Father failure

I am a Father failure.

I am writing to just get it out. Put it on paper, because I need to do something. Something besides the tossing and turning of restless sleep with a mind that will not let go of this nightmare day. I have been rolling this in my mind and heart all day and have finally given in to the desire to just pour it out somewhere and here it will be. My mind is reeling back replaying the events of today as if I have a scratched DVD that can’t move forward only to leave me in the worst part of a movie I don’t want to see.

As my fingers are flying across this keyboard, I see myself in my mind’s eye sitting on the floor holding my struggling 14yr boy who screams “Let me go” over and over in a defeated voice while tears stream down my cheeks. I was so scared and confused. My mind was paralyzed and shocked to the point where I didn’t know what else to do but to just hold on and mumble “No” over and over again to his desperate plea.

I just couldn’t believe how fast and fully this whole scenario had gotten out of control and where we ended up. We were both on the floor, completely drained of all energy. We had struggled verbally and physically for about 15 minutes now. One of us was pleading to be let go while the other was saying no and holding on. My wife was sitting on the couch across the room not wanting to look at us and determined to block it all out and separate herself from the insanity of what just happened. I could see it though, the pain in her eyes. . . the utter helplessness and defeat. It was there. This went beyond what she could handle both mentally and emotionally. She eventually had to leave the room. She could no longer bear to see this episode we were having. That is when I finally let go of him and he literally jumped up and ran out of the house. He fled like he was running from a serial killer. He was getting out and away like a prey running from a monster. He was running from me.

Words will never justly explain how broken I was in that moment to see my son run from me like he was fleeing for his very life. My mind was shutting down and my insides were freezing into a mass of broken machinery that rebelled against my mind. My mind shed all thoughts and gave into the pain of loss and rejection and failure. It went numb with a blankness that was terrifying. It was like working your whole life to build the mansion of your dreams just to have it swallowed by the earth in a quake right as you lay the final brick.

How did it get to this point though? How did all those years seem to go to waste where each day ends up being a struggle? I guide my son in the way he should treat others and care for himself while he pushes back with a tenacity that can topple mountains. He argues and pushes his views beyond the thoughtfulness of others.  It crushes my spirit and stomps on my faith a little.

It is sad to say that this all started with a very seemingly benign event. I was weeding out the movies we owned to turn in to McKays for credit. When my son saw me doing that, he went ballistic. He got to the point where he actually fought me to not take them. Really, we like scuffled over it. I tried to explain the whole needing to reduce clutter and to let go of things that we didn’t use anymore. But it fell on deaf ears. And then it was chaos and it happened soooooo fast. Faster than I could react. Faster than I could think. And then it was too late to go back. It was at a point where I had to dig in. I had to take the stand. All I could think of was if he blew his top and went ape crazy and got his way, how fast would it happen again when he looked back and saw how effective that behavior worked? But, here I am still hurting and still in pain with the memory it. Here I am writing at 1:00 in the morning when everyone else in the family had gotten beyond it and is sleeping tight. I am not over it though. I have messed up somewhere and I am hurting really bad with it. I am questioning my whole worth being a dad.

I am just going to come out and say it because there is just no use denying how I feel. I have failed as a father. There, it is out. The tears are rolling with it and it is on the table.

You see, back when I received the news that I was going to be a dad, not once did I think that I would be sitting here 14 years later wondering what the hell happened. I mean, how did he end up this way? I wanted him to have high esteem, and to be generous, easy going, able to adjust and accommodate, thoughtful, dynamic, talented, and full of faith. What he has turned out to be is not what I have bargained for. It is eating away at me here this early morning as I am breaking inside from how he acts and treats me and his mother and from the mean spirited and calloused way he speaks to us. He is so greedy and entitled that it is stifling. It is hard to believe that he really could have grown up in our house with us as parents.

What really bothers me deeply is that he does not show us in action or words that he loves and appreciates us. That is what it is.

He is not like this when he is away from us. From all I hear, he is engaging and well received outside our home. He has a great sense of humor and is a little demure. He works well with others and interacts with intelligence and poise. I know because I have been told. I see it at home too but it seems like the arguments and hurtful words are just a response of “no” away. Why does he treat us so horribly and rage at us when we give so much as it is? It is hard to help him see all that he has and how fortunate he is but that is not the teenage way now is it. What I have been seeing is greediness and self-centeredness. I see no empathy for our feelings and how we struggle to have time to ourselves when we give so much to them. I see a boy that does not want to spend time with me or his mom unless he has the idea that maybe we will buy him something. Inside it hurts a lot to see my son so distance in his values from what I hold and I have no idea how I trained him to be this way.

