Dear Roger;So I Name Inanimate Objects, That Doesnt Make Me Weird, Thats Just Texan

Chance and I had a bit of a discussion last night over the fact that he is of the opinion I am a bit ,"Odd". Now I may be, and thats fine, I own my oddness or weirdness and thats always been something I am proud of, but he tries to claim that I am embarrassing him and ruining his,'Game". I tend to remind him that he is 14 years old and as such, she should not even have a ,"Game" yet, as he cant drive and isn't allowed to date yet, so there is no,"Game" to be worried about, but he still finds me embarrassing, and I guess that some of my behaviors might be a bit off-putting to teens, but it could be worse. I am not getting arrested and ending up on COPS, I dont run around with my boobs hanging out or wearing booty shorts and hitting on his friends, I am not a drunk, out at the bars every night of the week, staggering home with a different flavor of the week boyfriend. Nope, I just do things like wear the wrong clothes, do my hair the wrong way, get a little wound up on occasion and twitch or stutter when I am angry or nervous,listen to the wrong music, and I tend to give inanimate objects names.

I have had the nickname,"Calamity" for many, many, years, and I dont have a problem with it. I write under that name on a few websites, and its a long running source of humor with people who know me and the life that I have led, so it is more of a compliment to me than a source of shame, and when I am playing a 1:1combat game I use it because its fun to go in and kick some guys tail, take all his goodies and then let him find out that a middle aged chick is running that name. My favorite truck was named,'Wild Bill", and it was an awesome truck that survived rolling down the side of the I-40, 4 times in a blizzard into a ravine, without killing me, and I even drove it for a few months after that until a dumb ass roommate wrecked it on the way back to Yuma. My favorite pistol was named,"Duke" and that was a truly wonderful .45 that I still miss. Now my home security consists of a Louisville slugger that is named ," Major Jack" and when Chance asked me why I call it that I told him that if I ever had to his anyone with it they were going to get majorly jacked up, and he just groaned and shook his head. I actually had a hell of a swing with the expandable baton when I was a deputy and it was my favorite go to weapon. My favorite boots are,'the guys" and what is funny is that my other kids know what I am talking about when I ask them to go get,"the guys" for me. My BOB had a name, but im not gonna go into that, it was really private and since he is no longer with us due to the unfortunate accidental abandonment and then discovery by my ex, I will just mourn him quietly and smoke a cigarette in his memory while I shop online for a replacement.

Oddness,weirdness, and strangeness has been a part of me my whole life. I have always been ,'Different" and strange and weird and I kinda like it that way, and when kinds used to try and use that as a way to hurt me when I was in school, I just got weirder and pushed their boundaries a little further. I was a pretty tough fighter for being a bit of a runt, because I tend to lose my mind when pushed too far or when someone hits me first, but most of the time I was able to just dazzle them with the fact I could out think them and talk my way out of any problems. My son thinking I am weird is normal, hes a boy and I actually think hes pretty weird, but then that is the nature of the beast. He does a lot of things I find disturbing and distressing and just plain gross and strange, but that other parents of teen, adolescent and even 20something y/o boys tell me that is perfectly normal, but YECH! Some things I just didn't want to know or observe first hand or find in the laundry.

Dear Roger;Blind and Clueless? Even My Sis? What The Hell Happened?

Well, I dont know what has happened, but apparently I am the only adult left in my family that even attempts to try and keep up with what the kids are interested in and involved in or listening to anymore. I just dont get it. When you were around, you knew what I was into, HELL! You took me for my first mohawk! and you encouraged me to listen to all types of music and try all kinds of new stuff and check stuff out.You didn't discourage me from my photography and even looking beyond the common stuff like Ansel Adams, though when mom found out that I was more into the really off the wall images like Mapplethorpe and stuff she wanted to shoot you for a little while, but she never really got the whole appeal that I found in the body studies in the black in white images, so she was just squicked out by me seeing naked guys I think, but then again she never understood why I always gravitated towards the odder stuff when I grew up in a small Texas town where that stuff wasn't talked about, and it was because I wasn't held back in the summers I was around you and grandma and grandpa and it did me a huge service! I still have a love of the new and the different and the fun and the adventure of life and all that is to be seen out there in the big wide world, and I love all types of music and art and literature and going and seeing and doing, and I am trying to imbue my kids with that same idea, that there is a whole wide world out there and they should get out and try a little of many different cultures and ideas so they dont have such a narrow view of the world that they stop seeing.

