Technology. Is it really that great?

I  love the way we can contact each other so easily these days. Everything is so now, so immediate. For millions of you that grew up with it, it's no big deal. Its' always been there for you. The speed of how all this is progressing, never ceases to amaze me.
The idea of having to mail a letter or card or any correspondence and have to wait for a week or more to get a response is unheard of now. To call someone and have to leave a message on their answering machine and have top wait for them to get home before they get your message, or before answering machines, you had to keep calling until you catch them by their phone would be considered primitive.
But all this speed is a double edge sword. The first thing that comes to my mind is the extra stress it adds to our life. The fact that so many things can be bombarding you by phone, emails, text messages, junk mail and most of them are impatiently waiting on a response. You find yourself in a head spin. And when you don't hear back from someone quick enough you become obsessed : "Why?", "What is their problem?" , "Whats taking so long?".  Its been a half hour. Sounds ridiculous doesn't it. But thats the way it gets sometimes. I know I'm guilty of it. It's the nature of the beast I guess.
But the scariest thing to me about the convenience of the electronic age is that anything you put on the net is out there forever. All of our personal information, everything about us is at the fingertips of big brother. Everything you write, every website you go to can all be traced and you tracked. I read an article the other day that our government nanny's want a black box installed in every new car thats built, so they know every place you've been, the speed you traveled, what time you were anywhere. They could start sending you speeding tickets by checking your black box. Just the idea that we are all being tagged like cattle in a stockyard bugs me a lot. Before it's over they will be able to track every place we go, every dollar we make, every dollar we spend and where we spend it. And if they don't like it, there will be consequences.
The people in favor of these ideas say "If your not doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about." This is true until your trackers decide what is right and what is wrong. Meaning, if you don't agree with us, "your wrong." We really need to start paying attention to what our government is doing in Washington. They are pulling the rug out from under us and making it sound like they are doing all this for our own good, to protect us.
I , for one, do not need them to protect me from myself. Doesn't seem quite right to me that most of our politicians are multi-millionaires and the average American citizen struggles to stay a float. They have their own private health plan, (which is not the plan they are trying to shove down our throats)  and when they get busted for not paying their taxes, there is no punishment for most of them.
Our system is broke. There is no one political party that's responsible. It is from greed and corruption on both sides of the aisle. Of course , this is just my opinion. I think we still have a right to that. Am I being paranoid? Let me hear some feedback.

Patience

When I was younger, I was always impatient. I didn't like to wait for people to get back with me, or wait for people that were late for appointments, (honestly I still have a tough time with that one), a job could never get done quick enough. I was a Type A boss. If it was something I excelled in and the people I was working with didn't, it would make me so anxious and frustrated. I had places to go, people to see and all these people just slowed me down so much.

The little old person in the car ahead of me going 25 in a 55 MPH zone. (hell even 25 in a 25 MPH zone), Try to run into the store for one item , one register open and the person in front has a paper bag full of coupons that they are digging through. There's another wasted 5 minutes. Waiting for someone to back out of a parking spot and for reasons I still don't get it takes them 5 minutes to put the key in the ignition and put it in reverse. How does our society program us to think that a few extra minutes means life or death? What are we going to miss. If something is supposed to happen , it will happen!

When my in-laws came to visit and we would go places, my mother in law had chronic pain in probably most of her joints. I understood and felt bad for her, but I still remember thinking sometimes she was milking it for more attention. I would get very frustrated. She was slowing ME down.  Well believe me I regret that so much now, I can't describe it, because of two years I experienced chronic pain. To go like that year after year, non stop, is more than most can bear. Thank God mine could be repaired. So if someone is moving to slow, and there is no other options for you, just take a deep breath and be glad that's not you someone is having to wait on. It's usually a few extra minutes. It just seems longer.

All my life it was push, push, push. Well let me tell you this. If someone asks me is there anything I would change if I could go back and do it over, this would be at the top of the list. From where I'm sitting now, all that rushing, day in and day out did nothing for me that I can see. There are periodic times when I know it needs to happen, just don't make it a daily routine would be my suggestion.