Here I am pouring my feelings out of how pained and damaged I have been from the struggles I have with him and I am starting to have this deep sense of guilt for feeling this way. . . for writing such horrible things about my own son. I am so hurt and broken from the effort I have been giving. The wearing away of my emotional endurance is going to overtake my determination to keep teaching important values. But it is like walking upstream in a raging river. He pushes back so hard with his wants and desires in a fury of entitlement that just pierces me. But again, here I am hating myself all the same because he is my son and I am not supposed to feel this way. I am not supposed to hate how he does this to me and his mother. I am supposed to love him and support him and encourage him. I am just tired. I am beaten down.

(A few days later)

So I have come back and read what I typed so frantically the other night. I have had a few days to re-center myself. I have talked to dad ( well I basically sobbed my way through all the pain, guilt, and confusion with him). Lord, what am I going to do without his council? I can’t even begin to contemplate that right now. I am come to realize that what I am experiencing is normal for having a teen. Well, the tantrums and severe reactions are not but that is my son’s slight autism tendencies magnifying these episodes. I am going to keep trudging on. I am wrong about him not loving us. He does. He just has moments where it is clouded by anger and frustration. I just have to try and not let it hurt so much. It is hard you know. Words. They are sticks and stones some times. They don’t break bones. They break hearts. It is worse. Especially when they come from people you love.

I am hesitant to post this. Part of me does not want to put it out there the struggle in my house and my guilt for writing such harsh words. I have only put my side of it here and not how my wife is handling it. The other side of me has this need to post it so that if other parents are struggling they know they are not the only ones. I have been told that it gets better but it looks so impossible from this side. Just hang in there. I was once told that I was given this child from the good lord because I was the only one that could raise him and his uniqueness. Well, we will see. I just have to power through my days and nights of shaky ground with faith and endurance only the good lord can give.

Here I go again.

I am weak sometimes.

I am not even sure were to begin on this one. Honestly I am feeling a bit down and don’t know what to do but vent and write about it. It is hard to explain  to anyone who is not a teacher because they have no idea or reference to what I am talking about.

Today I found out that my test scores for being evaluated happens to be a "1." I know, to the average person that means absolutely nothing at all. To a teacher in my state though, it means that basically none of the kids in my classes showed any growth with what I taught in class. One hundred and eighty days of dedicated lessons that were presented with all the enthusiasm and tenacious drive that I exude like sweat on a hot day pretty much didn’t translate at all to the kids knowing anything on a test that is supposed to measure all the stuff I taught. Yep. They did not learn anything according to this test.

On top of that, being evaluated by a person who just scores a bit on the low side kind of deflates me a little. This would not be a big deal if it was not for the other evaluators that do not coincide with this person. Now this can be a bit of moaning and groaning but seriously – basically I was a "2." Again, means nothing to the average Joe. Basically, being told that I scored a "2" is telling a me that I am just above incompetent. I am just a little more than a warm two legged human like babysitter that happens to share the same space as the students. The evals are still subjective even though they have a check list to be able to make it objective.

I think that what the issue is, I guess, goes back to two things – morale and fear. How can a teacher have good morale when being beaten down so much? Really. I have a lesson every day and I give it the good ol' one-two. I am told I am enthusiastic and motivated to do the best I can and to hold the course. I am giving the best way to remember and solve problems in the only way that I can. What more can be asked really?

Oh, but you do not understand how education works – it is never enough. NEVER. There is always more to ask and to do and to fill out and to jump through and to be beaten down with. . . . and . . . and. . . .and . . .

You see?

No. You cannot.

Not unless you are a teacher.

Fear though, that is my crutch right now. I have already had it on my mind: the whole losing my job thing. I have reminiscing about the one who, with deliberate effectiveness,  was able to remove me from his school with basically a mountain of paperwork. I look at this "#1" and think how easy it is for them (the education department) to create an opportunity to have hard core data to offer a principal to release me from my job again. It was really easy to do. Fail at getting tests together for the state, crash the whole system on line, wait until a week of useless testing has past for other subjects, and then give the test for my kids last on a Monday after 5 days of meaningless tests already. On top of all that, let the news channels broadcast to the whole world that the tests don’t count towards anything that will affect the kids but in silent glee make sure it still counts to teachers. Go back and read that again. I bet you will still not understand the frustration. How can that be an objective measure? 