I will admit that there are some things that I do tend to be a bit narrow minded about, and usually its things that might come back to hurt my kids, or that could potentially be detrimental to their well being, but I really do try hard to get past any learned or developed prejudices that I have gained over the years, and as a former cop from a border state, yes, I did develop some prejudices and issues due to experiences that I had on a personal level, and it has been very, very hard to get past them and see some people as individuals and not as the same group that I handled for drug dealing or robbing or murdering or assaulting innocent people, and someone throwing a child at you so they could escape with drugs tends to leave a scar on your psyche, but I am working hard to get past that image in my head so I do not pass it on to my kids.

The rest of my family has not been so open-minded though and that kinda bugs me. I have Pookie who I still think of as my Aunt even though she is all the way back home in Thailand now, and her two daughters are my adopted family members, and even though they aren't my blood kin, they are my family and I consider them just as important. Ali is half Iranian, and her father is never far from my mind though I know we will never be together again, I miss the times we had together and he was an important part of my life. I have had a wide variety of friends and acquaintances and even dated men from exotic locations,(much to my parents dismay), and even men much,much younger than me,(much to my kids dismay), and I think all the variety has made me a well rounded person who is more willing to consider the struggles that others may be going through, and that perhaps im just a little bit more forgiving.My attitude towards many things has changed over the years, and I have become more liberal as I have gotten older, and I think that just comes with realization that its just not worth ruining some kids life over a damn joint, or if they want to be just as miserable as straight people with all the hassles of divorce and that crap, then hell, let em. I could never go back to being a cop because I simply could not rack some kid up over a little weed, though when it comes to meth or driving drunk, I would every time. There are many things that I just dont feel are any of my damn business, like what celebrity is sleeping with who, and where they were seen or any of that stuff, I believe that they need to be left the hell alone when they aren't working. Chance told me about some video he saw on the news about that poor Pattinson kid getting jammed up by the photo rats and that the cops refused to help him , and I wished like hell I was those damn cops supervisor because they would been walking the graveyard shift in the ghetto for the rest of their very short careers for such piss poor public service. I dont buy magazines or watch those kinda shows or crap because it annoys me that people harass kids like that until they make them crazy. I did security for a bit, and I got to see just how nuts it gets and it could be very easy to come to hate folks in a very short while, many people have no manners and no common sense and when you mix booze and libido into it, things get out of hand real quick, oddly enough especially amongst the damn women! The worst I ever had to deal with was a drunk chick that thought she was going backstage no matter what" and no short little dyke looking cop wannabe was gonna stop her" .I really enjoyed that take down, and I swear, suit casing someone that outweighs you and is taller than you by a good 5 inches and then dragging them 20 feet to a cop car should not be as fun as that was, but hell, I was easy to please back then and the pay was great.

I sent the picture of Stevie with Jackson Rathbone, to mom and dad and sis, yesterday and I get a call from mom asking me,"How in the hell did you get Chance wrestled into a suit and smiling?" and I was confused for a bit., What are you talking about momma? Chance doesn't have a suit and last I saw him he was still scowling at me for daring to wake him up before noon. "Well the PICTURE you sent us" she says sounding all annoyed, like I had lost what few marbles I have left. "Hes got his arm around Stevie?....Whos that in the background too?" Now she sounds annoyed at me. Momma... thats NOT Chance! "What! Oh dont be silly, the picture you sent just yesterday!" Momma....can you pull up the picture again?now IM getting annoyed, "Jennifer, I think I know my own grandson!Those dimples! and Stevie is in it in some parking lot, he needs to shave by the way. Are you letting him grow a beard or something? hes really looks better without all that fuzz hes looking thin, is he eating? MOM! pull up the DAMN PICTURE! THATS NOT CHANCE! now my sister gets on the phone, " Heeeey Beyaaach, moms showin me some picture of Chance and Stevie in a parking lot, what the deal?" Sis, are you wearing your glasses? "Nah, I only need them for driving". BULLLLSHIT! go get your damn glasses. "'You dont have to yell, hang on im putting them on...ohhh who the hell is that boy?" now my moms back," Who is that kid with his arm around Stevie and where is Chance?" Chance ran off with the band, Stevie wanted to and I am now insane, dang it mom! I told you guys for over a month that we were going to a concert of the 100 Monkeys and that is Jackson Rathbone. My mom says,"Who is that? and is promptly echoed by my younger than me sister. Go ask Bailey Joe, I gotta go have a beer. "So this isnt Chance? No mom, he wont be caught dead in a suit and he doesn't smile, he prefers the brooding/sullen & skinny jean/rock t-shirt with orange clown fro look.

