I was driving to Toulon the other day to drop my kids off at my ex-wife's and I saw that they were tearing down the old Wanee Farm. It was a pretty nice restaurant and a bar back in it's heyday. Of course I really hadn't spent much time there in the last 20 years.
ON my 23rd birthday I went out with Jane, a girl I had seen a couple of times. We went to all the bars in Kewanee. We would walk in and announce it was my birthday and I would get a free drink for simply living to see another year.Almost a year to the day earlier I had been dumped by a girl I intended to marry, and I thought this was a nice way to get over that event and have some fun. The last place we went was the Wanee Farm..
When we walked in it was very quiet. Other than an old man sitting alone( making love to his tonic and gin. Not a pretty picture) the only other people there was the bartender, and a blonde girl who made me sad I was out on a date. She was wearing a tight tiger print dress and 5 inch heels. ( being only 5 foot even she needed every inch)She gave me a smile and then went back to her drink.
Jane and I sat at the other end of the bar. When the Bartender came over Jane asked ,"Hey it's my friend's birthday can he get a free drink?"The Bartender replied,"I'm sorry we don't do that here." Suddenly the Girl In 5 Inch Heels shouted out, "It's my birthday too!" She walked slowly over and sat next to me and smiled. She told the bartender to buy me a drink.It turned out the Girl In 5 Inch Heels was born the same day as I was. We even figured out we were only a couple of hours apart. She kept buying me drinks all night.
I was so enthralled by her that I didn't notice two things until the end of the night.
One. She never paid a dime for the drinks she was "buying me"
Two. Jane.
When the bartender called "last call" the Girl in 5 Inch Heels told him to shut up and go sit down. The Burly 6 foot some guy looked at her and then did what she said. I looked at her with a ,"How the heck did you do that " look."My Grandpa owns the place."
After several hours of talking I was reminded that I had indeed started the evening with a another girl. ( It could have been the slight coughing behind me , or the persistant finger jabbing in my back) I told the Girl In 5 Inch Heels that it was really nice meeting her and I hoped I'd see her around. And with that Jane and I left.On the short drive back to Kewanee Jane naively asked me, "You don't like that girl do you? I think she's bad news."
"No", I said. "I just think it's cool she's got my birthday. Isn't that weird?"
And with that short conversation three things happened for the first time.
1. A friend ( or family member, or member of the law enforcement community) tried to warn me that the Girl In 5 Inch Heels was bad news.
2 I ignored the friend's ( or family member, or member of the law enforcement community's) advice.
3 I lied to a friend ( or family member, or member of the the law enforcement community) about the Girl In 5 Inch Heels.
Even as I spoke to Jane I was planning on breaking my date with her on friday and doing something with the Girl In 5 Inch Heels.
I don't believe it was on our first date, but it was one of the earlier ones where she said she was a heartbreaker and I better be careful. My response was at once cocky, and stupid. I told her in order to break my heart she would have find all the pieces , mend it back together and then she'd be free to break it again.
She smiled and said ,"ok".
I foolishly thought she was joking.
Now I'm not going to go into specifics here ( I'm not quite sure what the statute of limitations are in this state.) but the Girl In 5 Inch Heels was true to her word. Even nine months later when the smoke had cleared ( a bit. It was hazy for years) and I crawled away to college, she wasn't finished with me. I would get a new girlfriend and like bird of prey she would swoop in and destroy that relationship. ( Once she even swooped in to destroy the new exgirlfriends, new boyfriend because new exgirlfriend made a mean comment about the Girl In 5 Inch Heels)
I don't think I was out of her shadow for over 4 years. Sometimes people would say, "Hey the Girl In 5 Heels is back in town." I would either leave or close the curtains and turn off the lights and pray she wouldn't stop by. ( Yet insanely there would be a small part of me hoping she would stop by because after all wasn't life just a little boring right now) Girlfriends would laugh at my fears and tell me she was nothing compared to them. then the Girl In 5 Inch Heels would stop by ( Just to say Hi!) and soon I would have an new ex girlfriend.
There's a woman In Chicago that probably still jumps everytime you mention the Girl In 5 Inch heels name.
The other effect of being with her was I was never really free to eat or drink in the Wanee Farm again. My Dad would say , "Hey let's go to the Wanee Farm for Easter Lunch!" The whole family would get into cars and go. I would eat at KFC by myself.(Well actually I did go once, on the night of my wedding. But I was still very nervous.)
For years I worried about the Girl In 5 Inch Heels. She would haunt my dreams and nightmares. High heels went from being a turn on to me to a source of terror. I started dating girls that wore flats. ( with one noticeable exception)
Then one day the Girl In 5 Inch Heels stopped by my mother's boarding home for the elderly to visit her grandmother. My wife was working for my Mom at the time.
Perhaps it helped that the Girl In 5 Inch Heels was wearing tennis shoes.
Perhaps it helped that my wife was almost 6 feet tall.
Perhaps it helped that my wife was very beautiful and the Girl In 5 Inch Heels was looking a bit .....worn.( Say what you will about the end of my marriage but Angie was very beautiful. I've got photo's to prove it!)
But when I looked at this tiny girl next to my tall, confident and beautiful wife I couldn't help but think..,"This...this is what I've been frightened of?" And just like that I wasn't afraid of her anymore. Before my eyes she shrank to even smaller then she really was.
And what did I learn by all that?
Two Things.
That I should really listen to my friends( and Family and members of the law enforcement community) more. When they say that a girl is bad for me I should stop seeing her.
And.......The world is full of restaurants. Not eating at the Wanee Farm was a small price to pay for dating the Girl In 5 Inch Heels for eight gloriously horrible wonderfuly distructive months.

It seems I never really learn life's true lessons. Perhaps this is where my bad restaurant Karma stems

Marathon


Somewhere there is a man.
This man has trained everyday for the last few years to go to the olympics and race for his country. The marathon is all he can think of. He is the best his country can offer. He is dedicated. He believes in himself. He is ready.
And he will lose. In fact this man will come in dead last. Because ....well.......someone has to. And somewhere in the back of his head he will think,"I've trained this hard to come in dead last? Hell I could have just sat on the couch and watched tv and come in dead last! I should have just given up!"


He's probably French.