So I fear that this "1," this simple number that means nothing to the average person, is taking over my thoughts and emotions. It is lurking in the back of my 16 years of experience mind whispering “incompetent. . . incompetent . . . incompetent.” My rational mind is resisting the silliness of this background noise. My rational mind is telling me that there are many many in my boat. My rational mind knows that my principal knows this is not a true measure of me. The little child in my mind that sits in the back corner that had been beaten down, though, is whimpering. That little part of me that still remembers is trembling. That is the part that is peeking around the corners and tickling the flutter buttons on my heart. And I hate it. I hate that it is still there and that it still affects me. I am ashamed of it a bit.

I know that I have no reason to feel this way. I know that I am better than average and that I am solid with my style and pedagogy. I know that most will think what I am thinking and feeling silly. I know all this in my mind. But then, it is hard to hide from my past and my feelings. It is a prison inside with my own mind and fears and trepidations. I fight and reason with them but in the end, how do you reason with feelings? Feelings exist with no reason. It is a losing battle to fight against feelings.

So I am going to carry on. All will be alright. I am sure it will all blow over just like in past years with failed attempts of “authentic” evaluations.

But then again, that is not the issue in the first place.

Reflections of an Old man on Veteran's Day

Today is veteran’s day. I find myself again thinking back to my grandpa and the few stories he would tell of his service in the war. He served in the army and was stationed in north Africa and south Italy. Grandpa never told any stories about battles or the darker side of the war. He never wanted to relive any of it and he felt that it did us no good to tell us the horror he went through because we were kids.

There were times, though, that he talked vaguely of some of the trials he went though. It seemed that he just let his guard down a little and would reminisce a before he realized what he was saying. Then he would stop talking about it. One day he absently said that the .32 caliber pistol that he had coated in nickel was pointed at him before he came to have it. When I asked how he got it to not point at him, he just mumbled something and changed the subject. He mentioned once about how he got grazed by a bullet across his stomach and that if he was as fat then as he was now, he would have gotten it for sure. Then there was the time he told me that I needed to be careful waking him up in case he might try and hit me as he came awake. The look in his eyes when he said it was hard to take because I saw the fear that he felt at the thought of mistaking me for someone else in the drowsy time of waking. Like I said though, these times were very fleeting.

Most of the time, he talked of the good times he had while he was in the war. In one story he describes how his band of guys picked up a couple of baby rabbits that they had come across in their travels. They kept the rabbits as pets for quite a while until the rabbits did what rabbits did best – they bred. Grandpa said that they ended up having quite a few cages that were really stuffed with rabbits and they had to finally do something about it. They didn’t want to care for them anymore so they decided to butcher them all about and have a grand feast. That is just what they did too.

Grandpa was quite the ingenuitive person. People of importance seemed to come to him with problems they needed solved and to find inventive ways to repurpose things. One day, a Colonel or some other higher ranking officer came to him with a specific problem they were having with a missile. He was told that these missiles were designed to be hung from a fighter plane and used for air to land purposes. The problem was that the wires that fired the missile were run on the outside of the launch tube. When the missile was fired, the back wash of the missile would burn the wires off each time so that they had to be replaced every single time that they were fired. What they wanted was to somehow turn these missiles from air to land use to land to land use.  Grandpa was more than up to the task.

First he decided that he would run the firing wires in copper tubing so that they would not be burned each time the missiles were fired. Then he formed the tubes into a double row so that there were about eight to ten in each row. Of course he attached all this to a platform that could be moved. Finally, he wired the firing mechanism to a dial he call a rheostat so that he could just turn a knob one click to fire a missile.

So he relates the story:

“”The officer asked me to demonstrate the launcher for him and I was more than happy to show him.”

“Fire a missile Sargent,” he said and I turn that dial once and off it went. It struck the burn down range right where I wanted to.

Then he said, “Fire two of them.”

I turned the dial two click and the missiles flew out one right after the other. The Officer saw how fast I launched them and asked, “How fast can you fire those?”

I said, “Would you like a demonstration, sir?” and he said get on with it.

“I took hold of that dial and just spun it completely around (he made a motion with his hand that looked like he just spun a top). There was fire all over the place and when it settled the hill I was shooting at was practically gone!”

With a sly smile he said, “I turned to the officer and said, ‘would you like another demonstration, sir?’ and he turned to me and said, ‘Jesus Christ Sargent NO I don’t want another one!”