I may be getting older, and I may have recently realized that I need to wear my goofy looking circular framed, trifocal(Jesus wept) glasses more than I can got without them, but I do stay up on most of the current things in my kids lives, and even if I dont particularly care for their style or type of music or movie, or dress, I do at least pay attention and see if its something that they should be involved in, that is how I know that I dont allow anything like reality based crap like Jersey Shore on in my home, and that Brokencyde really annoys the snot outta me but that Chance likes them like I liked Ozzy. Black Veil Brides is not my favorite, but I will most likely be buying tickets to their show here in the next little bit because he really wants to go. The Warped Tour is another thing we are looking into and as long as he keeps an open mind and is willing to consider my favorites as well, we will keep up with the sharing, even if it means I buy the tickets and he pretends he doesnt know who I am once we get to the show, I expect him to return the favor when we go to shows that I want to act a little nuts at in the future, I behaved myself really well at this last show, and I was in "Mom" mode, but it was not easy because a raging fan was lurking under the surface just dying to escape, though never in front of my kids.

Dear Roger:Revocation of A Man Card, and As Good as I Once Was

Today started off with a groaned out,"Fuuuuuuuuucccccckkkkk." and an attempt to bury my head under the pillow until I realized I could not breathe,followed by the sound of the reason I could not breathe, the damn landscapers were back, mowing and hedging and blowing crap all over the place until my once hibernating allergies had come back to very angry and surly life. I felt much like I would have felt as a younger woman fresh from a concert and night of drunken debauchery, but there was a couple of things missing! Mainly the drunken and the debauching, there was nary a willing young man to debauch to be found and I was home and sober and behaving by no later than 9pm, so as best I can figure is,I just overdid it a bit with the move of all the furniture the other day and then hiking all over hell and half of Portland finally caught up with me. Plus I didn't eat or drink anything but 3 cups of coffee from 0900 in the morning until 9pm that night, except for a couple of slugs of Dr. Pepper and a couple of slugs of water, so I was a bit dehydrated and hungry. Carrying Stevie a couple of blocks didn't do me any favors either, because she may be a tiny little thing, but she is freaking solid and almost half my body weight!

I discovered that I need a little more padding on my scrawny ass before I go sitting on wooden beams for an extended period of time, especially if my goofy ass is going to be jamming and dancing about, because I have very interesting bruises on both lower butt cheeks and its not a lot of fun to try and sit on a hard surface.

Today was mostly spent laying around being a slug and talking to family and rubbing a very jealous nieces nose in Stevie's little moment, though not too meanly though, I did send her a copy of the picture and a few of the concert pictures, because Bailey Joe was the one that was the first fan in the family, and as tall as that girl is getting, I dont want to be on her bad side because she is as mean as a broke backed snake and if we go back to Texas for a family reunion, she might just kick my ass, she is after all,my sisters daughter and she comes by all that meanness honestly. Her question was,"Waaallll Helll Aunty Jen, Why didn't you just grab him up and toss him in the truck and bring him on round here, hes not so very big, you coulda took em." To which I replied,"One-Stevie would kicked my ass, Two-BAILEY JOE! Does your momma know you talk that way? Three- No truck" and she just busted out laughing and said,'Of Course my momma knows I talk this way, where they heck do you think I learned it?" We had a good chat back and forth for a bit and then I went and just hung out in my bedroom for big chunk of the day until Chance got home.

My son wasn't in much better shape and he complained that not having money to eat or drink all day before the concert really sucked, and I agreed with him, so my number one project this next week is to close out my old bank account and keep my ex from having any access to it at all so we dont get caught short like that ever again. I would have loved to have gotten Stevie a t-shirt at the concert, but that was impossible and I kinda resent my ex for that, as well as costing me the ability to take her to dinner, so I am fixing the problem once and for all. Hes going to have to manage to take care of his bills on his own because I have bills I have to take care of and I cannot support him. I made it on my own, supporting 4 kids and a vastly more expensive house payment, so he needs to man up.

