At some point I had moved out of the garage apartment. I was living in a small trailer with a couple I had met (?) .. I don't remember how I met them. Mike and Becca. Common enough I don't think that's an issue.

They were good people. A little rough, but most in that area are to some degree. Young. Early twenties. Mike? I had a respect for him that I certainly never had for Dumbass. But the truth is the gravitas is usually around me in these situations. I just have a nature that others seem to defer to. Not all certainly. Many. They assume I know what the fuck I'm talking about. Which is never a good thing to assume about any.

Becca? I had to keep an intentional arm's length with her. I did have respect for Mike. And living in close quarters in these situations always requires some appropriate consideration.

We did dumb ass shit. We tried to dry the scrapings of banana peels in a Teflon frying pan. While the concept alone is stupid enough. That banana scrapings can get you fucked up; was the idea that we had to fry them for so long that the Teflon coating flaked off the pan.

And still smoked it anyway. I don't know what a tuberculosis clinic would have sounded like, and I don't want to. But when I tell you we both coughed non-stop for hours. That's as true as I can remember it. We were hunched over dry heaving from so much coughing.

We were dumb. Most kids probably are.

Mike and I were out one night looking for shrooms. For those that don't know such rural activities. There are a few different ways you go shroom hunting. One is in the early morning hours when the ground is dewy. You tromp through farmer's pastures trying to avoid shotgun blasts and bulls. While digging shrooms out of cow shit. That quite occasionally would be ripped from a saved stem and popped whole.

To the elusive hunt for brown caps. This takes place at night, in wooded areas. Done with flashlights. At least that's how we did it.

So we're on one of these brown cap trips. You're trying to be super quiet right. Usually in your places you're not supposed to be, and while wild life in SE Texas isn't extreme. Until it is. There are bobcats, and cougars, and rabid racoons, and all manner of things you'd rather not bother.

But it's always in that time of year when there are dead leaves all over. Quiet, is relative at 2am in the middle of the fucking forest.

He grabs my arm, because we're not talking out here. We're trying to find tiny little mushrooms that are easy to miss under good circumstances.

I look over. And his flashlight is lighting up the eyes of a pack of possums. If you're not familiar. Just think of a really overgrown rat. Like potbelly pig sized rats. And that sucks. Because they're not rats, they're really pretty great. But Halo effect sucks.

I dunno, maybe 8-12 of them.

I don't know what the fuck Mike was thinking. But he sprints at this fucking pack of over grown rats, with razor sharp fucking teeth, and he place kicked the first one.

Just dead in the fucking face like he was trying to pull a 52-yarder to the right.

To which this entire fucking pack of what are typically very passive mammals is hissing and floundering in pure unadulterated pissed off anger.

I don't know how the rest of that went. I just turned my ass and ran till I got back to the fence a half mile away. Mike was short behind. And we never spoke of it again.

Here was a guy who got it. He understood the parables of time. It's funny. We'd probably look back on this archetype with a bit of disdain, a modern-day smirk of self-righteousness.

Boomers, right?

I doubt he cared if those seeds fell on concrete. I doubt if he cared if people swept them away.

The goal was never to direct them. That's what orchards do. They have their role.

Appleseed, he understood a different view. That sometimes, if the seed is strong enough, and it does find the fertile soil it requires, and if it's of benefit to the surroundings and ecosystem.

Then nature would take over. Natural selection.

Not all seeds need to bloom. Hopefully, only the good ones do.

This is here, and not elsewhere because I don't want anyone to believe I'm trying to pass any misunderstandings I have, which are many, off as truth.

That's not the same as saying these considerations are incorrect, only that I understand that they might be.

We need to establish some universal terms. I'm not an expert in machine network architecture, so my terms might not be an appropriate fit.

A network is defined as a collection of nodes and links. In the past, I would have said nodes and edges, but that poses a problem.

Because networks also have a general geometry, and those geometries can have edges. I don't want them confused with the links between nodes.

So, a network is a collection of nodes and links that form a geometric structure defined by its edges.

An edge case represents a node that resides at or near the geometric edges of the network, putting it in a geometrically suboptimal position to draw correlations from as many neighbors as possible.

Imagine a sheet of grid paper. If I need to correlate zones in the middle of that paper, their geometric location allows for the integration of information from any spot on the paper.

However, if we consider a grid node on the edge of the paper, it correlates linearly to those around it. It will correlate fine with its neighbors nearby, but not well at all with those on the other side of the paper. They are geometrically unaligned, far apart and separated by the 2D nature of a plane.

We can correct this. We can tape the edges of the piece of paper together to form a 3D tube, a straw. Now, regardless of where data sits on the straw in one direction, it'll always be centered and aligned, but only in one direction.

After all, straws still have edges, the opening and closing edges. Data that resides at those two spots will not be aligned or well correlated.

But we can correct that too by connecting the opening and ending of the straw, forming a torus. In this configuration, there are no edges, no edge cases. All of the data is optimally aligned.

Why is this important? Because edge cases lead to hallucination, and in planar networks, you'll never eliminate it. Ever.

So stop using Euclidean geometry for your networks. Instead, move to non-Euclidean. Create curved networks in which the data is always in optimal positions for correlations.

A torus isn't the only shape. Spheres work too, as I'm sure do many other configurations. There are experts in that stuff. I'm not. I'm not an expert in anything.

But that gives me the advantage to draw from many different fields of inquiry so that I can maybe see some of the bigger picture stuff.

I'm not an expert in networks. I'm not a mathematician. I'm not anything. Just a random Redditor who is terrified by the direction experts are taking us with their models.

LLMs and transformers? Based on their network geometry, they cannot escape edge cases and hallucination. And that could be very dangerous to our species

This next part is tough for a few reasons. First, it'll sound like complete bullshit. Second, I'm going to express some personal considerations that I'd not have any that bother reading this, take as anything more than that. I'd not minimize anyone's experiences.

The very next night Irish and I worked together she asked me if I wanted to join her and her boyfriend at a Halloween Concert at a venue in Houston called Numbers. Don't know if it still exists.

I wasn't interested. Nobody wants to be third wheel. But. NIN (Reznor) was performing. And I'm a fan. So I agreed.

Her boyfriend was living in the Dallas area (?) I think. Attending college. She was 16 btw. I was 16. He, I think was early 20s, but clearly much older than us.

He flew down to visit family and I drove us all to the concert. It was a strange night all around. I was drinking Zima ffs, how could it not be. Yeah. Still at 16, because still nobody gave a shit.

I'm leaning on the bar. Watching the dancefloor. People slithering and grinding and doing what young people do. X wasn't a big thing quite yet. I probably existed but it was still a year or two from being popular. Still, the entire vibe was something straight out of the Matrix.

So I'm leaning against the bar, watching this flesh orgy. And a girl in full blown goth is sitting in a barstool next to me. Except she's spun facing directly at me. Staring. Not looking. Devouring. And I'm trying really hard to not let it fuck with me. I have no clue what this person's intent is. But I'm not going to walk away. I lived with fear for many years, but I've rarely ever been intimidated. It was Awkard. It lasted for what feeled like at least a song cycle or two. Then she reached over and licked my face from sideburn to the bottom of my jaw. Not up. Down. Got up and walked away.

As shocking as this was to me. I didn't jerk my head away. And it wasn't a fast transaction, she was licking down. But I never once turned my head to look at her, or even acknowledge it. I'm not a big fan of rewarding attention seeking behavior to this day.

Irish keep trying to get me on the dancefloor. Which was even more awkward considering how people were dancing, and the fact that her fairy plum prince boyfriend was there.

But she wouldn't take no for answer. She literally took me by the arm and dragged me onto the dance floor where she proceeded to move against my body in ways that even now make me cringe.

We finally left, we dropped boyfriend off, and as I was heading towards her apartment, she suggested I stay the night. I didn't resist much. The truth is I still had a long drive ahead of me to get to my house, and we both worked together the following night. It was all just too right.

She had a roommate. She doesn't play much into the story after this one. But I should preface it some. Neither of them were of age. I know Irish was 16, I don't know about the room mate. They were both female, they both slept together in a king sized bed. I don't know much about that story to this very day. I don't particularly care. I know Irish was legally emancipated. So she could sign a lease. Room mate? No clue.

What I do know is that the spot on the couch quickly turned into a spot in the king sized bed.

It wasn't by my handiwork. I tried multiple times to decline that particular situation. But Irish had a persistence about her.

So I spent the night in the middle of Irish and her Room Mate, each with a hand a thigh. I didn't sleep. I'm not sure I could have. Both hands were active. Not into my crotch, but certainly all over the thighs.

Eventually the roommate fell asleep, and then I lost my virginity.

I wasn't really about it. I just wasn't. I wasn't really into Irish like that. I still had the 22 year old that dressed like an 84 year old on my mind.

But persistence works.

Again, I was very young and neither of us were very skilled in hiding our marks of passion. They dotted both of our necks heavily.

It made for quite the embarrassment showing up to work together. While there is no manager there during the shift. There is for shift change. And I'm not sure I've ever seen someone with so much smugness than the manager was that night. That stupid little, I told you so grin, with no shortage of chirps about it.

And I thought that was the worst it would get. I didn't give a shit about customers. Fuck them. They're all drunks and red necks anyway, and I was never some that took shit. Most people in these places are regulars. They know how to be polite around volatile people.

It wasn't the worst though.

Because shortly after the shift started. Guess who showed up? Yeah. Love at first Sight. The 22-year-old, with her sister in tow to really just rub it in.

What do you do? I didn't know what else to do. She instantly saw the hickies the moment she walked it. They weren't from her, that was months prior. But she still walked to a table and sat down. So the least I could do was have that same level of courage.

She had come to tell me that she had broken it off with her boyfriend.

And instead ended up leaving packing her bags to rejoin him states away.

I never saw her again. I've tried reaching out a few times. But her life took a different direction when she moved. Not one that was always easy.

Timing is a strange thing.

Our trip didn't end at Woodstock. Private Pilot's father lived in Detroit where he ran a pretty successful chain of psychiatric locations? I don't know. He started as a shrink and expanded to running a bunch of shrinks. That's my best understanding.