July 23

A passenger of the Titanic remarked years after the ocean liner had sunk, how to him, everyday was April 15, 1912. How, for the rest of his life, he would always live in that moment. I first read that when I was 13. To me it was just a line in a book that I could not truly understand.
When I was 12, I moved to Atkinson. It was my 6th school in 7 years.In Atkinson I did not get off to my best footing. I begged my Mom and Dad to move back to Kewanee or even Annawan. Initially I only had one friend, a boy named Billy Bull.
To make matters worse for me when I needed a new pair of shoes my Father bought me the gayest pair of cowboy boots to found in the Bi-State area. ( I am many things but I am not a cowboy.) The same day he took me to a barber that I'm fairly sure died of extreme old age the next day. The last act the cadaverous old goat did was to give me the most horrible lopsided crew cut ever.The next day at school I was greeted with chants of "Might whitey white walls!" ( this I guess had something to do with the fact that you could see the back of my very untanned ears.) Having to play in P.E. in cowboy boots did not help my day at all. Even my friend Billy joined in the mocking.
It was during this time that I began to notice a girl named Susie. I had first met her when she had asked some high school football players to please not beat me and Billy up one day after school. During the cowboy boots and bad haircut affair, I noticed that Susie seemed to be the only one not joining in. Whenever she would first see me in the day she would smile and say,"Hello Tomhernandez." She would say my name as if it was one word. As the months would pass I would come to believe she was saying my name the same way someone else would say Charlie Brown.
Halloween night that year Susie would do me an act of kindness that still resonates inside of me. To tell it would take too much time here, but it was, in all actuality, a very simple thing. But it was also a very decent thing. And decency was something I wasn't used to. After that no matter how bad my day was, seeing her could would always brighten it.
Susie had very light blue eyes. So light that they almost seemed silver. In my 12 year old mind I would imagine they were like that because of a light shining though the other side. Her smile was simply a thing of beauty. It was always genuine and sincere. This was again actually a very rare thing in my life up to then.
By the time my 7th grade year had ended I had settled in to life in Atkinson. I had more friends, and Billy and I joined the track team. My cowboy boots had met a tragic end in a leaf burning "accident", and the barber who had given me that very horrible haircut was now in fact dead.
I did not mourn him.
Our house was directly in front of the town park. Often I would find classmates across the street playing or just hanging out. During that summer whenever I saw Susie there I would make sure to go over and say "Hi". Every time she would smile, a real smile and say,"Hello tomhernandez". Billy seemed to be the only one to notice the change in my demeanor. He would mock how my voice would change whenever I spoke to Susie. He said I acted like a little girl around her. This usually resulted in me dumping my pop over Billy's head.
During the midpoint of my 8th grade year Dad announced we would once again be moving. My first reaction was to protest. Dad informed me that we were only moving 4 miles away. We would become the caretakers to the 40&8. It was a private park with camping and swimming. I happily went along with the move.It was only later when I realized what that 4 miles would mean. I would now be back in the Annawan school system. And away from my friends. My sorrow was short lived when Susie informed me that her Dad was a member of the park and she would come out quite often. ( I told Billy he was welcome to sneak in anytime.)A couple of months after I was back in Annawan, Susie and Billy did me another great favor. Susie asked the school if I could still go on the 8th grade field trip with the rest of my old class. When told they needed the money right then, Billy paid the 10 dollars for my ticket. So in May of that year I found myself with the rest of my old Atkinson class at Six Flags Great America, in what still is, one of my few perfect days. My Annawan classmates were not pleased. Annawan did not get a 8th grade field trip. As the Atkinson bus drove though Annawan I found myself waving to any of my Annawan friends I could see. No one waved back.
My first summer at the park came and went. My friends from both towns would come out and swim in my lake. I found that waking up and looking out my bedroom window to see girls in bikini's in my backyard was not the hardest way to grow up. I thought to myself, considering how my first 14 years had turned out that God owed me a couple of decent summers. Life was good.
Like most things in my life it was brief.
On Monday, October 29 1979 during my first hour class a classmate turned around and asked if I had heard what happened the night before. "No", I said. He told me a kid named Billy Bull had been inside a corn bin when the auger turned on. He was pulled down into the corn bin. Billy was crushed by the weight of the corn.Billy had died.I sat in my chair for the rest of that class. I stared straight ahead not speaking a single word. When class was over I went to the restroom and threw up. All I could think was I still owed him 10 dollars.
Billy was buried on Halloween that year. At one point before the service began, Susie came over and sat next to me, without speaking at first. Then she said, " You know Tom, Billy was your friend. He knew that you were his friend." She looked at me for a couple of seconds. "You know that right?" She sat next to me for much of the service. It was the second decent thing that she did for me on a Halloween. It was only later that I realized she had called me "Tom". To my memory it was the only time she ever did.
That Halloween night I sat home on my bed, thinking of my friend Billy. I hadn't talked to him much once school had started that year. He had called me a week or so before and I wasn't home. Many times I've wondered about that missed phone call. What we would have talked about, or who we would have made fun of.
Time passed. I didn't see as much of my friends from Atkinson as I once did. Some still came to the 40&8 pretty regularly. Among them was Susie. She would always stop and say hello. Everytime she did I would smile, and think to myself that the day just got a litle nicer.
One day in late June of 1982, when Susie left the park, I found she had left a little ice cooler. I thought to myself, "Hey this is my chance. When I call her I'll ask if she wants to see the movie Blade Runner with me in Kewanee." The fact that I had no car to take her to the movie did not seem a problem to me at all. The problem was, that after an hour of almost calling her number many times ( my finger just couldn't seem to dial that last digit), when I finally did get her on the phone my lips seemed frozen. After a horrible few years of silence( was it only seconds? It seemed much longer! ) I finally blurted out that she had left her ice cooler at that park and she could pick it up whenever she wanted to. She said thanks, to which I replied, "OK!", and hung up. When my mom came into the office she found me hitting my head on the desk, saying "stupid, stupid" over and over. To my moms credit she simply grabbed what she needed and left.
Friday July 23rd 1982 was one of those perfect summer days. The sun was shining in a clear blue sky. It was warm, but not humid, and the breeze off the lake made it even better. Susie came to the 40&8 with another girl from Atkinson around noon. They laid out a blanket to suntan, but within a few moments they were heading back to the car. When I saw Susie I asked her, "leaving so soon?" She smiled and said, "Hey Tomhernandez! We'll be right back." I was sitting next to my best friend from Kewanee and wanted to introduce him to Susie. Oh well, I thought, she'll be back soon.
I would never speak to Susie again.
A quarter mile from the 40&8 there are railroad tracks. To this day I don't know if they were racing the train or simply didn't see it. But the result was the same. The train hit the car on the passenger side.
On Susie's side.
It drug the car down the tracks gouging a trail through the gravel surrounding the tracks. The rescue squad from Annawan was there in a matter of moments. They got both girls out and raced to Kewanee with Susie. Her eyes, those beautiful almost silver eyes, were open the entire time. She would die only a few blocks from the hospital.
That night I woke up and walked down to the railroad tracks. I looked at the long scar in the gravel from where the car had been dragged by the train. I felt totally empty inside. My friend was gone. In my head I kept thinking, if I had only kept talking to her. If I had only kept her there for a few seconds longer.
A few seconds longer and that jagged scar in the gravel would not be there.
On a night when a Mother and Father, and brothers and sister were mourning her , my thoughts were selfishly of myself. "Did she know",I thought. Did she know how special I thought she was? Did she know she was my friend? I stood there until I heard a train whistle. I found it was now a sound that I hated with every fiber of my being.
We lived at the 40&8 for a little more than two more years. And in those two years I went over those railroad tracks countless times. And every time I would fall silent and stare straight ahead, not glancing at the scar in the gravel. But every now and then, late at night, I would find myself down by the tracks looking at it with weary eyes. It was almost as if the Earth itself had a scar.
Occasionally I would find myself walking the mile and a half into Annawan. I would walk to the church behind the library and silently ( and sometimes not so silently) curse out GOD. Mom would sometimes find out about my late night walks , and want to know what I was doing. I tried my best to explain. But I did not have the words to express my feelings or to describe what was going on in my head. One cold February morning when she was getting a little angry with me, I pointed at myself and said, "I think something is broke inside of me and i don't know how to fix it."
Mom was not helpful.
Time has not dimmed my feelings. Not a day has passed that I haven't thought of my friend, or that day in July. I don't know why she haunts me so. It would be easy to explain if it was the first bad thing that ever happened to me. It would be easy to explain if it was the first loss I had suffered. But it wasn't. It would be easy to explain if it was the last loss I suffered. But sadly it wasn't. I have been to more funerals than I care to remember. Each one is painful. And each one brings me back to my friend.
Occasionally I will wake up in the middle of the night knowing that I've just dreamed about her. The memories are fleeting and soon I find myself struggling to remember details, but it's like trying to hold on to a puff of smoke. I lay there for the remainder of the night frustrated.
Worse however are the nights that I remember the dreams. When Ethan was only about three or four weeks old, I dreamed I walked over to his crib, and there I saw Susie looking down at him. "He's beautiful isn't he?", I said. She nodded and smiled her kind smile. She never said a word. The dead never speak in my dreams.
The dreams I remember are worse.
The most recent time was a few months ago. I was suffering though a very bad case of vertigo. I lay in bed unable to move my head left or right. The medicine I take only really knocks me out for a few hours. At one point I opened my eyes and saw Susie sitting on the side of my bed looking down at me with those almost silver eyes. She seemed a little sad. I knew it was just a dream. I knew, even in that fog my mind was in, that she wasn't really there. That this was just some side effect to either the vertigo or the medicine.
And I didn't care.
All I cared was that I could see my friend. If for only briefly and if only in my mind, my friend was there. I tried to say the only thing I've wanted to say for all these years, but found I couldn't talk. I couldn't move. She put a finger to her lips and said, "Shhh." I looked up for a few more moments looking at her, wishing that somehow she could stay. I closed my eyes and fell back asleep. When I awoke, my vertigo induced hallucination was gone. I did not feel any better. If anything I felt a little more empty.
So sometime tomorrow, July 23rd , I will drive to Atkinson, and for the 26th time put yellow roses on her grave. I will tell my friend, in hopes that somewhere she can hear me, that I miss her very much. And that she would always be my friend.
Tomorrow the calender says it will be July 23. But that doesn't really matter. You see to me everyday is July 23 1982.

