RIP Mongo

Shhh! I’m thinking.

What? Oh, that title…no, nothing bad has happened, not yet. I was just thinking about my inevitable death. Someday, I shall be no more and my four readers will finally get their lives back, minus a few years of inane blog posts they’ve sorted through here at M.A.M.S. I just figured it would be interesting to plan out what my obituary would say. I know what it should say. But, perhaps we could take a look at what it could say. I was recently discussing the deaths of some famous people with family and friends and had decided that I did not want my obituary to read, “Died from anal cancer” like some of Farrah Fawcett’s online obituaries had read if I were to ever die from anything remotely connected to my ass or other parts used for disposal of waste. Now, a publicist for David Carradine said that the Kung Fu star died fighting ninjas, which I thought was far more appropriate than the dreaded Michael Hutchence’s syndrome. My good friend asked if there was ever an obituary that made it past the editors and contained various references to either false accomplishments or hysterical hyperbole. The winner might just be Michael Jackson when all is said and done, but I thought I’d give it a go.

Mongo died, today, at the age of 115. He was killed while fighting a zombie horde that had invaded his hometown. Mongo managed to dispatch several zombies, with only a crowbar, while simultaneously rescuing a family trapped in their poorly protected home. He was bitten on the arm by one of the undead and proceeded to detonate a propane tank killing him as well as the remaining attackers. This was considered the only outbreak of undead nature and the disaster has been averted thanks to the Supercentarian.

Mongo had accomplished quite a lot in his 115 years on this Earth. He was raised in the desert by his Uncle and Aunt on a moisture farm near the Jundland Wastes. His childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons, in the winter he was known to play in his most prized possession, an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle. A tragic gun accident cost him the life of a childhood friend and nearly his own eyesight forcing Mongo to never use another gun, relying only on his own ingenuity, a Swiss army knife, and what was available to him for escaping tight situations.

As he entered into high school Mongo had scored many milestones. Among his achievements, he successfully became a surgeon at the age of 14, though some dispute the age to be 16. An old computerized journal written by Mongo was discovered and converted into existing readable document format by MIT grad students and supported the claim of 14 years. He gave it up though to lead a normal life with his peers. He went back to high school to in order to graduate with his friends.

During his second high school career, he successfully helped his basketball team defeat their rival high school’s Dragons. In that same year it was discovered that a similar looking and possible relative, unconfirmed, played guitar at a high school dance in California, 30 years earlier, prompting speculation that Mongo had indeed gone back in time and performed a yet unreleased version of Johnny B. Goode. The principal of that school has declined comment, only recalling that he was a slacker.

During his senior year, it was rumored that Mongo became embroiled in an international incident between the Soviet Union and the United States military when he unknowingly hacked into the military’s supercomputer used to predict possible outcomes from nuclear war. He just wanted to play games. This incident has been denied by both the U.S. and Soviet Republic’s Government as something you could only find in a movie. One last highlight occurred in Mongo’s adolescence when he successfully skied the K-12 slope, beating the captain of his high school ski team, Roy Stalin.

After graduating he spent the summer as a caddy at Bushwood Country Club where he competed for a college scholarship against other Caddies. Winning the Caddy Day golf tournament proved him a worthy recipient but some unconfirmed discretion with a club cofounder’s niece forced his disqualification. Undeterred, he somehow obtained enough funds for his college career from local businessman, Al Czervik. As the summer wound down he spent a few weeks in Nantucket, single handedly winning the Nantucket Regatta with a makeshift boat and crew assembled from various locals and the engine of a sports car. Before entering college, he had another brush with luck as he was responsible for saving actress Brooke Shields from drowning. He was offered a large sum of money and subsequently blew it all hiring, musical group, Van Halen to play at his birthday. What money he had left was used to attend college.

Over the next few years, Mongo attended a variety of schools, earning him degrees in all manner of study. As an undergrad, he studied astronomy at Grand Lakes University and competed on the dive team. He performed a nearly impossible dive dubbed the Triple Lindy which earned him the only perfect 10 from judges. The dive has since been banned from collegiate diving due to its inherent danger. Afterwards, he transferred to Adams College where he successfully defeated the Alpha Beta fraternity employing a high tech laser light and sound show in the talent portion of the annual Greek Games. This victory led to his own fraternity's wresting of power, over the Greek Council, from the Alpha Betas and an end to nerd persecution at Adams.