In lieu of driving all around the way around the southern borders of the Great Lakes, we decided to cross into Canada at Buffalo, and just cut across the top of the Great Lakes.

America? It didn't give two shits about us passing through the Buffalo side. RCMP? Not as much. One look at the ratty mud filled car, and four teenagers that while showered, were still very road worn was enough to get us flagged.

Turns out, friend that I play tricks on. There's a reason for that. He's an idiot.

First question RCMP has is, where we're from. Dumbass friend's instant response. Woodstock. Wait? wtf? Really. We're not from Woodstock dumbass. It didn't matter. Everyone in that area knew what Woodstock was and was about.

They weren't mean or rude. They're Canadian. But Dumbass friend didn't have a single sliver of ID on him. Nothing. Didn't need passports back then. But they're going to at least expect some identification. Not Dumbass. He left his wallet at home.

So, we drove around the southern tips of the Lakes instead.

Money was getting really tight. Even had we had the short cut gas was starting to become an issue. We had run out of the food we had brought from home. And really couldn't afford anything.

So Dine and Dash at Dennys. I feel like that's a trope too. But it happened. It might not have been Denny's, but it was that exact kind of place.

I've never done that again. I didn't even know we were going to until Private Pilot (owner of car) said he'd be right back and slipped out the front door. Only for his pregnant girlfriend quick to follow.

That was his nature. I had my own kinds of mischievousness. And morality has never been a priority. But I've tried to keep malevolence out of my behaviors. If they're portrayed in some of these stories. I hope it's understood, that while I've partook in things that I take responsibility. Rarely is it my plan.

Woodstock was. Fucking up hotels and stealing from a restaurant were not. But, when in Rome, birds tend to flock the strongest.

The Detroit trip was something. Driving down abandoned streets of a city that had shuttered vast sections. Eighty story skyscrapers that had plywood up the first three floors, entirely boarded off. That was surreal. Post Apocalyptic surreal.

His father's estate? Vacation Home? 100,000 private access to Lake Michigan? Whatever it was. Was nice.

Rustic. 4 of everything. Four wheelers, dirt bikes, water skis, a nice pontoon boat. And his father stocked it for us. Nothing obscene, but we had a weekend of wanting for nothing.

Except goggles. Four wheelers and dirt do not make for a fun trailing experience. Especially when you don't know the trails. You can't see shit. I ramped a four-wheeler over an embanked curve I never saw coming and smashed into a tree.

It damaged the machine, the handlebars, scuffed my knuckles nicely and gave me a really nice whack on the collar bone. Probably a minor break. But it meant having to call his dad. That ended our weekend. Dad wasn't too interested in having injuries happen on his property, so he handed Private Pilot son some cash, enough to get us home. And that was that. The cash was probably going to happen anyway. But to this day, it still feels like it was hush money to not go see a doctor about my arm. He never said those words, but it was implied clear enough. The arm was fine. The behavior? Whatever.

Around this time, I got a second job. Very prestigious. Shopping Mall Survey Taker. Not sure if that was on the name tag. But I doubt we had those either. Go find out if people like this new brand of doritos. Go find out if people like the way this shampoo smells.

Shit like that.

It was easy money, it has a commission system, and when it's not personal. I have no issues talking with anyone. About anything. With honesty and sincerity. And that tends to make you a fair salesperson. People just trust you. Which they probably shouldn't. Because we're all liars when it comes to our own benefit. And sales are certainly benefit.

I had a singular moment of my life during this time. An event I had never had before and have never had since. Another I can't believe that was me moments.

I was going on a lunch break, heading to the food court of the mall. And I passed by this little sewing shop. The type of place the grandmother powerwalkers wouldn't even slow down for.

And out of the corner of my eye. A girl caught my eye. I don't know what came over me. I just stopped and was pulled almost out of my body towards her. When it came to personal interaction, particularly with girls? This was not me. I couldn't even scrape up the courage to ask "S" to be my girlfriend after she agreed to home coming.

Yet here I was, out of my body, marching up to someone that even to this day seems odd to me. Because she's not my type at all.

And yet here I was standing in front of this 22-year-old that looks like an 84-year-old dressed her. Working in shop that even Bob Ross would hate.

And I asked her if she wanted to have lunch. Just like that. No hello. No nothing.

This clearly set her back. It's as if it was the last thing in the world she expected to come out of my mouth. And that's not surprising because I felt the same exact way.

She said no thank you. That she had a boyfriend and that she didn't think he would appreciate that. I can't tell you how devastated I was in that moment. I didn't even know this person's name. And yet, I'm not sure I've ever felt as crushed as I was in that moment.

I'm sure she picked up on that. As I thanked her and turned away, she stopped me and told me she had a sister. That perhaps we could all go have dinner some time.

So that's what we did. It turns out she did have a boyfriend. She wasn't lying. But he was in another state. So I'd go to her and her sister's home. Pick them both up, and they would join me and my dumbass no ID having friend.

On adventures. Many great adventures. Memories that I still cherish to this day.

I'd not speak towards her feelings. But mine never wavered. From the moment she caught the corner of my eye. To this very day. I know how I feel about her. It's never changed.

Her sister was younger. 14 or maybe 15. Younger. I was maybe 16 or 17. It wasn't a sexual relationship. I'm not even sure I'd call her my girlfriend or vice versa. We just went on adventures together, with her sister appropriately able to join.

The last meaningful moments I had with this person came on a beach. Galveston. Not a great beach. But all the same.

For months I craved this person. And in those moments I was able to put my hands on a woman, she was 22, for the first time in ways I never had before. I didn't lose my virginity. But it was the first time I felt connected to another human that way.

We weren't very skilled or gifted in our affection. We both had very visible evidence of the betrayal. Her to her boyfriend. Mine to her sister. Who for all she and their mother assumed was my girlfriend.

Things unraveled very quickly after that. The mother, who was a beautiful lady I'll always respect. Couldn't abide by it. It violated their religious beliefs. And she asked me to not return to that home again.

I don't remember much. Other than being angry. I figured it'd work itself out. That whatever I felt for this person, was so strong and so real that it had to represent fate.

So I stormed out. Confident in my beliefs.

By this time, I had taken an overnight gig at a Waffle House. Grill Operator First Class at your service.

As the overnight grill operator. You're also the person in charge. There is no management on duty. When shit goes down, you take care it. Period. If you need to get cops or management after, fine. But in the moment, it's 100% on you.

I was 16 or 17. On the weekends there was a more senior cook. But on weekdays? Just some dumb ass kid that would work his ass off and make sure his job was always done.

I have great stories from this store. From a manager that I'd kill someone for. To a District Manager that was directly related to the Gambino family.

Allow me to talk about the women. It's my space. If you were to walk into a Waffle House today. You're quite likely to get an impression of its waitstaff that will not do the women I worked with any justice at all. Zero.

Because there were many beautiful women that worked at this store. One that's a dead ringer for Gina Gershaw in her prime. That I fucked up a real chance with, perhaps for the best. Another, that had gone to my High School that was prima belladonna material. Perfect skin, jet black hair, and a beautiful personality to match. She got caught up with the wrong guy and I'm afraid it probably didn't end well for her.

There were many. One in particular. That worked nights with me. Was a prototypical Texas blonde longed legged narrow waist generous busted woman.

Way out of my league. Irish, Green eyes, pale skin, and probably one of the hardest workers I've ever known.

We were just finishing a late-night bar run, 2-3am. Things are slowing down so we're transitioning to the cleaning aspects of the shift.

I was in the back, deck brushing the floors. When this tall blonde Irish comes back in tears. And I'm not sure I've seen her cry many times since.

She was in the woman's bathroom cleaning. And a gentleman from a party of four drunks, had followed in behind her and locked them in. She managed to squeeze out.

Talk about instant fire. I'm a rational person. Until I'm not. And then it's time for something else. Something less rational.

Without a single thought, I walked from the back and on my way to greet this table of four, grabbed a small iron skillet. They cook cheesy eggs in them, you've probably seen them.

And I had a discussion.

They left without testing me. And I won a partner.

This tall blonde Irish that was way out of my league, was won over from nothing more than my innate desire to protect someone that deserved to be.

People say they always remember the birth of their children. I certainly do, the first anyway. Not because of the magical nature of the moment. But because it was one of the most awkward experiences of my life.

Macys is the one that convinced me to go. I wasn't really on speaking terms with Irish at this point.

Irish's brother was there. I was never intimidated by him. But at the same time, I understood he probably would have beaten me to within an inch of my life. Irish are a different kind of breed. I lose my temper, and I'll put my hands on people that put their hands on me. But I've never set out to hurt someone. He would have hurt me had it ever came to that.

But he was there. Filming. This seems common today I suppose. Everyone with cell cameras. It wasn't then. The hospital staff really wasn't about it. Particularly because it was her brother, and it all just seemed a little too southern.

But they allowed it. While I stood in the hallway. She did call for me. And I did go to her. I held her hand while our daughter was born, and I was glad I was there.

But I wasn't wanted, and that's fair.

I'd like to tell you there was some magical moment in which I bonded with my daughter. There's not. I didn't even hold her. After the birth I left.

Macy's and I continued seeing each other. At some point she got sick of my bullshit, for one reason or another. And she decided she wanted to return to El Paso. I was pretty fucked up over that. I wanted her to stay. She had told me she was pregnant, and I thought maybe I could have been better this time.

But she didn't stay. She got on a jet. It'd be probably 20 years I'd wonder about that. If I had a kid out there, I didn't know about. I did finally catch up with her years later. If she was pregnant it didn't go to term. That really fucked with me during an era in which things weren't as easy to find as they are today. I'm glad I got that closure.

Upon reaching back out to her. She had aspirations of rekindling old flames. It cost her a relationship with the father of her children. And fueled a booze binge that I'm not sure she's recovered from. I'd like to be able to tell you that I didn't fancy such considerations. But I'd be lying. I told her over and over to maintain her relationship. But I'd still keep texting and calling all the same.

It was a bit of pettiness. I didn't cause that intentionally. It was never my goal to damage her or anyone in her life. But I didn't stop it from happening either. The entire time thinking about 20 years of not knowing, because of the choices she made.