The Last Picture Show

A couple months ago I was standing in my parents kitchen when Dad mentioned to me that there was a movie coming out that he wanted to see. It peeked my interest because it's been a while since he's seen a movie in the theater.
Dad is slipping. Every day there's just a tiny bit more gone then there was the day before. It'll be quite a while but soon he'll be gone. Even now he's not the dad I knew. Dad is a gentle soft spoken man. Anyone who knows me, or has read this blog at all knows that in his day he was anything but gentle and soft spoken.
I miss the mean bastard he used to be. I want him back. I want my Dad back.
Going to movies was the thing we did when I was a boy that I loved to do with him more then anything else. The day he took me to see Star Wars stands out as perhaps our perfect day together.
So when Dad mentioned he wanted to see the movie Cinderella Man I happily agreed to take him.
The nearest showing was in the Quad Cities a good 40 to 45 minutes drive away. On the way down we had a nice talk. Dad was very lucid and seemed to be enjoying himself greatly. We grabbed a bite to eat at a burger place. It was just a very pleasant day.
It was while we were in the movie theater that it hit me. I was sitting next to him and they were playing the coming attractions. I looked over at him and saw sitting there smiling. As I looked at my father I suddenly understood.
This was it. The very last time I would see a movie with him. It had been almost 4 years since he saw his last movie. He had declined greatly in that time. I knew it took a great effort for him to come to this.
For the next two and half hours I sat next to my Dad and watched a very good movie. But even more then that I sat next him and just enjoyed being with him.
Going to movies with Dad was fun to me because being the youngest of 5 kids it was one of the only ways to get Dad all alone to myself. Even though we didn't speak much during the movie it was still time we had together. It was during those times I felt the closest to my Dad.
About half way though the movie I could tell Dad was getting a little confused. He was losing track of what was happening in front of him. He'd ask me a question, or tell me a fact about boxing he'd just mentioned a few minutes earlier.
I didn't mind.
For the last time a movie ended for my Dad and myself. We got up and walked out of the theater. During the drive home we talked. Dad told me many of the things he had told me on the way up. He talked of boxing and growing up in the late 30's and the early 40's. I enjoyed every second of it.
When we got home he went up to his bedroom and fell asleep. It had been a long day for him. He thanked me and told me how much he enjoyed himself.
Dad didn't sleep well for the next week. He would get up and wander around the house and keep mom up all night. He seemed much more confused then he was before we went. I felt a little bad about what Mom was going though but at the same time knew it was worth it.
Angie never did understood my love of movies or why I enjoyed taking Ethan so much. I was trying to share and recreate the times that I felt close to my Dad.
I wonder if 30 years hence if Ethan will be taking me to a movie for the last time. I wonder if he'll be taking his kids to a movie and remembering what it was like sitting next to his old man many years earlier.
And for anyone wondering Isaac and I share many moments together.
They usually involve causing Ethan great bodily harm, but they are our times together. And I can only hope 30 years from now Isaac will be causing great bodily harm to Ethan and remembering the times he did that with his old man.

Harry Potter and some half blood guy

Last night I went to Wal-Mart and bought the new Harry Potter book. I went home and crawled into bed and started reading. I thought to read a few pages, maybe a couple of chapters and then fal asleep.
By 9 oclock this morning I finished the book.
Now this presents problems because I want to now talk about this to my friends. However they are by and large very slow readers. In some cases it may take some of the quicker ones a week or more to finish the book. And I can't talk to any of ythem about it. I can't discuss the things I want to discuss.
The horrible thing is this is what I went though the last time a new Harry Potter book came out. You'd think I'd learn............

Dating
At the end of the school year a teacher asked me if I had starting dating since my divorce. My reply was, "I'm not sure I'd want to date anyone who would go out with me."
She stared at me and said, after a bit, "that's.......just a horrible thing to say. I'm not sure how to feel about that."
"You weren't asking me out were you?"
"No."
" Then just ignore it."

Holding Hands and singing a song of perfect harmony.