Speaking of,'Manning up" pooor Chance, we may butt heads pretty hard, but we always seem to be able to tease and joke with each other pretty easily in the good times, and when he got back today I started right back in on him. Soo son, get your "Man Card" re-validated by hanging out with your buddies and beating on rocks and sticks? "Shut up! Mom! Jeesh, that crap wasn't funny, and I still do not believe you that you didn't know there weren't gonna be any guys there!" But son, there were guys there the fellas in the band are guys and then there were those two guys in front of us,oh wait, never mind the two guys in front of us, but the guys in the band were there, but wait a minute, I want to make sure you are clear after that whole "Criminal Minds" episode..."JESUS!!! MOM!!!! STOP!!!! OH.MY.GOD!!!! Im leaving, im going to Susan's, shes not so weird." Im just saying son, he is a cute lil thing and if your feeling confused there are... 'MOM! SHUT UP!! OMG! I have teased him off and on all day, though its been on a wide variety of topics related to the whole day. But I could not resist getting him on the whole masculinity worry one more time this afternoon when he came walking into the living room,scratching and burping and trying to act all caveman, guylike until I went to change the channel off,"Icarly"."Why are you changing the channel?" Because "Icarly" is coming on and your sis is busy reading to her stuffies and doesn't care. " Well, I wanna watch it, thats like one of my favorite shows". Say what? "I love that show, its cool." And then it dawned on him what he had just admitted, and to whom he had just admitted it to. Just hand it over. "What?" Your man card, and dont you ever bitch at me again about going to a concert I pick, because I will out you on every single social media/networking/teen place in existence as an "Icarly" fan the minute you do.

Dear Roger, Stevie Rae is in Love With A Monkey, and to Tell the Truth Im Crushing a Little Myself!

Well we made it to BOTH concerts and back home in one piece, though it was quite the adventure! Stevie did not quit singing and hopping around the house singing the praises of the guys in the band until after 11pm, when she abruptly fell asleep in a pile of her stuffed animals, still clutching the monkey t-shirt that she has advised me that I am never to wash again because Jackson Rathbone touched it when he posed for a picture with her at the Voodoo doughnuts acoustic show that they put on before the concert at Doug Fir.

We left the apartment at 1200 and headed to downtown Portland because we weren't sure exactly where the acoustic show was going to be, and I had written down directions off the internet, but being that I cant seem to find my butt with both hands in this city yet, we weren't exactly sure where we were going, so we ended up walking a few miles out of our way. Stevie Rae was a good sport about it though, she was soo excited about the possibility of meeting her hero that I probably could have told her were were marching to Arizona and she would have been up for it. I ended up calling the shop to make sure we were headed to the right place and luckily we got some good information and we ended up in the right part of town at the right time by just pure dumb luck and she ended up getting to sit in the very front row at the acoustic set, less than 10 feet away from the band. She was so excited she was squealing and almost vibrating and she was blushing and hiding her face like she was a freaking teenager! I was a bit disturbed to see just how much she freaked out over the boys, but I am hoping she was just amped up over the whole vibe that was going on in the crowd. I was pretty happy myself and I really enjoyed the music, and I am not gonna lie, there was not an ugly one in the bunch, so have a group of good looking, in fact strikingly handsome fellas to look at, made my whole week. They gave out free Cd's after the show was over and we headed out to walk back to the Doug Fir, but then I thought, "This is a once in a lifetime chance for her, she is such a huge fan and they seem like such nice guys, I will kick myself if I dont try" so I nutted up, embarrassed Chance to death and walked over and asked Jackson Rathbone if he would take a picture with her. He never faltered, he was so damn kind and nice and gracious and polite that I have to say, it sure shows that that boy has some damn good parents who did some good home training, because he was soo sweet to my baby. He posed with her with his arm around her at her level and he smiled really big and it just made her whole year! I thanked him and HE. TOUCHED.MY. SHOULDER! (end of fangirl moment)and I held it together until we left the parking lot and then I SQUEED loud enough that Chance wanted to find a hole and hide in it. 'MOM!" Hes young enough to be your SON! Thats GROSSS! siiiiiiighhhhh....such a buzz kill

