Here, there, and everywhere

Now, fear not, the story does not end badly. However, as I rolled across the entire road, a car is approaching. I have not been told how close I came to hitting the car, but we did not collide. Instead, I rolled right into the safe and open arms of the gutter. I was found shortly after (from my cries probably) without noticeable damage.

Some time later, when I was around 6 months old, my parents decided that it was very important that I learn how to swim. Well it was important for my mother anyway and, in truth, I would do it the same way. Regardless, my mother took me to the local YMCA and signed us up for the earliest “get your baby used to the water and swimming” classes. Apparently, I did very well, and it must have worked, because I love the water even today.

For the most part these were quiet, playful times. There were other kids on my block that I got along with and during this time didn't get in trouble much. Some of my earliest memories are of the trees in our yard. I loved to climb. I was practically a monkey with how much I was climbing. Not only did I like to climb, but was dangerously good at it. I have always been considered tall so it was easy for me to jump and grab a low branch to hoist myself up. If that was unavailable, I would wrap my arms around the trunk and “hug” my way up to a branch. Man that was fun, the feeling of being high up and being with nature.

That, of course, was when I'd get distracted and fall. I remember falling one time specifically and I did bounce. But, I was young, resilient, and went right back up after I caught my breath. It did not deter me from liking heights, nor looking down from them. What it did do was give me a slight anxiety of the act of falling. As you can imagine, I now have a healthy respect for elevated edges.

My memories are also filled with the great woods we had practically in our backyard. There was so much undeveloped land back then that you really could get lost for a while. Deer trails, thatches of blue-, rasp-, black-, and huckleberries, as well as, honeysuckle were everywhere. We would feast on them during late summer when we were hungry or brought them home to have with dessert. Huge vines grew in the trees and we used them trying to be like Tarzan. We built BMX race tracks, forts and other hideouts in between the trees. We tried to stay away from the poison ivy, though.

I scraped my knees and injured myself quite a few times in those wooded shadows. Once, when we were swinging from the vines, I was going from one elevated ridge to the opposite side and the vine broke like in the movie Romancing the Stone (+1 to the anxiety). Then there was the time I was BMX racing and when I went over the final jump in first place, my front tire fell off. Another time, I was riding my bike in front of my house and had the craziest idea [I should have known then not to do it]. I wondered, “How far could I go if I closed my eyes for a second.” Not only did I not get far, but collided with the neighbor's metal mailbox. This metal mailbox had a folded corner that ended up cutting my upper arm badly. I freaked myself and my mother out and needed about seven stitches.

Then there was the time that I was riding my bike down hill and was zig-zagging back and forth. It was during the “zagging” that I hit a sand patch and my fork “T'd.” Once again, I was flying like Superman. I ended up, for the second time in my life, with embedded gravel, and sand over my face. Only this time my parents were leaving for Hawaii the next day and I had to stay with my grandparents, who everyday cleaned my face to remove the sand and prevent an infection. Again, because I was a kid, I healed without any scarring.

The final time that I injured myself in NJ was the week before we moved to Texas. I was walking in the woods in the dead end on my street and tripped over a vine. I don't mind the tripping. What I do mind is the person that decided it was a good idea to take a six-pack of beer bottles, smash all the tops and put them all booby-trap style for someone's knee. I was lucky and only needed ten stitches. The day before we left to fly down to TX, my mom took me to the doctor to check the incision site. The doctor said it was okay to take the stitches out, even though my mom kept saying are you sure it is okay, it is his knee and the knee bends, won't it open up the incision site? The doctor took the sutures out and before we got back to the hotel, my suture site was open. My mom had to go to the drug store and get some butterfly bandaids and try to keep the site closed. I missed swimming in an indoor-outdoor pool at the hotel we stayed in at Texas, which made me really mad, because I love to swim! There still is a scar on my knee today, but it healed better than both my mom and I thought it would.

There are also some other random memories of early NJ. I remember the old open-aired ice/roller skating rink that we used to go to. It was way back in some hard to find location, but we would go every once in a while to skate. The local hockey teams would also play there in the winter and we would sit in the stands and have hot dogs and hot chocolate. I find the Zambonis amazing. The mall had a Friendly's across the street, which we visited during the summer and sit on the grass and eat our ice cream cones. In your home, did you have one of those push-button or the rotary cable boxes? Did yours have a corded remote? I remember a mouse running across the room while we were watching a movie on HBO when we had one of those. I also vaguely remember dressing up as an owl for halloween one year and the time I tried to sell something for Boy Scouts. But mostly I remember when my brother was born, and the next door neighbor's pool.

