand there is , at the most, one person who will read anything here, and since he knows anything I'll post here what's the point?
I've been busy. I know ,you'd think a unemployed guy who's kicked his everquest habit would have plenty of time, but alas no. I have 2 children who keep me busy. My soon to be 4 year old keeps me VERY busy. Hell he keeps my 10 year old and my wife busy as well. He was diagnosed with autism a month or so ago, but we've known something was wrong for a lot longer then that.
What saddens me the most is his inability to talk. I don't know him very well , and I desperately want to . I want to know his favorite color, his favorite story, why he loves the Star Wars movies so much. I would give almost everything I have just to hear him talk to me. I've found myself dreaming about it of late. (during the few hours the little guy lets me sleep)
A little side note he may have expressed a favorite color last week. We were getting gas at the local gas station when a truck pulled up. As we were leaving he looked at the truck and said what I thought was hello a few times. I looked back in the rear view mirror and saw it was a yellow truck. Later on I got a bag of skittles and asked which ones were yellow. He picked out the yellow ones.
So this week we work on colors.

Sad fact about myself


For almost my entire 8th grade year I did a Mork from Ork impression.
And I didn't get beat up once.