Tapping into that associated brain power he felt within the Tri Lambda fraternity at Adams, he decided to leave and attend Pacific Tech to complete a physics degree and worked on a research team consisting of fellow students tasked with designing a chemical laser and tracking device for the military. No such device has ever been claimed to be in existence or contracted by the military and, as such, any information would be deemed classified. His final few years in college were spent in business school while he moonlighted as a hot shot bartender.

After graduating college a second time, Mongo entered into the world of business as a mail room clerk while secretly becoming a high powered executive simply by occupying an empty office. He kept the company from being acquired in a hostile takeover by influencing a number of high rollers in the business world to bank roll his bid to take over the Davenport Enterprises in a proxy fight for the Pemrose Corporation.

Not satisfied with big business or medicine as a career, Mongo moved into the realm of archaeology and retrieved several priceless artifacts such as the Cross of Coronado, the Lost Ark of the Covenant, and it is rumored that he found the stones of Sankara, and the Holy Grail, though evidence is there to support it. There was an additional report that Mongo found the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull but this was deemed too silly even for the most diehard fan of his exploits.

It has been rumored that Mongo is simply a pseudonym, an alter ego for various identities associated with Batman, Superman, James Bond, and even the most outrageous, that he is, indeed, Hannah Montana. As incredulous as it sounds, neither him nor Montana have been seen together at the same time. Further reports that he is the Lindbergh baby have been seen as either ridiculous or intriguing from various points of view.

Other identities connected to Mongo that have either been proven false or are undetermined have been:

Keyser Soze
Client # 8
He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named
Spartacus
Tyler Durden
Grand Priory of the Sion
Jason Bourne
General Maximus Decimus Meridius
and,
The guy in the creepy Burger King Costume

While none of these have ever been confirmed it is worth noting that no one has disputed these claims.

Mongo is survived by his wife and daughter as well as the rest of his extended family which include, Jan, Peter, Bobby, Greg, Marcia, Cindy, but not Oliver; Alex P., Mallory, Jennifer, but not Andrew; Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper, and Snorky; various Happy Tree Friends, Bucky T. Katt, Satchel Pooch, and Rob; Gordie LaChance, Chris Chambers, Teddy DuChamp, and Vern Tessio, even though he was the fat kid that grew up to marry Rebecca Romijn, the bastard; Stewie, Chris, Brian, Peter, Lois, and the other one; the fourth member of Destiny’s Child, Lisa Lopes’ right eye, Randall Flagg, The Dread Pirate Roberts, Ante Meridian, Uncle Meridian, and all the Little Meridians, The Noid, and various members of Menudo.

Guests will be received at The Brickyard citing that Chuck Norris’ beard could not hold his awesomeness, Circus Maximus could not be booked, and Michael Jackson’s memorial in the Staples Center was like seeing Quiet Riot at the County Fair. He will be interred at Machine City until a more suitable venue can be entered into the Pop Culture World for his eternal rest.

Hail to the King, baby.

The Six Million Dollar Miracle

We can rebuild her – We have the technology.

That title is a bit of a misnomer. Not the miracle part, but the price tag associated with it. After all, in the 1970s, the operations that gave Steve Austin his bionic abilities may have cost around six million dollars, but in today’s terms, the actual cost attached to all of that hardware may put it closer to what the government gave AIG in TARP funds. However, to say that my Mother-in-Law was given, not only bionic parts, but a six million dollar cumulative price tag for all her surgeries is probably incorrect. In fact, they didn’t exactly add anything, more like they took pieces out. OK, I should have titled this “The Incredible Shrinking Woman.” Are these 70s and early 80s pop culture references doing anything for ya? Thought not. Well, then let’s just find the chase and cut to it.

I spoke before about my unwillingness to understand how someone can have faith in a higher power when all they’ve done is fight to keep death at bay. This time around, I think I’ll look a little more positive on the subject but I won’t give into too much praise of a higher being keeping her around. Here’s a quick rundown on what we’ve had so far.

