Gooooo Joe! Go Far. Really, Really Far!

September 18, 2009April 23, 2010 ~ riggledo ~ 5 Comments

Last Sunday brought another outing with Little. He wanted to see GI Joe and his mother said it was OK, so I set it up. Our normal meeting time is 2:00 but because the movie started at 1:50, I arrived at his house at 1:15. I have a pet peeve about cutting things too close and I’m kind of particular about where I like to sit in a movie theater. I like to be in the top row whenever possible, because there always seems to be a little more leg room there, the next best option is the first row of the stadium seating area. I knew it would take about 15 minutes to get to the theater, I figured there’d be popcorn and drinks to be obtained and I wanted to make sure bladders were emptied prior to the start of the movie (particularly mine.)

When I arrived at Little’s apartment he was sitting on the living room floor with his brother playing a video game. He was wearing track pants and a t-shirt and I thought he was just ready and waiting for me, (I was about two minutes late). His mother said something to him in Spanish, but the only word I was able to make out was pantalones (pants). I thought that was strange because he looked ready to go to me, but he paused the game, got up from the floor and ran off to his room. His brother reset the game so he could continue playing on his own (He and his Big Brother go out on a different day).

That’s when I noticed it. The game they’d been playing was set in a warehouse of some sort. What’s shown on the screen is from the perspective of the character’s eyes. So you see the room around you, you see the boxes and crates that are spread about and you see the other characters in the game. Off in the distance you see a red cross-hairs and at the bottom of the screen is an assault rifle pointing ahead of you. The objective of the game is to put the cross hairs on the enemy characters and shoot and kill them. I asked Little’s brother who was winning and he shrugged and said, “I don’t know. You just shoot people.” The only thing that made me feel at all better was that twice as I watched him play the game, his character was shot by the bad guys and he died. Of course he just hit reset and started the game over so the consequences may not be really driven home, but at least it’s not just him running around killing other people.

Little re-emerged from the back of the apartment, having changed his clothes to blue jeans and a shirt with a zip up hoodie jacket. He also had his hair gelled and styled. His hair is cut such that he can have a “fauxhawk” and he wanted his mother to style it for him, it’s actually really cute, and I’m a little jealous. We got a late start because of this but we had plenty of time.

We arrived at the theater and there was a bit of a line, but nothing too bad. I asked him if he wanted to get something to drink but he said no. I asked him if he was sure and he said no again. Once we finally had the tickets and were inside the building I asked him if he needed to go to the bathroom. He hemmed and hawed about it a little bit until I said, “’Cause I need to go to the bathroom so we have to go in there anyway.” We both went and I was impressed when he went straight to the sink and washed his hands without me saying anything at all.

We walked past the concession stand after we left the bathroom and Little said, “OK. I changed my mind. I do want something.” I asked him what he wanted and he said he wanted popcorn. Last I checked you can’t drink popcorn, kid! I didn’t mind, I was going to offer that as well. So I got a small popcorn (In movie theater terms, small is relative) and two bottles of water. This was going to work out fine because I drink water more slowly than I do Diet Pepsi and I thought maybe I could make it through the whole movie without having to go back to the bathroom.

By the time we had our snacks and got to the door of the theater it was 1:52 and the previews had already begun. I was prepared to tell him to wait inside until our eyes adjusted to the dark but when we got inside there were only about six people in the whole theater. I let him pick the seats and he did a pretty good job.

I don’t know what Little weighs but he is still small enough that he has to sit in the back seat of the car. He ended up fighting for his life with the seat as it tried more than once to fold back up with him inside. I’m going to have to work out how I can help him with that.

We settled into our seats and started eating the popcorn while watching the previews and he was pretty funny. He would pick up one kernel of corn and put it in his mouth and immediately pick up the next one repeating this method over and over till his mouth was full and then he’d chew it. Whatever. He was happy and that’s what really matters.

Now, the movie… The movie was really pretty terrible. It was clearly all about the action, and there was a lot of action and I’m realizing that action isn’t enough for me. I like an action movie as much as the next… not terribly macho guy but I need more. K once told me she didn’t like a certain movie because, she said, “there was too much plot. I don’t like a lot of plot in my action.” (And no K, I’m not calling you a macho guy.) I am different though. If there’s no plot in my action the action isn’t worthwhile.