I have my Grandpa’s medals from the war and now I have his jacket. There are not enough words that can be said to explain how much they mean to me. No person can understand the depth of his character and his mentorship. No one can truly know the price he paid with his life and duty. All I ask is that if you would like to protest something about our country that displeases you, do it in person or in the form of votes and freedoms of speech. Keep it civil and educated. Keep it peaceful and with honor. But please – please – do not disrespect our flag. Our flag is a symbol of our country and our countries values based on the constitution. Maiming it or destroying it or abstaining a pledge to it is not protesting an injustice; it is protesting the values and the freedoms that you are exercising. In a way, you are insulting all those people who fought, like my grandpa, for the values our national flag stands for. Your problem is not with our values and the constitution. It is with people.

Happy veterans day to all those who have served and who are serving.  

My Love story - nightmares

Nightmares are not my thing. Honestly, I am one of those people that just don’t remember my dreams. I sure am fortunate with this. When I go to sleep at night, the next thing I know is waking up in the morning.

Well, today I remembered my dream. Here is what I remember:

               The dream opens with seeing myself. I do the same thing every day. I got up early, just like always. I make my coffee, just like always. I watch the news just like always. As I watch, as if disembodied, something seems amiss. It seems different this time. I . . . He is just sitting there kind of disengaged with . . . well everything. He is watching the news but seems not to hear it. His eyes are not focused and his hand seems to just drift as it reaches for the coffee. He sips the coffee but not in a way that looks like it is enjoyable or that he really wants it at all. He looks like a zombie almost as I see my dream self just go through my habits like I always do. It is funny to be talking about myself as if I was some stranger but in a way this dream person is me and yet not me at the same time.

               Then is it light out and I am wondering how much time has passed. I see my dream self come in the house from outside. I guess he had just been in the shed working or doing something outside. I have my junk clothes on. Those are the clothes I don’t care if they get ruined or not. He moves towards the bedroom and then I am suddenly in the bedroom able to see what he is doing.

                The room seems odd to me. Everything seems to be there like it always is but then again different. It suddenly comes to me that there are no shoes on the shelves next to the door. My wife’s dresser is empty of almost everything but a few bottles of perfume. There are no books and binders lying on the floor. Actually, come to think of it, there is not one sign that my wife is there at all. I then notice there is nothing on the bathroom door that is hers. There is usually a nightgown or a robe or something of hers hanging there.

                I watch as my dream self moves to the dresser and picks up a perfume bottle. I recognize this one immediately as the White Musk my wife wears that I love. He takes the cap off and sprays the perfume in the air a little and then he gives the left pillow on the bed a spray – my wife’s pillow. Then he walks out of the bedroom and gives a spray to the couch and the air once too. After this, he goes back into the bedroom and then comes back out to sit in the living room again. He turns on the T.V. and Star Trek the Next Generation is on. He just sits there and watches it.

                The back door opens and my two boys explode into the room like a party popper going off. They are loud and rambunctious like always excitedly talking about a movie and acting out their favorite scenes. I see my mother and father-in-law come in after them and they move towards dream me on the couch and sit. He sits next to me and she sits in the recliner next to the couch. I notice a glance between them but my dream self didn’t catch it. The boys have his attention instead. He asks them how they liked the movie and they start in on all the parts they liked.

                “You should have come with us daddy!” the youngest yells. He does not have a normal inside voice.

                “You know I had work to do outside and it is hard to do when I am alone and you two boys are not supervised,” I said back.

                “Maybe next time?”

                “Maybe, boy.” He responds softly and his son moves off to play with his brother. “Were they good for you?”

               “The same,” my father-in-law says.

                “That bad huh?” He responds. My dream self just smiles a little. The boys are pretty hard to handle even being normal. It seems a little fake to me for some reason, maybe a little disconnected.

                “Did you have a girl over?” my mother-in-law asks.

                Instantly I see the response of my dream self. He grimaces. It was only an instant before it was gone but I saw it clearly. The lines showed in the middle of his forehead and his mouth became tight. There was a squint of pain that creased his eyes and he almost made a sound as if he wanted to grunt in pain. I saw it as his stomach muscles flexed. And then it was gone in an instant. I am not sure if the In-laws saw the reaction or not but I could tell this was not the first time it had come up.

                “No.” He said flatly. It was clear that he was not going to expound on this.

                “I just thought that since I smelled perfume that you might have had someone over while we were gone,” She said.

