Category: Life

Lessons I’ve learned through the school of hard knocks. This is my catch-all, miscellaneous category if you will, where I address topics that don’t quite fit into the other categories.

Amy


Private DD Rodríguez

When I joined the Marines, I had to spend the night at a hotel on Michigan Avenue near Roosevelt Road the night before we went to AFEES (Armed Forces Entrance and Examination Station) on Michigan and Balbo. I was so nervous about joining the Marines that I didn’t sleep much the night before.

The next day, we had to take intelligence tests and physical exams all day long. From there, we went to O’Hare Airport where we flew to San Diego for boot camp.

An interesting thing happened to me while boarding the plane. As I waited in line to get on the plane, I joked about being afraid to fly with a female whom I thought was part of the flight crew. She laughed and we talked a little. When I sat down, I noticed that she had followed me to my seat and had sat down next to me. She was very pretty in a plain sort of way. She had long, light-brown hair and hazel eyes. And she had such perfect teeth. Very white, but not unnaturally white, and all perfectly aligned. We were probably about the same age. “You don’t mind if I sit with you, do you?” she asked, even though she was already sitting next to me. She caught me off guard, so I took a moment to respond. “N-Not at all.” She held my hand and said, “This is to comfort you since you’re afraid of flying.” I couldn’t believe this was happening to me! Oh, yes, and she had this–I couldn’t quite place it–sexy, non-Chicago accent. I loved listening to her speak!

Well, I told her that I was on my way to Marine Corps boot camp in San Diego and she told me that her father was a colonel in the Marines. What a coincidence! And I was afraid that she would stop liking me if she discovered that I would soon be a jarhead. She actually took a liking to me and we talked and talked. We had quite a few things in common. This was a three-and-a-half hour flight and I was tired from not sleeping well the night before.

Well, I nodded off while I was looking out the window. I had forgotten all about Amy. When I later woke up. not only was Amy still holding my hand, but she had also fallen asleep with her head on my shoulder. I guess she was very comfortable with me not only as a person, but also as a pillow. I liked watching her sleep like that. She eventually even got more comfortable as she turned her body towards me and put her free arm around my waist. Later, she actually drooled on my shoulder a little. When she finally woke up, I felt as if I we had known each other for ages. She gave me her address in Quantico, Virginia, and told me to write to her. Her full name was Amy Trostle Barnes. She was so interesting and I had met her at exactly the right moment when I needed a shoulder to lean on. Well, I wrote to her while I was in boot camp and for about a year after that. But we never met in person again.

DDR

More coincidences


Seagulls of my reader’s imagination

Hello, Gentle Reader. I’ve noticed something interesting occurring on my blog lately. I tend to occasionally write about someone who comes to mind because I remember him or her well. I have no agenda or ulterior motives. I never announced to anyone that I would write a blog entry about him or her. I just relish recalling the good old days and I focus on all the positive things that I remember about this person. Occasionally, the subject of my blog entry discovers my blog and he or she e-mails me and/or comments about the blog entry. If I write it, they will come.

If you look at the comments in the right margin, you’ll see what I mean. This made me think. How can you, Gentle Reader, be sure that all these commentators are real people? You have no way of knowing if these people really exist. I mean, I could just be making them up. After all, I do have a disclaimer at the bottom of the page stating that I may be stretching the truth a little. If you wrote a comment, do you know for a fact that you yourself exist? Right?

But what about all the rest of the commentators? How can you be sure that I didn’t invent them, so it looks like I have many more readers than just you? Let’s go one further: What if you don’t exist? Yes, that’s right. You don’t exist outside of this blog! I made you up! You only exist because you read this blog and I let you write comments. Now that’s something to think about! Or perhaps I have already created some memorable stories in my past so that interesting people will come to life and brighten up my life. You know, like in an old episode of Twilight Zone.

If only life were that easy!

DDR

Rock, paper, scissors


Rock, Paper, Scissors

You may think that rock, paper, scissors is only a child’s game, but they actually have a world championship in which contestants from all over the world compete.

Well, that got me to thinking about the game. This is a game for all ages. The entire family can play. There’s no equipment to buy. The rules are simple and cheating is impossible. Chances are no one will get hurt while playing, unless college students play it as a drinking game.

The game is easy to play. Everyone forms a circle and makes a fist that is raised and lowered three times. On the third downward stroke, the hand must form one of three things: Rock (fist), Paper (hand held open with palm down), or Scissors (index and middle fingers mimicking a pair of scissors). Rock breaks Scissors. Paper covers Rock. Scissors cut Paper. The beauty of this game is that no one player has an unfair advantage. Size doesn’t matter. Neither does gender or speed. Not even skill or luck! Everyone has a shot at winning. Each item, is a potential winner or loser. Beauty, eh? It’s a great game for choosing who goes first for another game.