I’m honestly wondering if I have always been this way or if it’s a new development but, given the concerns I’ve raised previously with Little and his preoccupation with guns, I found myself far more acutely aware of the gratuitous death. It’s funny how we, as a society, tend to turn a blind eye to death and destruction in our “entertainment” as long as it’s the bad guys that are dying. Watching Fast & Furious, just the other day with Michelle, I actually cheered a little bit, at the end when the bad guy died. But in GI Joe there was a lot of the bad guys killing good guys (extras though they may have been) and there’s a scene where they’re driving through the streets of Paris and the bad guys are crashing into and flipping cars right and left, if not killing then at least injuring innocent civilians in their path. Putting aside, for a moment, that I would not have seen this movie to begin with if not for Little, I do not know if I would have been bothered (or as bothered) by this if Little hadn’t been there. In general, I felt that this movie was much too much for seven year old eyes.

But the plot, my God, the PLOT. The plot was riddled with as many holes as the characters lying dead or dying on the ground. I was left with so many questions and had I cared about the movie to begin with I’d have been terribly dismayed instead of just annoyed as I am.

Lesson number one for Kevin, when taking a seven year old to a movie, he will have to go to the bathroom at the height of the action. Little spent most of the movie staring intently at the screen barely speaking. I suppose it could have been very different. He could have talked through the whole thing. Every once in a while he’d say, “Whooa. That’s coooool!” but that was about it. I glanced over at him a few times and as the movie progressed and got more intense I noticed he had his index fingers in his mouth and he was rocking forward and back in his seat. I asked him if he was OK and he said he was. I thought maybe he was nervous. I didn’t know that this wasn’t just a thing he does, like sucking his thumb. But I had my suspicions about what it meant, and sure enough just as we were reaching a pivotal moment in the “story” he leaned over to me and said, “I have to go to the bathroom.” That was OK. I did too! But to this day, I do not know what happened to The President.

This week, we’re going to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs which seems much more up my—er, his alley. I’m actually looking forward to it and Little doesn’t know it, but we’re going to go see it in 3-D.

I had a check-in call with Hadley, the Match Support Specialist this week. They require it in the early stages of the match, but I wanted to talk with her anyway. I wanted to know, from Big Brothers and Big Sisters perspective if I was over-reacting to the gun thing. Hadley confirmed what I already suspected; that I can’t really say anything to Little’s mother or even to him as far as telling him that this is “bad”. But she also agreed that it’s unfortunate that he’s exposed to so much of it and that I should just keep an eye on it but make every effort to keep the focus of our time together off of such things. So I’m on the look-out for other things I can do with him. Thanks so much to Jody for some great thoughts in the comments on my recent post for things to do with Little. It was a great help. I’m open to more suggestions from any and all of you if you’ve got some insight you’d like to share!

On A Lighter Note

September 17, 2009April 23, 2010 ~ riggledo ~ 3 Comments

I have very few truly good childhood memories with my father, unfortunately, my parents divorced when I was two, but I was reminded today of one of them.

When I was a boy, my father used to take us to the drive-in movies, frequently to something completely inappropriate for my age. He took us to see Gotcha, a movie about a Cold War era college student who gets wrapped up in a spy game while on vacation in France and trying to lose his virginity to an exotic woman. From this movie, I learned that cool guys wear parachute pants and play paintball in the real world. I also saw my first pair of boobies. I was nine.

He took us to a double feature of Dragnet and The Untouchables. I remember sitting and watching Dragnet, and there was a “morning after” scene when Tom Hanks’ character rolls away from the woman in his bed and picks up a box on the night stand only to realize it is empty and hearing my Dad say, “oops.” I didn’t understand why. It wasn’t until years later that I realized it was a condom box. The Untouchables is a violent movie about Mob gangs with a lot of guns and violence. I was twelve.

I also remember going to a double feature of Bright Lights, Big City and Colors. Bright Lights, Big City was a Michael J Fox movie so how bad could it be? All I remember is Alex P Keaton running around the screen looking for his next fix. Colors is a movie about a couple of cops working in East Los Angeles, dealing with gangs. The movies tag line was “70,000 gang members. One million guns. Two cops.” I learned from this movie that real men say “fuck” a lot and that they have sex with the bad guy’s sister, or girlfriend, or something. I also learned that when the real man has sex with the bad guy’s sister or girlfriend or something, he is supposed to be on top and the sheet is supposed to be just barely high enough to conceal ass crack. Also, more boobies. I was still twelve.