                “No. I was working outside. I had to get the trees trimmed before they budded.”

                “Oh. Ok,” She said and made a glance at her husband who gave her a look back but that was all they said.

                Then there was an uncomfortable silence, but that was when my mom and dad suddenly pulled into the drive. I could tell this was unexpected since the boys came running out of their rooms whooping and hollering making for the door. They ran up to the car as their grandparents pulled in and the boys gave them the usual barrage of questions and stories which is a cacophony only boys can make.

                “What are you doing here?” My dream self said as he walked up to them.

                “What? Can’t a boy’s parents visit him without making appointments?” Mom said to him with that fake look of incredulity she always wears when getting questions like this.

                “I just haven’t had a chance to make sure I have enough food and the house is a mess. . .”

                “We will get food and your house will be fine. We just wanted to come and see you,” Dad said. It never surprises me that he would just pick up and leave to come see one of his kids. He has done it several times in my life. It was his way.

                I am not sure what happened next but the scene changed for me in my dream and it was later in the day maybe during the night since it was dark outside. The in-laws must have left since they were nowhere to be seen. The boys couldn’t be heard either. Ma and Dad were sitting at the table with empty plates in front of them and my dream self had a piece of pie in front of him but he just played with it using his fork to move it all over the plate not eating it. There was no talk for a moment and everyone seemed to be in their own reverie or just keeping their thoughts to themselves.

                Ma then turns to my dream self and says, “When are you going to start seeing other women?”

                “Jeanathon,” Dad says to her in exasperation.

                “I told you, I am not,” my dream self said with bit of grit. I could hear the irritation in his voice.

               “You have to move on, she is not coming back.”

                “I know but I am not going to look for a replacement. I will not find one and I just don’t want to,” He said like he had said it a hundred times.

                “Stop this. He has told us all this before and it is his choice,” Dad said.

                “I know but he still sprays her perfume in the house and on his bed.”

                “I am sitting right here you know. I understand what you are saying,” my dream self stated.

                “Well, it is not right that you have not done something with all her stuff. Don’t you think it is unhealthy to spray her perfume all over? On the pillow next to yours? I bet it is the actual pillow she slept on isn’t it? You still have her stuff on the counter in the bathroom the way she had it. It is like a shrine. There is nothing right about that. What about the pictures?” She was talking fast now.

                “That is enough!” my dream self yelled and stood up to leave.

                “What about your boys?” She asked. “What do they think about it? What do you say to them?”

                “I don’t want to talk about it.” He said pausing by the door to the bedroom.

                “She is not coming back,” She said. “It is time to move on.”

                “No. No, it is not,” he said flatly. “Do you think I don’t know that she will not come back? I am not stupid, you know.”

                “No one said . . .” she started but was interrupted.

                “I know she is not coming back. I just need to remember her. I need to have something of her around to remind me so that I don’t lose what she looks like or feels like in my head. God knows I have gotten rid of a lot and that was hard enough. I know it has been years. Hell, if you really want to know, it has been 2 years, 150 days, 12hrs, (glancing at the clock) 16 mins, and  5 seconds. Call me crazy. Send me away. Get me therapy. I don’t care. I am lost and sad without her. I made a deal to be hers and only hers and I am not going against it. You want me to start seeing other women and start to get back to a ‘normal’ life? Well, the day I asked her to marry me, my life stopped being normal and started to be extraordinary. How could I go back to normal again? I can’t. So if you want me to start seeing others. . . .well, I’m not. And that is final.”

                My dream self walked out of the room into the bedroom and my ma and dad just sat there.

And that is all I remember. I am not sure if the alarm went off or if I slept long but the images are so vivid this morning that I can’t get them out of my head. Hell, I don’t even know what happened to her. I guess I either forgot or it was just not in the dream.

Is it normal for a person to dream of the loss of their loved one like that? My wife has them all the time about me dying or that I will cheat or leave. I am not sure but this dream really hit a chord for me. If the horror of the loss of me would happen, I would not want my wife to deny herself a new loved one if the chance came along, but in truth, I would not do that. How could I tell her the same?

This is a hard topic and only in the deepest fear of the far corner of the recess of my mind will it be remotely touched. Did I say that I am fortunate that I don’t remember my dreams?

I Offend people

I am sure that I offend people. I think about some of the things I say and believe and I am positive that they would offend people. Here, think about this.