In 1997 after a bout with a tricky case of pneumonia, she found out that she had a football sized tumor on her kidney. When they opened her up on the table, they wished that they hadn’t. RCC (Renal Cell Carcinoma) had metastasized into her lungs. They put her at stage IV and removed the tumor, along with the kidney, and an ovary. When I say “They wished they hadn’t” I mean that had they known what was going on inside her, they wouldn’t have bothered and told her to go home and be comfortable. But they didn’t. Instead, they put her into a study for an experimental treatment that would quite literally take her to death’s door in order to reboot her immune system. Consider it the Jurassic Park computer system method.

When I met her daughter, my future wife, she had already been through the treatments and come out with a clean bill of health, for now. All of the spots on her lungs had disappeared and she had been cancer free for a year. I have since learned that you are never really free from it, regardless of how well scans look.

Jump forward to 2006. For nearly 10 years, my M-I-L has had clean scans but a new spot showed up on her pancreas. Soon, the doom and gloom crept back into the thoughts of her family. Statistically speaking, for her to live past five years would have put her into a bracket of about 5%. I’m not exactly sure but I’ve heard various differences pushing her closer to a 1% bracket. But, now she had to endure more surgery.

After 12 hours on the table, the doctors in Pittsburgh removed part of her pancreas, and her spleen, making recovery a difficult process. She spent five days in recovery, more because of the lack of empty rooms than anything else, but she really didn’t look that good and being lumped together in that bullpen of other surgical patients didn’t do much for her recovery process. Still, she came out on the other side with no apparent tumors or other spots in her system. The pathology came back as renal cell cancer; her old nemesis had shot seeds into her system and found a new place to sleep.

The three years that followed gave her an opportunity to see the birth of another grandchild, my daughter. “Gammy,” as my little one refers to her, is pretty much an everyday fixture in her life as we only live a few minutes away and because of the renewed bond between mother and daughter, we see them often, if not every night. We even share the stomach flu as we all got hit with it on Valentine’s Day, providing more evidence that I should just skip holidays all together.

But then something happened. Gammy wasn’t bouncing back from the stomach flu like the rest of us. That missing spleen might have something to do with it, or it could be that something more sinister was going on in there. She began to have problems focusing. Headaches became an everyday occurrence. She started to seem confused and even stopped at a mailbox and drove through a red light. Something wasn’t right. My wife, ever the enforcer when it comes to medical issues started to harp on her about seeing a doctor and her coworkers even forced her to keep an appointment for an MRI in March of 2009. Before she made it back to her desk after the scan, the hospital had called her. She needed to go directly to the ER and consult with an oncologist and neurologist. She had a brain tumor. After the diagnosis, we all realized that these symptoms were noticed long before the stomach flu incident. At New Year’s she seemed distant.

On March 18th, she went in for surgery to remove the tumor. Considering her last surgery lasted 12 hours, we expected a long day ahead of us, but the doctors came out to see my wife and her dad after an hour and a half. What had gone wrong? Could they not operate? Was it really bad? After losing all color in the face, they were given the news. She’s out of surgery and they had already removed the entire tumor. The surgery was quick and she was out of the hospital in two days. A follow up treatment, of radiation to the area, provided extra defense in case they had missed something.

During her stay in the hospital, the announcement of her other daughter’s impeding nuptials provided a method for getting my in laws to go on vacation. In their 43 years of marriage, they had never taken one. So, in we decided to tag along with the newlyweds and get a house at the beach. It would be the first time my daughter and her Gammy would see the beach.

The trip almost got cancelled. My M-I-L started to feel shortness of breath and would get tired walking a small distance. She also developed a lump on her arm. While in the hospital to do additional scans of her abdomen, everything came together. Another mass was found and she was suffering from blood clots in her arm, legs, and lungs. She ended up back in the hospital over Mother’s Day weekend for treatment. An EKG showed a weakened heart and surgery was almost scrubbed because of her condition. If anything, vacation would be cut because of surgery to remove the mass that had now been found in her remaining ovary. Why she did not have a hysterectomy back in 1997 is beyond any of us. Soon, we had a new list of problems to address. Would she be strong enough for surgery? Is this renal cell or ovarian? Can her remaining kidney handle continued stress from the dye used in scans and another surgery?