It might sound like these are bad memories when I clearly stated this was a good memory. They’re really not bad memories. I sit here now, more than twenty years removed from these events and can clearly see what poor judgment my father had, but I enjoyed the movies well enough and clearly they had an impact on me for me to remember them so vividly all these years later… Oh, wait…

But there is more to these memories. What I remember so fondly, is not the movies we saw. There were others as this was something we did on a regular basis, but it is everything else about the outings that has stuck with me.

not jack — This is not exactly what Jack looked like, but it gives you an idea.

Long before I was even born, my father bought a Dodge Ram pick-up truck. It was, as I remember it, a monster of a vehicle (though I was young and small and my recollection is probably relative).

The truck was two-tone blue with Navy Blue on top and Baby Blue on the sides. Very apropos to the 1970’s I’d say. For reasons I do not recall, and may not have ever been aware, the truck had a name and its name was “Jack”. I called it “Jack-Jack” long before The Incredibles was ever conceived of. Jack had an extended cab with inward facing fold down jump seats in the back, sliding window in the rear windshield and a full length bed.

One of our favorite “family” activities was to make homemade pizzas. We would buy crust mix and spaghetti sauce and big bags of Mozzarella cheese. We’d buy pepperonis and Canadian bacon and black olives, mushrooms and green peppers. We’d chop up the vegetables and mix the dough, spread it out onto rectangular pans. I’d pour the sauce (usually too much and Dad would have to scoop some back up) and spread it around on the dough. Dad would generously sprinkle the cheese on top of the sauce and Erin, always the meticulous one, would place the toppings, always with the edges of the pepperonis touching each other (she never wanted to have anything to do with the Canadian bacon.) We’d toss the vegetables on top (again, leaving the olives off some of the pizza because Erin doesn’t like “little rubber washers” and they’d bake. I remember these pizzas being one of my favorite things to do at my Dad’s house.

The great thing about movie night was we combined two of my favorite things. As a “family” we’d shop at the store for the pizza ingredients. As a “family” we’d build these masterpieces and bake them to perfection. Then Dad would haul a huge ice chest out of the garage and while my step-mother, Georgia, would fill it with ice and cans of cold soda, cut the pizza and cover it with foil and pack paper plates and napkins and what ever else in a paper grocery sack, Dad would gather the folding lawn chairs and toss them in the back of the truck while Erin and I gathered pillows and blankets.

We’d all climb into Jack. I remember hating riding in the back of Jack, even then I was claustrophobic. Dad would fold the vinyl covered seat forward and I’d climb up and over and into the jump seat with Erin on the other side, each of us holding a warm delicious smelling pizza in our lap unable to dive in. Dad and Georgia would climb into the front seat and we’d be on our way.

I remember in the early days, drive-in movies were still fairly popular and we’d have to head toward the back of the lot to park the monster pick-up. In later years, we often got to park near the front of the lot. I always enjoyed that; I was too young to recognize it for the demise of the industry that it was. Dad would park Jack, facing away from the huge wall the movies would be projected upon and we’d set up shop. Dad and Georgia sat together in lounge chairs while Erin and I sat in upright chairs on the tail gate. We’d settle into our seats, situate the blankets and dig into the pizza and sodas.

I remember sitting in those chairs chowing down on those pizzas and watching the movies with such excitement. I always knew I’d never make it to the end. We made these outings in the summer time when “dusk” doesn’t happen until around 9:00 at night. By the time the second movie started at or after 11:00, there was no way I was going to last till it was over, and I rarely did, but it was fun all the same.

There is a company that runs a couple drive-ins in the bay area, one in Concord and one in San Jose, and they’re having a special event tonight; free entrance to the lot, therefore, free movies. They’re even showing movies I haven’t seen before, “Up” and “Night at the Museum 2”. I’d love to go, I’d love to recreate a little of my childhood. I’d love to take Little along, but alas, I do not have time to make a pizza. I do not have access to a pick-up truck and a car or the back of my SUV just would not be the same. And, it’s a school night. Oh and Little has to go to school tomorrow, too.

That home-made pizza sure sounds good though… Hmmm.

I’m OK.

September 17, 2009April 23, 2010 ~ riggledo ~ 7 Comments

Negativity sucks! I mean everyone is negative sometimes and it’s to be expected and it’s OK, but constant negativity sucks. I have a lot of negativity in my life, much of which I can’t control, so I try to control it wherever I can.