A while back I knew a very nice young man. He was deeply religious.
So of course I took it upon myself to corrupt him a bit. Surprisingly he was one of those rare things, a man who actually believed in what he said. So in respect for him ( yes mark I can have respect for fellow human beings.) I stopped my attempts to lure him toward the dark side. We would have break together and hang out and have nice little chats. It took a while for me to understand that he was trying to lure me away from the dark side.
One night as we were talking I asked him, "So what do expect to happen when Jesus comes back?"
He smiled a little and said, "It'll be heaven on Earth. Literally."
I thought about it for a moment and finally made a face like I tasted something bad.
" You mean everyone gets along?" He nodded. " No conflict?" He nodded again. "Like we all hold hands and sing a song of perfect harmony about friendship and love?"
He looked at me as if trying to figure out if I was mocking him, but eventually nodded once more.
" Nope ", I said with conviction. "I wouldn't want to be there."
His eyes went wide a bit. "But why Tom? Isn't that what everyone wants?"
I thought about it a little more and said, "Well I can't speak for everyone else but I sure wouldn't. I need conflict. I need struggle. What would be the point if everything was perfect. Why even get up in the morning?"
He was shocked when he found out I sincerely meant it.
I wouldn't want to live in a perfect world. I'm not cut out for it. I wouldn't want to live in a world without pain or without mistakes. I really hate to quote James T. Kirk but as he said once, "I need my pain. It makes me who I am." And it does.
I used to envy friends whom I thought ( usually mistakenly) had happy well adjusted homes. But around the age of 17 or so I understood that I could never live in one. It would drive me insane. ( no comments mark)
Even in my own hectic family there were periods of quiet. And usually I would find myself trying to find a way to stir up a hornets nest. I would be working quietly to find some way to get Rose or Geno in trouble. And the beautiful thing was Geno , Rose, and John would be doing the same to me or one of the others in our family.
Hell, even our Dad would wind up doing something to keep himself from getting bored. Of course Dad's answer was usually very unpleasant for the whole family.
I don't believe I'm alone. I'm sure that most people really wouldn't want to live in a world that was perfect. I mean for one what would you do? Can you imagine what books, music, and movies would be like? I couldn't sit though a two hour movie about happy people being happy.
I believe humanity needs strive. I believe God made us to struggle. We do our best work in bad situations. To quote Orson Wells , ...remember what the fellow said. In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance.

In Switzerland they had brotherly love. They had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce?

The cuckoo clock.
I think the Vikings of old understood it better then anyone. Their idea of heaven was a place where they would fight each other all day, then at night they'd party like there was no tomorrow.
My religious friend asked me what I thought heaven would be like. I thought about it and said, "My heaven would be easy. Let me live Hugh Hefner's life."
It saddened me very much when I found out my friend had no idea of whom I spoke.

My Bad Trip
For a while now I've had a tooth that bothered me.
20 years.
Well longer.
Anyway I've been told to have it pulled for a while now but since I'm deathly afraid of dentists I've been postponing it. However for the last few weeks it's been bothering me a great deal. My consumption of Advil has gone though the roof.
Finally this Tuesday, as I stood on the playground watching the fourth graders play, ( I work at school.) it became unbearable. I called and made an emergency appointment to get what was left of said tooth out of my mouth. ( rest of my teeth are fine.)
The event itself went fairly well. The Dentist shot my mouth with four injections of painkillers and proceeded to rip the remains of the tooth out of my jaw. He seemed to be taking a great deal of frustration out of my tooth. As he was doing this he also made the usual dentist small talk about the weather and other things that I was unable to respond to as he was ripping pieces of tooth out of me.
When it was over I mumbled though a mouth of blood and gauze, "Will I need anything for the pain?" He stated that in all likelihood that I would be in considerable pain and wrote me out a presciption for a painkiller. I had it filled.
That night around 8.30 my jaw began to ache. At 8.40 my jaw felt like Mike Tyson had been pounding on it. I looked at the bottle of painkillers. "Take 1 or 2 as needed for the pain."
Ok. I'll take two I thought.
I went to bed at 9.30
At 11 I woke up suddenly. My entire body felt like there were bugs crawling all over me. I kept trying to wipe the imaginary insects off me. When I turned on the lights I saw my Ex-Wife Angie standing in my room repainting my bedroom walls.
Pink.
"What are you doing here?" She looked at me like it was obvious but refused to answer. I sat there watching her paint. She looked really bad, kinda yellowish.
I thought I'm never going to get any sleep with all these bugs crawling over me, and my yellowish ex-wife painting my bedroom. So I got up and went downstairs to watch TV. To my horror when I got down there I found she had painted my television screen pink and my sofa and chair. Wet paint signs hung everywhere.
I was about to go upstairs and bitch her out when I heard a knock on my door. I opened it but there was no one there. I closed it and turned around and saw my nephew.
"Tom I need your Spider-man # 1!" And he ran up the stairs and began looking in my comic book boxes. He became more and more upset as he couldn't find it. I tried to help but the fact I didn't own a Spider-man #1 and that there were now over a million bugs crawling all over me, made me a bit slow.
The bugs were very sneaky. When ever I would look at my arm they would all hide. When I looked at my legs they would all hide.
But I knew they were there.
Somewhere in my drug induced haze I knew that this all a little fishy. I decided to sit down and look up the painkiller I took on the internet. Before I could look anything up Angie ran over and painted the computer monitor pink.
"Damn It Angie!", I shouted.
Kris was now getting upset about not finding Spider-man #1 so he decided to rip up all the books that were not Spider-man #1. "That way when I'm done the one not ripped up will be the one I want." I couldn't argue with his logic.
It went on like this All night. I went back to bed when Angie and Kris promised me they would try to be quiet. The bugs also sent a representative(A 6 foot brown cockroach named Larry) who assured me they would also be quiet.
They kept their word. They were quiet. But I knew they were still there.
Finally around 5.30 in the morning I came out of it. My room wasn't pink. For that matter neither was my computer nor my television. My comics books were not ripped to shreds, and Larry assured me that the other bugs were also just my drug crazed imagination.
Somehow I made it to work. At 9 I called the pharmacy and told them what happened. "Ah that is one of the side effects. Maybe you should stop taking it?"
"You think?" I said a bit harsher then I needed to. Larry pointed out that it wasn't their fault i had a bad reaction to the medicine.
Here's the punchline. My brother Geno called me up today. He wanted to know if I had any left.
Larry told me not to give him any.

Religion
I love Easter.
Even for more than just the memory of chocolate Jesus. (see last years Easter blog)
No I love this time of year because it's always a nice time to reflect on God and his plan for me.
Sadly that plan seems to involve sneaking over to my house while I'm sleeping and burning it down. There was also his sick little joke last year of having my wife who hates Star Wars get addicted to a Star Wars on-line massive multi role playing game and running off with some guy she met there. Of course she ran away after she married him in the game.
And I understood it. I knew that God asked himself, "What would be the most ironic way to end Tom's marriage?" And while I'm sure Satan had a nice little reply about me being eaten by a runaway circus Bear on a tricycle ,God thought the whole Star Wars gag was funny and went with that.
Nope God and I get along.
As long as I stay more then 1000 yards away from him per the restraining order he took out on me.
What I can't stand are other people telling me what God is thinking or what his plan is for me. I've really started to despise much of organized religion.
This whole Terri Schiavo thing for instance pisses me off. Somehow the religious right has made this their Cause Of The Day.
I have an opinion on the subject. A strong one. And it doesn't matter one damn bit what it is.
It's a family matter.
We, the news, the government, and the media shouldn't be in it.
They've turned this woman's death into a circus, all promoting whatever cause they believe in and attaching it to this poor brain dead woman.
And make no mistake. She's a vegetable. Her brain has the thickness of a good soup.
She's been gone for 15 years. She can't eat, can't drink, can't dream, can't feel pain, and certainly can't register to vote.
I know if it was me in that condition I'd certainly want to be let go. I told my now Ex Wife that. So I'm sure that if I was in that condition I'd hope she'd let me go.
(You know somehow I don't that would be a long decision on her part.)
But back to the point at hand.
In this circus you've got everyone from the Right To Life people somehow linking abortion to this, to every politician with a religious base tripping over themselves to make sure someone knows they tried to save this poor defenseless woman from a fate worse than life. Every person with any sort of cause that they can link to this woman is jumping in front of a TV Camera and screaming, "I'm here for Terri!" Meanwhile the husband is being cast as a vegetable beating murderer who just wants to knock off his loving wife. Apparently some of these nuts think that if he truly loved her and just kissed her she'd wake up. Of course these are the same people who think Science is just a lot of hocus pocus.
It actually scares me when I hear some of the stuff I hear these days. It reminds me of the days when astronomers told of a universe where the Earth wasn't in the center. Religious leaders wanted to hear nothing of it. Couple of people got branded as heretics for that and burned at the stake.
Of course we live in a much more enlightened age.
Of course that believe went flying out the window when they got John Edwards to speak as expert on Fox News.
No not the former VP candidate. The speaking to the dead guy from cable and the sci fi channel show.
God this is a scary time to live in.

