Delving into the dusty and ramshackle regions of my mind.

For some unfathomable reason Mother Theresa over at “The Rain in Spain…” tagged my dull and boring self for the meme asking I spout off seven remarkable things (outright lies) about this poor Southern redneck. This week at work was frustrating and crazy, which delayed my participation. For that, I apologize to Mother T.  I do enjoy these little trips into the dusty regions of my ramshackle mind, I hope I do not scare anyone away, still working in a rush so forgive the typos.  

1.)This is going to amuse a lot of people and have some question my manhood but I actually like the music of ABBA. I never owned any of their CD’s but since I was a kid when one of their songs played on the radio, I would soon be grooving to their music. Now when I was in high school I kept my appreciation of Sweden’s super group a highly classified secret.  So yeah, as my contemporaries were zoning out to KISS, Twisted Sister, and Black Sabbath I was geeking out to a group that back then was at a minimum snickered at or outright ridiculed.

A few months ago, my wife bought a used DVD copy of the movie “Momma Mia”, which is based around many ABBA songs. When I hear her upstairs watching it most of the time I will eventually drift up to the family room myself.  One thing about the movie that just does not ever seem right is hearing Pierce Brosnan sing.

2.) It is a subject I have never touched on, but I met my wife at a Jimmy Buffett concert in Charlotte, North Carolina.  It was the summer of 1992 and I had just graduated with a nice and shiny two-year Associate degree from one of South Carolina’s finer community colleges. My job search had started a few months before and after sending out scores of resumes, I was hitting a humongous goose egg. It was several months after the conclusion of Operation Desert Storm and America was welcoming home thousands of troops with the military gearing up for a massive draw down in strength.

Curious enough, I had left the active army back in 1990 at the conclusion of my four-year enlistment when word started to come down from officials about a reduction in force back then. I figured I would beat the rush by leaving the service, get into college,  and be sitting pretty as a civilian long before the majority of troops were sent home. Little did I know that barely a month after I rejoined the civilian ranks Saddam would do something very stupid and invade little Kuwait.     

My major was electronics and by the time I had my degree I found myself competing for entry-level technician jobs with former Navy personnel with over twenty-years of experience.  Let us just say by that time it was a buyer’s market with forty-something ex-Navy Chief Petty Officers almost coming to blows with each other over a minimum wage technician jobs at Chucky Cheese pizza places fixing old fashion video games.    

My brother Steve took pity on my sorry, unemployed soul and coughed up the bucks for both of us to go see Jimmy’s concert. By chance, I ended up sitting beside the future Dragonwife, who was newly divorced and accompanied by some blind date bozo her best friend had arranged.Thirty minutes into the concert her blind date understood which way the wind was blowing and went home early.

Because of my attending a Jimmy Buffett concert my son, Darth Spoilboy would eventually be born along with my daughter Miss Wiggles being adopted from China. Moreover, my wife and I have been married now for what seems like a couple of millenniums.

3.) One of my most pleasant memories from childhood involves a camping trip to a small barrier island, which was actually nothing more than a glorified sandbar when I was about five years-old.  My hometown, Georgetown, South Carolina sits on the edge of a coastal estuary called Winyah Bay that is used even now for fishing and simple recreation.  While growing up my family would often make fishing trips into the bay and since Georgetown was a port city big freighters were often seen heading towards the docks or back out to sea.  Those freighters fascinated me since I had some idea they were part of a much larger world that I could not comprehend.  Many times as we fished on the bay I would watch those big ships heading back toward the ocean waving at the guys leaning against the railings and marvel at the places they were going to see.

It was early in the spring of 1969 and my dad loaded up his boat with the old tent, an old cooler, and other supplies and along with his best friend and his son we were a few hours later in Winyah Bay heading out the same direction as those freighters. We set up camp on a small barrier island way above the high tide line next a medium sized tree that had somehow taken root. The island was about a mile long but was no wider than fifty yards.  The one memory of the place that is still clear after all these years is pristine beach facing the ocean with huge shells littered all around and how almost Caribbean-clear the water looked.

We fished on the open ocean, a new thing for me, all day after getting the camp setup. Later I caught a small hammerhead shark and who I battled, at least in my mind, like Santiago from “The Old Man and The Sea.” My dad took a picture of me holding up the two-foot creature still attached to the line even though my arms felt like warm taffy. We cut the shark loose then and put him back in the water. He swam around the boat for several minutes, slapped it with his tail a couple of times and then disappeared.

After putting ashore at the camp, we had a manly dinner of canned spam on bread washing it down with Pepsi. As the sun went down my dad and his best friend went night fishing leaving Jack and me at the campsite. After stern instruction about what not to do, we watched them fade off into the night. Jack and I had a ball pretty much doing what we wanted but for me the best thing was watching a freighter heading out to sea.

4.) Watching my teenage son is a riot, free of most of the bad family drama I went through the kid is crazy smart and popular in his group of friends. Now if I don’t have a heart attack worrying when he gets his driver’s license I figure I will be ahead of the game.

5.) My daughter is eight years-old as of this post and if I worry about anything, it is she. Since I was in the military, I have some insight into the workings of the male brain. Hell, not too long ago I was one of those hormone-driven punks and if I ever get into serious trouble if will be because one of those creatures hurt my daughter. But, do not even begin to think I consider my daughter some delicate, hot house flower. She is an utter firecracker and in a few ways the boys do not understand what she can do to them.

6.) I am finding middle-age pretty much sucks, but since fighting it is stupid and the alternative is death which is a serious mega-bummer I can deal with the increased fire threat on my birthday cakes each year. Now if there was a couple of things I could change I would wish for better eyesight and my damn hair back. I suffer from a medical condition with my eyes preventing all forms of corrective surgery, as of right now and the foreseeable future, so barring a miracle I’m screwed on that end. However, I am seriously thinking about joining the hair club for men.

7.) My final aspect I will reveal for this meme is an oldie but a goody, I unreservedly from the deepest bowels of my soul hate suburbia.