Odds & Loose Ends # 1

For those of you who used to know me from Marist High School, I remember quite a few of you who used to talk to me about your various boyfriend/girlfriend problems. I was being a good sport and trying to help you out using common sense and powers of observation. You surely must have known that it wasn't experience on my part when I used to try to help you out. I have always wanted to ask those people with whom I tried to help out through those two years I was there, "Did you ever stop to consider the irony that was present when you used to talk to me about these things and considered the fact that I would have killed to have had your problems? " I used to help out a lot of people and I don't recall that anybody tried to help me with perhaps finding a girlfriend. I did, however, get told by friends in the class ahead of me that I shouldn't even bother to have tried pursuing some of the girls I pursued. I was even told by someone from that class that I wasn't good looking enough to go after some of the girls I went after and that I needed to lower my standards. Of that group of people I used to know, only one person has ever come forth to tell me that they were embarrassed by having tried to convince me of that at the time. This person actually called me up, years later, and apologized to me for having bought into the idea. Because of that, I will always speak positively of that person. He's the only one who came to his senses and had the guts to speak up. In short, I will never let my thinness, my IBS, my wearing hearing aids and being a little different prevent me from my dream of being with a beautiful woman/women (whatever the case may be). Who are you to tell me otherwise? I do think of something that my late Dad once told me. It makes me wonder if, in the Afterlife, he wishes that he hadn't said it. He told me the year that he was to pass away that he thought I was going to have so many women knocking down my door that I wasn't going to know what to do with them. Dad? Do you still know something that I don't? I hope I don't have to wait until I'm with you before what you said to me comes true.
I support three organizations-MoveOn.org, ONE.org and Amnesty International. I have known about Amnesty International for many years. In a post that I will address one of these days, I will tell you the story of how I became aware of it from my having been at Bellarmine for my first two years of High School.
I've been thinking a lot about the first house I lived in on Franklin Street lately. I keep having this fantasy that I could be in a kind of commune type situation where a bunch of friends and I could live there so that I could occupy the upper floor. I have especially been thinking about the bedroom where my oldest brother used to sleep and the one my other brother and I slept in. I keep thinking about how I could have one of my small stereo systems in the room that my oldest brother had and I could hole myself up there. I could also have my headphones-only system in there as well. I just keep thinking of all of the '60s history I lived through in that house and all of the associated music to go with it. Over the years, I'll be listening to the old Decca/Brian Jones Era period of The Rolling Stones and I'll have very vivid associations and feelings of that house and time going on as I'm listening to the music. I've even listened to those Stones CDs and have imagined myself being back there listening to those very CDs and conjuring up the literal happenings and feelings I had when I lived in that house. I got to go and revisit the house back in the 5-month 1996-1997 period when I was down there. It was really amazing how much of the upstairs had not changed at all. I will talk about this house a lot more as time goes on. I will most definitely talk about the Camino Drive house as well as my favorite times occurred in that one.
I've never wanted kids. I just wanted a woman. Now, I just want a woman I can grow old with because I don't want to grow old alone. My kids are of the four-legged variety. The German Shepherd I have is the love of my life. She is going to be 10. You'd get sick if you saw just how much affection we shower each other with everyday.
I'm thinking of Eric Clapton today and I hope he is recovering nicely from gallbladder surgery.
I am entertaining the idea that I might go to see U2 in Oakland or Seattle next June provided that I have the money and that the CD reissue year is light. What I'm really hoping for is that Cowboy Junkies will come through Eugene again. If they do, it won't matter how light or heavy the CD year will be for me next year, I'll be there to say hello to Margo and enjoy the band.