The Call Of Nature
Once when I worked for Wal-Mart (the borg of our world) I had to stand outside during a pleasant early morning , watching the items we had for our side walk sale, and making sure nothing was stolen overnight.
At about 3 in the morning a car pulled up and two gentlemen get out. One went into the store and the other stood by their car. I watched the man who was obviously in a very drunken state. He looked around trying to see if anyone was watching him. When he was satisfied that no one was he walked over to another car, unzipped his pants and began to urinate on the drivers side door. I picked up my walkie talkie and told the third shift manager what was happening and asked if she'd call the police.
"Tom,", Betty said, "If I call the police he'll be gone by time they get here."
"Ok", I said, "But I just wanted to let you know that it's your car he's taking a whiz on."
One minute and 38 seconds later while his friend was still in the store I saw two town cops with their lights on come into our parking lot.
When Betty came out to go home she got into the passenger side door. She did not look happy.
Just a thought for those of you that might be doing some late night-early morning shopping.

No One Takes Pride In Their Work Anymore

One of my Jobs at my School is to help grade the occasional homework. Last Friday I was Helping the Math teacher do some grading. The nice thing about the math books is that in the back are all the odd question's answers. So that the kids if they have even the smallest bit of intelligence can always get at the very least 50% of the questions right.
Two of the papers I graded had this as the answer for number 37
"Students Answers will vary. Please see page 168 for more details."
When questioned by the teacher both students said that, yes indeed they worked the problem and that was the answer they came up with.
I took much more pride in my cheating when I was young.
But I'm not like that anymore.

Over

Yesterday at 9.32 in the morning my marriage to my wife quietly ended in a courtroom in Cambridge Illinois. It had been a day long coming.
I had long imagined what I would say when it was over. There had been times when I would think gleefully of spiteful things to say to her. I was sure I would feel a sense of victory.
But standing a few steps behind her while she told the Judge she agreed to our terms for divorce I felt no such sense. I felt strangely empty. My life for the last 15 months had centered around this divorce. Everything I did was in one way or another a reaction to it. Now that it was over I am unsure of my next steps.
I hold no hatred or even anger towards my ex wife. ( wow....First time I've thought of her that way.) That has long since faded away. While I strongly disagree with many of the choices she has made they were hers to make. Also I have to admit I like myself much better now than I did 15 months ago. I like were my life is at and where it's headed. If she had not done what she had done I would still be unhappy and can only guess that so would she. My feelings for her are complicated but she is the mother of my kids and I truly hope the best for her.
My original plans for celebrating the end of this divorce was to treat myself with a nice dinner out of town and some quiet time to myself. But I was I leaving the courthouse I turned the car around and drove the 20 minutes back to my home and the children I had fought for. I spent the day and the night with them. We didn't do anything special. We watched a movie on DVD. I helped Ethan build a castle for a school project. ( One which he knew about 3 weeks ago and only told me about 5 days ago. Thanks a whole heap there buddy!)I read a story to Isaac. When the night was over I stood in their doorway and watched them sleeping in their bed. At that moment I felt truly grateful and realized I had indeed won a victory.
I'm unsure of my next step. I like my life now. For the first time in my life I don't feel the need to have someone to complete me. I won't rush into anything. When the time is right everything will fall into place. I do have faith that I will find someone.
I truly like the quiet moments in my life now.

Ghosts
Sometimes I believe I am haunted. Not by real ghosts like my family believes happened in Cambridge when I was a young man. But rather by the past. By the shadows of things that have once been.
When I say this I mean it in an almost literal sense.
A block from where my parents live is Main Street. There have been times where as I have walked to the Osco's there that I hear a faint Ambulance siren. And most times when I turn around there is nothing there. You see it's there that my friend Susie actually died.
When I would ride my school bus my senior year there was never a day that when my bus would go over the railroad tracks I would not hear a terrible grinding noise followed by screams. There were even times when I would be taking a nap on the bus when those sounds would wake me up.
Even to this day I will not look towards the track when I go over that crossing.
It's not just audio. There are times when a memory will over take me and I can almost see something from my past. There have been many times standing in my parents front yard that I could almost swear to have seen my brother Steve drive by. Always it's the same the window rolled down, his arm hanging out, the wind blowing his hair and smile on his face.
And once again , no these aren't ghosts. They are memories. Some , like that of Steve driving by my parents house are real. Others like where Susie died are imagined.
When my family moved from the 40&8 ( the private park where I spent most of my teen years) I refused to go back for a long while. Every inch of that place was full of memories. Some sad, many happy. It was a long while before I could deal with them.
Even here in my own home there are almost too many. Standing in my living room I will often see it as it looked right after the fire. A gaping hole in my floor. The room black and burned. I took no photo's of it because I knew I'd remember it forever.
Among my many weakness' (please see Mark for a detailed list) is an inability to move on and forget the past. Hell anyone who has read this blog in anything more than a glance would tell you that.
So when a year ago today (see how weird it is? I hadn't thought about it. I made to effort to bookmark this in my memory, but when I woke up this morning I knew that it had been a year. To the day.) I found out my wife was planning to leave for a man whom she met over the internet and whose name makes him sound like a (bad) McDonald's happy meal, I was very worried that I was going to fall apart and focus on things that were no longer true. ( Like my wife was faithful.........and sane.) I worried that I would do what I had done so often in my past and make a bad situtation worse.
I sat in my computer chair that dark night and feared at what the future would bring. I looked around my room. I got up and looked at my kids who were sleeping. I walked around my home that I had fought for after the fire afraid that now I might lose it, and my children, to my wife.
Now a year to the day from that night I'm pleased to say that I still live in my home. I'm even more pleased to say that so do my kids. I'm even more pleased to say that my wife does not.
I am now working at my son's school, and am taking classes to finish up my college. Hopefully one day I'll become that bad history teacher I've always dreamed of becoming.
Many nights I still find myself standing in my kid's doorway and looking at them as they sleep. Now I am no longer worried that I might be losing them. Now I just stare and think how lucky I am.
When 2004 began I thought it would be the worst year of my life. And here now a year later I look back and rank it among the very best.
There is no romantic prospects on my horizons. Nor am I looking to hard right now. I enjoy the way things are now. And when the time is right I will know.
As for my wife I hold no ill feelings. She gave me 2 kids and 7 happy years. As baffling as her actions still are to me I truly believe she did what she thought was best for herself. Weather I agree or disagree is no longer for me to say. I hope her life is a happy one.
Working at the school I used to attend does have it's problems for a man who often sees his own past in front of him. There are a few times I see three kids running down the halls making much noise. I'm about to yell when I see it's just Mark George, and me.
Not all haunted memories you see are bad.