All you do is wear yourself out mentally, physically, and you make a lot of people want to avoid you. And in that area, I think you could miss some golden opportunities along the way. Life experiences have taught me this. It makes me remember times when I should have shown more patience or compassion, and help to those people along my way were moving to slow, working to slow, maybe need a little assistance, or wanting to just talk a little and I didn't give them that extra couple of minutes.  I think it will make a world of difference in your life.

Easter (What else?)

Happy Easter!   I hope this is a day of peace, love, joy and comfort to all those that are struggling or in pain. I wish I had the answer as to why some of us have more struggles than others, but I don't. All I can say is hang tough. We haven't had to go through all we've been through without a reason, which one day we will all know why. I just know it. Anyway, I hope you have a lovely day, whether you believe, or not. It's a great place to start. And to those that are happy, pain free, and coasting along just fine, may your life be filled with more and more of it everyday. But REMEMBER the great days. Some day that might be all you have. :) You just never know. Love to you all.

Getting use to our new house

Im not sure why this past few weeks I have thought about my early years. Maybe it's because I've been told by my doctor to temporarily take it easy, (back issues) which is a nice way of saying "sit on your ass until I tell you it's okay not to." Actually I think it's something we all should do time to time. But by choice, not necessarily because something happens that makes you do it.  Once again using the  excuse that I was two/three years old and don't remember much of that period of time, I do remember one story about Bill.

My oldest brother, Bill had gotten a new wagon for Christmas and when spring came around, he was allowed to play in the front of the house with it. Well, my mom was cleaning and things around the house when she realized Bill and his wagon were no where to be seen. She was running up and down the street calling him, calling our neighbors. She was really freaking out. The phone rung and she answered it and after a brief conversation said oh my God, thank you and hung up. She took George and me and we headed down the street to the Rexall (drugstore). We walked in and back then all the Rexall's had a soda fountain bar. There was Bill bellied up to the bar with a big grin on his face and a vanilla ice cream cone in his hand. When he saw my mom's face, he wasn't grinning too long. She handed the cone back to the fountain clerk and we all headed home. Isn't it funny how kids are drawn to ice cream like bee's are to honey? Bill had just decided an ice cream sounded good and he had the wheels to go get it. I don't know what happened to the wagon after that. Probably put under lock and chain.

                                                            This photo was from probably 1962 or so.

When I was two (1955) we moved to a town called Channelview. I remember the first time I saw it , it was nighttime. I stood on the big front porch and looked through the pane glass windows that were on both sides of the front door. I could see the stairway that looked like it went forever. Remember I was only a foot tall. This place was huge.

It was a two story house  out in the middle of nowhere. We had two and a half acres of grass and woods which we initially loved, but would later learn to hate for reasons Ill explain later. The house had three bedrooms upstairs and one downstairs. Two bathrooms, one on each floor. A huge kitchen and living room with a fireplace. Well after moving in, it was decided by the powers that be, that George and I would get the downstairs bedroom. First of all I didn't want to room with George. He was a blanket hog and sloppy. It wasn't easy to share a bed with him because he would turn every direction possible on that bed when he was asleep.  The first few nights I found more reasons not to want to sleep downstairs. It had wooden floors and between those and the rest of the creaks and groans that house made, it was spooky. I never could get to sleep.  And if the monsters I was imagining had showed up, well my parents were all the way up stairs. I would have never made it alive. As for air conditioning we had a giant attic fan above the stairway which drew air in from the outside through the windows and was drawn into the attic for the heat to escape through a large grill in the side of the house. So naturally we had to keep the windows open at night so air could come in. The downside of this  was CRICKETS and an occasional frog would sound off now and then. There was the sound of the armadillo's, the opossums, raccoons rustling around out in the leaves. George always added to the mix by saying there were probably  alligators from the river too. But there must have been tens of thousands of crickets in out yard. And almost like a symphony warming up around dusk, the crickets would start in. Thats all they did.  They just warmed up....all evening it seemed. This drove me insane at a very young age. Im willing to bet, some of the issues I have today happened because of those crickets. George would just snooze away all night. I don't know how he did it. I would get up in the morning looking like the living dead. I kept complaining, but they would not let me move upstairs where they weren't as loud. I even got to the point of sneaking upstairs and laying across the foot of my parents bed. But I always woke up the next morning back in my bed. I never could figure out how they moved me and I wouldn't ever wake up while they were moving me. Now if all that wasn't bad enough, one of our neighbors raised peacocks. They would start making their squawking noise at around six in the morning. Let me tell you, ten or fifteen of these going in our yard,there was no way you were going to sleep. I learned fast too that you cant make a peacock do what you want it to do. If you throw something at it or try to shoo it away, it will turn and start coming after you. Our neighbors had a fence that for the most part keep them corralled, but if they wanted out, they could fly if they wanted to. They are a beautiful bird. But a real pain in the ass. More about our country estate(HA) later.