I think homosexuality is wrong and it is not biological. I have seen the studies and have a pretty good knowledge of how the body works. It is a socialized learned behavior. I think that marriage should be between a man and a woman. I think that abortions are wrong. If you don’t want your baby (pay attention to my wording), then you should have had the will power and sense in your head to make it not happen. I think that if you really wanted a job, you would find one – any job. You may have to suck up your pride and get what you can take – do that job the best you can – and thank the Lord you have a job at all even if it is cleaning floors and wiping toilets. I believe there is only one God and it is the one in the Holy Bible. I think that divorcing your spouse is wrong. If you agreed to marry them, then you thought long and hard of what you are choosing and you need to stay committed to that choice. I think that bleach blondes that have dark tans look horrid and go against genetic possibility. They are freaky looking.

These are just a few. I bet that even those I am close to are a bit surprised at these proclamations and are feeling a little offended right now.  I am not sure if people really know what it means to offend another person but it means to cause resentment or hurt the feelings of another person. I would guarantee that I would receive a lot of comments that I am not a very offensive person but that would be from those I associate with and you know, ducks of a feather as they say. . . But in reality, I am sure that there are a lot of people who if they asked me what I thought of some situation or another would not like what I said or be offended by what I would say back to them.

I have friends that may fall into my generalizations or stereotypes that I am perpetuating. I am hoping that you know me well enough that I believe in the human spirit and that there are exceptions to all situations. I should really say “for the most part” or “generally” to tell the truth. In the end, though, I pretty much treat other people’s past as being in the past and what they are doing now is a true measure of them as a person. Sometimes a person is handed a bad wrap or they have a misstep. Maybe they truly believe they are in the right. That is not for me to judge. I am not sure what I am saying but I am not purposely trying to offend a person. I may not agree with some choices and I have lived with some of mine to be sure.

In reality though, why are people offended in the first place? Because their viewpoints and beliefs are challenged? Because their own guilt or shame has been validated by another person? Because they have been told something that contradicts what others have said to them? If you are offended, you are resenting what someone has said or done and have hurt feelings over it. It sounds to me that there needs to be a little thicker skin. Would it not be true that there would not be an offense if people would be fine with their beliefs and defended them or just not be in denial with their choices?

So, if I happen to offend you in some way by what I have said or done, know that it is not a personal attack on you or your beliefs or actions. I am not going to change those views or tell you I think yours are okay if they contradict mine. That would be asking me to deny who I am to be like you. I am not you. I will accept you as you are because we are not the same and I will consider our difference in opinions as a challenge to be debated if the time comes. Having these differences in opinion helps us to be resolute in our own identity. So I say this, don’t be offended. Be resolute in what you think. That holds respect. Do not ostracize others for their views or actions. In a lot of cases, it is only one dimension of a multidimensional spirit. And keep treating others as Jesus does in the Bible. He really knew how to treat people.

My love story - Part 4

Too crazy for me.

I am a twin.

Yeah I know, right? The number of times that I have heard the phrase – “There’s two of you?!” have riddled my life for decades. It is not funny just to tell you. I am me and my brother is . . . well not me. Being a twin is not really great material for being a comedian thank you very much. Being a twin is for the most part full of pros and cons. Mostly cons but I am not being objective now am I?  We are fraternal twins which helps since no one really can tell we are twins unless we let them in on it. We are night and day. This goes also with the whole girlfriend thing too. Where I was hopelessly single and Friend Zoned, my brother had a steady girlfriend in high school. Of course it was not all holiday either.

My brother had a girl friend that dominated his high school years. Boy did I learn a lot by watching this one unfold. She was a petite little girl probably not even 5 feet tall. She had hazel eyes with glasses and light brown straight hair that was cut to just above the shoulders. She had a slight lisp when she talked which made her voice and the way she talked always remind me of how a toddler would speak. She was pretty smart making decent grades. On all accounts she was cute. She was adorable really.

I know I am forgetting something though. Let me see. . . I am trying to put my finger on it. Oh, yeah! And she was psycho.

At first, I really didn’t pay attention to the whole brother having a girlfriend thing other than he had one and I did not. I was not one to really be bothered by it other than the fact that I really could have used one. I was doing the whole ignoring so that I didn’t focus on pathetic me all girlfriendless and lonely thing. As time went on though he began to show signs that all was not going well. As it turns out, this girl was quite a piece of work.