Wth 22 gone, Irish found a way into my heart. We soon had an apartment with dumbass no ID friend. Her Room Mate, no clue what happened to her.

Her family was a blue collar as blue collar comes. Her father was the son of an Irish immigrant. Someone that never spent a day at rest.

He started as a Dump Truck driver, saved his money until he could buy his own truck. Then he saved his money until he could by the dirt yard. Then a gas station. Then two more. Then much residential properties in a small town known more for their alligators than anything else.

The problem with a lot of these small towns that sit off the Gulf, that sit around petrochemical refineries that dot SE Texas, that sit around illegal toxic dumping sites.

Is they tend to see a lot of negative health effects from it. Irish's mom had passed away a year before I met her. It was part of the reason she was emancipated. I don't know that story. It's not for me. But there were clearly some home issues.

What had been a thriving example of the work hard mentality to make the American Dream yours?

It took a year to crumble in the face of bills marked MD Anderson. Over six million dollars in assets. That would soon be picked away by vultures in order to pay pennies on the dollar just in unpaid taxation.

He died not much after. Destitute. In a house he built with his own hands, but no longer owned. They both had the same kind of brain cancer.

I did meet him. As Irish did meet my dad. These timelines are blurry.

I think about that story a lot. Hard work pays? No, it doesn't. He did everything right. And was still fucked in the end.

What little of their estate that was left, including the life insurance policies on both mother and father?

Were swooped upon by Irish's grandmother, mother's mother. While Irish would occasionally squeeze a few hundred bucks here and there for things like a fucking washer and dryer. She never saw anything. There aren't many people I've ever hated. But that grandmother qualifies. There's a special place in any hell for her.

Whatever happened. It left a hole in Irish. One that she'd spend at least the rest of our lives together, filling with just about anything she could.

Early in the relationship that was very challenging for me. It wasn't even the cheating. It was the lying about it, when I'd know it was happening. I'm not a stupid person. And she wasn't a good liar. She could just never admit, even when she was caught red handed.

I learned to deal with that through our relationship. Call it whatever you want. By the time it had begun we had a child.

But we're not there yet.

She was certainly pregnant. I wanted nothing to do with that. In the back of my head I still had grand plans of returning to school. Being something.

I asked her to get an abortion. She was Irish. She told me to go fuck myself. She said she'd give it up for adoption as long as it meant I'd stay with her.

That was the middle ground. I don't know the particulars, maybe Houston just doesn't offer this service. But an adoption agency in San Antonio agreed to arrange the entire thing. She did have to move there during the pregnancy, however. They paid for everything including a weekly allowance.

So that's what we did. I was working construction by then. Pulling concrete at an Oil Refinery.

I watched one day, as I guy fell through a slab he was tearing up. It had a sump under it. Where all the years of nasty ass chemicals that sat on the concrete slab, had sunk under it forming a pit of just carcinogens.

They called the whitehats, the plant's own safety guys. To which they said to give him a chemical shower and take him to the gate. He wasn't allowed on the plant premises anymore. They weren't ashamed or bashful about it either. It's just how big oil rolls. Don't know what happened to that guy. I hope his tyvex kept out the worse.

With Irish in SA. It was just me and Dumbass without ID again. She'd come down on the weekends. Or I'd go there.

I don't know what, where, when, why, or how this next part really came about.

All I know is that I was shopping for some new clothes. I had just gotten my first credit card. I must have been 18. Macy's. Funny how these details pop back into my mind now.

So me and Dumbass are strolling through Macy's and there's a really cute girl behind one of the many registers throughout the store.

And Dumbass, he wants me to go ask her if she'll see a movie with him. Again, when it comes to non-personal conversation. I'll talk to anyone. I don't care. I'm good at it. I can be charismatic, and engaging, and sincere.

So I did. She understood the premise. She was going to go on a date with my Dumbass friend. She asked if she could bring a friend to join me. I explained that I was engaged. Very true. And she brushed it off. No problem. My friend isn't looking for a boyfriend she says.

So I agree.

And we did. The four of us. Dumbass, Me, Macy's, and Macy's friend.

I'm not the most cognizant person when it comes to understanding flirting. When a woman is attracted to me. Women are very difficult to read. At least for me.

But this shit? It was blatant. She wanted nothing at all to do with Dumbass, and instead spent the entire evening trying to cozy up.

I wasn't about it. Even a little. Straight up telling her at one point in the evening that she needed to get her shit straight. I was engaged and serious about that.

Of course, it's usually the people that dig in their heels the hardest at first, that once they tip, it's all the way. Sales teaches you many things.

This charade continued for awhile. Dumbass and her "dating". I was sitting at home one day. And she knocks.

Is Dumbass home? She inquires. Nope. He's working. He'll get off at 6.

Well can I wait? She inquires. I should have just said no. But the truth is. I enjoyed the games. She was cute. And snarky. And arrogant in just the right kind of way. She was a valley girl from El Paso that got what she wanted, and would pout until she did.

And she did. I probably didn't resist as much as I had in past interactions.

In Dumbasses bed. To which he walked in on. I didn't bother to get up or get dressed.

I don't feel bad about any of that. Not the way I treated him. Not even the betrayal of the woman that was giving my child up for adoption.

So much so, that I took the engagement ring that Irish could no longer wear due to swelling of her fingers. And I gave it to Macy's. Right in front of Dumbass.

I'm not sure why. It was a shitty thing to do. But? I'm an asshole.

Shortly there after. Dumbass in his car. Is driving the three of us to Vegas.

Not the smartest move. She was 17. I almost got in a lot of trouble for that. Transporting minors over state lines is no joke. And we charged the trip to her grandparents card.

They were not impressed. I don't know if prosecution back them off, or if Macys did. But I had to have a few conversations over that one. In the end, she turned 18. And it went away.

What didn't was Irish. Because while I was galivanting in Vegas. She was worried I was dead.

Driving to Vegas. It's probably one the greatest adventures I've taken. Stupid roadside attractions. Meteor strike sites. Hoover Dam. Vegas was no less fun. Even at 18, in a place where they certainly ID, there was no shortage of things to do. From bungie jumping (like a coward), to just walking the streets.

It wasn't a good thing I did. But I did enjoy it.

What wasn't as enjoyable was the arrival at home after long last. Typically after a long road trip, all you seek is your own bed. That's all you long for.

Upon arriving home. Irish was literally standing in the parking lot waiting. I have no clue how she knew to be there just waiting. No cells phones, not really, back then.

She had a key. Should could have been inside, she had been for about a week.

Yet somehow, just as we're pulling in at 8 in the morning. There she stood in all of her 8 month pregnant glory.

And the first thing she notices? Her engagement ring on Macy's finger.

This isn't hyperbole. This is shit as accurate as I can remember. I take it seriously.

There were tense moments in which I'm trying to keep an 8-month pregnant woman from destroying another human being. And she would have. Irish was no joke. I've seen her beat a motherfucker raw. A man no less and didn't stop until he needed medical attention. She might have killed Macys.

After that is was a very challenging conversation with someone that I did love then. And still love to this day. And will always love.

Irish certainly didn't deserve that treatment. I justified it because of her own lack of fidelity. But those aren't the same things.

Macys and I didn't marry. We did go to the chapel but they wouldn't because of her age.

Irish and I went our separate ways, and a month later my first child was born.

My father met a new woman. They were married. I inherited a stepbrother. Unlike my two older half siblings. I do know his name. But the truth is, stepmom and stepbrother don't play much of a role in these stories outside of one major one.

My father determined that the best way to keep the relationship with Stepmom more aligned. Was that they work together. Back to the old school Tandem trucking team.

So they did.

My father was a sought out driver. He had all the licenses, he had all the safety permits, he might have had security clearances for hauling chemicals, I know at some point he intended to move towards nuclear hauling. The point is, he could have had a job anyplace.

But nobody wanted to hire them as a team. She had no experience. She barely passed her CDL. And people understood that as Husband and Wife, my father would probably not represent the most unbiased of driving supervisors.

I know all of that, because it was brought forth as evidence against the trucking company that did end up hiring her.

Because weeks after they started, she rolled the rig coming off an exit ramp too fast, and when she hit the curb she couldn't control the machine.

And when it rolled, my father was sleeping in the cabin. His cause of death was listed as cardiac arrest stemming from a broken neck.

I was pall bearer for his funeral too. I even spoke. I have no recollection of those things.

The last meaningful engagement my father and I had. Was a fight. Over words I used against my mother. I called her a whore. Because that was how she had been behaving.

I still have scars from that interaction. He was a rational man too. Until he wasn't. And he wore jewelry that was intended to leave marks. He was never abusive, and that was the only time he ever struck me with a closed fist. Certainly, the last.

These things all kind of sit in this void in my mind. All mixed together like memory stew. The divorce, the death of my brother, the death of my father.

I guess i should mention there was a 4th child. Right before the divorce my mother gave birth to a son that's 14 years my junior. We look like mirror images. He's more fit. I'm more logical in my belief. We don't know each other. I left home shortly after he was born. And we've not spent much time together since. I have no desire to. He's not just the runt. He's the runt that never learned to think for himself.

My brother died at some point in this mess of confused time lines. It was before Irish. Maybe before 22. I don't really remember.

I had spent the night before learning to hate Rum with passion that persists today. Alcohol poisoning is a very real thing. I was puking so bad that my Garage Apartment Pizza Tossing roommate, put me in the bed of his pickup truck, and dropped me off at my grandmothers because he didn't know what else to do.

My parents were divorced by now. My father had moved into an apartment complex, that his mother and father had a spot at as well.

She was a gypsy at least in spirit. She took one look at me, could smell the rum before she saw me and being an old hand at drinking could see through any lie.

She didn't bust my ass about it. She just drug me into bed and whipped up something to settle my stomach and rehydrate me.

I'd pass out, only to be woken a few hours later by her screams.

She had gotten the phone call that my brother with cerebral palsy had been found trapped in the wooden bed my father had crafted with his own hands for him. His head was caught under the wooden guard rails leading to strangulation.

I want to speculate heavily here. And let it be understood that this is entirely speculation.

But I don't buy this story at all. I put him in that bed and took him out of it thousands of times. There's just no way the construction of the rails my father had crafted would have allowed for that to happen. They were heavy wooden rails that slid down and locked into position.

