Is it my breath? Old friends and odd reunions

The night of my high school graduation remains the loneliest time in my life. Picked up my diploma (they didn't trust us enough to pass out diplomas on stage), turned in my robe and went home.

Parents gave me money to go to Bonanza Steakhouse. Went to eat by myself and then back home.

No parties. No friends. Nothing.

Okay, now that I've set the scene for you, this is not about teen angst and whining. So I'm almost sure you're asking, 'What led to an overcooked T-bone and free refills of iced tea (and where am I going with this?)?'

This is a tough blog to write and not sound like a whine. I will anyway, because I have some questions about what happens to relationships.

I've been in contact lately with some high school friends (keeping in mind that I've been out of school for almost 35 years), and the results been . . . confusing? Someone in Port Arthur created a Web site for TJ (Port Arthur Jefferson) alumni -- the school no longer exists -- and it's already attracted more than 3,000 online participants. Amazing!

I've reconnected with some friends through the Web site, and visiting with them has been a real treat. In other venues, I've become good blogging friends with someone who was just an acquaintance in high school, and now she's been a wonderful re-connect with Southeast Texas. Some of these folks seem to be just like me and have picked up like we chatted over coffee just yesterday.

Unfortunately, there have been some 'odd' reunions -- odd as in 'what just happened?' -- with those whose friendships I valued. Any renewal of -- for lack of a better term -- childhood friendships just 'poofed' with an e-door in the face, and nothing was left but some cyber-dust. I've been really surprised . . . and sadly embarrassed . . . with who slammed the door. And, unfortunately, no amount of self-examination has given me an answer.

My wife says that I can carry on a meaningful conversation with a tree, and she becomes proudly frustrated when she hears business associates, hers and mine, say, 'Everybody loves George (her words, not mine).' I throw that in as some kind of evidence that I'm a nice guy and not somebody hanging out in an overcoat and black socks.

I guess it must be strange -- and maybe a little frightening, reason for apprehension -- to hear from someone after 30+ years, especially when I think of all the phases of life I've passed through (you should be happy that you didn't catch me in the admitted asshole phase) and assuming that others have changed just as dramatically during three decades.

So what's up? Is it my breath?

I mention my high school graduation because that seems to be a pivotal point in my life, when I packed my emotional and social bags and left Port Arthur behind (although I lived there another 3 1/2 years). My senior year sucked for a bunch of reasons (too awkward to explain here . . . if you were there, don't feel bad; it wasn't your fault . . . really!). It was a powerful enough experience that I've always warned my own children: never abandon your friends. I do believe all that revolved around those seemingly forever nine months resulted in a 1974 Bonanza-night out and a decades-long relationship void with those from my hometown.

I wrote in my very first blog that my wife must think I'm in the witness protection program because I have so few contacts -- well, really none -- from my childhood in Port Arthur. I've also blogged and asked about what happens to people during their lives that makes them grow from the same environment into 180s on the life-outlook scale.

As I've grown older, I've recognized the need to leave the 'witness protection program.' Now, I'm wondering: how do you say, 'you were important to me' to those who have just 'poofed?'

But to those who re-warmed yesterday's cup of coffee and just enjoyed the chat: THANKS!

Dorothy . . . Peter Pan . . . The More Things Change . . .

Daughter #1’s more of a Peter Pan than I am. As independent as each of us is, neither one of us really wants to grow up. She was in town a couple of weeks ago, and every day seemed to bring a new ‘Toto-I-don’t-think-we’re-in-Kansas-any-more’ moment (is it okay to bounce metaphorically from Peter Pan to Wizard of Oz in the same paragraph?).

At that time, Daughter #2 talked about being in the sixth-grade band; and Daughter #1 seemed to accept that her sister was in sixth grade and even 'whoo-hooed' her role as the big dog on the intermediate school campus. Then Daughter #1 realized that her sister will 'grown up' and fighting in the jungles of the seventh grade next year.

‘That can’t be right. I was just in the seventh grade.” Well, maybe seven or eight years ago.

A friend, who helped me unpack when I moved to Fort Worth in 1990, has an older daughter who is a life-long friend of Daughter #1; and Daughter #1 regularly trades Facebook messages with her (she attends Stephen F. Austin State University; Daughter #1 is across the state at Texas Tech).