My work environment really sucks. There are five people in my office suite and for the most part we all dislike and barely tolerate each other. There’s constant negativity, often thinly veiled, sometimes completely blatant. I try not to take it personally. I try not to let it effect me. I try not to participate in it. I try to stay above it, beyond it. But it gets to me, a lot.

The negativity and sheer misery that my job brings has really begun to take its toll on me. I used to be able to block it out. I used to be able to leave it at the door. The awfulness that surrounds me at work sucked, but when I walked out the door to the office, I put it behind me and went about the rest of my life. Lately, I haven’t been able to do that and it’s really beginning to take its toll.

I’m trying to find a new job. I’m trying to find something that will satisfy and fulfill me. I’m coming up empty and I’m realizing that the seven and a half years that I’ve spent in my current job have been wasted. I have learned nothing. I’ve gained nothing. I have a title that doesn’t match my experience and skills. I have a salary that will be hard to duplicate, especially in this challenged economy. I need to make a change and I honestly just do not know what to do.

I decided I needed to look for something different from what I’m, well, what I’m not doing now. Six years of progressive advancement in Project Management when I’ve only managed one, very small project the entire time has prepared me for absolutely nothing. I’m expected to have experiences and skills and abilities that I simply do not possess because my job has never really given me that opportunity. I’m willing to take a step back. I’m willing to take a lower salary (though I don’t know how I’ll manage). I’m willing to start over, if I could just get the opportunity, but people see “Associate Project Manager” and expect me to be able to hit the ground running. People see that an “Associate Project Manager” is applying for, say, a Project Assistant position, or a Project Analyst position and they can’t understand why someone who is “clearly over-qualified” would want it and then they move on to the next resume.

So I sit in my chair, staring at my screen, desperately wishing I knew what to do, begging and pleading God for some sort of direction, a sense of what I should do. I’ve got nothing. And I’m trying so hard not to be a negative person, but my defenses are down and I’m being bombarded, it seems, from all sides.

I’ve eliminated as much of it as I can. I’ve un-followed nearly 100 People on Twitter, many because their negativity has been too much for me to handle. I was spending (wasting) way too much of my life on trying to stay up to date on my twitter feed and I finally realized that is just stupid. So I cut the list way down.

I’ve been reading a bunch of people’s blogs, many of which I can’t relate to. I’m cutting those down as well, not that I don’t find value and enjoyment out of reading the blogs, but I’d like to be reading more blogs that are things I can relate to. I’m not a parent and I’m almost guaranteed never to be, so why am I reading Mommyblogs and Daddyblogs?

I spend so much of my life feeling like no one in my life really understands me. I spend so much time feeling like I have nothing in common with the people in my life but instead of finding people I do have things in common with I continue down the same path and hope for things to get better. That is not working.

Lately, my life has been sucking quite a bit and I can’t seem to figure out how to change that. And when things get like this, I find it really difficult to concentrate, difficult to sort anything out or find a solution or plan. I tried to write yesterday. I wanted to come up with some sort of post because I hadn’t written anything in several days. I started three times and this is what I came up with:

Mediocrity

How does one learn to be OK with… A dozen words are going through my mind for what should go here… insufficiency? Lack? Ineptitude? Less than? Mediocrity? I’m not sure.

I’m surrounded by it though, and it’s becoming apparent that it’s a problem for me that is a big contributor to my own unhappiness. I just don’t know how to accept these things as “OK” and go on about my business…

Teenage Lament

There are days I really miss being a teenager! I miss the lack of responsibility and accountability that comes with being a teenager. I miss being able to make irrational judgments and decisions and knowing that there would be no lasting effects from those actions. I miss knowing that I was going to be provided for, no matter what I did.

When I was a teenager if I hated my job, I quit. There’s another one waiting around the corner.

At A Loss

Focus. Concentrate. Think Straight. Be rational and coherent.

This seems to be a list of things I’m not able to do today. Not really just today but lately. I’m feeling very overwhelmed these days with all the things I’m not able to manage. I’m so tired of trying. I’m tired of trying to be what other people seem to need me to be. I’m tired of having other people impose their expectations on me. I’m tired of having oblivious people in my life who just take over my life and expect me to comply.

I’m tired of coming to work everyday just to sit at my desk and not have anything of value to do. I’m tired of trying to find a way to occupy my time when I know that there’s nothing for me to do. I’m tired of making the effort to find a new job just to realize that there’s nothing out there for me. I’ve wasted the last seven and half years of my life working in a position that has given me no real practical experience and a job title that comes with more expectations I can’t meet.