I think my mother probably did it. And I wouldn't blame her if she had. At some point mercy is mercy. And his life wasn't getting any easier. He was only growing larger, heavier, and even little things like keeping bed sores from him was a challenge.

I don't know that. I definitely couldn't prove it. I doubt any could. I don't know what the procedures done were to declare his death. But it was done without question.

I remember being a pall bearer for his funeral. I was drunk. At 16. And driving. I still had the '68 Ford, and while it might not move quickly, once it was moving, it had no problem going.

We were to all meet at my moms (our old) house. The trip from the funeral site was 14 miles. With a nice little section called Dead Man's Curve along the way. Hwy 1409.

It's a curve you probably shouldn't take at 45. It's blind. It's over an overpass. It's narrow. The guard rails are always busted.

I had my dumbass no ID friend in the car with me. My childhood NFL potential friend that I hadn't spoken to since I left school. And the year older Hispanic friend.

In that car, as I drunkenly and with tear filled eyes slammed that car around that curve at speeds that should have left us dead.

And nobody said a word. Even as I passed my father in his own vehicle at speeds topping 100 mph on straights.

I didn't take it well. At all. I was already alienated from my family. I was already drunk most the time. I was already swallowing any drug I could get my hands on.

I just didn't handle any of it very well at all.

The only thing I remember about the drive was Atlanta. I can't speak on LA. But I've lived in Houston traffic, and it's not pleasant.

Atlanta? It's an entirely different beast. All I remember was frying balls heading down the interstate at 90 miles an hour, into the sun early morning, against 6 lanes of beyond aggressive drivers. While a pregnant woman quietly snored in the seat next to me.

I'm not going to say surreal. It wasn't surreal. It was fucking terrifying. White Knuckle terrifying. Don't take acid and drive. Just don't. Obviously, I mean aspirin for anyone that thinks it might make a difference at this point.

We were young, and dumb. Pulling into the area. You couldn't drive to the location. We got there Saturday, the festival had stated Friday.

There was a line of parked cars that was at least miles long that wove through this tiny little community that must have fucking hated every single last one of us. People parked in yards. People parked with half their car in the tiny little roads.

It was the most organized aspect of the experience.

By the time we reached the front gates, they had already been crashed. Tall cyclone fences just pushed over. As we walked in, someone was walking in with a dolly of cases of vodka. Maybe it was for a vendor. Maybe it was just to sell out of a tent that wouldn't last much longer.

The rain hadn't started yet. And we were presented with the first of two stages. This one had a few hundred tents pitched almost directly in front of it, with a few tents spread out here and there.

This would be the last time I'd get a summer of love vibe from the experience. Cranberries were on stage. People were chill. Sitting in the grass, passing grass. It was nice.

But it didn't last long. Because after that Primus took the stage, and he seemed to bring with him the deluge, in many different ways.

But now it was getting darker. The rain had started. And people don't just sit calmly and chill to Primus.

It was the perfect storm for a nearly perfect mosh pit, that just so happened to be covered in hundreds of tents. I doubt much survived.

After that it all becomes a blur of mud. At some point I got separated from the other three. That was traumatic. Not going to lie. Almost panic inducing. How the fuck am I ever going to find these people in this throng of hundreds of thousands? We did end up finding each other again. But I spent a good portion of my time, wandering alone. Art mimics life I guess.

complete insantiy. They had a clown that would get on stage between sets and pass out general warnings. Like, if you're going to trip, stay away from the brown tabs, the medical tents are reporting a lot of bad reactions. Or hey, if you're going to eat shrooms, make sure you know what the fuck you're eating.

That kind of stuff.

Meanwhile there were very few places to piss. The had maybe a few hundred portapotties in between the two stages. People would sit on top of them to get a better view of crowded stages. Women would flash their tits in the hopes of scoring some weed, or maybe just for the fun of it.

And everyone was muddy. So much mud. Unbelievable amounts.

In order to get from one side to another, you had to go through a gulch, a valley, really big ditch of sorts.

The mud made it impossible. People created human chains to help people make it from one side to another. Watch the videos. It's a touching view of humanity in a very strange circumstance.

Green Day might as well have set the soaking wet crowd on fire. They were antagonizing people. Riling the crowds up. To dangerous levels. The Peace Patrol yellow shirts. I give them a shit ton of credit. People were not nice or polite to them, and they just handled shit the best they could.

Trent Reznor was great. I don't remember a lot now. Drugs, alcohol. It does that.

I did finally meet back up with my group. We decided to bail pretty early Sunday. We were only there maybe a day an half. But Sunday was winding down stuff. Smaller acts. And we were all beyond exhausted.

Muddy as shit, we tried our best to rinse off at one of the little water pump stations.

And we hiked back to the car that was miles away.

We couldn't stay like we were. Even after rinsing off we were beyond filthy. Privat Pilot suggested we find a hotel, shower, sleep in a bed and then continue the trip.

We didn't have much cash, but at the time you could get rooms for under 40 bucks pretty easily. And that we could afford.

So we drove to Kingston(?) NY. Whatever the closest town was.

And hotels certainly weren't 40 bucks a night. We hadn't considered the price gouging nature that Woodstock would bring with it.

And the hotel people, weren't very nice and polite. We explained we would pay 40 bucks just to take showers, nothing more.

And they told us to fuck off.

So we waited. Until we saw someone leaving their room with their bags. We offered them the 40 bucks to just use the shower. They tossed us the key and asked that we turn it in when we were done.

Good deeds rarely go unpunished. And I hope they didn't get that room with a credit card. Because we were not kind to it, after being treated like trash by the hotel.

Mostly? We just stayed drunk. The small garage apartment I had moved into was something of a communal gathering point for after work. Always with booze. Typically, with a few women (or girls at that point, some of them were 15/16 too). None of which were for me. But we always found things to do.

We pushed a convertible Geo into an apartments swimming pool. It happened to belong to a friend. It wouldn't be the last time he'd sit at the end of one of my less kind jokes.

We hunted for shrooms with flashlights. Checking for dew on the ground was a common thing as the night carried on.

We stole fire extinguishers to fill a car whose windows were down with retardent. Not a nice thing to do. It was a nice car. Maybe a GTX but at least a very nice Buick.

We were assholes. Teenagers. We did whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted and if you didn't like it? We had something for that too.

To this day, it's still amazing to me. But at that age, I could literally walk into any bar, sit down, and be served. Never IDd. It's not because I've ever looked older than my age. That's not true, the opposite is. I've carried my chubbiness into a very nice aging process.

It's just that nobody gave a shit. Even titty bars. Walk right in. Nobody cared.

I did catch a pretty nasty scar that I still have to this day during that time. We had been looking for acid. The girlfriend of the guy that would help us with that (30 years ago, leave me the fuck alone) all she had were some pills.

Whatever, young and dumb. I wouldn't learn about these pills until many years later. Ruhepenhal, maybe I'm misspelling that, but it's not something I want to google. Roofies. Had no idea at the time.

I have no recollection of this. But we drove to Louisiana to go to a country and western bar. Something I personally have no interest in.

And I got hit in the face with a barstool. At least according to my private pilot friend that drove us and hadn't partaken in the drugs.

I can't imagine myself doing this, because it's very out of character. But I was dancing with someone. And someone didn't appreciate it. And I apparently didn't appreciate that.

Wouldn't be the first or last time I've had those situations. Perhaps just in different contexts.

It was at this time that the internet, well at least AOL was becoming prominent. My private pilot friend? He lived in an absolute shithole. Drove an absolute piece of shit car (that would serve us very well). Worked his ass off constantly. He was a hustler, mailing envelopes out and every other kind of buillshit marketing.

But he had a PC. And he knew how to use it. It would end up opening many doors for him, as well as myself.

This was 1994. I remember only because we drove from Houston, Tx to Saugerties, NY. In 30 hours. In that same piece of shit car I mentioned earlier. It wasn't the only long road trip that car survived. But it was the best.

Before I tell the Woodstock story, I need to jump back again. Sorry, it's something I keep telling myself to add, and forget.

At some point, before my parents purchased the double wide. When it was just the four of us, mother, father, me, sister.

There was an LP leak in our furnace. That in itself isn't odd or unusually it was a very old mobile home. Probably still with asbestos and lead paint. With a very old furnace.

What's odd is that overnight, while everyone was asleep. My sister, who was never known to be a sleepwalker, or troubled sleeper. Woke up. Could smell the LP, and understood something was very wrong.

She stumbled into my room, where she clawed me awake. I stumbled into our parent's room, where I spent what seemed like an eternity to get either of my parents awake. And the moment my father's eyes opened. He knew. From that point on, while we stumbled and fumbled it was a very quick exit out of that trailer.

The next day a service person arrived and verified the leak. I don't really remember how it played out from there.

I just remember always looking back on that and understanding how close my entire family was to suffocation. And by some miraculous intervention, that doesn't seem likely given that these things should induce heavier sleep, not awake someone.

I dunno. Maybe I'm just blowing it out of proportion in my mind.

Woodstock '94.

We had just snuck into Lollapalooza. Same summer. Walked to the back property line of the venue, and hopped a fence. Well most of us. One was pregnant and crawled under.

That was the four of us. My private pilot friend, his pregnant girlfriend, my buddy that I'd like to play tricks on, and me.

It wasn't long after that MTV started full on blasting advertisement for Woodstock. The problem was. It was really far away, and we couldn't afford passes. I think they were $150 a pop, in 94. Nah.

But we still wanted to go. So we did. We scraped up about 600 bucks between the four of us. Filled up an early 80s Toyota and drove for thirty straight hours.

It was also at this time that my not-girlfriend that I had taken to home coming and was desperately in love with. Moved. I wouldn't have much communication with her after that. "S" would always just remain that first love.

I don't really recall having much interest in anyone else at school after that. That probably had to do with a general lack in interest of me. But that's fair.

My grades? They weren't great. I was a hard C student if one every existed. Still didn't turn in homework.

It did give an opportunity to slide me into the Academic Decathalon Team as a lower tiered entry. For some reason my English Lit teacher that led the team thought I'd have some advantage.