Anyway, we walked back to Doug Fir and got in line for a couple of hours for the paid show, with Stevie soo buzzed up and high on Jackson vibe that she was bouncing all over the place and eager to get inside and be close again, it was like she was on some kind of weird crack or something and im pretty worn out tonight from trying to keep her from driving everyone in line crazy with her antics. She looked up at me once and said,"Mom, I kinda love him." with the most serious expression on her face, and I said,"Really? weelllll, Im sorry sis, but I have a very strict No boys until you finish college, rule that I will enforce no matter what or who, so talk to me after you graduate from Texas A&M in about 15 years." she looks at me and just says,"Oh".

Poor Chance was pretty much the only straight guy in the line to get into the concert. He was teased by some of the girls in the line and he begged me for a railpass so he could go back home without us, but I wasn't about to let him leave and ride all the way back to Gresham Station alone. After we got our Will call tickets he saw a couple of guys show up and he kinda perked up and even pointed out that he wanted to do his hair like one of them, but he quickly changed his tune and turned kinda sullen when they started making out with each other in front of him. I asked him if he still wanted to do his hair that way and he just glared at me, I guess he didn't find that amusing. He did like the band and he was really impressed with their musical ability, and it amused him to see that Rathbone had the same,"I like Boobies" wristband that he has. He pointed it out to me and said,'Great minds think alike".BOYS!

Stevie and I sat up on one of the log rails that extended from the upper deck so she wouldnt get stepped on and we could both see the show. My tailbone has a bruise on it from sitting on the hardassed thing for the entire show like a damn horse, but she was able to enjoy herself and even dance and wave to the guys and interact a bit. They smiled at her and she just giggled and came alive unlike anything I have seen since before we left Flagstaff!No sadness, no tears, no,"I miss..., just happy, we all were, even Chance,(though he would rather not admit it), it was a much needed shot in the arm of joy and fun and I thank those boys from the bottom of my heart.

Dear Roger,Adjusting to the Portland way of Mind

Last night was the first night spent in the new place. It was nice to be able to kick back and relax, watching "True Blood" on tv and not worrying that the really over the top weird shit that was going on was going to freak someone out, but it was also kinda sad to be away from my friends as I have kinda adopted them as our family.My friend Sus's parents are like how I wish my folks had been, doting grandparents and kind and concerned and involved and genuinely loving, and I miss having Sus to just sit and chat with in the evening.

We decided to turn the laundry area into private quarters for the Stinky Princess! Its a perfect area for her, it has shelves for her stuffed monkeys, as well as her boots and books, and there is room for a bed and desk and even a little tv/dvd combo if she so desires. Out of all of all of us, she is adjusting the best to all the upheaval in our lives. She has decided that she has adopted Sus and her family as her own and now Sus is her 'Aunt" and her parents are her new grandparents that she has never really had before. She flitted around that house like a fairy on speed, amped up on all the Twizzlers and Popsicles that they fed her and drew them pictures, danced for them and even sang the impromptu songs that she made up.I know she is going to miss the nightly performances with Sus's husband out on the back deck, singing along while he played guitar. She has quite the voice for a 6 year old and she is completely freaking fearless, so I have no doubt she is going to wow the new school she is going into this fall, and I am probably going to enroll her in piano lessons and maybe ballet if I can find a local studio, because she is a force of nature that needs an outlet. She is practically vibrating in anticipation of the 100 Monkeys concert that we are going to on the 28th, and I am just a little worried about trying to take someone that is only 3ft tall to a show that is going to be full to hormonally challenged tweens who will probably not give a damn if they run the hell over a small child. I am hoping that with Chance with me, he will be a good "Head of Security" for her and will help me keep her safe and protected from all the freaky hysteria because I would hate to go to jail in Portland for thrashing some heifers for hurting my baby.She wants to be up close, but I dont think that is going to be possible, I am going to just try to get her a spot so she can see and hear and hold her on my shoulders if I have to .