When my wife mentioned that the life-long friend’s baby brother, who Daughter #1’s known since birth, becomes a teenager this year, Daughter #1 challenges with ‘No way. I’m still a . . . ,’ and then backs down with a ‘when did everybody grow up?’

Our neighborhood -- where Daughter #1 grew up or at least where she kept celebrating birthdays -- is fairly transitional. Families have moved with job changes and schools have continued to open – and kids get shuffled around – to accommodate more families moving into our area. Change shouldn’t be new to her, and she always adapted well.

Unfortunately, her class of friends has seen tragic deaths throughout their school careers --parents killed in motorcycle accidents, parents dying unexpectedly from heart attacks and aneurysms, friends taken by cancer and killed in accidents, and classmates taking their own lives -- but I don’t think she was prepared as a newly crowned adult to mourn the slow death from cancer of a long-time friend’s dad.

Fortunately, life is good, and it does change. Daughter #1 loves to open Facebook, when she’s here, to show her mom the latest baby photos posted by some of her friends from high school. Her display is somewhere between the delight of a child with a new Barbie and the disgust of a teenager served liver when she realizes that girls her age – women – have children. Some are married now, some with husbands in Iraq, and some have begun careers, with rent payments, car payments, cell phone payments and insurance payments all their own.
Daughter #1 is slowly recognizing that her Dorothy has no ruby slippers to help return her to Kansas and that her Peter Pan has no Tinkerbell to keep the magic of Neverland (although, like me, she’ll keep clicking her heals together just to be sure).

But what doesn’t change? I crossed a small bridge during a recent walk – after Daughter #1’s ‘OMG-I’m-growing-up’ visit – and saw a teenage boy sitting on a large rock, not doing much of anything but throwing rocks in the water. His posture and his careless-but-sometimes-intense throws were mine about 35 years ago, when I sat on the Port Arthur seawall and threw rock after rock into the Intercoastal Canal.

If I would’ve asked the boy was he was doing, I’m sure he would’ve replied, ‘nuthin.’ But I almost guarantee that every rock – just like each rock I tossed – was labeled: girlfriend, school, college, car, parents, job, money, boredom, sex, drugs, drinking or – another apparently un-changeable – going to war.

When I crossed the bridge again, he’d moved, now to a nearby picnic table, where he stared at clouds while kids played on the toys of a nearby playground. He was sitting on the bench seat, leaning back with his elbows on the table, head tossed back and his face turned toward the sun. My picnic table – whether I walked from my rock on the seawall to Rose Hill Park or drove to Port Neches Park – was – like this young man’s – one more spot that wasn’t home. And every cloud that passed over had a rock namesake: girlfriend, school, college, car, parents, job, money, boredom, sex, drugs, drinking or going to war.

While I was weighing Daughter #1’s ‘life’s-coming-too-fast’ against my recognition that teen angst is eternal, I thought about the soul searching, life choices, missed opportunities, twists of fate, stupid comments, smart moves and the sheer luck of living. And then my IPod pulled up Jimmy Buffett’s ‘He Went to Paris.’

He went to Paris looking for answers
To questions that bothered him so
He was impressive, young and aggressive
Saving the world on his own

But the warm Summer breezes
The French wines and cheeses
Put his ambitions at bay
Summers and Winters
Scattered like splinters
And four or five years slipped away

Then he went to England, played the piano
And married an actress named Kim
They had a fine life, she was a good wife
Bore him a young son named Jim
And all of the answers and all of the questions
He locked in his attic one day‘
Cause he liked the quiet clean country living
And twenty more years slipped away

Well the war took his baby, bombs killed his lady
And left him with only on eye
His body was battered, his world was shattered
And all he could do was just cry
While the tears were falling, he was recalling
The answers he never found
So he hopped on a freighter, skidded the ocean
And left England without a sound

Now he lives in the islands, fishes the pilin’s
And drinks his green label each day
He’s writing his memoirs and losing his hearing
But he don’t care what most people say
Through eighty-six years of perpetual motion
If he likes you he’ll smile then he’ll say
Jimmy, some of it’s magic, some of it’s tragic
But I had a good life all the way

And he went to Paris looking for answers
To questions that bother him so

'How Am I Supposed to Know?' 10 Things About My Dad (#1 and #2)

This is my dad. This photo is one of my best photos. I took it in the late '70s, and it's been around our house for decades. I think it captures my dad perfectly, in appearance, character and personality, although I did have loan him the hat for full effect.

