Showing posts with label friends. Show all posts

Summer is supposed to be a nice time when you can get together with family and friends and enjoy a barbecue or a ball game with some ice cream and an iced tea (or a beer). It's about enjoying the ability to be outside and doing things when everybody has a little break from stuff.

OK so not many people get a break during the summer from work, but it is a time when the kiddos are off school so they get to complain that there is nothing to do all summer long until the last week. Then they find about 100 things to do and complain on the night before school starts again that the summer went by too dang fast.

I've noticed an unfortunate part of my end of summer days. It's the anniversary of many friends and family that have passed on. To say that it leaves me with a feeling of melancholy is sometimes an understatement. I realized that as I'm getting older the list of people I've said goodbye to is growing (and much too quickly).

On the all powerful facebook I saw a friend from a post remembering a friend of ours that passed some 21 years ago. It was followed by a post from one of his friends talking of a friend that passed within days of that person but 2 years later. This was followed by another and another. I didn't realize it until I was reading that post that I knew about 10 people that have passed within a few days of each other and a dozen years apart.

That of course got me to thinking of other friends I've lost over the years. Not to mention family. I'm from an Italian family and one thing we know how to do is well have big families. Many memories are of older relatives from my childhood. They would all sit around at my cousins house for a family get together eating pasta and arguing. Looking back it was a wonderful way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

It also got me to thinking about all the things left unsaid between me and my friends and family that have passed. I am fortunate that my list is not all that long, but nonetheless there are regrets for comments not made (and even for a few made in haste).

The only point I have to this rambling post is remember that our time is short and it's precious. Use it wisely and never take any of it for granted. I received a sharp reminder of that from a simple post this morning and I will make sure I'm talking to mom and dad today. Funny how it doesn't take much to get us moving in the right direction.

The word itself is ugly. Nobody likes to have regrets. It's not exactly a goal in anybodies life. My grandfather used to tell me that when I got old I would look back and the fewer regrets I had, the happier I would be. That sounds like pretty sound advice looking back.

Just because it's good advice doesn't mean it gets followed though does it? We all have those moments in our lives that we wish we could revisit and maybe change the outcome of. I arrived at that moment recently while rereading a post from Hunter at The Time Crook. He made this post and it really got me to thinking.

I'm full of silly childhood regrets, but there are a few that are a bit more on my mind as I get a little older. I'm gonna share one of those with you, but first I have to preface this a little bit. I'm a believer in the Death Penalty...Wow where did that come from right? If you kill somebody intentionally, then you deserve to die for it in my opinion. If we are going to keep people alive for 15 years after the crime then giving them the death penalty is pointless...

That said, here's my regret...

As a teenager I had a friend named Richie. We played sports together, we hung out together and we were pretty good friends through junior high school and all the way through high school as well. Now Richie was a nice kid. He was as pleasant as they come, and he was well mannered. In fact to the point that my parents were always telling me that I better be every bit as well behaved as Richie when I was out and about.

Richie came from a dysfunctional home. In the sense that his parents didn't or wouldn't show him any affection. He was the oldest of three brothers, and he was constantly expected to be responsible for anything and everything they did. They doted on both of the other boys, but Richie was never given that love and affection that he craved. He spent more and more of his time at my house. My parents accepted him in as one of our own, and even offered to let him come live with us to finish high school when it became so bad at his house. He was 18 before he graduated and his parents were going to make him move out and support himself to finish high school. Fortunately that didn't happen. I will never forget some of the times we dropped him off after a high school football game at some random hotel that his parents were at for one of their workshops. They never had time to watch him play sports, but they managed to watch the other two.

After High School we went our separate ways sort of. I joined the military and he went to a junior college down south. He was going to be a broadcast journalist. I'm quite sure that he would have made a hell of a good one too. Things don't always work out the way we plan though do they? He met a girl and all of a sudden he was in a relationship for really the first time in his life. I never met this girl, but he was happy and so I was happy for him.

Life kept moving on though and I was soon caught up in my own little slice of life. I was married and working, and on top of that I was going to be a dad. I heard that Richie had some trouble down south, but nobody really knew much about it. I was too caught up with my own little world to worry all that much about it. I figured if he needed me, he would call or write (pre-internet). Sure enough I got a letter from Richie, but by this time, I was going through some other stuff in my life. I was getting ready to get divorced, and I was wondering how I would be able to raise my child as a single parent. I didn't have time to talk to Richie, and I didn't really want to know what was going on in his life to be honest. I didn't bother to respond to his letter, and I didn't bother to notice that it was postmarked from a correctional facility.

A year went by before I found out the details of my friend. He was on death row. He was found guilty of murder. He had killed his girlfriend and her mother. I won't offer up the specifics of this horrific crime, because it haunts me still. Let's just say that it was gruesome, and he admitted to it, and was more than willing to pay for his crime.

I wasn't there for my friend when he needed me though. I wasn't there when he went through his break up, and I wasn't there to help talk him down, from whatever crazy place his mind brought him too. I was forced to accept that I had failed him as a friend. That of course doesn't mean that I had anything to do with all the madness that followed, but it's a what if moment for me.