First of all, she was an emotional game player and she had all of the trump cards when it came to my brother. Saying he was being controlled would have been an understatement. She was a puppeteer and he was just dangling on her strings. She would take hold of his emotions and mold them as if they were clay into what she wanted, crush it flat and reshape it into something new. She put him on a roller coaster that was soaring up and then would do a death drop into the pools of tears he shed only to whip him back and forth along sharp turns and endless track.  Getting the picture? She was a crazy woman.

The most favorite game this girl would like to play is to get mad at him and break up about a week or two before a holiday of some sort. Then after letting my brother wallow in sorrow and shame for a week, she would make amends (usually with some compensation from him) and all will be back on track just in time for the holiday coming up. Imagine that! At first I thought it was humorous to see him all taken in like that but after a year or two, it became a bit sad. Well, pathetic. What makes girls, or guys even, do stuff like that? Is it some kind of skewed view of romance? I just have no idea where it all comes from because I have seen this kind of thing a lot.

I know one thing; there was no way that I would let any girl do that to me. I decided very quickly that if I called it quits with a girl, or she called it quits with me, that would be it. I have held to that since I have decided, not that I was making the choice that much anyway. I was never going back. The whole trampoline thing was just too stupid for my liking. Since then, I am sure of this one fact. If a couple calls it quits once, I have never seen it work out if they give it another go. There was something that causes it to fail and it would fail again. I am not saying it can’t but I was not going to fall into a trap like that.

There is even more that made this girl straight up cray cray – she was on the lookout for another man when she was not around my brother. She even made passes at me. I didn’t really care for this because not many other girls seemed interested in me like that and . . . well . . . she was seeing my brother. Honest to goodness, this girl got a job where I worked and she was definitely trying to get me to notice her. She even went so far as to tell me to “give her a chance.” Cha, right! First, you treat my brother like a bouncy house in which you can bounce out and back in at your will. Then you are not being committed to your relationship. And on top of all that – you are still crazy! Seriously. Needless to say, I really was not comfortable around her. She was a whole book on what not to date. Looking back on it now, I think it is obvious that she was not really sure of what she wanted.

I don’t remember what caused my brother to stop seeing her but he finally came to his senses. As for me, I learned so much of what I would never want out of a relationship that it would impact my dating perspective for life. Really, she was psycho. It is amazing what you can learn from someone else’s problems. I didn’t even have to be in this relationship to learn a lot from it. Most of the time I was thinking that hell would freeze over before I let a girl do that to me.

In case you are wondering, my brother had wizened up after that and is now happily married with three daughters that are beautiful and bright. His wife is a great woman who is intelligent and good for him.

And she doesn’t make passes at me ***wink***

As an end note, I believe that this girl is not this way anymore. Let me make this clear. She is not that way anymore. I am also positive that some who may read this will know who I am referring to (if you know me and my brother). It would not be fair of me or those who read this to have this view of her now -  over 20 years from when this all happened. Time has a habit of turning people straight and life will inevitably teach its own hard lessons. I am sure that we all can look back at our youth and think – man I am glad I grew out of that stage! Or – I sure was a different person so long ago. Everyone changes and grows into the person they are now. She was definitely not for my brother when they dated all those years ago and basically, that is all I really have to say other than I learned a lot about how I didn’t want my relationships to be. This post is just to add another layer to my search and path to my wife. I feel that it was an important piece to the puzzle.

My love story - Part 3 I was THAT guy

I was that guy.

You know the type. I was the one that was nice and kind to all but not that kind of guy that would be boyfriend material. Don’t tell me you don’t know what I am talking about. I know. I have seen it many times. But, there will be more on that later.

Let me just say that it was not a great time in my life going through the whole puberty and raging hormones thing. Of course, I would doubt that anyone that looks back at their life as a teen would say it was great and full of roses either.  I had a hard time for lots of reasons. Actually, it was my own little piece of hell most of the time.

First of all, I went through a huge change in a very small amount of time. I hit my growth spurt early around 7^th and 8^th grade and have not really grown since . . . well not taller anyway. Rounder? Well that is another story. I was awkward in every sense of the word. My limbs were long and unfamiliar. I was tripping on flat ground for goodness sake! How embarrassing is that? My voice dropped to a resonance of a creepy stalker dude which made me feel like a stranger was usurping my mouth when I talked. And most of all, girls confused me. No really. I did not understand how they thought, how they decided anything or most of all – how they chose to be a girlfriend to anyone. For a guy who had a body that was a complete stranger to his mind, this was a nightmare to have all these wants and needs but have a body that rebelled by shear change in hormones. I . . . was . . . hopeless . . . and lost.