Chance and I have butted heads pretty much constantly. He seems to have developed the habit that my ex had of constantly criticizing me. He had to make snarky comments about pretty much all the furnishings I got, he didn't like the apartment because there is no pool, and it just seems that nothing I do is right or enough and I have started snapping back at him just like I did at my ex and just like my ex he has started trying to intimidate me and I called him on it. Last night he punched the wall right next to my head, and considering he is 5'9 and 170 and I am 5'0 and 105 in my socks, its just him trying to use his size to get what he wants and when I stepped towards him instead of cowering and asked,"Are you going to punch me?" he said,"Maybe you need punching." and I told him "Go ahead, punch me, I am used to it, Ive been punched alot, I can take it. Maybe it will make you a man like it did him, maybe it will make your life better, maybe if hitting me doesn't make you feel better you can punch your baby sister, shes alot smaller than you too and that should really make you feel like a man. Is that what you learned in Texas? Because none of the MEN I knew in Texas proved themselves men by hitting the women in theirs lives, but since you were in Arizona so long maybe you are more an Arizona boy than a Texas boy. Go ahead, hit me, whats one more bruise or scar or concussion?" He just looked at me and then went in his room and locked the door. I have been trying to find a physician up here for him and I am demanding that he get into counseling for all the issues that we have been through, because with all the anger he has floating around, he needs some help before he follows through and does hit me, because I have seen it in his eyes that he wants to strike out sometimes and that worries the hell out of me.

My little family has alot of issues to deal with, the least of which is learning to navigate the streets and cityscape of Portland, but we are starting to work on them and hopefully we will sort them out in time and adjust to all the new issues that seem to haunt us from our old life. Doing without all the luxuries that we had in our old house, such as our flat screen and our surround sound and my Cuisinart coffeemaker and my big ole fancy plantation style queen bed that was soo tall I had to hop up to get in it with the nice comfy memory foam topper that was 6 inches thick and all my pillows. I miss my art work and my barn wood tables and my Texas decor and Hatch green chilies and good tortillas and NOT hearing my neighbors getting what I have not gotten for such a DAMN.LONG.TIME....yes, I had forgotten that one of the joys of apartment living is that you can often hear your neighbors getting some, and apparently my neighbor needs to adjust the headboard on their bed or tighten it.

Dear Roger;Apparently I am "Freaking Know it All"

"Geek, Nerd,Annoying Pain-in-the-Ass, gamekilling Know it all", these are all names I was called before I was finally banned from all board games with friends and family. I am no longer allowed to play any form of Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble, or any game that involves knowledge of words, language, obscure facts, or even pop culture or strategy! W.T.F.? I am not even allowed to play checkers because I,"over-think" the moves and beat the snot out of everyone I play against and they all want to throw the board after a few games against me. I break out a few words in Russian or Latin or even Italian or French and then challenge the rule interpretation on a couple of games, and all of the sudden no one wants to play with me.

Chance led the movement to ban me from the games,calling me a ,"Freak" that knows way too much weird, obscure shit about too many things and he claimed that I am obsessive about making sure things are correct and that I get annoyed when people get things wrong and I would just get sullen if too many trivia facts were screwy within the game,(as they often are) and that I would waste a bunch of time proving the game info wrong. When the hell did he observe all my so called obsessions? He claims that I am a such a nerd that I am too good at too many things and that I just ruin things for,"normal people" and that I shouldn't be able to play. It really hurt my feelings and I pointed out that I am not good at math and he just rolled his eyes and huffed at me,"because you choose to have a block about equations, but you KNOW all kinds of weird mathematical shit because of Amir and you have a basic grasp of Ring Theory and thats just freaky, so dont even go there", so then I reminded him that I cant read music and that just pissed him off and he yelled at me,"yeah, because you freaking play by ear whatever you want after you hear it once or twice and you can pick out each individual instrument in a damned song and tell if its real or electronic and you can tell when someone is flat or just off and you know more than 10 different guitarists just by how they freaking sound on a couple of chords!" GIVE IT UP! Just go read something like freaking Scientific American or whatever and let us lowly mortals play our simple games and be happy!

I kept muttering at him about my failings, such as grammar and punctuation or my fashion faux pas such as wearing boots all summer long and the hideous gray wifebeater, and I was promptly told that idiosyncrasy and refusal to participate in the rules of English writing as a result of my personal revolt against the APA and MLA style Nazis does not equal humanity. Not even my perpetually screwed up hair issues got me any leverage, but then I played my trump card, my guaranteed in, proof that I am human and prone to weakness and incapable of handling one aspect of life, imperfect and fouled up beyond all repair! I.CANNOT. FIND. A. MAN!