My athletic career in a nutshell.

On weekends when I was in elementary school some guys would show up at the football field and have a scrimmage. One of my friends ask me to show up one weekend, so I did. I got picked last being the runt of the group. On the very first kickoff the guy in front of me caught the ball. He turned around and lateraled it to me and said follow him. So I got right behind him. At some point he cut left and I cut right and from the opposing team the biggest meanest looking kid I had ever saw named Tommy was coming right at me. He would have squashed me like a bug.Well rather than have him turn me into something similar to a bug on a windshield, I instinctively tossed him the ball at which time he had a wide open field for his team to score a touchdown. This was the end of my football career.

Then there was baseball.

Being on the smaller side of the stature meter held me back in a few areas, one being sports. I only played one year of baseball (pee wee league), I think I was 5 0r 6 years old. The big draft day arrived and we all showed up anxious, nervous and excited all at the same time. There was a designated number of teams and players set up ahead of time. The coaches drew numbers as to who would choose 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc..... and the games began. Each team that would come up I would actually imagine them calling my name. One after another chose their teams and I was running out of time. Finally the last player was picked and I still sat there with the other left over players. They said thanks for coming out and that was that. I was so depressed. The fact that I was 4 foot tall and weighed about 60 lbs didn't seem to matter. Case closed right? Not so fast. Over the weekend they decided there were enough left over players to form one more team. So they voted on it and just like that the "Colts" were created. The coach was going to be Mr. Barnett. He was the maintenance guy for the school busses. I don't know if he had ever coached before but he was all we had. So here was our team.

Now you can imagine what our team looked liked. The guys that no other team would pick. So we had our work set out for us. Before now I had not played much, mainly because I didn't have a glove, ball, bat. Things you kind of needed to play. So my dad took me to a place called "The Coastal Salvage" that sold just about anything you were looking for. They had one glove. Not just any glove. It was a glove that was between a a catchers mitt and regular glove with five fingers. You put your thumb and first finger in the first slots and the third fourth and fifth finger in the second slots.

I had never seen a glove like it but it only cost a dollar, so my dad bought it.

 Apparently no other player had seen one either, because at our first practice, everyone, including the coach ask me what kind of glove was that? As if I wasn't insecure enough already.

During warmups I couldn't catch anything with that thing. It was so embarrassing. I told them since it was new that I would have to break it in. I couldn't hit the ball either. Struck out every time. I did walk once and the guy behind me hit a home run. That was the only score I made all season. I was the worst baseball player ever except for this one kid who had glasses as think as a milk bottle. I don't think he even wanted to be there.

Coach decided to put me in right field. Wayyyy out in right field. Except this one game when he was short a player and coach put me on second base. At one point, this batter hit a line drive right at me. Out of fear I stuck my glove in front of my face and somehow it stuck in my glove. The guy was out. This was the pinnicle of my career.

I was so glad when that last game rolled around. We never won a game all season. But I had played a season of baseball. And I never wlll forget Mr Barnett. He never gave up on us.

My brother George

I grew up with seven brothers. The oldest one, Bill, died when I was only four, so I can't remember him so much. From oldest to youngest was George, me, Joe, Andrew, Thomas, David ,and last but not least, Rex.

