“And when your looks are gone and you’re all alone, how many nights will you sit beside the phone? What were the things you wanted for yourself, teenage ambitions you remember well. It was the heat of the moment, telling you what your heart meant. The heat of the moment shone in your eyes.” So what was to come in your life?, your teenage ambitions? We all had them when we were young and naive I’m sure. Mine surprisingly wasn’t really anything that important or earth-shattering. I wasn’t necessarily interested in fame and fortune. Simply because I knew my limitations. I wasn’t tall or skilled enough to become a professional athlete. I didn’t have the family connections to enter either local or national politics. And I certainly didn’t have the intelligence required to be a Nobel-winning chemist or physicist. Nope, much like that often quoted line from the movie ‘Rudy’, I actually was “five feet nothin’, a 100 and nothin’, and had hardly a speck of athletic ability.” So I knew early on in my youth that I probably should lower my expectations in life. I mean my blue-collar, lower middle-class upbringing taught me that if nothing else right? So when my high school days were ending, and the college years were in the horizon, I had only one dream. And that was to become a high school history teacher. Why a teacher you ask?, well simply because my greatest mentors growing up in my formative years other than my grandfather were all teachers (specifically history teachers). And because of them, my love of history is still so relevant all these years later. Case in point, when my oldest daughter lived in New York City for a couple of years, every time I visited her I just wanted to follow the footsteps of where Washington, Roosevelt, Sinatra, hell even Belushi, along with so many others stepped. Or the tables at legendary restaurants that they sat at, or just maybe where they posted up and got drunk at inside their favorite watering hole. As weird as all that is (and I’m fully aware that it certainly is), I get off on that shit! And it’s the same thing I go thru when I visit Washington D.C., or Chicago, or Los Angeles. Hell even last year when I was in Key West with a good friend of mine (coincidentally also a teacher), to be in the same spot of where Hemingway and Truman once stood at was thrilling to me.
So what happened to that teenage ambition of mine?, of helping to mold and shape the young minds of tomorrow? And maybe help sway them from the predominately far right (okay, MAGA) views that was to become of many in this very red state. Well the answer to that is easy, one word – “LIFE“. And by life I mean, the decisions that I ultimately made. When maybe in life I took a left instead of a right. And of course it didn’t help at the time that I didn’t possess the maturity back then in my teen years that was needed to eventually finish college. Many days I thought “wait, the teachers don’t care if you come to class or not?, sweet!!!“. No, not so sweet at all looking back. Because I never did finish college, in fact I basically flunked out after my sophomore year. So I joined the Air Force, and thought for sure that I’d have a plum assignment so that I could be able to come home every weekend to all my friends and a girl that I was dating at the time. Yea, I had it all planned out, it was gonna be epic. But no, Uncle Sam had other thoughts, namely sending me to Anchorage, Alaska for two years. And then after that assignment, another couple of years in Colorado Springs (which lets be honest, was SO MUCH BETTER). Then I met someone from my hometown who I started seeing as much as possible when I could come home, got her pregnant, then drove sixteen hours straight to ‘man up’ to her parents about knocking up their little girl, and so we got married, all in that same week. So yea, not exactly achieving the teenage ambitions that I remember so well.
And finally after four years of serving my country, the enlistment was over. So we packed up, and came back home to start our new lives (me, her, the baby and a dog named Blackie). And it was tough, mainly because of my bad choices, and my mistakes, and both of us trying to be adults, but honestly neither one of us were ready for that. And I take full responsibility, I was the man, the husband, the father, and I failed miserably in all those roles. Taking shit jobs that I hated, several that I dreaded going into work every day, all just to help pay the bills, feed the family, and try to keep our necks treading above water. And most of the times back then, we were drowning financially, and many times trying to avoid calls from creditors. She didn’t deserve that life, and that’s something I will always regret. I brought misery to her and her parents. They hated me for it, and quite honestly all these years later, they probably still do. And I don’t blame them, I would probably feel the same way. And even though I look back now and know that it was a lifetime ago (we’re talking when I was still in my early to mid-20’s), in many ways it still haunts me because I feel like it was just last week. And as dark as some of those days were for us both back then, I wouldn’t change a thing. Because I now look back at my life (including those mistakes) and I’m glad that I took that left instead of a right. Because if I wouldn’t have, maybe today I wouldn’t have two very beautiful daughters who each have their own college degrees (unlike their old man), a healthy, handsome grandson, and a career in marketing that I’m actually very proud of. And yes I know that I never did achieve that dream of becoming a high school history teacher, and I never did have that opportunity to help shape and mold some young minds. But that’s okay, because very few of us get to realize those teenage ambitions that we all wanted for ourselves, those that we remember well from back in our youth. Though even today, I will never forget what that heat of the moment that shone in my eyes back then felt like. And even though my looks may be gone now and I’m all alone, what eventually did become of my life, I’m so very grateful for.
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