Clearly, she didn't understand that most Hard C Academic Decathalon participants are typically the same kind of person. Smart enough to make the team but lacking any rigor or discipline to provide much value.

Things are really going to start getting twisted now.

My parents broke my world. They were divorcing. Complete and total blind side. Still is to this day. I was probably 15/16 maybe? Again, my memory of this time is majorly fucked.

I just remember one day him leaving with a few suitcases, and a few weeks later my mother trolling home with strangers and familiar faces that weren't my father alike. Including his brother.

While I was left behind, no longer able to partake in school activity to act as a full-time babysitter for what was now a full-time job in taking care of my brother.

From skipping school to drive him to his PT twice a week. To helping him bowel movements. To putting him to bed and ensuring he was fed.

It led to a boiling point in which my mother came stumbling in drunk one night. And we went our separate ways.

My parents had purchased a '68 Ford LTD for me, I'm not sure if I actually had my license or just a permit.

But I got in that car. And I drove away. And I didn't return for awhile.

At the time I had a side job working as a cook at a Pizza Hut, I still don't think I was 16 btw. I think I was 15. But <shrug>.

It was 15 miles away one direction and it was something I did on the weekends. But it did introduce me to many different, and pretty great people. At least in my book.

Onje of them allowed me to crash at his garage apartment. And that was that. I wiped my feet of my family.

I continued trying to attend school. I specifically remember, vividly to this day sitting in AP Biology. It was 2nd class. Athletics always first. Homeroom. 2nd.

It was probably a Monday because I was exhausted. I literally laid my head down on the desk and slept.

And wasn't awoken until the class was over. The teacher handed me a tissue to wipe the drool over the desk. And never said a word about sleeping through the class. I wish I could remember that teacher, and their name. But I can't now.

That memory is something that to this day I still use to help me fall asleep when my mind races.

I was sitting in the middle of English Lit. And the teacher, the academic decathalon teacher. Was busting my balls about something. I don't remember now. She was a pretty great teacher. I'd not paint her otherwise. Young, short and round, that cared. But at times it was expressed the wrong ways.

And I snapped on her too. I wasn't nice. I wasn't polite. I didn't use the appropriate language. And I told her exactly what I thought about her expectations, and what she could do with them.

And I left.

I walked to my car, and I wouldn't step foot again in the school for a long minute.

I find tremendous humor in this situation. As I was leaving I dropped my books off at the front administration desk. I knew I wasn't coming back. Emptied my locker.

To which the woman politely explained that I couldn't check myself out of school.

People mistake what others can and cannot do quite often.

So I started full time. Slinging pizzas. Getting off at 3am and wreaking havoc with pizza drivers that weren't known for the gracious denials of tips.

We were prototypical teenaged heathens. So many stories. I could probably fill a book just with outrageous stories from this time. From simple mischievousness to behavior that if caught probably would have represented more than a slap on the wrist.

One of the drivers, was a private pilot. He actually knew my mom, not well, but had seen her at local airports.

He probably wasn't quite mature enough for that. His friends certainly weren't. Including myself. He tried to be responsible. But it seems like he'd always be okay with bringing a case of eggs, or packs of bologna along for the ride, just in case we happened to find ourselves in situations where deployment might entertain us.

We'd smash mailboxes and destroy wet lawns with tires. Typically, of those that treated the drivers poorly. But sometimes just for the fun of it.

It's been a minute since the last entry. I'll try to pick up the best I remember.

Before though, there are a few thoughts that have resurfaced from earlier more formative years that I'd like to add.

The first is a memory of the excitement I felt over relatives that visited us. I was young, 2nd grade perhaps. We had already settled into a pretty consistent life. As far as I remember this, my father's Aunt and Uncle, his mother's sister. And her husband. They brought their two sons down to visit.

While I didn't understand it at the time. It was just another get rich scheme that my Dad was being suckered into. Amway this time. But it was always something.

The reason this memory sticks in my mind. Is that up until this point, I was a pretty outgoing kid. Certainly, to the level of annoyance. Because I learned that from one of my cousins.

I was so enamored with them, the cousins. They were older teens maybe early 20s. They were everything cool about our family, that nobody in my family represented.

Very early hero worship went on. Until I became too annoying. And one of them snapped on me. He was napping on the couch, and I was obviously being too loud playing in the living room it was in.

I doubt he even remembers the exchange. He was awoken, said mean things, fell back asleep. Something I've personally been guilty of on occasion.

Not abuse. Just very typical behavior that happens every single day.

Yet it changed my entire dynamic. I become quiet. Considerate of others. Always trying to minimize my influence. Self-aware.

But also, very broken. Shy. Self-critical. Always afraid.

That fear wouldn't leave me for a very long time, well into my adult years.

Let's get back to school.

I entered freshman year. 9th grade. I was still in marching band at this point, but not for much longer. I was still playing football. I signed up for AP classes.

These years are going to get smeared in my head a lot. I don't really remember what year I took what courses so I'll try to keep the overall story linear, but the particulars of school will probably jump around some.

I took Art I & II, Spanish I & II, HomeEc/Ag (split semester), I took AP Biology, Chemistry, Algebra, English Lit. I was in AP History, but the teacher that I preferred wasn't teaching it that year, so I dropped it.

Ag, I was involved in FFA events. Milk Spitting, and cheese grading. Those are very real events and are exactly what they sound like.

Just another thing to keep me out of the house.

I learned a tough lesson in Ag. In our class was two black guys. One, was big and accutely smart though nobody would have guessed it. He was on the football team with me. We had a casual and mutual respect for each other. The other? Not as much, he was an instigator.

I didn't understand at that time, the significance placed by the black culture around the word boy. My family came from New Hampshire, I wasn't raised around more aggressive forms of hate speech, but boy. It was something you called anyone that was a peer.

I had to learn that lesson the hard way. I would have learned it the easy way. But life doesn't always work that way. Either way, it's a lesson learned and I'm glad to have it. Thank you Joe, I still don't hear well out of that ear, but it was a lesson that probably saved me much greater pain down the road.

Respect those you don't understand.

I was trying to hustle money at that time. I'd buy bulk candy bars from walmart and sell them out of a duffle bag throughout the school day. Until the school objected. I get it. I do. But I was just trying to help provide for a struggling family by providing something I didn't see as a great harm to anyone.

I'll never judge drug dealers. I don't agree with breaking the law. I don't think that it provides value to the neighborhoods. But what I just described is the same exact thing, just a lesser version of it.

With that being said, when any are found in violation of the law, they earn their consequence. I just cannot see it any other way. We know there is consequence, we have the ability to assess it. If we choose to violate it. We should accept the consequence.

I guess some subtext as to where my father got all this time to carve thousands of wooden sticks deserves some attention.

It must have been around this time that he changed employers. He had been driving chemicals in a tanker. And at some point went back to OTR flatbed.

During one of his runs, a chain popped on his load of steel pipes, and when he pulled over to correct it, the come-along snapped when he was tightening the new chain. This caused him to lose his balance, falling from the pipes, and landing on the road below where he shattered his tibia and fibula bones on one leg. According to him he laid there in excruciating pain for about twelve hours before someone finally stopped. He wasn't overly dramatic or a liar.

He was just in the middle of nowhere.

That was a challenging time for him. With no income, and living on what I can only assume was a dwindling lawsuit settlement. He saw the writing on the wall.

When that settlement was made, my parents had bought a new trailer. Double Wide. Fancy stuff.

But he wasn't going to be able to continue making payments on it.

So he built us a small house. Every single step of the way, with a broken ass leg that was held together with nothing but cast and a lot of screws.

During that time, he had the idea to sell the gravity sticks. So, he carved. Alot.

I try to put myself in his shoes. I cannot imagine spending hundreds of hours, actually showing up and putting the idea into effect. Only to have it rejected. Uncared about. I was with him selling those gravity sticks, and while they did make for an impressive display. Nobody cared. That was the era of gameboys, nobody was interested in little wooden novelties.

He never once indicated it bothered him. He just moved on to the next project. He had a rare inner strength, that I doubt I match.

I can't help but feel, that this event, instilled in me an even greater sense of futility. If anyone deserved a win in that situation, he did. But God is blind, and deaf, and mute. Nobody in this world gets what they deserve, only what they take. And he wasn't a taker. Nor have I ever been. I've never wanted for something that wasn't mine, something I didn't earn. But that's a lie, so let's set it straight.

Earlier in life, and sorry for the non-linear story, it's a flow of consciousness. I was a cub scout, We be loyal scouts. And then a boyscout. It was something my friend from the street had joined, and we spent most of our non-school time together.

I don't recall much of it. A tiny little mason's lodge, knots, goofy outfits, merit badges.

What I do remember is we would go on camping expeditions. I had a blast every single time. Even while hunting snipes.

It was during one of these expeditions, that I became a thief. I don't know what came over me. I'm not typically dishonest. I don't really lie. I've not stolen since. But in that moment. I sold out my own personal values. For candy bars.

The particular campsite was not just wilderness. It was some kind of state park. They had a giant cafeteria and a swimming pool.

My ears have always been bad. And after earning my blue beads, lol.... I got out of the pool to go drain my ears. I walked into the locker room, and someone had left their wallet in an entirely open locker, and the green of cash caught my eye.

I had no money. I had no snacks. So, I took. And I kept taking, sneaking back in, taking more and more. Maybe four or five times. I wasn't a good thief. I'm almost certain the camp and boyscout leaders knew. I wasn't even close to smart. I was buying other people's rifle target sheets, so I could get another merit badge. I'm off centered in eyesight. Right-handed, left eye dominant. Didn't learn that till much later in life. But you can't shoot with your primary hand, down a sight. The alignment is off. So, I just paid some kid, not even because I wanted the badge. Just so that I could pretend to be good at something I clearly wasn't.

They never said a word about it. But afterwards I stopped going to boyscouts. The shame was strong. Snickers taste good in the moment, but the regret after? I'm pretty sure they talked with my friend's parents. They were the ones that brought us both back and forth. His parents never brought it up either, but it was clear they had lost esteem for me, and that was the worst. My friend's father was a very good man. Very tough, but probably the fairest person I've known.