I’m tired of trying to find a solution when I don’t even fully know the problem. I’m tired of …

There are three, because I started one and a different thought popped into my head. I started another and the next thought popped into my head. I couldn’t sort it out. I couldn’t make things fall into place so I could coherently express my feelings… So I gave up and played a computer game. That’s always easier.

Besides, I don’t want to be negative. I don’t want my blog to be a place where people go and read my negative feelings and get tired of dealing with it, and take me out of their line up. And then this happens…

Maybe, just maybe, there are people out there reading my blog who actually really do care about me, and not just the laugh I may or may not bring. Maybe some people reading this blog actually notice when I’m not around and have concern. Maybe this is about more than just words on a screen, and laughs that are conveyed (I hope).

So here I am. Yes, Jody, I’m “OK” by a relative scale. I’m well aware that there are a lot of people in this world, a whole lot worse off than I am. That doesn’t change my unhappiness, but then again… I suppose it does put some things into perspective… a little.

Fairyland (Not That Kind!)

September 12, 2009April 23, 2010 ~ riggledo ~ 5 Comments

Sunday was my second outing with Little. At the end of the previous visit, I asked him if he knew what he wanted to do the next time we got together and he said he wanted “to go to the lake”. There’s only one lake in the immediate area that I’m aware of, so I figured he must’ve meant Lake Merritt.

Lake Merritt, is a large, man made lake in the middle of Oakland with, as far as I can tell, not a whole lot to offer. There’s a walking trail around it that if you walk the entire thing is 3.4 miles. I walked it once… Only once… After a really exceptionally shitty morning at work… In the wrong shoes. It’s a long walk and I didn’t really think that was the thing for us to do.

There are boats of various types to rent by the hour, including peddle boats that may be something of interest at a later date, but to be honest, I don’t know how to swim and the idea of renting a boat scares me a little. Plus, we’re still getting to know each other and until there’s more trust built between us, it didn’t seem like a good idea.

And then I remembered the Children’s Fairyland and I thought, “That’s perfect!”

I arrived at Little’s apartment at our usual time to pick him up. The children were still eating so I waited a few minutes while he finished lunch before we headed out. It was about a 15 minute drive to the park and we talked a little bit on the way. I asked him about school, he just started the second grade last week, he said, “We learned about bees.” (I understand the birds come later.) I asked him what he learned about bees and he said, “I don’t know.” I asked him what else he learned and he said, “When we’re done with bees were going to learn about ants.” OK… Not what I asked but, good for you.

We arrived at the park and I parked my SUV in the first available parking space I could find. Neither of us had ever been to the Children’s Fairyland before but we could see it from where we parked. There were obvious Children’s Fairyland attractions directly ahead of us… on the other side of a fence. But the entrance was nowhere in sight. So we walked… in the wrong direction as it turned out, but ended up accidentally circling back around and stumbled across the entrance.

I’m always amused and fascinated by how children can make a game out of just about anything. As we walked around outside the Fairyland looking for the entrance, we saw a number of birds of various types in the grass. We were walking on a paved path that had dark spots all over. The spots were clearly old and not transferable and who knows what they were, but Little started chanting, “Don’t step on the poop. Don’t step on the poop.” and skipping along on the tips of his toes.

Once inside we began seeing the sites. I handed him the map and asked him if he saw anything he wanted to do.

The first thing he saw was a big slide that looked like a lot of fun, so we went in search of the stairs leading up to it. It looked like great fun and I couldn’t wait to slide down it. There was a sign that said, “No Adults”. Damn! I told him I’d meet him at the bottom, but since the stairs leading up to the the slide were on one side and the outlet of the slide was on the other, he was down the slide and running around to find me before I got to the bottom of the stairs.

We wandered around the park for a while looking at the sites and the animals. We saw Donkeys,

and bunnies,

and goats.

We also saw the G-Force, but they were under cover.

There was a show. A guy named Jean Paul Valjean who does magic tricks and juggling/balance acts. (In his spare time, he leads french revolutions… Mmm. That might be someone else.) I wasn’t sure Little would be interested, but we found ourselves next to the amphitheater where Jean Paul Valjean was performing a few minutes after the show had started and I asked Little if he wanted to watch. Before I even had the words out of my mouth he darted over and plopped right down on the ground next to all the other kids.

