Welcome To My Mess.

 Hello world… Welcome to my mess… Some may choose to call their mess a life, but not I, I call it what it is on most occasions… A mess. most people would deny they have one, or worse yet, try to avoid the confrontation of their mess altogether. They do this I find, in a variety of ways, one of the most popular ways is usually by critiquing other people. They can do this better than you, or they can do that better than you. They have less character flaws than you, and their blond hair doesn’t have dark roots. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it, you’re perfect, right? Not that I would ever doubt your word, but I believe the proper terminology for this affliction would be “You’re In denial.” but don’t look at me. I am not perfect and have never been known to make such outlandish claims. In fact, I am quite happy with my mess.

Okay, Let me be the first to start. Hello world. My name is Rant, or Anthony if you prefer… And I’m a happy mess. Ok, I’ve admitted it, now let's examine some of the symptoms. I can’t balance a check book, hell I’m lucky if I can keep track of how much change I have in my pocket let alone how much I have in the bank. But with the help of some very patient tellers at U.S. Bank, I can keep track of my funds without ever really keeping track. Ok, I’ll admit it, I am bad with money, But even with that being said, there is much, much more to my mess. Here’s a good one, Food, (Usually Fattening food) talks to me. If it's bad for you, It seems to gravitate towards me, Country biscuits and Gravy, steak and eggs, Fruit pies, Donuts, Ok, ok, let's not talk about food. Here are a few other particles of my mess. Sometimes…

I talk too much and listen too little… But still manage to hear what is being said.

On Occasion, I lose my temper, Blow my top, flip my lid, and blow things out of proportion… But I always find a way to admit when I’m wrong and am never too big to say I’m sorry.

I have a tendency, usually when I am lost in my thoughts, to be aloof to the point of rudeness. I sometimes think with my heart instead of my brain. And sometimes it bites me on the ass…

I wear my emotions on my sleeve, and am loyal to my friends to a fault. I am bad with names, but can remember every smile that I have ever met. I am at most times overprotective of children, even with those that I don’t know. I drink way too much coffee, watch way too much T.V. I Hate the word Hate, but absolutely hate Mondays.

I don’t know about anyone else. But I don’t do a lot of things right, yet I find a way to get things done. I am a reformed drinker, an ex smoker, two difficult addictions in my life that I overcame for a time… I have high hopes that neither will resurface in my life, but know that resistance can be a fragile thing. Yet still I resist.

I have no delusions of grandeur, I am just a guy, a human being, doing… Living. Breathing… Loving life, just hanging around, for better or worse, just a man… Content with his imperfections and his mess. 

 

The Sad Slow Death of Childhood.

I was approaching eleven years old when I had gotten my first taste of technology. It was in the fall of 1969, at the very beginning of the rainy season in central California, when I had bought my very first transistor radio. I don’t recall much about it except that I bought it at a store called Western Auto, and it was red. And out in the country where we lived, it picked up about three or maybe four tops different am radio stations. Remember am radio? My step-brother (Who was 1 year older than me) and I had been planning our big weekend out in back of the farm.

We had gotten some old bedsheets from my closet and were in the process of constructing the biggest, bad ass tent in our backyard that either of us had ever seen. We were just two kids with a plan, and a whole weekend to execute it. We slept out under that raggedy old tent most of the night listening to the radio, and outlining “the plan.” There was a wide ditch full of water that ran between our side of the property line and the tomato field that was next to us. The plan was simple, we were going to “Borrow” a couple- (Or five or six ) double-sided pallets that were laying out in the barn we would then drag them into one of the many wood sheds out back. We were going to construct a couple of Rafts that we would sail down the ditch with, stopping at various points to catch us a few Crawdads. (crawfish)

The next morning on a Saturday as I recall, we took the Radio out in the shed with us, we copped a few of the old man's tools and drug the pallets from out of the barn and took them to the shed and began to plug all of the holes that were in them, with boards and nails. See, what we figured was, “Hey… It's wood, and wood floats, Right?” uhh, yeah sure. We cleverly concealed the entire operation from my mother and stepfather and upon completion of both Rafts drug them to the ditch full of water one at a time and prepared our selves for “The Launch.” we managed to drag both rafts to the edge of the water line just in time for it to start raining.

Our young minds were filled with excitement and joy as we each took turns pushing our creations into the water filled ditch, My step-brother pushed his in first, as I prepared my own pirate raft for its maiden voyage, and when the moment of truth came, with transistor radio in my coat pocket, I launched. Well they did actually float as I recall, Long enough to get us both out into the middle of the ditch, to where both rafts promptly sank like a couple of rocks. Mine, of course, managing to somehow take my new transistor radio with it. Well we both made it through the ordeal and safely back to shore alive, soaking wet but alive. And there was Mom, standing on the back porch watching us drag our eleven-year-old know it all asses out of the water , shaking her head to and fro with complete disgust for what she was witnessing.

We were kids, because we were allowed to be kids. We didn’t have middle schools, our mothers didn’t have to schedule play dates, nobody ever got shot at in school, in fact nobody ever even thought to bring any guns to school. Childhood lasted until you hit thirteen or so as I recall, and then you became a teenager, and slowly began to develop more adult oriented habits, like becoming interested in the opposite sex, thinking about your first set of wheels and such things as that. As an adult, I think back to when I was a child, and then I bring myself back to the here and now. I think that what disturbs me most is how little is left to a child’s imagination, If you can think about something, you can either go online to find it, or just buy the video game. I don't know if it's some twisted side effect of evolution or if some people are trying to kill it intentionally, they over sexualize children, they teach them things that a kid shouldn't have to even think about, How sad it is for me personally, to witness what seems to be the slow death of childhood, how sad indeed.

Wrong For Every Right.

 

Imagine living in a hundred years of peace, quiet and tranquility, no war, no internal or external strife, a nation, a world, without turmoil or struggle. Lofty idealism at its finest.  A world where only good exists, where the hero would be waiting in the wings in the slight chance that even the smallest of problems should arise, they could swoop in at a moment's notice and crush the problem before it started. 

Well, you can imagine it, but it will never happen. Call me a realist, but the world will always have as many bad guys as it has good ones. But see, here’s where it gets tricky, bad guys can serve a useful purpose too, try to follow my logic here, they keep us on our toes, they keep our guards up, and without at the very least, the threat of danger, we could easily become complacent, and complacent people make easy targets, so in that regard perhaps, they do serve a healthy purpose. 

We do tend to let our guards down too much, we become too trusting of others with veiled intentions, and we end up with a lot of Pearl Harbor and 911 type of scenarios, simply because we want to see the good in people, and our fearless leaders, through ignorance or arrogance, (Or both) choose to ignore the warning signs that not everyone on this planet has our best interests in mind. News flash, there is no perfect world.

There are bad people here that will always want to do us harm, they have been here just as long as us, and in many cases, even longer. There will always be bad for every good, wrong for every right, evil has been here for centuries, and it doesn’t appear to be going anywhere, anytime soon. So I guess for the time being, don’t let down your guard just yet, keep the faith, and don’t ever forget about the past. For me at least, it seems that the biggest difference between good and bad is knowing the difference between the two, and choosing the right path.