"aww geeze, I guess we should let her play". We found most of the Scrabble pieces after the board hit the wall 20 minutes later.

Dear Roger, Texas Boys Lead Lives of Alley Cats

Well crap! Im loving life up here in the Northwest Territories and im even going to the coast this Friday for some fun on the beach, though I hear the water is cold enough to shrivel the balls right off my teenage son, and I have been slowly but surely getting stuff moved into the new apartment and getting things set up so we will be fully moved in and settled at the first of the month,so I am pretty damn happy. I did make the mistake of reading my hometown,Mt P.TX, newspaper last night online though and I saw that a fella I knew growing up had passed away, and while his death at the age of 35 was a bit shocking, it was reading his obituary that really took me to my knees and left me crying as if my heart had been ripped to pieces.

Growing up in East Texas, I got into come crazy assed stuff, it was just the nature of the beast. We all either had pick up trucks or muscle cars or some form of transportation that led us to all kinds of mischief around the oilfields and I ran with a crowd that was a mixture of stoners,cowboys,poor white trash, and oilfield trash. We would go park out by the Sulphur River Bottom and drink beer and listen to music and do all kinds of crazy stuff, including racing our vehicles, jumping off bridges, and just being wild Texas country kinds, and one of those kids was a boy I always called,"Sleepy" because he had this slow-assed, lazy nature and drawn out, almost asleep, way of talking that would just about make you crazy, and by the time Jay got done saying something, we all had pretty much forgotten what the hell his point was. He was a cute kid with dark eyes and the typical dark skinned, dark hair of an almost coon ass and my sis even dated him for a while. He was a bit of a smart ass, pretty cocky, but also sweet and easy going and funny as hell and he was always around when there was a party or something to get into. I liked him, and last time I remember seeking him he had grown up into a pretty decent looking man for someone that was a couple of years younger than me, but like most of my other running buddies from back home, I had lost track of him and I figured that he had either gone on to work at the mines or in the oilfields or maybe if he was damn lucky, he had gone onto college, but last night I found out that none of those had happened for Jay because he is dead. There was no explanation in the paper as to what had happened to him, he was just listed as a previous decedent of the fella that had passed yesterday, but I cannot imagine what the hell happened to him. We lost quite a few boys out of our class in school; car accidents,accidental shooting,suicides,a hanging,and other just plain Texas style accidents, and then later war took a couple and we have a few doing life in the Pea farm for some pretty heinous shit, but Jay was not one to really be involved in anything too terrible. He drank, smoked a little green and was a goofball, but nothing that shoulda got him killed. My sis tells me some of the stuff that my watermelon headed nephew gets up to back home and I am amazed that that boy has lived to reach the age of 18, with all the truck racing and gun foolishness and his rich-assed, shit house mouse crazy friends that he runs around with getting him into all kinds of stuff, but he seems to have inherited the family blessing that none of us ever die violently,(even when we deserve it), and he has escaped some crazy stuff. Just this past weekend some of his goofy buddies decided to run from the lake patrol in their mega-cab pick up truck down some back roads and one of the boys decided to go from the front cab of the truck to the bed to throw out some evidence of some fuckery, and in doing so his foot slipped off the running board at 75 mph and he was drug for a bit until his other foot slipped and then he tumbled off and was turned into road pizza, ending up face down in the bar ditch, unconscious and unresponsive with multiple broken bones and missing a whole bunch of skin. His brilliant buddies decided that rather than leave him for the ambulance or the cops they would scoop and run with him to the hospital in the back of the truck.He lived, though he probably wishes he didn't due to the amount of skin he is missing in painful areas, but it just makes me ask,"How the hell to any of them ever fucking survive to procreate?" The next question is,'Wonder if those pictures of me hood surfing on my '73 Mustang with a Lone Star in my hand on the old long bridge over the Sulphur will ever surface?"

Jay was a good kid, Im willing to bet he was a pretty decent man, and most of the boys back home grew up into pretty decent men even with all the craziness, or because of if. I am sorry and saddened to see that so many of them have passed, though I am thinking the next generation is going to do a pretty damn good job of filling their boots.