<– By the way, that is not a cigarette in his hand, he is holding a “magic key”. There are little stations throughout the park with boxes. You put your key in a slot on the front of the box and it plays a recording about the animal or site you are standing in front of. You pay $2.00 for the key when you enter and you can use it all over the park. I handed Little the key and said, “You hold on to this, but don’t loose it.” and he did a great job of keeping that key. He only dropped it once and he snatched it up so fast you coulda missed it. He used the key exactly two times and was completely disinterested in what happened. I must say I don’t really blame him.

I must also say Jean Paul was actually pretty entertaining, even for us big kids and we all got a lot of laughs.

As I said there were balance tricks

and he did tricks with a Chinese yo yo.

For the finale he balanced a spinning bowl on a stick held in his mouth, with balls rolling around inside the spinning bowl, while he blew air into party favors on his head and juggled balls with his hands while spinning a ring around one foot. It really was rather impressive…

When the show was over we were off and running again, there was more to see and do and we were losing light (not really it was only about 3:00, but the park closes at 4:00 so we only had so much time.)

We made our way to the back of the park where we found a miniature old timey town.

Then we saw a small train circling behind the town so, we had to go ride it!

And because nothing is ever truly virtuous, the designers of this park positioned the train “depot” next to the snack bar. Isn’t it interesting how little boys who never mentioned food before are suddenly starving when they know there’s over priced theme park food around?

Little insisted he was starving. I reminded him that he had just eaten, I saw him, and asked what he had for lunch and he said, “I don’t know.” Then he remembered he had eggs. I went along with it and bought him some ice cream… ’cause I wanted ice cream too.

Time was nearly up and we stopped off in the gift shop on the way out… My idea… STUPIIIIID!!! He kept picking up stuff and talking about how cool it was. I knew it was coming and finally it did, “Can you buy me this?”

It was a plastic sword and I could just imagine him showing up at home with this thing, whacking his brother on the arm and having his mother hate me. I told him, no. But I would have said no whatever it was. I don’t want to set too high expectations too early on. He was disappointed but he got over it pretty quickly.

We got back to his apartment shortly after, and no sooner had we walked up to the court yard then we heard his year older brother shouting, “Bang, bang. Pow, pow.” I looked up and saw the older brother standing on stairs that faced away from us, holding a clearly plastic, toy shot gun (looked vaguely like a sawed-off) and pointing it at Little.

Almost as quickly, Little’s younger sister, currently 5 years old, came running up to Little, clucking away in Spanish, too quickly for me to pick anything up. In her hands were a plastic knife with a theoretical sharp edge on one side and a theoretical serrated edge on the other. It immediately evoked images of Rambo, or Harry Tasker, sneaking up behind some sort of bad-guy and slitting their throats. She also had a toy gun, pistol, in her hand. It was black, and for a moment, from a distance, I just wasn’t sure it wasn’t the real thing… I hoped, but I wasn’t sure. I approached with caution. It was only as I got closer that I saw the plastic packaging on the ground with the fluorescent orange suction cup darts in it. Little’s sister handed him the gun and as he was pulling on the upper casing I saw the rubber band stretched between two posts within. It was only then that I realized, Little’s sister must have asked for some sort of assistance making the toy function properly.

What concerns me so greatly is that Little’s demeanor changed so much, so instantly. Alone with me, he’d been a little boy. He’d played and run around the park like a child enticed by child like-things. The moment we entered the gate of his apartment building and his siblings had approached with these toy versions of deadly games, he was immediately enthralled. No longer was he an innocent boy, but rather a guilty, experienced handler of such deadly devices. I hope I’m making mountains out of mole hills, but something in me bristled in that moment.

I want to serve that little boy better. I want to show him a world where peace and benevolence win over violence and mayhem. I want to show him a world were guns are not toys. Guns are weapons. Used improperly they are offensive weapons. Young and mislead men use guns to destroy their lives and those of other, innocent people. Wise young men respect guns. They’re not afraid to own guns, if they so desire, but they understand that guns are defensive weapons only and not something to be taken lightly.