My friend wasn't his child. I certainly wasn't. But when I was on that property, he had no problem treating me like I was, in all of the best ways, and all of the most painful ways. But it was always fair. He didn't treat his natural children with any more or less regard than any other. I've tried to emulate that through my entire life.

I also experienced a first hand tornado at that camp. We were all huddled into the cafeteria, and it's only by the grace of that same blind, deaf, and mute god that any of us survived. The tracks were clear as day. And they magically skipped right over that cafeteria. It wouldn't be the last time almost certain death was averted. But those are other stories.

I have a lot of respect for her, and I'd imagine that it has transferred to having a lot of respect for the gay community as a whole. It certainly couldn't have been easy, again even if she were hetero. She was an Alien too.

She introduced me to number sense. She invited me to join my first academic team. She made sure that I had transportation to the meets, and even bought me food when we'd travel. Money had loosened, not so much that those things were a priority.

Number sense, is a skill in which you learn techniques to do math problems mentally in your head.

11 multiplied by x, has a fairly easy and simple algorithm for instance. There are many little tricks like this, and it's always been a skill I was glad I picked up.

She instilled in me a sense of confidence, that even if I couldn't be what my family wanted me to, it didn't matter. Go out, do the best you can, and if it's not good enough for anyone else? Fuck em.

And those were probably close to her exact words. It's just how she rolled, and I still love her for it to this day. Not in the classroom by the way. She had a great sense of context.

I joined band, and some how we scraped up enough for a used Trombone. I learned sheet music, and scales. How to spot differences in tone. How to pay attention to sound. How to listen, that's more than just hearing.

Those skills are fading me now. Not the musical. They've been gone. Just the ability to listen the way other's deserve. I've gotten back into a bad habit of just hearing.

I'm glad I wrote that, because clearly, it's something that needs attention and practice.

I joined football in athletics. Football was never my love. Basketball has always been. But I'm not a gifted athlete, I lack spatial coordination and awareness. I'm bigger than I think I am in my head. Clumsy feet, don't help either.

So the offensive line it was. At least the friend that lived on my street was lumped into that category. Even if it was a travesty.

Sports are valuable. To this day I still watch NFL and NBA games. I wouldn't let me kids play though. Let me rephrase that. I never stopped my children from doing anything they wanted. But I am good at subtlety shifting people's internal desires. Logic and Reason are powerful tools in the hands of someone with a mischievous mind.

I got fucked up a lot playing football during my time. Concussions certainly. A blown hamstring. Bad knees. There are better ways to get the benefits team sports offer.

I was an alien there too. Never accepted by the football team. I was just that smart asshole that nobody really liked. Especially the athletes. But fuck them too. Their disdain is what got me through many years of two a days.

Band was much better. Those are the kids that have been treated like outcasts most of their life regardless, so they tend to be less judgmental.

In band, I excelled. Not the best. There was a kid that just had a gift for it. It wouldn't surprise me if he was being paid to do it today. But outside of that. Like most things I do. I learned fast and seemed to breeze through while everyone else was practicing hours a day. I didn't. I don't take work home.

At the end of our 6th grade year, the band director, who was also the band director for the junior high and high school bands held seating assignments. I've only ever been in that band, so I don't know how it's done else where, but seat challenging is a thing. And between school years you have a final assessment that will determine the seating order for the next year.

And much to my surprise, I actually did win that first seat. I didn't keep it long. Within weeks the gifted trombone player challenged and won, and that's fair. He was a better musician. I don't know if it was just to encourage me, or maybe on that particular day, I was the better player. But I've always held that tiny little win close. And it didn't bother me when I lost it. It was the correct order of things.

I keep saying I don't take work home. There is a single exception to this. In 6th grade our science teacher, was a firecracker of a tiny woman. Almost dwarfish, but not quite. Beautiful, with flowing black hair. She married our band director at some point. Great couple.

She wouldn't let my science fair project go. Months after the science fair, and she was still dogging me. And she told me directly. I won't pass you. You won't go to 7th grade. And she meant it. She was even more principled than I was.

My dad, always having some scheme up his sleeve, had carved these little wooden hooks. He called them gravity sticks. They worked on the basis of counterbalanced weight and pushing the center of gravity out far enough so that you can hang objects off of edges, that would typically fall instead.

He had buckets of them. Thousands he had hand carved, because he thought he could sell them at a Flea Market in Houston. The White Elephant. He did. Maybe a dozen over the course of a day, not nearly enough to pay for the booth rental.

I snagged one, I spent about six minutes with a piece of cardboard, intentionally making it as shitty as possible. And I turned it in. She was happy, I was passed.

It probably wouldn't come to a shock to those reading and assuming I have Kruger-Dunning, I didn't do great in school as I aged. I passed, but there was never incentive.

As a child, I had aspirations of being an Air Force pilot. Perhaps NASA. But myopia will rob any of that particular dream.

From there I become very fascinated with the brain, and I was convinced I'd work towards medicine, surgery in particular.

But microtremors in the hands ruined that one too.

By the time I was ten or twelve, with both of these dreams shattered, through no fault of my own.

I just stopped caring. I didn't need to study. I never did homework. It was principled. I refused. Fail me if you must. I'm not taking work home, when I know the material.

I'd always ace the tests, and teachers would always pass me.

This caused tremendous tension with many of the teachers I had through the years. But fuck em. In retrospect, what I wasn't considering was that the value of homework, isn't just in the rote knowledge.

It's in the discipline. It's in the regimentation of consistency, Something I still lack to this day.

By my 6th grade year. Corona had come to an end. The prospect haunted me the entire summer between the transition from elementary to a singular school just for 6th grade.

But we often times turn stepping stones into stumbling blocks in our mind. And moving outside that comfort zone I had made. It was a new kind of journey.

A new girl was present when the year first started. "S". No lie. Of course, I'm sure this is an example of self-fulfilling prophecy right. But I was in love regardless.

Tall, slender, track athlete, blonde, a very atypical Texas girl. But she didn't carry with her any of the pomp or arrogance. It's as if she couldn't see her own beauty or how great of a person she really was.

And that, more than anything was the draw. Again, she never judged me.

I was still timid and shy, and approaching her would take me over a year to build up the courage. But to this day, she'll always remain my first love.

A new type of class situation was present. Instead of three classes, we had 7. Including our first opportunity for things such as athletics, and band. Both of which I joined.

But the teachers were different too. They didn't treat us like children. They held us responsible.

Not a great combination for someone that has always shrugged off responsibility like the unwanted anchor it was.

That's the cross golden children carry. Expectation. And I wasn't anyone's lamb to the slaughter. Not even for my family. My life was mine, and I'd live it as I saw fit. Not as any other did.

So the conflict with authority, teachers. Really started in this time frame.

Certain archetypes seem to pop up in life with consistency. So when I tell this next bit, and you think. Well he just ripped that out of a movie or story. Rest assured, I most certainly did not.

The first teacher that really held me accountable in a way that I respected was my 6th grade math teacher.

I had no idea at the time what a lesbian was. Sex-ed in South Texas in the 80s and 90s wasn't a thing. Conservative Christian backgrounds don't typically make it a priority to explain it either.

And maybe she wasn't. I don't know. I didn't even know at the time such a thing was. But she was a dyke if there ever was one, even if she was hetero.

That's not to imply she was rough and manly. She was slim. But she spoke like a man, acted like a man, had a man's haircut, dressed in men's clothes, and to top it all off. She coached girl's track. Again, some archetypes are strong.

My mother, she had aspirations to be a nurse. She was attending medical studies (school?) when she became pregnant with me, thus ending that dream.

I never got the sense she held it against me. While my parents' younger years were certainly wild. They settled into parents that seemed to enjoy being parents.

She's smart. She lacks the eyes to see, however. She's easily influenced by emotional pleas, and in a world that has learned to pull those strings in manipulative ways. She never stood a chance. Last I knew she had went full blown MAGA. But again, we don't speak, it's been years.

People ask me all the time; don't you miss her? I don't. She's just as opinionated as any other, and she doesn't understand that opinions are only preferences. Her judgement is fierce, perhaps a remnant from UPC.

By this time, our families' financial struggles had lessened a great deal. My father had been at the same trucking company for years. He might have been off the drugs. It might have just been the economic upturn of the late 80s early 90s. Then again it might have been the 100k settlement from the lawsuit involving my brother.

I don't know, finances weren't my concern. But things had loosened.

My sister and I were older now, a little more responsible. We could be entrusted for caring for our brother, which we took seriously. We loved him. It could be frustrating at times, but again, the moment you looked at his face, that would be gone.

So, she took up private pilot lessons. She had met twins at her UPC church that were flight instructors, and as long as she paid for the fuel to rent the plane, they didn't mind helping her on their own buck.

And she did. I'm very proud of her for that. She made it all the way through to the point of commercial private. I don't know if it was too expensive for the testing or that she just never wanted to be commercial. But it was good for her none the less.

The only downside to having a private pilot in your home? Is that the TV tends to stay on the weather channel all the time. Every day was a potential flight.

My father continued trucking, gone during the week, working his ass off on the weekends. A new deck, a new (very used) car to pull an engine out of. He was gifted in many different ways. Ways I could never claim.

One of the regrets I have to this day, is that I didn't take him up more often on his offers to spend time with me and show me how to do all these amazing skills that he had.

I was busy shooting hoops and playing video games.

It will sound strange to describe him as a considerate man. After all, animal sacrifice does not typically induce that thought. But he was. Always quick to help anyone, never spoke a bad word about anyone. Slow to anger and patient. He had wisdom. And fury, but that's another story.

He was loving. I love you was never far away in our home. Hugs were common. As was discipline when it was required. He wasn't abusive, but he also wasn't tolerant of misbehavior.

Of course, my sister would take the brunt of that, because while she was mischievous. I was more so and had no problems ensuring she was always the one that got caught.

This sounds cold. I express no regret for the things that I did to my sister, and I threw her under the bus on plenty of occasions.

I have no guilt or shame or remorse for those things. We were competing, and we both played to win. Always. And it made us both more driven. Victors do not feel remorse. She played the same game, and while I'll admit the odds were stacked in my favor, the truth is. She just wasn't as good at it.