Due to the EKG results, her surgery was being postponed for a month. The doctors did not feel that the tumor was dangerous enough to operate right now, so they felt they could wait. The blood clots were treated but they waffled on clearance for the trip. It was a 12 hour drive to the beach and she would have to keep her legs elevated and couldn’t sit for long periods of time. Having a two year old daughter would mean numerous stops along the way, so that wasn’t a problem. Also, thanks to my daughter, we needed to have a vehicle that could handle all of her things as well as ours, so we rented a Dodge Grand Caravan to make the trip. In a twist of fate, the blood clots nearly hampered but ultimately allowed for her to go on vacation. A trip, I feel, did wonders for her outlook and health. We had a three story house with lots of steps to climb, and a pool for her to exercise and relax in during the week. After we returned home, her multiple doctors all gave her a clean bill of health for surgery, citing that she was in better condition than she had been in months, perhaps years.

Skipping the Fourth of July was not an option my daughter shares a birthday with the adjoining day. A cookout/birthday party served as a celebration and feast before surgery. The following Thursday would be her latest date with the surgical blade. Because of the volatile nature of ovarian cancer, she could not be biopsied until after surgery. Running the risk of rupturing the tumor could escalate her into a higher stage. I had just learned that once you get classified as stage IV RCC, you keep that no matter how clean your scans are there was no sense in adding a high stage of ovarian cancer if it was possible.

After an hour and a half or surgery, she had been put into recovery. The gynecological oncologist sat with us in a room and discussed the procedure. He was used to see ovarian cancer on a regular basis and from what he saw, this was not it. There was a very condensed and compact area that was affected. There were no nodules or other infected tissue which suggested to him that this was indeed, renal cell cancer. Pathology could reverse that opinion but for now, we breathed a sigh of relief. When you have to root for one kind of cancer over another you start to feel like your rooting for one political candidate who is not as despicable as the other while still maintaining that they are both evil. When asked about the short length of surgery he said that it would have gone quicker, but they spent an hour cutting through a lot of scar tissue from previous surgeries in 1997 and 2006. At one point before surgery, my M-I-L wondered if they could just put a zipper in place instead of having to constantly cut her open since she’s becoming an old pro at this. I told her in recovery that the next time they ought to have it down to fifteen minutes. It could be like ordering a pizza. It’ll be done in 30 minutes or it’s free. Maybe you could start using a drive through for this. While trying not to pop a stitch from laughing at the lameness of my jokes, she said, “There won’t be another one.” I’m not sure if that means she hopes that this is the last time she’ll have to do this or that she feels that her luck has just about run out.




Think about it, while simultaneously keeping the Pittsburgh medical profession in business, she’s pared away about ever spare part you can imagine. How long before it’s something she can’t live without? She’s already a diabetic; she has OSA (Obstructive Sleep Apnea), hypertension, high blood pressure, and is prone to pulmonary emboli. She takes more drugs than the ballplayers listed on the Mitchell Report and the bands on Ozzfest. Sooner or later, she won’t be treatable. It’s not like she can take that amazing cocktail of drugs like she did in 1997. She was in perfect health back then. Now, she wouldn’t survive the extreme dosage needed when she first got diagnosed. Lesser doses may not be sufficient to rid her of more tumors.

Through all this, we have maintained that this is a chronic condition instead of a terminal one. Cancer has taken a heck of a lot of her body, but not her spirit. Approaching the back nine of her 60s has given her the frame of mind that she’s just playing with the house money and the deck has been getting colder as the time marches on. The Sword of Damocles is constantly hanging overhead waiting for her to exhale. One day, luck will run out and I hope that is well into her 90s or more as long as she can maintain a good quality of life. I know my wife will be devastated when the day comes and she wants every day she can get but she has to know that it’s not her choice and ultimately, there may come a time when she can’t fight. I’m just hoping that she goes twelve rounds with death before losing at Battleship, Clue, Electric Football, or Twister. Be that as it may, the fight rages on and she does not go gently into that good night. If there is a higher power, I think he’s just not ready for her. She is a force to be reckoned with say what you will about Mother-in-Laws; I think I’d like to keep her around.

Frankly, I think the medical profession ought to be asking her to do speaking tours. She’s beaten the odds so many times; I’m beginning to she’s unable to be killed. After all, her mother is in the upper half of the 80s and is still kicking it in an assisted living facility with an artificial hip, bouts with congestive heart failure, and some dementia. My wife also has a resilient nature as she’s come back from thyroid disease and MS to lead a normal life. So, to adjust for inflation, maybe my Mother-in-Law is the $30 million dollar woman, or perhaps just priceless.

