Well, a few days have gone by, I suppose I better write again, or I may never pick up the proverbial pen and paper again. It has been an interesting few days. I feel like I should write about something fun and current since my last entry was kinda a downer. I don't want to get stuck in a rut of writing only bad emo stuff about my past, but, I figure since I started this, I might as well finish it. So I'll write a little more this post, and maybe another one later sometime. Just until I get it out of my system I guess. I'll try to make this post not have any bad stuff in it, we'll save that for next time.
My childhood was a pretty darn good one from what I recall. I had a wonderful mom, and the best grandparents anyone could ask for. My grandparents on my dad's side were around, and very supportive and loving, and wonderful, and I miss them now that they're gone. They were great people, and I wish they were still around so I could say thank you. But unfortunately I was never really super close to them, from what I recall. I do remember going over to their house and I would play on my grandpas computer, or in the garage fitting pipes together, or watching daytime tv with my grandma. Sometimes I would spend time penciling designs onto chunks of wood, and then putting them together after my grandpa cut them out with his various saws.
The next door neighbor had a small yard, half of it was fenced because she had a pet tortoise or two. I liked to watch them if I recall correctly. It was in the unfenced yard however that I apparently tried to brain myself while playing catch with my mom. We had gone to visit my grandparents who weren't home when we showed up, so we decided to play catch in the little grassy area next door, I think I was about 6, if that, so we didn't need much room. Well, you know how little kids run half the distance to you before they actually release the ball to throw it to you? Cute right? Well, in this case, after I tripped, and did a face plant on the grass, it wasn't so cute when we realized that there was actually a cinder block buried in the yard, and not like nice and flat buried on purpose, it was just in there, so the corner point was actually barely sticking straight up out of the turf, which I hit dead center of the forehead. BAM! Headshot! I think I still have a small scar in roughly the same spot 25 years later. So if you ever wonder "What's wrong with that guy?" - now you know.
I loved both sets of grandparents, but my other grandparents, the ones on my mom's side of the family, were my favorites. I know it's not nice to say that, but it's true, and I might as well be honest. They were awesome. We were very very close. I recall going out to their house where we would ride around on the little roads in the mobile home park on the moped my grandpa had fixed up for us kids. I was just old enough to ride it by myself and it was fun. We would also mow the very small back yard with the old school push mower, which, at that age, was still considered "fun". I also remember playing poker with my two cousins and my grandma, using pretzel sticks and marshmallows as poker chips, and all play acting like we were tough gangsters or card shark cowboys or some other random thing. I also remember playing Atari in the back room, Joust was very cool.
Further back, I think, was when they lived in the house on.... Ginger Street was it? There was a big back yard, which at some point was almost completely taken over by hundreds of bike frames, wheels, handle bars etc. I have no idea where my grandpa got all those scrapped up bikes, but he would shuffle through them in his free time to get enough parts to put one together every so often and give "new" bikes to the kids in the neighborhood. When he wasn't putting bikes together however, my cousins and I would build forts out of bike frames and have water balloon fights, or play laser tag. Real laser tag, back before it was outlawed. Wow, that just brought back a long forgotten memory. I think my cousins got those laser tag guns the same Christmas that my older cousin got this 'mad scientist' kit where you packed muscles and skin onto a preformed plastic skeleton, which was basically just like play-doh, except that then you prepared this vat with some special powder, and when you dunked the "man" into the clear vat, you could watch his skin melt and dissolve into bubbles and foam and goo. I think he (my older cousin) May have had chicken pox that christmas. They were living in a really cool house then.
I think that was the house where my uncle was teaching my cousins to box with gloves, and I wanted to 'play'/learn too. My cousin pwned me. He was bigger, had more practice, and actually kinda knew what he was doing. I, on the other hand, hadn't a clue what to do, had shorter arms, and got frustrated really quickly and easily, which just made me suck that much more. Luckily I was so frustrated that he decided to drop his guard, laugh, and say "hit me". So I did. I literally laugh to myself as I type this, because even though I lit him up and took him to the ground with one punch to his astonished face, via a wide hay-maker swing to the jaw, there's no way I would have ever even connected at all had he not let me hit him. Even still, he was dazed and amazed, and I think my uncle almost peed his pants from laughing at the scene. Needless to say, he didn't ever let me hit him again as far as I can remember. I was a lot stronger than I looked, and still am. I guess I'm what you call "wirey". I miss my younger cousin very much as well, and wish he was still around, but I always did seem to get along better with my older cousin.
Life has led my uncle, my cousin and I on a really wild ride. We're not really as close as we were back in those days, but I still love them just as much. I miss them too. Unfortunately I'm really bad at keeping in touch with people, I never seem to find the time to write or call, or even email. Then again, they don't write either, but I'm not blaming, it's just who we are and how we are. We know we all still care about each other, we just have funny ways of [not] showing it. So, if you guys are out there in cyberville, and you read my blog, here's me saying hi, I miss you, and I love you both, and "Hey, remember that time when..." And you too grandmama. And grandpapa too, if they have internet access up there.
I'll have to talk about when my grandparents lived in Hawaii next time. I have a few vague memories from there too. Something about lightsabers in the back yard, lizards in the shower (and everywhere else), and a drunk doctor who got his hands on my skinned knee. But for now, I have laundry to do.
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