We all were born at home. In attendance, would be my dad, my mom (of course) and whichever one of us that was beginning our new life. My dad was not a physician by trade but a chiropractor. I ,for one, am very grateful he had learned more than just how to straighten out backs. Seriously, my dad was an amazing man in either knowing how to do something, or learning how to do just about anything he wanted to do. I've thought of how he must have felt every time one of us was born. Especially with the first, Bill, born in Chicago where my parents met and married. I would have been scared to death. Can you imagine? Delivering your own baby? At home?

But this story is about George. I think we all need our story told. George and I were born in the same small town named, Galena Park. We lived in a small frame house and my dad had his office in Highlands Texas a few miles a way. Once again using the lame excuse that I was very young and don't remember much of that period of time.

George, from what I can remember always said what was on his mind. He always stayed busy and seemed to pick up on the mechanical things my dad used to try and teach us. George was always physically bigger than Joe, Andy & I so when we played games outside or had to mow the yard with a push mower or George wanted something his way, he got it, because he was bigger...right? Well one day Joe, Andy and I had decided we had had enough of his bullying us around, so we were going to gang up on him and beat him up good. George just laughed at us like we weren't going to have the guts to do it. So the three of us got together and made a plan to surround him and on the count of 3 we would all jump him. So here we are all surrounding George, and I counted outloud...1...2...3, and I charged at him with all I had. The only problem was that Joe and Andy chickened out. When I looked around and saw this I was already in George's arm length. So he proceeded to kick my ass like a rag doll and Joe and Andy stood in the background saying, we're sorry, we're sorry. That didn't make it hurt much less. So that was the last time we ever tried a coo against George again, until we got big enough not to have to take his crap anymore. We were kids. Thats what kids do...Lol What turned out to be George's primary talent was music. He would sing while playing guitar, played piano, trombone in the school band, trumpet. He was very proficient at all of them. On the weekends sometimes a few band members from school and George would meet up at the house and learn songs on their own. When George was about seven he was mowing the yard with a riding lawnmower and had an accident that almost killed him. He got off the mower to move the water hose and the mower slipped into drive running into George. I wont go into detail but he lost half his right foot and was in the hospital off and on for over a year and no telling how many surgeries. That laid him up for quite a while. He had this unbelievable surgeon named Dr. Brodski. Had it not been for him, George would have lost his whole right foot. But he basically had to learn to walk again with only three toes on the right foot. George was one strong determined kid. My dad always encouraged us to learn music, take piano lessons until we just decided we did or didn't want to do it anymore. He basically wanted us to appreciate music.

In 1965 after my dad decided to turn part of our home into a restaurant named Seven Sons Steakhouse, where we all worked, at some point the 4 older brothers, George, me, Joe, & Andy would bring out a small cake and sing Happy Birthday or Happy Anniversary, whichever was applicable.Then he wanted us to learn "Let me Call You Sweetheart" (in four part harmony) to sing along on the anniversaries. Then he decided we should learn few Christmas Carols for the holidays. This was really getting out of hand. Before our voices finally changed, we had sung for the Houston Shriners, Kitirik, MariJanes Magic Castle & The Roy Rogers show on local TV. We even had a customer write to Ed Sullivan and tell them they should audition us.(Although nothing came of it) It was fun but we did get tired of it. George still sang with his guitar and would have the women crying when he sang the song named "Honey." He was good. A natural. Kind of let it go to his head so he was hard to be around sometimes. We finally disbanded, and George left home at sixteen to pursue a singing career. Well that and the fact that he and my dad were both as hard headed as rocks, rarely got along together at this point. My dad had a ferocious temper. One time George took a stand on something and my dad got so furious he went after George with a baseball bat. Thank goodness George could run faster than my dad, even with a bum leg. Wasn't long after that George left. He actually joined a group and traveled the northeast U.S. making a living in music. That made him our hero. (my brothers & I ). This was the mid seventies, when the best music ever was being made, in my opinion. When he was in town I would try and hang out with him because it always meant chicks were around. He was always trying to brush me off, like I was some kind of a groupie. Come on, he wasn't that big yet. That life didn't last long. Once he realized how tough it was to make a living, he broke down and got a regular job. Eventually, he got into computers and did that until he passed in 2004 working at the University of Houston. Unfortunately I didn't know George that well when he died. He was always a loner and didn't have much to do with the family for years. I hope he was happy.