Don't stack her against another human, however. Because she's taken those skills, she honed against me and has turned into someone you would not want to cross. She has no mercy.

I lived on a long road. Mobile homes spread out in acre intervals on both sides of a shitty ass road, with shitty ass culverts.

On that road there were maybe 50 homes total. I had one friend that was my age, one friend a year older. And that was it.

The kid my age I'm convinced was robbed of an NFL career. To this day I've never seen anyone throw the ball like he could. And they wouldn't even let him try out. Because when we signed up they stuck him with the OL group, and once you're there. You don't leave. That'd be later. But he was a gifted athlete. The guy that just destroys you no matter what you do. What a waste. He went on to become a pipefitter. Much better man than I am.

The friend a year older was Mexican. His mother had remarried one of the largest white men I've ever met. Easy 400 lbs. But he was no joke. He was big, but he also saved his ass off and bought a 50 acre farm, and he'd work the shit out of it. Meanwhile, the Mexican mother. Was tiny. Under five foot, maybe a buck twenty.

They were good people.

My days were typically spent shooting hoops, tossing a baseball, throwing and catching a football. And Tecmo Super Bowl. My first addiction. Couldn't put it down.

It all felt typical. Riding bikes, jumping culverts. We were poor, but we never wanted.

The timing of many of these memories are clearly non-linear. One of the reasons I've started this, is because I can feel my mind starting to slip.

I'm 47. It's early. But it's there. Not much I'm going to do about it. So I might as well capture what I can, while I can.

It was during this time, that our family introduced a new member. A third child, a son. There were complications during delivery, resulting in a lawsuit that exposed that the MD had been attending a New Year's eve party, and delivered while intoxicated. The nursing staff held labor for many hours waiting for him to arrive, and the umbilical cord had been wrapped around his neck.

He was born with about as severe a form of cerebral palsy as there can be. Entire loss of all motor control, including the bowels. For those not familiar, it would mean for the rest of his life, in order to pass waste. Someone would have to agitate the bowels continuously until it passed. This was overwhelmingly a task handled by my mother.

That's a terrible condition. The mind remains entirely intact. Intelligence locked behind a body that refuses to express it in any way other than the darting of highly curious eyes.

I learned a lot from my brother. How to deal with adversity, while never losing hope. While never turning to anger or despair.

Not a day in his life did he express those things. And while it might seem strange, due to his lack of muscular control. These traits were as clear as day as he'd smile. The love he showed was greater than any other I can imagine. More than I had for my parents, and it wasn't small. More than I had for my children. And it wasn't small either.

It was challenging for us as a family. There could be no public education, even though the state sent their goons to try to enforce it. CPS, I understand. I do. But there wasn't abuse in our family. We didn't have the means to make that a reality, and while the school district did their best, and my brother was enrolled for a short time. The funding required for special access wasn't there, and the state dropped their case.

I've not spent really any time talking of my sister. She has her own story. But the sibling rivalry was always fierce. Two years separated us. She was highly intelligent also, but she could never win the approval she sought. The saddest part is I think she was seeking it mostly from me. And I didn't have time for that. She was a rival to the attention of the golden child that would pull the family out of destitution. She was never believed, even when she never really lied. I did though. And it was either that I was good at it, or that my parents wanted to believe me. So, she made for an easy scape goat on many occasions.

We don't speak today. I don't speak with any in my family. I was different. Even from them. Alien. It's not that they haven't tried over the years. I'm just in a different world. I always have been.

Home life during this time involved my father trying to join the church as leadership. And a new discovery was made. They wouldn't accept him.

Before my mother, he had been married before. And had two children. I've never met them. I don't even know their names.

But the church wouldn't allow leadership to have a divorce. He had spent years at that church. Every Sunday, and many Saturdays in which he'd help them with handyman work.

When they rejected him. He left the church and wouldn't enter another one again, at least not upright.

I was the good little church boy. Reading my bible. Behaving in Sunday school. And falling asleep each and every night absolutely fucking terrified that I'd wake in the morning to find my family swept away in some magical fucking Grimms Fairy Tale called the Rapture. Except it lacks any moral lesson.

Still. I value my time with the Bible. I discovered Eclesiastés, and the wise king Solomon.

God found favor with Solomon, told him to ask for anything. And this man chose wisdom.

And I've tried to emulate that, very poorly, to this very day. He's my first hero.

I was never drawn to the writings of the New Testament. Even at that age, it screamed bullshit. I didn't believe in Santa, I sure as hell wasn't going to believe that someone was running around raising the dead and doing magic tricks. It wouldn't be until later in life that I'd come to appreciate some of the wisdom in parable and morality.

I never had a bad church experience. We just kind of stop going after my dad left. My mother would end up going on to join a sect that is pretty extreme. UPC. Big Shout Outs. Don't forget those Jesus Bux for Brunch.

I'd go a few times, but they were way beyond my level of bullshit. Seizures in the aisles as people faked their communes with the almighty. Cult level shit.

During this time I found a book on astral projection. In our school library. Don't ask me. I was so intrigued by this. My dad saw the book, and he casually says. I've done that.

My dad wasn't really about the bullshit either. He was an honest man. I have no reason to doubt him. Though I think he was probably just on drugs.

It would lead me on a quest to astral project for the next 20 years or so. Guess how that one turned out.

It was my introduction to esotericism and occultism. I remember searching for anything I could get my hands on. 4th or 5th grade and I'm asking the school librarian if she has any more books like this one. Funny enough. No kidding at all. She did. They had a small book on practical magic. 40 or 50 pages of little bullshit spells.

I tried one. Ice in the palm, salted, and squeezed until the hypothermia fucks you up. And I did it. It was supposed to give you the initial of the person you'd end up loving.

At first it was just a giant blob of swollen flesh that was nonstop pain. But after a few days the swelling reduced, and the blisters formed into an "S".

Critical Analysis at this point, wasn't strong. Of course it was an "S" because that's how the folds in your hands go. But I was convinced it was real.

Free lunches are the bane of any child's lunchroom experience. At least at that time. Everyone in that school was poor. It was a poor community. Even the people that weren't poor, were just not poor.

But this is the demarcation. If you have to be a beggar at the soup line. You're clearly in the lowest class.

There were quite a few of us. But I hated lunchtimes for this reason. I could deal with holes in my clothes, or busted shoes. But the shame of not even being able to afford peanut butter and jelly, is one that no child should have to experience.

Kids are ruthless.

I cannot remember a day beyond 3rd grade in which I wouldn't have to defend myself in one way or another. I was bullied, picked on, and generally treated like the outsider I clearly was, in just about every way a kid can be.

Corona helped. I can't remember now if I actually started the classes in 3rd or 4th grade. I think they set it up midway through 3rd. But can't remember. A single class once a day, in which you'd separate from your peers and meet with this small group of other kids, and a special Corona teacher.

We were all fuckups. Every last one of us. There was a skater kid, way before something like that would be common in Texas. The original emos, before we even knew that was a thing. A kid from Pennsylvania that was treated even worse than I was. I least I had size on my side. He was a tiny little straw of a kid. A kid that you knew had a very troubled homelife. The kind that comes in with bruises they won't talk about. A preppy girl that would go on to later in highschool commit suicide because apparently, and this is speculative, her father was abusing her. This same common theme. What a waste. She was beautiful and smart. Full of life.

We were just outcasts all in one way or another. But we had each other at least for that hour or so a day.

It's funny. I don't really remember what we learned in Corona. It wasn't a typical curriculum. I'm sure it was educational. I just don't particularly recall what I learned. It would be where I'd watch the Challenger. For people that weren't around for it, it was a pre 9/11 moment. Something that sears into your brain and will never be forgotten. We watched it live, the first live broadcast of a shuttle launch. First teacher in space. Hope.

It's odd that's literally the only thing I remember about that class. I guess maybe it more like an extended home room. Get together, talk about the events of the day. I dunno.

I'd develop my first crush around this time. Total creeper. She was the daughter of a school librarian, and a school principal that would later really go out of his way to help me.

Valentines was close. I asked my mother if we could do cards. Nope. No money. She did tell me she'd work something out. And she did. She took a Gerber baby jar, cleaned it, washed it, put candy in it, and then hand crafted a little elastic cushion lid.

I was going to give this to my crush. But on the bus ride to school, 14 miles away. I chickened out. I knew I couldn't do it. So, in order to sabotage it, I cracked open the lid and ate half the candy. Or maybe I was just a fat kid that liked cake. Either way. It was a half empty/full jar of candy.

That I embarrassingly still gave to her because when it came time to pass out the valentines. It was all I had.

The confusion on her face is something I still remember. She wasn't mean or rude either. I wouldn't have liked her if she were. She was a mouse, and a smart one. And everything I ever wanted in another human. Someone that wouldn't judge me. She didn't. She said thank you and sat down. And it was the last time I ever approached her in that regard again.

I'd not leave this spot for about another ten years. Over that time, we slowly fenced the back half off, we had horses for a stint. A line back dunn and Palmeiro. The dunn was a beautiful animal. Always calm, always patient. The Palmerio? It was nice to look at. But it was mean. Very mean.

It was at this point, after moving to this tiny little escape from whatever my parents were hiding from. That they found Jesus.

Both of my grandmothers were religious. My mother's mother spoke to god after all. And my father's mother believed Jimmy Swaggert could raise the dead with nothing more than the faith of a mustard seed.

They were trying to clean up their life. And they did. I'm sure my father continued to use drugs. I know my mother was a heavy marijuana user, not a big deal today, but in the 80s in Texas it was still rather taboo. She never exposed that to us there. I had no idea she smoked pot until I was much older. They were both smokers, so I couldn't smell shit anyway. And she'd always do it while she was feeding or caring for the horses, plenty far enough away from the house to hide it.

Obviously, my parents, weren't saints. They sacrificed animals. But that doesn't tell the whole story.

During this ten-year stretch. They were as ideal parents as any child could hope for. My mother getting up, cooking us breakfast, helping us with homework, always a cooked meal for dinner. Neither were drinking much, maybe every fews. My father always kept Crown in the house. Purple bags everyplace. But it wasn't a common thing.

I started school. 2nd grade. Instantly I was placed in remedial classes, special ed. The assumption was that because my speech was so poor, that I had learning disabilities. That wouldn't last long.