Work In Progress

I’m sending this one out to all the young people in the world.

It’s no secret that I’ve become a little crusty in my 30’s. I didn’t want to be like this. I remember being very positive about the future. By the age of 30 I was going to be living the high life as an actor in Hollywood. There I would be, sitting by the pool of my palatial estate, while Susanna Hoffs brings me another mojito. Hey, it was 1989 and I was only 14. Give me a break. Apart from the fact that we didn’t get any flying cars, this was going to be a reality by now.

But somewhere along the way, I lost the mission. I don’t know if it was when I graduated high school and started being assaulted with all the crap that is the superficiality of college freshmen, but it seems to be a place to look more closely at. Seriously, after surviving the culture shock that is your first year of college, you look back at the next group of rookies to join the ranks of higher learning and you just want to vomit. Maybe we were all like that and didn’t notice it. I always felt that people, who were younger than me, didn’t handle things better than we did at that age. It always seemed like they looked smaller or acted less mature. Apparently, I wasn’t seeing the trees for the forest like I did back then.

Inverted, agricultural idioms, aside, this newly self proclaimed age of wisdom, that was my sophomore year, took place in 1994. Kurt Cobain was already dead from self inflicted lead poisoning and grunge was on life support. Being from the subural (part suburb/part rural) part of Western Pennsylvania, we were often considered hillbillies and red necks, but we were proud of it. There was a joke that the Mason Dixon line took a detour and ran through my hometown separating the city from the farm communities. In any case, usual attire of the denizens of my hometown did consist of at least two to three flannel shirts. That being said, I had a moment, one day, where I just snapped. I was walking back from the Student Union and I saw freshmen congregating outside the dormitory lobby wearing flannel shirts tied around their waist. I was appalled at this desecration. How could they be so…impractical?

Soon, however, the look was replaced by a retrospective musical trip down through the 60s, 70s, and 80s, over the next two years, leading to a vintage look manufactured in present time. Peasant blouses and flared jeans were sold in these little boutiques that pretended to be vintage but were just made a year before in some sweat shop overseas. Superficial fashion and musicality took on a whole new distressed look and it just made my blood boil. It was like we were all afraid to be original. The music industry and clothing designers phoned it in, and we began to cling to our previous roots to try and find something that could identify our generation’s entrance into adult hood. We were just shy of being in the age of the Reality Bites and Singles characters and too old for the Mickey Mouse Pop Tart Boy Band Brigade. We were lost and this schizophrenic soundtrack we had going on didn’t help much.

What didn’t change was the influx of college students that brought their high school hang-ups into the social culture. High school was a fashion show and popularity contest. Every day was American Idol results and elimination day. However, college was all about being comfortable. Granted, on Thursday nights, when girls would go out to the bars and meat markets, they glammed it up, but it was nothing to see the same coed sitting in Intro to Anthropology in a sweatshirt, pajama bottoms, slippers, and pony tail pulled through the back of a ball cap. As soon as kids shed that last bastion of peer pressure to fit into a clique in their high school microcosm, they finally began to transition into the real world and their ambivalence towards society was near complete.

Now, I’m going to pull out a pop culture guilty pleasure reference here, and believe me it took two years for me to even dare to watch this show, but Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a perfect encapsulation of what real life was like for young adults. And before all you Twilight geeks start saying, “Oh Buffy was the Twilight/True Blood of your generation” I’m already giving you the middle finger from my childhood. Buffy was not the (insert knock off Vampire franchise of 2008/2009 here) of my generation. The Lost Boys was. Near Dark was. Twilight and True Blood are the 90210 and Melrose Place of your generation. Twilight is the kids in high school. True Blood is the adults living in an apartment complex, sleeping with, and trying to kill each other. Granted, I will give True Blood more credit than Melrose Place. It’s still a popcorn confection, though. Yeah, I know Buffy was trendy and hip, but it wasn’t as mainstream and it didn’t get the attention that it deserved. That was probably for the better.

Now, I had a point here…

Oh yeah.

Go back and watch Buffy’s fourth season, paying close attention to episodes entitled "The Freshman" and "Harsh Light of Day", then go out and buy the series box set and realize that Twilight is crap.