“Boys will make guns out of anything,” K told me, and I know she’s right. I played at guns when I was a boy. Using my thumb and my index finger, I shot at many an imaginary bad guy, though to be honest, I preferred to defend the bad guys bullets with my wrist cuffs, stop the bad guys with my boomerang crown, and capture them with my lasso of truth. As a boy, my ultimate desire was to grow up to become, Wonderman. Only I much preferred this visage, over that of the comic book era:

Anyway, the gun play disturbs me. Perhaps I’m making too much out of a minor issue. Perhaps I’m not. Perhaps it’s too soon to tell, but I’d like to show him a better world. Meanwhile, when asked what he wants to do this Sunday, he said he wants to go to the movies. I asked him what he wanted to see and he said, “Meatballs.” A quick search on my handy-dandy iPhone revealed that “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” won’t be out until the following Friday and when I told him that, he said, “GI Joe.”

I suppose I’m actually glad that he was more interested in seeing a childrens cartoon than he was in a “war movie”, and yet, the “war movie” was next on his mind. I don’t know anything about GI Joe. I’m not necessarily opposed to seeing it, thought it wasn’t a high priority to me, but now I’m more concerned about reinforcing the violence angle, than I am about the movie itself. I told him, I’d only take him to see it if his mother said it was OK, (It is rated PG-13) but she said fine.

So Sunday, we go to GI Joe. We shall see. I’m deliberating if there’s a way I can have a chat with him about how guns should be handled, after we see the movie. Anyone have any suggestions for me?

The Day the Earth Stood Still

September 11, 2009April 9, 2010 ~ riggledo ~ 4 Comments

I was fairly sure things couldn’t get any worse. A month earlier, I had been laid off from my job without notice and without much of a severance package. Without a decent severance package I couldn’t pay rent on my Studio Apartment in San Francisco’s Richmond District and I had to give notice to my landlord. I wasn’t having any luck finding a job. I was feeling really worthless in the professional market and I was going to have to move in with Michelle or else I’d have to move back to Oklahoma or be homeless, neither of which seemed like particularly attractive options.

In an effort to maintain some sense of normalcy in my life and to maintain good habits for work, I had been getting up early (well anyway, my alarm went off early) so that I could listen to my favorite morning radio show and search the internet for valid job postings or opportunities. Now that I was moving, I had temporarily abandoned my job search in favor of packing and preparing for move day but I still had my alarm set so I could listen to the show.

It was Tuesday morning. I had five days to pack the contents of my life into cardboard. I hate moving. I love settling into a new place, but I hate moving. I hate packing. How is one supposed to live their life while packing? How do you pack when you’re still going to be in your place of residence for days? How do you decide what to pack? What if you need something before you move and you’ve already packed it away? I’m terrible at this and I’m always still packing the day of the move.

It was Tuesday morning. September in San Francisco, is the warmest month of the year but warm in San Francisco is not necessarily warm, especially not at 5:30 in the morning. I was laying snuggly in my bed when the radio of my alarm clock came on and I heard the familiar voice of the female host of my favorite morning radio show.

“KLLC San Francisco, Sarah and Vinnie, Alice’s morning show. It’s 5:32 AM. Let’s get right to the news. A plane has apparently crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City,” she said. Her voice was the same as every morning and yet it was different. There was an urgency in her voice that I wasn’t accustomed to. I was still waking up and my mind wasn’t fully functional. I wasn’t able to fully process the gravity of what had been said. I’ve never been to New York City. I wasn’t sure what the World Trade Center was, and I hadn’t yet grasped the significance of what had been said. “Kathy,” she said to the traffic reporter in another building, “What can you tell us?”

Kathy worked for KCBS, the local CBS radio affiliate. Her job, and those around her, was to report on the local traffic, but there was news reporting in the vicinity and she was the first to report to Alice’s listeners. “There’s not much to tell yet,” she said, “It looks like a plane has hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Reports are still coming in, but it sounds like it was a small plane. Maybe a commuter plane of some sort.”

I was waking up faster now, but I still didn’t grasp the severity of what had happened. Planes crash and that’s terrible, but it’s generally not that significant a news story. It’s usually a given that the passengers of the plane died. A plane crashing into a building seems terrible, but still how bad can it get? It was cold in my apartment and warm in my bed. There was no rush to get out of bed and start my day. I decided to just lay there and listen for a while. They talked for a few minutes about what it all meant, or more specifically, about how they didn’t know what it meant. And then Kathy mentioned something about an Airbus. At 5:45 in the morning, my faculties weren’t fully engaged and the term didn’t register with me. I’m not sure if I even knew then what an Airbus was. Must be another term for a commuter flight like she mentioned earlier, I thought.

And then someone mentioned hijackers and three more missing planes.

I got out of bed and turned on the TV. I knew it wouldn’t matter what channel it was on because something like this would be on every channel.