By Ethan
I have made a new number. If you have heard of Googolplexian then you will understand "some of this". If you can write Googolplexian zeros then do it a trillion times again you will get Googolplexiarillion. I hope my number will become a real number and that nobody wil claim this as their own.

Happy freaking birthday

today I turn 40 years old. Perhaps it's the events of the past year, perhaps it's the number 40, but I just want to get this birthday behind me.
40.
Wow.
I remember when I turned 20 (really doesn't seem that long ago) I was surprised. I really thought there was gong to be some change. Some moment when I would realize,"Now I'm an adult".
Only there wasn't.
20 years later I sit here and there's part of me that is still waiting for that moment. Part of me still waiting for people to point and say, "Hey that's just some guy pretending to be an adult."
Oh well.
There are many joys to being young of mind and heart. (if not of body)
When I was a boy everybirthday seemed to have snow. It was a tradition. As I got older snow seemed to fall less and less on my birthday. It was depressing. I honestly can't remember the last time there was snow on my birthday now.
As I type this I can look out my window and see as fresh covering of snow.
Perhaps that's a good sign for what's to come.

Made by Ethan (kinda and Mark helped)


Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear,Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair,Fuzzy Wuzzy made a dare,Fuzzy wuzzy had a dare that someone can cacth a hair,Fuzzy Wuzzy had a dare to catch a hare but is very rare and is in the air ,Fuzzy Wuzzy ate a hair over the air,(T.V. air and the actual air)but Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't fuzzy was he? (This is where Mark helped by telling me the actual thing)

Hello
Sorry I've been away for a while. I'd like to say, "I was out finding myself" but that would be a lie. While I kept wanting to write an entry here I kept putting it off. Some of you out there probably visted this site more than I have I have in the last few weeks.
I started a job at the school where my oldest son goes to. It's made me appreciate my childern all the more because honestly most kids these days are.......well horrid. But on the good side It'll make for many good blog entries.
It's hard to believe that it's been two years since I started this blog. Many things have changed since then, some good, some bad. I however am finding that I am enjoying life much more these days.
Some quick updates, Ethan is still a good student, but more importantly he's still a good person. Isaac is making strides against his autism, some small, some large, but all important. I am very proud of both my boys. Life here in my house is for the most part quiet and uneventful. It doesn't happen often but I'll take it when I can. My divorce is nearing it's end. All I'll say is I wish my (soon to be ex) wife well in her life.
Now since I'm a lazy man always looking for ideas let me ask the few of you still out there a question.
What was the worst thing you ever did in school?
If you're very lucky and give me good responses I'll tell you the funniest, worst thing someone ever did in school, story I've heard in ages.
Of course I'll have to change the names to protect the guilty.

Funniest thing I've heard in ages,
Someday you'll have the great joy of having childern,..... and paying someone else to raise them.

A Call To Arms
I got this today as an email. I couldn't help but think that if this was true that Mark would be the most advanced man on the planet.

A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo, and when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole is maintained or even improved by the regular culling of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can operate only as fast as the slowest brain cells through which the electrical signals pass. Recent epidemiological studies have shown that while excessive intake of alcohol kills off brain cells, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. Thus, regular consumption of beer helps eliminate the weaker cells, constantly making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. The result of this in-depth study verifies and validates the causal link between all-weekend parties and job related performance. It also explains why, after a few short years of leaving a university and getting married, most professionals cannot keep up with the performance of the new graduates. Only those few that stick to the strict regimen of voracious alcoholic consumption can maintain the intellectual levels that they achieve during their college years. So, this is a call to arms. As our country is losing its technological edge, we must not shudder in our homes. Get back into the bars. Quaff that pint. Share that handle. Your company and country need you to be at your peak, and you shouldn't deny yourself the career that you could have. Take life by the bottle and be all that you can be. Forward this to all of your friends, acquaintances and co-workers that may be in danger of losing their edge.

Excuses Excuses
I've been finding it harder and harder of late to sit down and write anything lately. I'm hoping that once school starts and everything gets into a nice routine I'll get back to this. I have so much more I need to write down.

On Golden Pond
In the early part of 1983 I went to a play with my English teacher Norma Brown, and 4 other classmates.
It was my senior year and having earned enough credits to graduate at the end of my junior year found myself quite bored. In order to keep myself awake I found myself doing more and more things I would never have dreamed of earlier.
One of them was going out for the drama club. I soon landed myself a role in the Wizard Of Oz. I was the flying monkeys.
All of them. (We didn't have enough actors for more)
I was put into a a little flying harness which was rigged into a pulley. My "friend " Tim would pull on the rope and I would go flying (out of control) across the stage. Tim found out that if he pulled the rope hard enough I'd go flying across the stage and into the wall.
Hard.
By the end of the play my Monkey costume had the wings bent, and I had a minor concussion. The final curtain call I was laying on the stage half conscience.
I was told I was the best part of the play.
Because I was such a huge hit, when Mrs Brown found out that On Golden Pond was playing at a nearby Barn theater she picked me as one of the students to go. When we got there she looked at me and said, "Ok everyone, we're representing our school. Don't do anything to embarrass us."
By the end of the first half I was fighting to stay awake. No car chases, no gun fire, and no nudity. Good God didn't these people have any idea how put on a show.
When intermission came I was hoping we could just skip on home. Mrs Brown nixed the idea.
I was walking around trying to find a restroom when I came across a tray with some cookies on it. There were only about 6 cookies left. I looked around. When i was certain that no one was looking I took them. I got back to my seat just in time for the play to start.
Not wanting to be a selfish pig I gave a cookie each to my classmates. I was going to keep the 6th cookie to myself. But I thought, "Hey Mrs Brown was nice to bring you here. You'd better give her one."
I leaned over and gave her the cookie. "Hey Mrs Brown, do you want a cookie?" She smiled at me and said," Thanks Tom. Call me Norma. We're out of school." I looked at her. "You know she's only about 30", I thought. Kinda cute too in that older woman kinda way.
I gave her my best smile. "Ok Norma." Maybe I was going to get an A. in english after all.
Just as Norma put the cookie in her mouth the actress playing the old lady came in with an empty tray and said, "Who wants some cookies?" The other actors looked very befuddled as they reached for the empty tray and pretended to take a cookie and eat it. Norma's smile began to fade. She sat there stone face with her half eaten cookie in front of her face. She tried to eat what was in her mouth quietly but each time she tried to chew it cut though the crowd like a bullhorn. Every actor in the play stared at her. Norma's face began to turn a bright shade of red.
"Tom ", she said in a very quiet, yet very angry voice, "Just where did you get that cookie."
Trying not to smile I said, "I found it laying around on a tray." Then not able to help myself anymore I smiled.
When the play was over instead of hanging around to meet the actors we bolted to Norma's car. On the way home I said, "I'm sorry Norma. I didn't know those were cookies for the play."
"Call me Mrs. Brown."
I only got a B- that year.

sorry been busy lately and haven't had the time to post.  Don't worry i'll be back very soon. Maybe tomorrow. See ya.

