The Introduction

The Introduction
aka The Prologue
"The Genesis of the Blogger" aka "The Origin of the Species" aka "In the Beginning"

Part I
Chapter 1
Verse 1
Visitors 1

I am exactly one day older than "Star Trek". The day after I was born, the first episode of that classic show was aired. If Buddy Holly were alive today, he and I could celebrate our birthday together. He would be turning 76 just as I was turning 46. If he were alive; And if he were so inclined as to hang out with me. It could happen!

So, I came into the world in the mid-afternoon on a Wednesday, probably the least remarkable and exciting day of the week. Why else would it be given that awful nickname of "hump day"? Everyone knows that Monday is the dreaded "back to work day". Even people like myself who do not work a traditional work week dread Mondays because everyone else will be in a slothful slump. Friday, of course, is the last day of the work week (for the 15% or so that still work a traditional work week) and the day most receive a paycheck. Saturday is party day, Sunday is the day of rest for heathen and holy alike. I've heard tell that Tuesday is the most productive day of the week in most work places and Thursday - well, Thursday is named for Thor, the god of thunder. That alone makes it a cool day. But, Wednesday? Wednesday remains the Zeppo Marx of the week. Wednesday is the Pete Best of the week. It's there, it's part of the show, but it's not anything to get excited about.

About the time I turned six and Buddy Holly had been in the ground for thirteen years, my parents sent me off to school. I already knew how to read and write and numbers weren't a huge problem at first. The main things I learned in elementary school were that adults could be cruel (my PE Coach / principal openly scoffed my inability to excel at kickball), could be liars (everything I learned about George Washington was a lie... except maybe that bit about him being a general and a president) and really weren't as smart as I (my first grade teacher insisted that my parents and I spelled my name wrong).

I honestly didn't get much out of junior high or high school, either. I faked my way through classes that I could and somehow managed to get a C in the ones I couldn't fake my way through. I found that I was lousy at mathematics of all kinds, but there was a sound, logical and damned good reason for this: I simply didn't care about mathematics. I knew how to count, to add, subtract, multiply, divide, etc. I could see practical uses for those skills, but when it came to algebra I simply didn't get it. To this day I have yet to have anyone stop me and ask me the value of X. I have yet to have a job interview that I blow because I can't find the value of Y. To be honest, I should have excelled at algebra. I could always find the answer to the problem. However, I didn't find it the way the teacher wanted me to. My way was far less complicated, yet I was expected to learn and do it her way. I began to suspect that algebra's real purpose is to force children to conform to rules put forth by those in authority, no matter how ridiculous.

In college I found that the only thing I was really good at, or at least the only subject I really enjoyed, was making out with my girlfriend. I enjoyed it far too much and my school work suffered. Worse than that, I didn't bother dating anyone but this girl. In fact, I quit college and married the girl a year after I'd met her. I was now 20.

My wife and I moved into a depressing apartment in a depressing town and I found a depressing job. I did the only sensible thing a young man can do in a situation like this: I got drunk. I stayed drunk for about two years. Somehow putting up with a wino boss that looked like Beaky Buzzard, the cockroaches running amok in my little apartment and the hee-hawing hillbillies that I knew as my in-laws was a lot easier when I was inebriated. My daily schedule looked a lot like this:
midnight to 7 am: work
7 am to noon: crash
noon to 1pm: eat something
1pm to midnight: get drunk

Eventually I crawled out of that town and out of the bottle. I tried going back to school, but after changing my major 57 times in a semester, I decided I should take some time off and figure out what I really want to be when I grow up. By this time Daddy Bush had launched Operation Desert Storm and Buddy Holly had been dead for 32 years. I had decided I was a lot of things around that time. I became a liberal, a feminist, a pacifist, a novelist and was starting to think agnosticism sounded like a good idea. Yes, I was a long way off from being a grown up.

 A year after all this, I grew tired of listening to my wife and her lies about me. I was allegedly having an affair with a co-worker of mine. I think what really got to me was that the stories my wife concocted about me and this co-worker were so much more exciting than our actual sex life together that I just had to give her the heave ho. I decided I was going to be a confirmed bachelor.

Later that afternoon I met my second wife. Well, we weren't actually married just yet, but it didn't take long. We got married in secret for reasons that make about as much sense to me today as my reasons for becoming an agnostic. We lived together secretly married for a few months, then had a wedding which was a secretly fake wedding since we were already married. I can't for the life of me explain this to anyone anymore. I chalk incidents like this up to proof that I am human and humans are not known for their intellect (American Idol is still a hit show - need I say more?)

Around the time that the ink dried on our wedding certificate, wife number 2 and I decided to call it quits. A lot of things happened around the time I was with her that I can no longer find any logic in, such as marrying her in secret, marrying her in a ceremony that was secretly fake and marrying her in the first place. Ranking up there among the dumbest things I did around that time was driving 1500 miles to Vermont without a valid drivers license to live with some friends I barely knew instead of driving 100 miles to where my relatives all lived. I lived in Vermont for about long enough to watch the leaves turn and fall and the branches to be covered with snow, then I moved back to Iowa to live with my parents.

I took a job as a telemarketer. I found the job to be pretty challenging at first. It is harder than you might imagine to schedule when to call people, since you want to time the call at precisely the middle of their dinner time. And using scientific research, we also had to determine the one and only thing in the world the customer did not want so we could try to sell it to them. I found that on the scale of unlikable occupations, telemarketer put me a peg or two above used car salesman and just a peg or two below serial killer.

I stayed in telemarketing for a few years until I made a strange discovery. I found an unusual creature living with me that I had only heard existed but had never seen before. This creature, I thought, was more likely to be a hoax or a myth than the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot, but it turned out it was real enough. This creature was called a conscience. And not only was it living with me, it was in me! Due to the sudden appearance of this parasite, I decided being a telemarketer was not the nicest way to make a living. I gave it up and went into customer service where I remained for a few years.

Almost ever since coming back to Iowa I'd been living with a woman that just fit that time of my life. I wasn't really going anywhere and wasn't interested in trying. Neither was she. I was in a rut and liked it, she was in a rut and liked it. We were both far too good at encouraging one another to stay on the bottom of life. I think we both figured that we were at the bottom of the totem pole, which in our minds made us strong. After all, we had to hold up all the others in the totem pole. But, I guess I wasn't directionless enough for her tastes and after a decade of going nowhere with me, she let me go. It was my time to go somewhere in life while she stayed immobile.

The first thing I did for myself is made a pact with myself to be a bachelor for the rest of my life. Romance was tiring, sex was boring, love was meaningless. I no longer saw the need to share my life with anyone else and was quite content with that until Julie bulldozed her way in.

Through Julie I have found the strength and desire to move on with myself and get somewhere. I have had several different jobs, just trying to find a niche in life where I can grow instead of finding a place to bury my head in the sand. I no longer see my jobs as just jobs, but careers. I don't see the paycheck at the end of two weeks as the sole motivating factor. Right now I am a Life Skills Coach, which means I work with mentally ill adults and try to assist them in assimilating back into society. Before this I was a relay operator for the deaf and hard of hearing.

Julie also taught me that love and romance are not stupid things that I could do without. On the contrary, I have learned that I probably never really loved before, I just thought I did. We were married last November. It was a real wedding; no more secrets.

Most importantly, Julie has brought me from the wishy-washiness of agnosticism and I have found myself back in good graces with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. For this, I will never stop being grateful to Julie.

And I now know what I want to be when I grow up. It took 45 years to figure it out, but I want to run a Bible Camp.

To be continued...