I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. Smoke billowed out of the tower and flames were visible even at a great distance. I landed on ABC. NBC had some young whippersnapper named Brian Williams on the air (where was Tom Brokaw at a time like this?) and CBS had Dan Rather. I never liked Dan Rather. But ABC had Charles Gibson and Dianne Sawyer on the air and Peter Jennings on his way.

I sat down on my ugly, too small couch across from the television, surrounded by boxes and chaos, the clutter an obvious metaphor for the state of my consciousness at that point, and I stared, mouth agape at this tragic scene before me. It was six o’clock.

A thousand thoughts went through my mind. I want coffee but I can’t see the TV from the kitchen. I’ve got a lot of work to do but I can’t tear my eyes from the screen. I should call my mother. I probably can’t call my mother right now, I’m sure everyone is calling their parents right now and the phone system will be a mess. What is happening? Why did this happen? This is a mistake, an accident, right? And then, as if in response to my last thought, the answer swooped in from the right side of my television screen and seemingly melted into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, shooting a ball of fire out the other side.

Looking back, it’s almost like I knew, if I went to make coffee, I’d miss something monumental. It’s difficult to describe how I feel about this. Such a horrific sight, a horrible thing to behold and yet, I had to see it. I had to know. And yes, there were a gazillion replays of the moment of impact throughout the day and weeks that followed, but that wouldn’t have been the same. Perhaps it’s because I’m part of “The Now Generation”. Perhaps it’s because I have a morbid fascination with disaster and mayhem and while it should never happen, if it’s going to, I want to see it. But I needed to see the impact “first hand”. I needed to be sitting there, glued to my screen. I needed to be watching the moment that plane vanished behind the already burning south tower, and I needed to see the ball of fire, the billowing smoke, and the plummeting debris that erupted from the other side. And once it had, I knew there was time.

I made my coffee, brushed my teeth and got dressed, contemplated calling my mother again, fixed something for breakfast and returned to the living room, ostensibly to begin packing and quickly reglued myself to the television screen and the tragedy that was unfolding before me.

Through all this, I listened. I listened as they reported on the missing planes, on the apparent hijackings and on the phone calls the passengers made to their loved ones. I listened as they reported on a third plane that had crashed into the Pentagon and somehow, that didn’t even seem significant in terms of destruction and loss of life. I listened as they reported on building evacuations in Washington and on President Bush’s relocation and the FAA grounding all flights within the US for the first time in history.

Back in front of my television I processed this information and looking at the buildings in flames and the images of the people hanging out the windows in an effort to gain a breath of fresh air, I prayed. I prayed for safety for as many as possible. I prayed for a quick resolution to the situations in those buildings. For the fires to be extinguished quickly and for those poor trapped souls to be able to make it safely out of the buildings and home to their families and I wondered what kind of renovations were going to be in order when this was over. How long would it take? How much would it cost? I was so naïve.

I wasn’t even fully aware of what was being said on the TV. It was all just so surreal. And that’s when I noticed the image on the screen had focused on the corner of one of the towers, where a plane had entered. I realize now, they must have been talking about the strategic impact of the plane and the structural integrity of the building but I didn’t get any of it. I didn’t understand what they were getting at… until if fell.

I was stunned. I sat, literally motionless, until it was done. Shocked, amazed, saddened, it all ran through me at once. Was this really happening? Was it possible, I was witnessing history as it happened? Things will never be the same again, I thought, we’ll survive and rebuild and move on, but things will never be the same again. Little did I know?

At the end of the day, when I felt sure nothing more could happen, when I had seen all I felt I could stand, when I had to be done with it for awhile. I watched Peter Jennings closing comments for the hour, and I looked on as they showed a prolonged shot of the Lower Manhattan Sky Line, shrouded in smoke and dust, scarred and forever changed.

For days after, all the imagery was replayed over and over. Maybe it would be different if that hadn’t happen but the sights of that day are forever seared into my memory. I thought about including some pictures in this post, but as I write, and remember, I realize, photographs aren’t necessary. We all saw it. We were all there. And if you’re like me, even a hint of a thought about that terrible day is all it takes to see it again, in your minds eye.

“We will never forget”, is not just a figure of speech. It’s not just a rally cry for the patriotic. It’s a fact, an undeniable fact, something about which I am simultaneously proud and tremendously, tremendously troubled.

I was fairly sure things couldn’t get worse. I was wrong.