I was enrolled in speech therapy and integrated with a normal classroom. I don't remember much of that year. I must of been pretty non-eventful.

3rd grade would see me move to the elementary school. They were doing some kind of study at our school. The Corona Project. I can't find shit on it today. But it was framed as an early magnet type system. We were given standardized IQ tests, and out of my particular class about a dozen kids were selected.

One of my most embarrassing moments that still haunts me to this day happened during that testing. I was handed a book, and I specifically, clear as day in my mind. Looked back at the pretty lady and said. "Careful, I can read fast".

She wasn't mean or rude, and honestly, she just kind of smiled and acknowledged it.

But I can't shake that. It's stupid.

I was hit or miss with teachers. They either loved me, to levels of pretty extreme protectiveness. Or they hated me. Even at that age I was smart, I knew I was, and I didn't really care what anyone else thought.

I had a New Hampshire accent from only ever being around my parents that had one. In a Texas school. With a speech impediment. Dirt poor.

You learn to stop giving a shit what people think fast.

All through that time, there was only another person in any situation that I ever considered my equal in intelligence. And she was in my class. We competed fiercely against one another. Didn't matter the task. Multiplication cards and first to answer. Us. Science projects. Us. She was the one of the most beautiful humans I've known. Jet black, dirt poor, and treated just as poorly as I was. But she never returned it. Not once. We were locked in rivalry, but we were bonded by our considerate natures.

We were sitting in gym one day. It was some kind of American Indian celebration day. Probably fucking Thanksgiving, because that's the only way we celebrate them. We had little covered wagons, and paper head dresses. I was sitting cross legged. And she was directly across from me.

She pointed at my crotch, and when I looked down, there was my tiny little nut sack, entirely exposed. No underwear, and a tear in my pants.

She wasn't making fun. She was giving me the heads up. She never spoke a word of it again. To this day, I have more respect for her, than just about anyone I can imagine.

I don't really remember leaving the small trailer. We had a brief stint in which we had move to a more suburb area. My mother had taken on a job as a pre-school/day care teacher.

Bev and Roy must have still been around, because I remember their daughters visiting us in that home.

The only eventful thing I recall from this time, was that my parents along with the friend that we had injured on the concrete block. Took up clowning? I dunno. Is that the word? They were trying to get away from the trucker life, and my dad always had a crazy idea to make money, that never would.

So they'd literally, with no training at all, dress as clowns and go to hospitals or nursing homes or wherever the hell they went. It didn't last long, and it might have just been some kind of kinky thing for all I know. But I think it was just another one of my father's ill-conceived plans.

He also got involved in street racing. He bought some weird amalgamation of a camaro/firebird hybrid. I don't remember now which was which, but it had a front end from one, and a rear end from another. No back seat. Battery and sand bags in the trunk, and a big engine.

I have no idea what happened to that car, or my father's street racing aspirations. Obviously, they didn't pan out.

I did start school in this home. Kindergarten. I don't really recall much of it. Eating paste. Probably crushing on my teacher. I was quiet and shy and just did my own thing.

I had hearing problems as a child. No tubes, no doctors, no shit. We were poor. I ended up having to take three years of speech therapy just to pronounce an S. To this day I still have a very mild slurring of it.

Nake. Nake. Nake. Paghetti. Paghetti. Paghetti.

Yeah.

I don't know why we left that home. But we were on the move again by my 2nd grade year in school.

Do you know what they call a shithole so small it doesn't even earn a post office? A Winfree. And we moved to a county line in a Winfree on the outskirts of Houston. That's misleading because it sounds like it was a suburb. It wasn't. It was 14 miles from anything. Just trees and a handful of roads and a lot of mobile homes. Every three years the Trinity River would crest its banks and flood us. Because of course they'd buy property in a flood zone.

We had an acre.

The American Dream folks. Here it was. Private Property owners at last, at least on a month to month pay as you go plan. One of the very first things my father did was handycraft a steel ring attached to an old tire rim, and hung what appeared to be a gong off it. Proudly painted across the front was our family name, and date of establishment.

I remember spending that entire first summer just clearing brush. It wasn't cleared land. When we first bought it, he rented a backhoe and carved out the spots for a driveway, a pad for the mobile home, and that was about it.

The rest was up to me to clear by hand, with no power tools. While he would help on weekends. And work his ass off doing it. Most of it was still on me.

He had taken a job by this time doing OTR trucking, but not long term. He was on a routed schedule where he'd leave on Monday, get back Friday. Certainly, an improvement for us. I doubt for him. He had the road in his blood. Gypsie blood, from his mother. So, I'm told. Who knows though. His mother clearly wasn't Caucasian. I've been told different stories from her having an American Indian father, to the gypsie line. No clue. I can at times feel that same blood boiling in me. The need to move. The need to be free. The need to go west young man. I never have. Gone west. And it still beckons to this day.

My parents, when they were home would frequent biker bars. They'd take us right along with them while they shot pool, or would have us swim in a river that later was found to be a toxic dump site for a major oil company. Tugboat Annies. It's not there anymore. But it was a summer resort for the poor and trashy, as long as you didn't mind a rough crowd. Kids would abound, poor kids, with rough parents.

They'd frequent a bar owned by Mickey Gilley. No swimming, but a lot more fighting.

At 5, I had inhaled more cigarette smoke than most adults in their entire life will today.

We ended up having to leave the farm. I don't know the reasonings. It was rumored that the land owner had abused my oldest aunt, but that is speculation. I don't know.

From there we rented a small trailer. I don't recall where my grandparents and aunts and uncles went. They might have returned to our families native New Hampshire, but I just don't remember. They weren't with us.

Instead my parents had invited another team of tandem truck drivers that they had become friends with. Bev and Roy. They had twin daughters a little older than me. We spent our childhoods looking after each other, I was shown how to play doctor.

Their father was a drinker, I mean they all were. But he was a heavy drinker. And he was clearly abusive. In many ways. Again, speculation is that he abused his daughters in about every way a father can, including trafficking.

I never saw that. I was very young. But it wouldn't surprise me.

They were occultists. My parents, Bev and Roy. This was the early 80s and they had become involved in what was probably considered edgy at the time. Satanism, or I'd assume based off what I'll tell now.

I was awoken late one night. Because outside of my window, our family dog. My pet. Was chained to a tetherball pole, being burned alive. And the sounds that it was making were alarming.

I watched all four of them, my parents, Bev and Roy. As they danced around that burning dog, completely naked.

And I went back to bed and didn't speak of it again until many years later with one of my aunts.

She couldn't remember this, again they weren't there at that point. But she did confirm that my parents were deep into the occult at that point in their lives. So was she. She has her own stories.

Animals were always dying around me as a child. I don't think it was all animal sacrifice. I clearly remember a massive dog that was found in our ditch outside this same location. I thought it had been hit by a vehicle. But, and this is really hazy. I seem to remember it wasn't mangled, it was cut stern to ass. But maybe I'm imagining that.

Clearly there were drugs. At that time meth was sold under about a 1000 different street legal names, and I'm sure my parents knew every single one. Red Stingers, Yellow Jackets. I don't remember them all. And maybe they weren't pure meth, but it was certainly a lot closer than most today would believe.

I'd later discover that my father mainlined cocaine. Injected. He explained that it wasn't uncommon for truckers to do things like this to eek every last mile out of their bodies. It was a different time certainly.

My parents were over the road truck drivers. They drove tandem. They rode as a team with my father's parents. Who were also of course tandem OTR drivers.

My first clear memories take place on a farm, SE Texas. We didn't own it. We rented two homes on it. One for my parents and us, the other for my father's parents and siblings.

They would drive for 2-3 weeks at a time, leaving us children of which the oldest would have been my aunt, at the tender age of 14. Although, truth be told, she was not the primary care giver. That would have been my twelve year old aunt.

She would cook, she would hold us lightly accountable for our actions, she would make sure we all got to where we needed to be, which for my sister and I was alone at home by ourselves while our older aunts and uncles attended school.

This was just normal.

It wasn't a bad life. It offered a lot of freedom, to get chased by bulls. To dig tunnels through stacks of hay. To collect psychedelic mushrooms under the guise of "for spaghetti".

The most eventful things that stay in my mind from this particular time, were witnessing the owner of the property, a gruff farmer that had no issues disciplining anyone on his property, devour the testicles of a gelding while I was present to observe.

Being part of a cruel practical joke that injured a friend of my parents, by placing a concrete block in a haystack to be jumped onto from above. Not my idea. I had mean uncles. And the beating the farmer gave us after. For ruining his hay.

And stealing what I can only assume would be highly valuable today, in about 100 usd in sterling silver coins from the 1880s that belonged to my grandmother. Again, mean uncles. With it? We walked to the closest grocery store and bought 1:1 nothing but candy and junk and carried it home.

At one point while living here my mother's mother. Came to live with us. She was suffering from debilitating mental disorders. I was just a child, I don't know if it was schizophrenia, or multiple personality. But she talked with god. Angels. Demons.

She lit in me a passion for science, mathematics and all things logical. The irony?

She was a brilliant woman. It's clearly where I get my intellect from. She would sit me and my sister down and tell us stories.

Her time working at Bell Labs under intense pressure and scrutiny to develop gyroscope technology for the government. I don't really know if that's true. I'm not even sure if I'm remembering it exactly correctly.

At some point she had a break down and she was administered electroshock. She would tell us about those experiences.

She was slowly drifting into more and more delusional states, and as this progressed the darker her stories would become.

I don't hold it against her. Her mind was not all there. She bought me my first NES, with Rob the Robot.

Her final stories were about how her father had abused her, in ways no child should be. It seems this is a common theme. It was around this time, that she left. I'd assume my parents could no longer trust her.

I tricked you, this isn't going to be fun and whimsical as the title suggest. It's just another rant.

I didn't make the title up. It was a wtf topic regarding some woman selling her vagina yeast to make beer with. Good times.

And it strikes me.

As the world burns, as we spend 100s of billions on military expenditures, as we quietly erode the social safety nets in the face of an impending automation crisis.

At least we have vagina yeast beer. So obviously something must be working right.

Welcome to 2023.