I also remember the two-story house we lived in with the small kitchen, my room, and the stairs leading up to the second floor. Then there was the time that we came back from someplace and a baby bluejay had fallen out of its nest. My mom picked it up with gloves (so it wouldn't have human scent on it) and we took it to the vet. The whole time we were trying to get the baby bluejay in the trunk of the car the mother bluejay was swooping down/dive bombing on us. My mom finally made us get into the car away from the mother bluejay, but I remember being somewhat afraid.

My second memory is of my new 4th grade class. We moved at the end of the school year, when there was about a month left, so that my brother and I could meet some kids before the summer started. Good theory, but my teacher told us quite firmly that, she only reviewed the course materials during this time and would not re-teach, she repeated, would not re-teach even to a new student. However, she was willing to allow me to be retested before the new school year. What a wonderful old hag. So she did not report a grade for me. I got to spend the summer with a tutor learning at the kitchen table, while I could hear the kids on my street playing outside. It was really hard to focus. Needless to say, I did pass with merits.

Inside the family, I had different things to attend. My chores were mowing the lawn, cooking, cleaning and making sure the pool had the right pH and chlorine levels. The pool was one of the highlights of the house and made the hot/hottest summer days enjoyable, but eventually the chores became tedious. Annoying my brother and getting him in trouble were just bonuses.

I was involved in a good number of activities thanks to my mother. Soccer, swimming, singing [at school, church, Dallas Boys Choir], cotillion, line-referee for soccer, altar serving at church, piano, voice lessons, violin and cello in school, cooking and serving for my mother's catering business, horseback riding, and I even won the Presidential Physical Fitness Award medal. I was into reading Shakespeare, the Middle Ages, crusades, religion, the new science-fiction fantasy genre, as well as, works like the Hardy Boys, The Light in the Attic and classic ghost stories. Classic rock, folk, and the oldies were my favorite music. Later on I got into rock and role-playing games.

These were wonderful years. I loved playing soccer with the Dallas All-Stars. It was a traveling team and we did well. I played left forward and sweeper and we even won a few trophies. At the same time I was swimming for the City of Richardson [COR]. I swam in a lot of meets and my strongest styles were back- and breast-stroke. However, I was called to swim butterfly every so often, especially for the IMs. We mostly won our meets and I received many blue and red ribbons. I remember being amused every time I went to practice because our coach was one of the largest women I had seen up to that time. When you are that old you can't grasp how that could happen. We were told that she was a phenomenal swimmer when she was younger. I also remember playing wall-ball before changing. The whole pool building had a walkway around it so the ball would really bounce if you threw it correctly.

Over the years of playing soccer [indoor and out] and swimming all-year-round, I started to get shooting pains in my left tibia. I continued playing until one day I couldn't even walk because it was so painful. We went to a six feet four inches Dr. Small, the leading Orthopedic sports doctor [he was the Dr. for the Cowboys], and after CT scans, bone scans, X-Rays, and slew of others ... nothing really came up. So, it was thought and a possibility that whatever it might be cancer or an infection. Because of this, it was decided that I needed surgery and had 4 inches of my tibia removed. Well, I had it, got my own private room, ...and it was the most painful thing I have ever experienced. I was not in pain during the procedure, they gave me pepperoni flavored anesthesia - yuck. It was the night and day afterward that was the issue. Not to get too gross, but even though all the precautions had been taken, they used a plaster cast and put it on way too tight causing my foot to swell and unbearable pain. Plaster, needless to say, does not expand. Immovable plaster + swelling foot = Lots of Pain for Brian. Even though I was taking pain medicine it just never seemed to be enough, and so the doctor finally removed some of the cast near my foot and the pain subsided. They didn't want to remove the entire cast for fear of increased infection. I also had to be on non weight bearing walking, so I hobbled around on crutches for two months.

During the period I had my cast on [a good six+ months] I was still involved with the Dallas Boys Choir and went on tour with them. One story that came from that year's trip was our visit to the Pueblo Indian cities in New Mexico where we had to climb ladders to see the good stuff. Was I going to let that stop me, heck no. There I was, crutches like purses on my arms, climbing the ladders up and down like everyone else, only I made sure I was the last one.

Finally, it was time for my cast to come off and it was at the same time we were getting ready for a road trip to visit my grandmother in D.C. The day before we left I went to the doctor to have the last cast removed. The strong urging from the staff there was that I should not, under any circumstances, go in any water other than a clean bath tub. Not scrubbing too hard was also mentioned, but the pool was what my mother remembers most. Just before my mom left to get some last minutes items for our trip, she remembers telling my dad that I can not go swimming in the pool, even with chlorine, it may cause an infection. When she came home, where does she find me? No, not in the tub. She says that I was practically scratching the new fresh layer of skin off in the pool. She was a little mad, or FURIOUS. Thankfully, not at me. It was my dad's fault after all. She had told him not to let me in before she left. Ok, the eruption stops, we pack up the car and head off to D.C. Almost immediately I am all quiet and passed out in the back seat. This was not my normal behavior, but, if you are not a child, it is my understanding that you pray to have your kids passed out. Regardless, I am passed out in the back seat. After a day of driving our reward was to have some famous Popeyes chicken. I still have cravings for it to this day, but rarely eat the stuff.