Fast forward to now. He is still on death row. He is a mentor in the prison system, and has helped many fellow inmates achieve their GED and even some advanced learning. They have tried to appeal for all these years to get him off death row. I even offered up a deposition, explaining his childhood, and the person I knew compared to the madman that committed that crime.

Should he die? Yeah, he deserves to pay for what he did. He knows that and so do I. I even explained that to the lawyer that I spoke with. I was asked to explain my friends childhood to the court and I did. That doesn't mean that I expect leniency and I know he doesn't either.

To call it regrettable is an understatement. So many lives have been destroyed by that one terrible act. Many more lives have been turned upside down. I take something away from this though. I realized maybe a little late that I will make time when my friends are in need. I will sit and listen if they have a problem, and I'll do my best to offer up a solution and if nothing else an ear. I can't change what happened but I can change my response to it for the next time. Lessons learned are sometimes hard, and sometimes that's the only way we learn them.

So I file this away with the other black marks in my life, but this one has a flag on it. This is one to be remembered. This is my regret.....

For any of you that have spent time in the military or are related to someone in the miiitary this acronym might seem familiar. Breath Relax Aim Stop Squeeze. It's one of the earliest things we are taught when learning to fire our rifles. It's very good advice and works rather well as long as you aren't amped up on any of the coffee or cigarettes that most military guys are.

I grew up with weapons around our house. My father and Grandfather both hunted (not very well). I took part at the ripe ol' age of 10 when I was allowed to get my gun safety course out of the way. By 10 I was already pretty familiar with weapons. I knew that they served one purpose and one purpose only....To kill. They aren't to wound, or scare, they are a weapon of destruction and used for good or bad is totally up to the person behind the trigger.

Now that being said, I might have known what they were for, but I didn't consider my daisy bb gun to be in that category. For those of you unfamiliar with the daisy BB gun it was a lever action bb gun that you almost had to aim at an angle to reach 50 feet. I got one when I was 8 years old, and I was in love with it. I had used my Grandfather's on many occassions in the backyard to have "target" practice. I wasn't allowed to shoot at animals or anything like that, but I could shoot fruit or bottles, and mostly cans.

In my neighborhood there were tons of kids around, but there were three of us that played together quite a bit. Me, Scott and Jeff rode bikes, boxed in a makeshift boxing ring in the front yard (using a water house to outline), had water balloon fights, and blew up more than our fair share of those little green army men with lady fingers (firecrackers).

Along with all those good things, we also decided one day to play War. All of our houses met at a corner in the backyard and we figured it would be a perfect place to hold our own little battle for domination. So bb gun in hand I got behind my makeshift bunker in the backyard.

Now you can't just start fighting in backyard war, you have to be prepared. You need a few essentials.
1. ball cap (battle helmet)
2. jacket (regardless of the time of year)
3. Jeans...No Shorts!!!
4. Boots or hiking shoes...Note sneakers are allowed if covered in duct tape.
5. Daisy BB Gun with pocket full of bb's.

This was a 1 on 1 on 1 fight. We would continue to shoot at each other until somebody gave up, was shot, or ran out of ammunition. Usually we all ran out of ammunition. The time I'm thinking about didn't end so easily.

I remember it like I just came in from the house. We were in the middle of our battle. I was getting mad because Jeff kept ducking just ahead of my shots. That wasn't so bad, but his laughter at my misfortune was maddening. I took a breath and started thinking. Thinking for a young boy is no easy task, we would much rather just do. I decided to figure out a way to win instead of always the tie that we had. I started timing things a little bit and sure enough I got Scott as he popped up from the fence. So he was out of the running and not even broken skin. This was looking up. I knew where Jeff was going to pop up, because he made the mistake of following a little pattern. So the next time his head popped up I was ready and got off my shot. SCORE!!! But he fell straight back like somebody hit him with a bat.

I hollered to Scott and we ran to the fence and jumped over into the other yard. There was Jeff sitting on the ground crying and.........BLEEDING!!!! "You're in trouble now!!" Those were the words out of my friends mouth. Jeff was too busy screaming bloody murder to say anything. So doing what any good friend would do we grabbed him by the arms and dragged him to the back porch and started screaming for his mom. She came running out and saw the blood running off his head and was immediately in action. She grabbed him up and we all ran to the car.

30 minutes later, Jeff was receiving a bandage on his forehead. The bb broke the skin and sat lodged in his forehead almost directly between his eyes. To this day he carries the scar. I lost my bb gun privileges for I think forever. I was grounded and a few other punishments were thrown on there. Looking back though it was all worth it, because I was legend after that incident. I was considered a dead eye by the other boys in the neighborhood now. That made for many good hunting trips later in life as they remembered that all the way through school.

So I guess I was ready for the military a little bit earlier than some because I was already putting into practice what they taught me some 11 years later.

B.R.A.S.S.