Love
Once I had a date. (long long ago) My date ordered a milkshake with her meal. We were standing there waiting for the rest of our food. Behind us stood a very tall, very big man. (he Looked a lot like Michael Clark Duncan. That's the guy who was in The Green Mile and Daredevil) As my date was taking a sip from her milkshake the tall man leaned over towards her and in a very deep voice said, "Your sucking on that straw like you're in love BABY."
Her eyes bulged out. She looked at me for help. As the man was 5 inches taller than me and at least 75 pounds heavier and had 3 friends, I had had no problem with the comment.
It was our last date together.

To anyone who reads this or is even a little interested could you please email me your Email address. I have something I'd like to ask. Email me at thomas_hernandez2003@yahoo.com . thanks

On the sad side of the news a deer tried to commit suicide today and jumped out in front of my car. Sadly the deer succeeded in his quest. Funeral services will be held at Bob's Venison Barbeque Shack 10 miles north of Kewanee Illinois anytime after Lunch tomorrow. In lieu of flowers memorials may be made to, Tom's Car Repair Fund.
Hope everyone has a safe 4th.
Tom

Ok sorry i've been absent. John's home and that always takes me down a bit. I saw this on the news and felt I had to share this.
I hate sexual predators. I feel they deserve death. I especially hate teachers who prey on their students. I feel sorry for the victims they leave in their wake.
That being said.
The Student who was molested by this teacher is the luckiest boy alive.
I know I know. If this was reversed I'd be calling for the male teacher to hung up by his private parts.
But as a former 14 year old boy myself , let me say to the victim, "Way to go son. You won a victory for every 14 year boy who ever lived." CNN showed a full body photo of her. She belongs in Playboy after she serves her 5 years in jail for making this kid the envy of every other boy in school.
I'm sure any women are seething about this. But trust me if the jury on this trial has even one kid who stared at his teacher with lust, it'll be a hung jury.
Now before you think ill of me, no it not just because this was a boy having sex with a older woman that I think this. It's a boy having sex with an incredibly hot older woman.
If this was just some plain everyday looking woman I'd be saying lock her up and throw away the keys.

Camp part two
After I was dropped off at camp by my police escort, I was herded with all the other boys milling around into the large central cabin for breakfast. The Cabin had the name Robin Hood in huge letters over the large double doors. While eating the dry cereal they gave us (one flavor, corn flakes, no sugar) we were given the rules. I didn't pay any attention. I was already trying to figure out how to get out of there and get home.
After I was done eating one of the camp workers started passing out postcards from the camp. We were all supposed to write "cheerful" messages back to our loved ones and let them know we were having a good time. I raised my hand.
" What if we are not having a good time, or haven't made up our mind yet? I mean after all we just got here."
The man in front ignored me and kept talking. "The first thing we'll do every morning is write a postcard. You can write as many as you like. We'll review each one to make sure nothing.....Inappropriate is there." I looked at my empty postcard. I thought about what to write. After a few seconds I wrote one line and handed it in.
The rest of the speech was about how why we all did questionable things in the past we would all learn valuable skills, and how to be better citizens. Hopefully we would all learn the value of community, and that we should respect the law.
Good god I thought, what did these kids do to be sent here?
The man finished his speech with, "Any questions ?"
I raised my hand again. He looked at me a second and finally pointed in my direction.
"Don't you think it's funny that you're telling us to repect the law, in a cabin named for one of the most famous criminals in history?"
Again my question was ignored.
Another younger man began reading off names and giving us cabin assigments. I was given the Little John cabin. This turned out to be good. It was just 20 feet away from the main cabin where the camp directors slept. And where the only phone was.
After we got to the cabin, the counsler in charge of it came up to me and said, "You need to write a new postcard."
"Why?"
"You wrote", he said looking at my postcard,"Get me out of here! We like to keep our messages back home more upbeat. If you could write something about having a good time and that you miss them or something we'd appreciate it."
I sat on my bunk and wrote, "Really another one of your great ideas Dad. I can't tell you how I feel about being here. Love Tom". I addressed it and handed it back. The counsler looked at it and said, "Much better!"
"What's your name", I asked.
"Little John", he said smiling.
"No really".
"You are to call me Little John." He smiled even more. He turned around and walked out the cabin.
"Oh God," I thought to myself, "I'm in hell."
Within five minutes of him walking out I was beaten up by the other kids. My hat was stolen and my overnight bag was gone though for any money. (I kept it all in my sock. No one was stupid enough to look in there.) I lay on my bunk thinking, "It's going to be a real long two weeks."

Camp part one.
I was very excited about going away to summer camp. I had never been away from home for any length of time before. (Unless you consider the almost 5 months I spent in the hospital after Steve shot me. Not the most fun time to be had.) My best friend George was always being sent away to camp or various other places. He seemed to enjoy himself.
So after Dad exiled John and Geno for what he called, "Acting like inbreed Missouri hicks", (Mom and her family are from Missouri) I began to prepare to go to camp.
Dad had been told by people he worked with at the Park Police in Kewanee about the camp. Apparently he had been complaining about the,"Slacked jawed yokels pretending to be his son's" one day. He said he'd like to just ship them all away for a few weeks and get some peace and quiet. One of Dad's friends an actual Police Officer overheard Dad and told him about the summer camp, "Camp Sherwood Forrest". He said it sounded like a great place to send me for a couple of weeks.
Dad was skeptical at first. "How much would it cost?"
"It's free."
"Sign him up!" Dad actually smiled when he told me about it.
He still smiles about it.
It may not of cost any money for me to go, but I'll admit Dad spent quite a lot of money to buy me things to take with me. I got a new fishing pole, and tackle box, new clothes to wear, and even a new hat.
Which still puzzles me. I've never been a hat person.
But I'll admit I loved this Hat. It had the Enterprise on it.
The day before I left it stormed out. Hail fell from the sky and tore my Mom's garden to shreds. It turned out there was one of the biggest Tornado outbreaks in the midwest's history that day.
"Maybe God's trying to tell you something", my sister said. She was always trying to ruin anything I enjoyed. I just ignored her. Dad told me to get to bed. I had to be up at 6 to get ready to leave.
I barely slept at all that night I was so excited. I was afraid that if I fell asleep, Dad would oversleep and I wouldn't get to go.
At 5.30 I could wait anymore and began to get up and get ready. Very loudly I might add. At 6.30 Dad and I left the house. I looked forward to two weeks of fun away from my family. I was so happy to be leaving I didn't even pull any mean last minute pranks on Rose.
Dad and I drove in his car to the police station. Dad looked around with a slight frown on his face. "I guess this is where the bus is leaving from." We went in and Dad talked to a police officer sitting at a desk. I didn't hear what was said. I was too busy looking around at the cells in the back. I remember thinking, "I bet this is where Geno is going to end up."
Dad turned around and said, "Ok this is where I leave you. You'll get a ride in just a few minutes." Dad looked at me, clearly uncomfortable, and said "Um....You be good....Have a ....Good time......Bye." And with that he was out the door.
I smiled. I knew with Dad gone I was one step closer to going to camp, where I had visions of sitting by a lake shore fishing all day.
After about 10 minutes of impatiently waiting for a bus to pull up a squad car drove up with another boy in the back. The officer got out and looked at me and said, "You the other boy going to Camp Sherwood Forrest?"
I smiled and nodded. "Well get in. We don't have all day." He opened his trunk and I put my stuff in. I jumped in the back of the squad car with a big smile on my face. The little boy next to me obviously didn't appreciate going to summer camp as much as I did. He sat next to me with a big frown on his face. I tried talking to him about how cool it was going to be. I even offered to share my fishing pole with him, because I didn't see one in the trunk for him.
From his lack of response all I could tell was he didn't like fishing.
I tried a different subject.
"Isn't it cool we get to ride there in a police car?" I leaned forward. "Hey officer can you turn on the lights and siren?" Both the Cop and the Boy next to me looked at me like I was insane.
Trying yet another subject I looked at the boy next to me and asked, "So you ever been here before?"
He looked down at the floor of the car and muttered softly, "Yeah."
"Wow, it must be a great place if you want to go back."
"Nah they're making me."
"Ah", I said. It became obvious that this must be some kind of mamma's boy who didn't want to leave home. The rest of the ride was spent in silence.
I was just about to nod off in the backseat when the Police Officer said, "Here we are boys."
I looked out the window and saw the sign. A big smile grew on my face.
"WELCOME TO CAMP SHERWOOD FOREST" My smile faded.
In slightly smaller letters the bottom of the sign read, "For troubled youths."
Suddenly the next two weeks did not seem like they were going to be much fun.
"I'm going to kill Dad." I muttered to myself.