To add to this, I really hated how the whole process of getting into a relationship worked. It was complete craziness to me. There were times when I watched how these guys played out their role in getting girlfriends thinking that I was watching two roosters fight over hens. For guys to have these competitions over a girl seemed like the stupidest type of male silliness that there was on the face of the earth. I just didn’t get it. Then there was the whole idea of the girl actually provoking the behavior even more. It was insane. On top of all this were the couples that abused each other by purposely hurting each other’s feelings with either deception or gossip or some kind of obsessive control. All of us know that kind I am positive. In the end, it seemed as if they would be on a trampoline bouncing in and out of a relationship falling apart and getting back together when to every outside sane observer it obviously was not meant to be. In some ways, it was like watching a movie that had no plot or a game show that had no prize with everyone losing.

Well, I was not boyfriend material obviously. I learned early on that girls just did not like me in that way. I did not see relationships like other kids did. To me, it was not a game or a competition. It was emotional and should be intuitively simple and straightforward. I talked to them to see if I liked their personality but to them it was too subtle I guess. I was not aggressively pursuing. To be honest, I had no idea how those guys in my school actually got a girlfriend in the first place. It was not like there was a book laying it all out for us. Silly me! I honestly thought being nice and kind was the way to get a girl to like you. I guessed wrong. Then I saw how these guys treated the girls and I was sure that the world was insane.

And then there was my annoying habit of being extremely shy. No one who knows my teacher personality would describe me as shy or introverted, but I am, and it was to the extreme back in my teenage years. I have gained a lot of confidence and esteem over the years with my wife but back then, nothing made sense to me. I had a hard time talking to girls and asking them if they would like to spend time with me. I would be the lone stag in the herd that hung out on weekends separated from the herd while the rest were all hooked up. I would say only a couple of words when spoken to or stumble my words. I was embarrassed easily and girls giggled at the way I acted. I was that guy.

It was not until junior or senior year of high school before I actually had the nerve to ask out a couple of girls. And that is when I learned a phrase that I would hate and loath for years – “You’re nice but . . .” I was not the kind that girls wanted to date or were interested in. I was the kind that was a good friend and nonthreatening. I had no ulterior motives nor was I looking for more or some such stuff that put all girls on their guard. I was just a nice guy. Trust me it only took a couple of times before I knew I was blackballed in my school. I had no chance. I mean really – we only had 90 some kinds in my whole graduating class. Think about it. I had no chance whatsoever. I was a permanent “friend Zone” kid. Ugh, it was depressing.

It was hard to even decide who to date. With such a small class in school, there was a very limited amount of choices. The girls were either too freaky or scary or they were the very essence of Mean Girls, or they were too snobby. The girls that I considered good were seeing these guys that were treating them bad. I thought they deserved better but darned if I knew how to change that. Man, my teenage years figuring out the whole girl and guy thing were an exercise in confusion and lost causes.

I had all the same wants and needs of a teen too. I wanted to be close to a girl and be a boyfriend. Hey, I am a red-blooded boy after all! Damn if I could figure out how to get out of the stigma I was in. I had crushes like normal kids where a look or a word from a girl would set my tummy fluttering. Of course, my shyness was my enemy and I had no idea how to respond or get the girls to notice me in some other way than “friend Zone.” I was pretty hopeless and I am sure that the adults around me just shook their heads. Have you ever seen Big Bang Theory? Yeah, I was like Leonard – all hope and too much nerd. I just couldn’t figure out what the other guys did to get girls. Even if I did, it would not be my style so I would not have done it anyway. It was all just too complicated for me.  

I guess I really never changed from that guy in high school. I am still very much like that. I am still pretty shy and would never know what to do if I was looking for a girl. Just the thought of dating again sends fear wracking my insides. I lucked out though that my wife saw in me the type that would be faithful and steadfast. To this day I really don’t know what it was that drew her to me. I was still that geeky nerdy shy guy that was stuck in the friend zone. It was meant to be I guess.

I learned a lot about the motivation of people and how they really didn’t know what they wanted. I remember thinking that girls sure do like to be sad and misguided a lot. I just was not one of those people that wanted to get into all that drama. I wanted to find a good girl and stick with her for a while. Even though I was lost most of the time back then I did know one thing – I was not going to change who I was to join in on the craziness I saw all around me. Not that anyone was that interested in me anyway. I was that guy.