I'm telling you about this photo and introducing you to my dad because of daughter #2. She shocked me last weekend when we were watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (our family's weekly sniff-and-feel-good-about-people time together). The show took place in Louisville, Kentucky.

When I asked daughter #2 who was born in Kentucky, she just shrugged. When I exasperatedly told her that my dad was born in Kentucky, she just as exasperatedly questioned, 'How am I supposed to know anything about him?' He died when daughter #2 was less than 2 years old.

So, here are 10 things about my dad (in no order of importance . . . forgive me if I've already shared some of this with you) that I'll share with daughter #2.

Number One
He was born August 6, 1916 in Dukedom, Tennessee, and grew up in Mayfield, Kentucky, which is in Western Kentucky, and was a teenager during the Great Depression. He was the youngest in his family and had two older sisters -- Kathleen and Ruby -- and an older brother Herman.

Aunt Kathleen and Aunt Ruby visited Texas when I lived in Conroe in the early '80s. My parents drove them over from Port Arthur, and I still laugh when I think of them calling my dad, then nearly 70 years old, by his childhood name: 'Baby.'

Number Two
My dad was a boxer in his teens and 20s. He told me that he was a Golden Gloves boxer, but most of the stories I heard were about his matches when a carnival came to Mayfield or nearby Paducah, Kentucky. Carnivals were traveling shows that moved from town to town during the Depression; and their games, contests, shows and exotic animals were the most excitement a little town like his would see for months.

Some carnivals featured a 'champion' boxer, and when the carnival hit town, word spread quickly (and tickets sold just as quickly) that this champion would box and beat 24 of the 'best' local boxers in 24 hours. My dad usually was one of those 24 boxers; and during the Depression, when jobs and money were hard to come by, he was happy to look good for a few rounds, take a few punches, hit the mat, and then pick up his paycheck from the champ's manager.

He must've been a local favorite because other carnivals recruited him for their Thursday-through-Saturday, best-of-three matches. From what I understand, he always lost on Thursday, but made a valiant, underdog comeback on Friday. Tickets sales 'skyrocketed' (as much as tickets sales would skyrocket in a small town) for Saturday's championship bout; and almost always, he lost after a 'hard-fought' match. And then he picked up his paycheck from the champ's manager.

My dad was 'older' -- 39 -- when I was born (I was 42 when daughter #2 was born, so I laugh when I think about it), but he was very quick when he'd box with the neighborhood boys in his 50s and even when he'd shadow box in his 60s.

I don't think I appreciated just how quick he was until he shared with me how he and a World War II shipmate (he was in the Coast Guard, which was rolled into the Navy during the war) would pick up a few bucks before shore leave. My dad would pull his handkerchief out of his pocket, lay it on the ground and stand on it with both feet. His friend would take bets: my dad would remain standing on the handkerchief and any challenger could try to hit in the head. The story, as told to me, was that he never got hit; however, his ears sure were cauliflowered (a sure sign that a boxer has taken some hits -- could've been from all those carnival losses).

There does seem to be common thread of boxing and money running through all his stories.

My dad gave me two bits of boxing/life advice:
- You gotta roll with the punches (which, at 52, I finally realize is true)
- You gotta bob and weave (a skill to which he attributed his handkerchief-bet winnings)

He tried to teach me how to box, but I was slow, skinny and not very strong. And I weaved and bobbed when I should've bobbed and weaved.

When I was about 13 or 14, we were boxing in the front yard (can you imagine today's response to a father and teenage son fighting in the front yard?). He hit me upside the head with a right cross and floored me. Like most teenage boys, I sprang up wildly, and I caught him by surprise with a right hook in the side. After several days of soreness, he went to the doctor, who told him that he had a couple of broken ribs.

And I think that became Chapter One in his unwritten, unplanned Lessons for Fatherhood. Even with fascinating recollections of carnivals and ship-board bets, that front-yard match and those broken ribs became his most-often repeated boxing story for the next couple of decades.

Daughter #2's going to have to wait for Things to Know About My Dad #3-10.