I started this in Feburary. I wanted to finish the whole story now, but was afraid everyone would forget by now about this. So I'm reprinting yet another blog (Hey it's summer, time for reruns.) Tomorrow I'll finally finish where I was going with this after 4 months.

TV can be a bad influence on a weak mind.
Directly across the street from us in Kewanee were two households that had a total of 7 Teenage girls. Three Draminski girls and four Shinkevich girls. This meant that during the summer of 1975 Geno and John couldn't walk out the front door without sticking their chests out and sucking in their stomachs. If one or more of the girls were actually outside sun bathing Geno and John would make excuses up to get into fights with each other just to try and impress those girls.
Geno and John could be laughing and joking with each other about something they saw on Monty Python or a movie they had seen, but the instant one of them saw a girl across the street they'd jump on the others back and begin to wail away. The minute the girl would vanish out of sight they'd stop and start talking again like nothing had happened.
As late spring progressed into early summer their bruises began to mount up. As did their ripped shirts and torn jeans. Everyone began to joke about how much they were fighting to impress the girls across the street. Dad had even began to take their fighting as routine. (However one time he did go outside and spray them down with a hose to make them stop.)
Everything began to get more then a little silly the day John watched an old movie from the 1950's called Ivanhoe.
Ivanhoe was one of those old movies about Knights and Jousting. (Actually it had a lot more to do with that, but all John saw were guys riding around on horses with long sticks slamming into other guys riding around on horses with long sticks.) At the end of the movie the hero and villain Joust over the fate of a woman they both love.
John thought that was just the coolest thing he had ever saw. The next day I saw him sitting outside on the back porch staring at his ten speed bike. I knew he was deep in thought because every now and then he would scratch his head and frown.
The next day everyone on our block was treated to the sight of John on his bike (Which he had spray painted silver with black letters that said Silverstreak) with a trash can lid for a shield and a push broom for a Lance racing against Geno on his old crappy bike with just an old mop for a lance. They started about 5 houses away from each other and peddled rapidly towards each other. With a loud bang they crashed into each other and John went flying from his bike.
Miraculously John was unharmed. (I know if I had been involved there would be a mop sticking out of my head to this day.) Geno stood over him and taunted him for falling off his bike. To my amazement the neighbor girls instead of seeing this as the heights of stupidity, actually seemed to be impressed with them. This of course just encouraged them on.
Soon Geno and John were "jousting " with their friends Charlie and Joe, the Lasky boys, and at least one of Vinny the Vampire's kids. (I know it would be a simple matter of looking up his real name, but for almost 30 years I've only thought of him as Vinny the Vampire so why change now?) Despite their best monkey like attempts of being safe, injuries began to mount. Black eyes and bruises soon began to spread among all the contestants. However the two worst injuries were not caused by themselves but by me.
My dog Duke would watch the jousting matches behind the fence in the back yard. His barking would get louder and louder as the day went on. One day for no apparent reason I can remember I let Duke out in the middle of one of the matches. It was Geno against Charlie. Duke ran straight for Charlie. When Charlie saw Duke heading straight towards him he began to peddle as fast as he could away from my dog.
Unfortunately for Charlie he was going up a slight hill.
And he was a little fat.
Duke pounced on Charlie and his ten speed and they all fell over in a loud crash. Charlie landed right on his face and didn't move. As my brothers and the other boys ran towards them Duke began to shake the bike's back tire back and forth in his mouth.
When my Mom and Dad found out what was going on they were furious. Dad suggested only brain dead idiots would crash bikes together on a busy street like we lived on. He demanded that they stop at once.
So of course the next day the jousting matches were held in the alleyway behind the house.
Again for no clear reason I can think of I did something very bad. I had gotten the idea from another movie called the Great Escape. I had already tried it out on my best friend George to great success. (Well for me anyway. George was less then thrilled.)
As Geno and John were racing towards each other down our alleyway I pulled tight a rope I had tied to a pole across the alley road. Geno ran smack into it. Unfortunately for Geno I had misjudged where it should go and it caught him right about the eyes. His head was pulled back and he went flying from his bike to the ground below him.
John saw the rope go tight in front of him and veered out of it's way. Sadly for John he steered his bike right into Dad's parked car.
I almost made into the back door before they caught up to me and began to beat the living crud out of me. Of course this was just the right time for Dad to look out the back door.
When it was all over we were all punished. I was punished for nearly decapitating one of my brothers. Geno was punished for still doing those stupid jousting matches. John was punished for still doing those stupid jousting matches and for putting a big dent into the side of Dad's car. I was punished once again for making John put a big dent into the side of Dad's car.
Mom and Dad decided they needed some time away from all of us. Of course them going on a vacation and leaving us at home wasn't even worth considering. So Geno and John were shipped of to stay with some relatives for a week or so. (Dad split them up. Geno went to one of Mom's brothers, and John went to one of Dad's brothers.) I was looking forward to going to one of my cousins house when Dad informed me I would be going to Summer Camp for two weeks.
I was stupid enough to think I might actually enjoy myself there.

ego and SUPER EGO

When I was a young man (16) I would often say, "I am Hernandez. That is enough!" in a dramatic way. (usually in a equallly dramatic Peter Pan type pose with my hands on my hips) What's odd is it gave me some weird sort of confidence to get though whatever the crisis of the moment was.
Latelty I've found myself thinking it again. And again it's given me a weird sort of confidence. My ego so long buried seems to have resurfaced with a vengeance. It's like an old friend that has been gone for years, yet once back is so comfortable.
I hope he sticks around this time.
My vertigo flared up recently. I refused to let it get the better of me and kept moving around thinking to myself, "I am Hernandez. This is nothing. I am Hernandez. That is enough to beat anything." I just wanted to make it though the day.
And not only did I make it though the day, I made it though the night and the next day as well.
I once saw a psychologist who told me that while I seemed to have no self esteem I had a huge Ego. I thought it was funny at the time.
But he was wrong. I was plenty of self esteem.
Just a lot more ego.
And pride in my family name.