You can imagine my surprise, bewilderment, and frustration when I woke up and find my family packing. I immediately reminded them that we were promised some Popeyes chicken. It's then they tell me that it's the next morning and that I passed out as soon as I got into the hotel. I tell them that I don't recall that. My mother, using her Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) degree, instantly raises concern. Off we go to the emergency room that just happens to be across the street. One look at my leg and the ER doctor says that I have the worst case of impetigo he has ever seen and says we need to go back to Dallas to see my surgeon. My mother and the doctor “discuss” this and it's agreed that I'll just use triple antibacterial ointment, take oral antibiotics, and wash the infected leg with hydrogen-peroxide three to four times a day. In one day I went from completely comatose in the back seat to being your more typical, ”ooo, what's that,” ”get off my side, you passed the line,” “mom, he's touching me” child. I'm sure my parents were very pleased.

So you may have been wondering why I mentioned altar serving and didn't elaborate. I normally wouldn't, but serving did have a big impact on my philosophy of life. Saint Mary's Roman Catholic church had a very nice complex and offered a lot of programs. Let's just say that I was very intrigued in faith and religion [and not necessarily Catholic] and was one of the favorites of the altar servers; I was in the early stages of being groomed for seminary school. There were seminars, classes and workshops on a regular basis for us. The priests there were honorable and had the best of intentions. I took the history of the Crusades, Middle Ages, lessons from the Bible, asked questions and came to my own conclusions. In the end it was very simple. All honorable faiths teach the same tenet: treat others as you would have them treat you. When you think about it, it is really very simple. Yet, some how, it gets shrouded and confused in our everyday life. We get bombarded everyday with mixed messages from TV, media, celebrities, teachers, loved ones, mentors, bosses, peers and strangers. Purchase this, buy that, up-grade now. Everywhere we turn someone is trying to turn us into good little consumers. Corporations [the most influential individuals] ever watchful, trying to make another dime off us. It gets harder each day to glean the truth from what we are presented. Right and wrong get mixed in with financial decisions more and more as we get older. But, not all is lost. Distinguishing between needs, wants and desires are lessons that need to be learned and hopefully at an early age; and hopefully without being a lesson learned the hard way.

The lesson I learned from my spiritual studies allowed me to realize that all the faiths originated on spirituality. In my mind this was the progression: spirituality -> faith -> religion. It was the mixing of religion with greed, power and influence that corrupted spirituality. Religion and faith are not bad until it invades another person’s freedom. I realized that spirituality could be defined in many ways, large and small, as long as it was personal, good, and private. That one does not need to go to a temple in order to pray, for we each are our own temples and Gaia our provider.

The education system of Richardson was phenomenal. Besides my first teacher, everyone was encouraging, intelligent, extremely helpful and were more mentors than teachers. The curriculum was tough, challenging and mostly fun. If you can put your children into a system with a junior high instead of an elementary school, it is better for maturity, decision making, and education. The biggest difference was that in the Texas system, students do learn about American history; and when they finally get around to it, where do they incorporate it?... How about in World history. We were taught Texas history as it pertains to not just the state, but also the history of the land. From the early trips of Texan Indians, Spaniards, the Mexicans, to the present. Looking back it was a bit odd. For example, Texas is the only state that is allowed to have its state flag the same height as the American flag. It symbolized and recognizes the original independence Texas had as its own country before it joined the United States [then the Confederate States]. Unfortunately, sometimes things are not always what you are taught [link]. The amusement park Six-Flags was originally named Six-Flags Over Texas and, as you may have guessed, was started in Texas. The name comes from the saying six flags over Texas [the national flags of Spain, the Fleur-de-lis of France, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the Confederate States of America, and the United States of America] that we are also taught in school.

Needless to say, it was one heck of a move. The best part about the move was the property. As an outdoor person and someone that studied the old druidic forest management, I would tend to the “wild” areas as I saw fit. In late Winter, just before the fresh green of life appeared, I would clip, prune and seal the trees, clear the area and map out pathways and hidden places. As the days grew longer and Spring became Summer, I would train the growing things naturally by weaving them, running branches and fresh growth in the right directions, and make sure nothing was over-growing something else. It was during my “landscaping” that I was the happiest.

We now lived in a small township surrounded by suburbia. We had your classic old-time strip mall that consisted of only a few stores and around the corner was one of the best delis I have ever frequented [they had really good breakfast sandwiches. I hate to admit it, but my favorite was the pork-roll and egg bagel sandwich].