Here you have a female lead who is the chosen one to fight the forces of evil in the world. In high school she wasn’t the most popular girl, but she was the strongest person in her peer group. OK, go with me on this. It’s a metaphor for being at the top of the high school food chain.

Then when she starts college, she meets a group of college campus vampires that basically stomp her into the ground. This is what happens to you when you bring that social inflexibility into a bigger pond. The small fish will get devoured. She finally makes that transition and defeats the group. In "Harsh Light of Day", the parallel of her emotional being gets destroyed after investing more heart and soul into a one night stand, only to find that she’s just a notch on a guy’s bed post. This is college in a nutshell. You come in like a glass tiger and end up being shattered by a well thrown grain of sand.

By the time I graduated I was about to be in pieces. I was still convinced my future was paved in red carpet and Oscar gold, but afterwards, I had lost some of my hopeful spark. I joined the ranks of the temporarily employed, then unemployed, then near homeless, and finally started over again at the bottom. 12 years later, I have attained some delusions of mediocrity but the engine is running and I am moving forward, somewhat. Perhaps somewhere along the way from graduation to working class, I lost the rest of my goodwill. I just started to feel some of it come back but that changes with the weather a lot of times and I find myself spending more time climbing the hills then coasting along the tops of them.

But it was after college that something happened to the average coed. There was a massive swing in genetics and attitude. Kids that were two to three years younger than me looked and acted five years older. I remember being very drunk and very inappropriate at a college campus, right after I graduated, and at some point in the darkness there was this realization that I can’t be that guy. I can’t be the guy that pretends to be worldly and wise. I can’t pretend to be cool and the older tougher man, when I was still immature and broken. It wasn’t fair to other people and I didn’t want to hurt anyone in my suicide bombing of the relationship marketplace. It was like a midlife crisis where the balding 50 something guy starts dating girls in their 20s. Here I was trolling college campuses, still smarting from a college relationship gone sour, and I really needed time to work on me before I could work on a “we.”

Now, I am grizzled and jaded and scoff at the youth of the world. “Damn kids, get off my lawn.” “Pull up your pants. “ “Put your hat on, facing the front or the back, not off to the side.” But what I really want to do is sit some kid down and give them reassurance that things will change for the better if they just keep moving. Kids are swirling around a turbulent nexus nowadays. The economy, wars in multiple countries, health care, the job market, and social security all threaten to prevent them from succeeding in the world. Add to that the reports, lately, of teen relationships turning violent and murderous and you have a generation in crisis. Now, these relationship issues are not a new thing. Go read some Shakespeare. There was all kind of angst and family disapproval and extremes in terms of devotion to significant others all while the characters were younger than 18. Take Romeo and Juliet, for instance….no, not the Leo DiCaprio version. Pick up a damn book. Crack open that musty goodness for once. Don’t YouTube it.

Everything is magnified tenfold to a younger person. I see the inability to understand this concept of time in my two year old daughter and it just resonates adolescence to me. If you tell her that we are going to go “bye byes” she is at the steps, with blanket and bottle in hand, ready to go. You may have another five minutes worth of trip prep in store, but she wants to go, now. In essence, we were the same way as teenagers and even into our early 20s. We thought that the present state of things was going to last forever. My two longest relationships before meeting my wife lasted just shy of two years apiece but I thought each one was going to be forever. I was going to marry and raise a family with them both during our respective times together. I never allowed for flexibility in personality or environment and they both ultimately failed.

When I met my wife, I wasn’t in it for the long haul. I just didn’t have it in me to get heavily invested in something that had hit the wall previously after two years, especially with the gap in age between us. I was 23 and she was 19. She had a lot more growing to do and basically, so did I. I had to step back and realize that the behavior and personality traits that she is exhibiting now will change and I need to recognize that she will eventually meet and surpass my level of maturity and that’s when I’ll know that we are ready to move to the next level.

Now, it sounds as if I was testing her and putting her through some kind of probationary period before I would commit to a life with her. It was quite the opposite. I was the one under the microscope. I had everything to lose. She had to wait for me to learn to walk. I considered myself damaged goods and she was the one test driving me to see if I could earn her love and that was the best thing. I learned a lot about patience and communication. I learned how to grow with someone instead of dragging them down. She taught me more about being an adult then I learned on my own.