For those who might be thinking it's too late to start over..

At the age of 55 I decided to make some major changes in my life. Try a new career, move to a new state, settle down with a new lady , which I never thought I would do again. I kept having this nagging feeling of, "there just has to be more for me in this life". Was I scared to make all of these changes? Hell yes. But excited at the same time. There is a power, a source, God, whatever you want to call him right there that has got your back. (Sometimes you question that but that's ok.) Just keep talking to him. I just turned 59 last month and I have had my challenges the past couple of years, (some pretty major ones) and trying to say this without sounding like I'm bragging, but I have handled it much better than I think I might have, had I known ahead of time what my obstacles were going to be. Am I financially successful yet? NO. As a matter of fact, so far that part really sucks, but could be worse.Will I ever be? In my opinion? YES. Am I happy in my new city. YES. Am I happy in my new marriage? Positively YES. Have I accomplished everything I would like to do? Absolutely not. The point Im trying to make is I am so much more happy going after what I love to do. I still have doubts, fears of the unknown, questions on how or if its going to work out before I make my exit. But when I do take that last breath, I'll be able to say,"I gave it my best shot". I realized money is not what gives me happiness, (although I would like a bank full of it), Waking up and being excited about what I'm going to be doing with my day is what lights my fire.

Don't get me wrong, it's not easy, but is it easy where you're at right now?

Did I wait to late to start anew? I can say without a doubt, NO. At least for me. Everyone is different and you need to make a plan, (I worked on my new business 6 years on the side before I made the move), but at least think about it. Time in this life will run out. Fear of the unknown is paralyzing sometimes. It is scary. But it's also exciting. And in my opinion, the worst thing you can do is to live your life the way someone else thinks you need to live it, or just to make them happy. This is your life. No matter where I go from here, I gave it a try. Question: Do you know how long you'll live? You may have plenty of time to do whatever it is you want to do. Just decide to start being happy. LIVE! Do your best to smile.

Tough to make a buck..

There were no such things as allowances, well at least not where I grew up. You wanted money, you go out and work for it. My six brothers and I would do all the jobs our dad had us to do around our house, and we got clothes, food and a roof over our head as my dad put it. If we wanted spending money we had to go out and work elsewhere, (mowing yards, painting, trimming trees, picking up soda pop bottles people threw from their cars to get the deposits for them at the store, three cents a piece if I remember correctly.) You could mow two acres of grass for six to ten dollar, depending on how many shrubs there were to mow around and trim. And the ones I hated the most would let the grass get six inches tall or more before they would have you cut it and THEN not want to pay you extra because it was twice as long as it should have been before you mowed. Once while negotiating how much extra it would be with one older neighbor ladies who was a real tightwad. And to make it worse, she had horses and in the summer the horse shit smell around her place was something awful. Anyway without realizing it a snake had wound around my right leg and when I felt something on my leg I reached down to scratch it or shoo it a way is when I realized it was a snake I would guess about three feet long, looking right at me. Well, needless to say I did a one legged dance that has never been duplicated since to shaking that thing off my leg. She walked out calmly and picked it up by the tail and threw it about 15 feet. She said " it's only a garden snake". I didn't care what kind of snake it was, I then priced the lawn mowing job so high, she turned me down. Needless to say snakes are not one of my favorite reptiles. It was tough to make a buck back then.

Pivotal Day

At age 7, I did what all boys my age did. I ran, climbed, rode my bike whenever I had one that would work. I didn't realize it a at the time or for many years after, that this particular day would be a very pivotal day in my life. My dad had placed a two by six inch plank between these two oak trees about 12 feet apart, and centered a birdhouse in the middle of it. Little did I know at the time how much that day would play such a large part in my life. It really ended up playing a big part of who I would be in so many ways. I will explain what exactly I mean. It's all 20/20 hindsight now, but it makes sense to me.