Well, we are like each of those items. We, too, possess this duality that coincides beautifully with the yin and yang symbol. We are a rock in that sometimes we must be strong and forceful, but that won’t always work for us because someone who becomes paper will defeat us. So we have to choose what we become carefully. Unlike a game in which chance plays a huge part because we don’t know what the other player(s) will show, in real life we can adapt to the situation and use the appropriate object. We must constantly change accordingly. Anyone who consistently uses one object will surely fail. We must constantly evaluate our surroundings and adapt. Rock, paper, scissors is the perfect metaphor for life.

DDR

Love is …


Chicago Sun-Times

“Love is …”

I’m talking about the little cartoon that you see in the newspaper comic section. You know, the one with little cartoon couple that illustrate some aspect of love. I saw it today, but I didn’t even read it. I just kind of stared at the picture because I recalled the very first time I became aware of the cartoon way back when I was still in high school. All the girls loved reading it. Some of them even clipped out the ones that they especially loved. I was your typical teenage boy who didn’t pay much attention to those cartoons. But then one day, I met Maria Pardo …

At Gage Park High School, I met a lot of interesting people that I still remember to this day. I’m still friends with many of them. Instead of staying in the assembly hall for the study period, I used to go to the library because I loved reading magazines or whatever book caught my interest. I never actually studied for any of my classes. I used to read U.S. News and World Report cover to cover. Occasionally, I talked to the librarian.

Then, one day, I looked up from my magazine and I saw her. Apparently, she had been sitting there for weeks, but I had not noticed her before. Actually, she noticed me first, but it took her two weeks to catch my attention. But that’s how I am. I’m frequently oblivious to everything around me once I start reading. When I finally took a good look at her sitting at the table across from me, she was smiling and signaling me to sit by her. She was beautiful! She had long black hair and big brown eyes. She wore makeup even though most of the other girls didn’t. She even painted her fingernails. When I sat next to her, I smelled her perfume that just captivated me. From then on, I always sat next to her in the library. And somehow, she always managed to sit right next to me. She always read the Chicago Sun-Times, but she always read the horoscope first and then the comics. I always preferred brainy girls, but she was the prettiest girl I had met at Gage Park and she had asked me to sit next to her.

At first, I thought she was Mexican. I mean, she looked Mexican, very Mexican. But then she told me that she was born in Ecuador. I was surprised because I thought everyone who spoke Spanish in Chicago was either Mexican or Puerto Rican. She spoke English with this really very sexy accent. I loved listening to her talk, so much so that when she spoke to me in Spanish, I lied to her and told her that I didn’t know Spanish just so that she would continue talking to me in English with her sexy accent. But the highlight of the study period was when she would read the “Love is …” cartoon. No matter what it was about, she would always squeeze my hand and say, “Isn’t that so cute?”

Frankly, I didn’t get it, but I played along. We got to know each other quite well that year. Or so I thought. When spring came, I asked her to the dance, but she said that she already had a date. At the end of the school year, I asked her what she was doing for the summer. She said she was getting married and moving back home to Ecuador. I was disappointed, but for a while, everyone thought I had the hottest girlfriend in the school!

DDR

Neighbors


Marquette Park, Chicago, Illinois

Good fences make good neighbors. Words of wisdom by Robert Frost. Words I can live by.

My neighbors who complained about me not mowing my lawn until Memorial Day also complained to me when the fence between our properties was blown over by intense winds. It was an old wooden fence and the posts rotted at the base from the moisture. Well, her husband put the fence in my yard. They insisted it was my fence, but I didn’t know because the fence was already there when I bought the house.

So I took the fence apart and slowly threw it away with the weekly garbage. The wood was rotted beyond repair. Since I didn’t have any small children or pets, I didn’t think I needed to replace the fence between our yards.

But my neighbor would sneak up behind me while I was doing yardwork to insist that we get a new fence. I really couldn’t afford a new fence and I told her. But she insisted that we had to get a new fence and we would each pay for half of it. I said I wanted a three-foot chain-link fence because it would last longer than a wooden fence.

I had a red cedar wooden fence at my old house and the wind blew it over after about five years. What a shame that I had replaced the thirty-year-old chain-link fence with a wooden one that didn’t even last five years! I insisted on a chain-link fence, because the chain-link fence at my childhood home was still standing after all these years.

But my neighbor ordered a six-foot wooden fence for privacy. And I was supposed to pay for half. I reluctantly agreed, but when I contacted the contractor to pay for half of the fence, he told me that the neighbors had already paid in full. I just didn’t understand. They only paid for half of the fence, so only half of the fence was installed. I would be responsible for installing the rest of the fence.

Normally, I don’t get that involved with my neighbors. If my house would have come with a good fence, I could have avoided dealing with my neighbors on this issue.

DDR