The culmination of all this occurred when she was diagnosed with MS in 2001. After the initial diagnosis she told me to break up with her. She didn’t want me to put my life on hold because she was broken. She thought it wasn’t fair to me that she was diseased (her words), and I shouldn’t have to devote the next 30 years of my life to pushing her in a wheelchair. Was it a little dramatic, yes, but not far from the real fear a lot of people experience in a similar situation. But, it was that moment when I knew it was time to put up or shut up. She was willing to resign herself to a life of solitude, thinking she’d never find anyone willing to take a chance on someone with an expiration date. And I realized that perhaps my biggest problem with commitment was actually having something to commit to. Maybe my purpose in life was to be with her. We were kind of like a lava lamp. She kept me tethered to the ground, never letting me float away and I kept her from falling down completely. For the record, she’s fine. She’s had two real flare ups in eight years and has a lot of her Mother’s spirit in her to fight.

This is one of the main problems I have with organized sporting activities for children. I’ve seen some soccer groups where they don’t keep score. T-Ball is not challenging to kids. We’ve taken the pass/fail option away from the children and when they grow into an environment, such as a middle school or junior high, that pressure to do well is not ingrained in them because as a child, everyone played and no one lost. If you can get past the tangents and exposition maybe you can find that real nugget of wisdom in all this. “Kids, it’s ok to fail.” In fact, I think everyone has to fail to understand how to deal with success. Whatever is bothering you now will make you laugh later. So, I say to the youth of today the following truths. WORD OF NOTE: These are by no means personal experiences. However, you should be able to identify with each one.

1. That guy who shit all over you at the prom by going off to some dark corner with his ex, you will love someone who is ten times the man this jerk could ever hope to be. He will worship you. And you will lose him too. A few years later you will find someone else. It will probably happen by accident and all the crap you put up with and dished out over the years in previous relationships will only serve to make you ready to deal with the reality of love.
   
2. Remember that popular girl you fawned all over in English? You know the one who smiled at you, instantly sending out that misunderstood subliminal message that she was ready to stop dating assholes on the football team, and be with someone who would treat her like a princess. She would confide in you how her boyfriend is cheating on her and that you are such a nice guy and a good friend. No lie, she’s going to write that in your yearbook as well as every other guy she’s not interested in, too. Guess what? She’s going to continue to date stupid assholes and there’s nothing you can do about it. You’re going to meet someone who has a heart and soul a hundred times more powerful than this person and she will call you to the floor on every little bullshit thing you do for your own good.
   
3. You there with the sad sack look and emo fashion sense. Did you just break up with your girlfriend? That’s ok. Yeah, I know you both said you would be together forever. You had baby names already picked out and knew exactly what your house would look like when you got married in a big old church with a string orchestra playing the wedding march. It doesn’t matter. She’s going to finish college, get a job at an investment firm and meet this other guy. They are going to get married and move to some other state, far away. She’ll quit her job to have three gorgeous kids. He’s going to become a top account manager at his firm and she will start on online business at home, doing consulting work. Where’s the silver lining? She’s going to find you on Facebook one day and though you won’t ever know it, she became the person she is because of you and she still thinks about you from time to time. If she would have stayed with you, you both would have ended up working two jobs to make ends meet. Besides, you weren’t really ready for a heavy relationship and you’re only a few years away from that CD release party for that album you put together because of the experience. In fact, there’s a track on it named after her. Just keep plugging away. It’s going to happen.
   
4. And you, yes you there with these grand plans to be a world famous chef. No one can tell you otherwise, I know. You are so sure that you are going to succeed that you decline all advice to take business courses or any other well rounding subjects into consideration. You are going to drop out of culinary school and get a job working in a restaurant as a Sous Chef. You’re never going to be appreciated and you will always get shit on at work regardless of that talent you know you have. So, instead of waiting for that casino or resort to open near you, solving all your problems, take some business courses or something else and give yourself an edge when it comes to your career. You’ll open that restaurant and do quite well. But you have to be patient and allow for some detours in life. Be flexible and not so headstrong. Learn to sail into the wind as well as running.

Now, all of you go out there and make the world a better place…and pull up your pants and stop listening to that God awful music.