I was so impressed with the way the birds were able to fly into such a small hole to build a nest for the eggs they would lay, then a minute later fly out to get more straw. And the colors of the birds were so bright.

After watching this one bird go in and out so many times, I got this great idea I would catch it and make a pet out of it. So I proceeded to climb one of the oaks and made it to the plank the birdhouse was attached to. I thought I would slide out next to the birdhouse be very still and once the bird took more straw in I would reach in and grab it. My plan was working perfectly. I had slid out the plank and waited patiently. All of a sudden there he was. He landed on the round perch and went into the hole. I immediately stuck my hand in to grab my new feathered friend and thats when things started falling apart quickly. The first thing I noticed was the bird pecking at my fingers.  I think it startled me more than it hurt. When I tried to pull my hand out of, what seemed a much smaller hole, I couldn't get it out. The more at tugged at it the looser the house became. The next thing I knew, the birdhouse and I were headed for the ground. First the birdhouse, then me landing on top of it, head first. Dazed and not knowing which way was up, I looked up to see my dad running for me. He had been working across the yard on the roof for a one story apartment he was building for my mom's sister who was a quadriplegic. He saw me fall. I knew I was probably in big trouble because I should not have been up there messing with the birdhouse. I tried my best to stand up and act like I was ok, but I knew I wasn't and my dad knew better too. The last thing I remember was him swooping me up in his arms and I passed out.

The next thing I recall is walking out of my dad's office. He was a Chiropractor, had his office in our home. My Aunt Jackie was sitting in the living room with my mom and as she looked at me, she said "Boy you look like you've been in a fight."

My mom got up and hugged me and everyone was making a fuss over me and I'm thinking this is pretty cool getting all of this attention. Something you didn't often get, growing up in a large family. Little did I know what I was in for. For the next two years I fought migraine headaches that you wouldn't believe, For months after the fall, my fingers would not work very well and when I pressed down on anything it hurt all the way up my arm. I had been taking piano lessons when this happened and my dad insisted that I keep taking lessons. I remember being so mad at him for making me practice, knowing it was so painful. But he knew that it was good PT and as it turned out, I eventually gained full use of my fingers and could play the piano pretty good as well. For months I would sleep holding my right arm upright at the elbow because if I laid it down flat it would just throb and throb. My mom said even long after I had healed, I would sleep with that arm like that. But the thing I hated most was that I did not grow one fraction of an inch in height for over two years. Do you know how humiliating it is to get hand me downs from your little brothers. Or that all of your classmates just keep getting taller and you don't? I finally did start to grow again at a regular rate, but I was running two years behind. My fourth grade teacher was also the librarian. Every once in a while she would ask for a couple of volunteers to come help put returned books back on the shelves and help her get things organized. So one morning she asked for volunteers and as usual I would raise my hand because everyone wanted to get out of the regular classroom for something different to do. I must have really been exuberant, because she looked at me and said "John put your hand down. Your too short to help with this." I shrunk back down into my seat and felt so humiliated. I hated that women from that day on.  I regress, the reason I wrote this to begin with is because of how much that day affected my life as I aged. Even though I recovered to the point of doing just about anything physical I needed to do I always had to deal with headaches and neck issues which were taken care of by a combination of aspirin and chiropractors. Until the age of 56 when I woke up with a pain like I've never experienced. For the past 4 years I have been unable to work at any job that required much of any physical effort. I have just recently went through a second spine surgery and will need a few more months before I am ready to get back at it again. I already feel much stronger than I have in years and things look pretty good now. But having so much time to think lately, I couldn't help but wonder which way my life would have gone had that one event when I was seven had not occurred.

Funny, with all this time on my hands lately, I haven't had the urge once, to do any bird watching. Im an actor now and I really love it. I've been working on it for about 15 years. This has been and will be my pursuit from now on. Because its what I love to do. I recommend to anyone, "If you're not doing what you love doing, start doing it today". You wont regret it.