I have recently been confirmed in my assumption that I am an analyzer. I have always been introspective and a person who “thinks too much”. I see too many possible outcomes/answers to every situation and problem. This has a negative side as well as a positive.
It means I have a hard time being black & white on issues, it means I am indecisive. I think of the normal set of pros and cons, but then go on to examine “sub” pros and cons of those pros & cons. I fret over things that need not be worried about because I feel like I have good reason to be concerned.
The blessing is that in many situations, I feel like the analyzer experiences a depth in life most people are content to pass over. Where as most people are seeing & processing squares, I am taking on cubes. If the brain were like a computer, then my RAM would be more busy processing this extra information and slowing the computer down. But in the end, I feel I have a more deeply rooted, and more well thought out perception because of it. I’m just sayin’.

It was night and I was walking up a neighborhood street with a tennis court to my right. The lights were on and there were several highschool or a little older aged  kids in there. I noticed thed was red paint all over the grass between me and the tennis courts. I reached down and got the red all over my hand and at that same time a car passing by came really close to me. In jest I slapped the back of the car with my messy hand and hoped they would think it was blood. One of the kids came out of the tennis courts and picked up a brush sopped with the red paint. He threw it at the next passing car. The driver got pissed off and whipped a U. He stopped his car on the side of the street, got out and pointed a gun at the kid. I think he a had one or two guys with him and they all looked kind of like gang members. He shot the kid and as the kid’s friends ran up to try and fight them they got gunned down too. I thought they’d think I was one of the kids and shoot me too, so I dropped down into the deep grass and played dead. They saw me and ran up to where I was and put the pistol to my head. “What’s up?” they asked me. Realizing they knew I wasn’t dead I acted like I just woke up. “Nothin’ I was just sleeping here,” taking my chance I quickly grabbed the barrel of the gun forcing it off my forehead. I got up and manged to get my finger behind the trigger. I think I was successful in discharging all the rounds thus disarming him. Then I woke up.

One little boy was noted as having said “Gramma, I don’t want to eat this granola bar, it tastes stinky,”. Everyone had a good laugh at the little boy. But you know what? It turns out he was right, it did taste stinky.

There I was hiking on a trail, about 90 miles from anything. I was moving at a good clip, like a horse. And that’s when it happened. I stepped on a stick of wood. It snapped and I must have come down on my head cause i blacked out. When I woke up I couldn’t move but i was floppin’ around like a fish out of water. Then I saw ‘em. Eyes, surrounding me. You know what it was? Big Horn Sheep. Flesh eating Big Horn Sheep. And they moved in to cannibalize me. They ate me alive and that’s the only reason I’m still alive to tell about it.

A really cool job would be to get paid to tear down an old house with a light saber.

Some of my best childhood memories are family vactions. I especially liked the part when dad put me in a burlap sack and kicked me down a mountain.

The cool thing about removable limbs is that you could really freak someone out by switching an arm and a leg.

• Next time you see someone walking down the street with their neck craned forward, walking in a bit of a shuffle and flapping their arms intermittently, don’t laugh cause maybe they have a condition that makes them this way.

• They say “Your real character is who you are when no one is looking”. I guess I’m a booger pickin’, nude, nose hair pluckin’, wedgie pullin’ moron.

• Maybe the question shouldn’t be “The Chicken or the Egg?” but, did the first chicken have eggs for breakfast?

• Everyone always asks, “Why is the sky blue?”. I have always wondered “How does the sky stay up there?”

Jack Handy had some deep thoughts. I had some of my own thoughts:

If I ever become Mayor, I’m going to have the city begin paving a road to nowhere. By the time they figure out I duped them I will have made off with the keys to the city.

Next time you’re on a bike ride with your grandma, I think it would be funny to jam a stick in her spokes. No, that wouldn’t be funny. But it would be funny if she did it to you.

Think about, Aliens aren’t really that mysterious. Flying? We can do that. Going to other planets? So can we. Cutting our heads open and blasting out the brain matter with water or air? So can we!

I think many times when something tragic happens in someone’s life there is this period where they have to face it all alone. There is the initial wave of the shock when the event happens where family & friends are there with you with jaws dropped and hands outstretched to help. But once you’re out of the hospital and it appears you’re OK, family and friends go back to normal life. I’m not saying this a bad thing, it has to happen sooner or later. But the person who went through the tragedy still may have physical set backs or at very least the memories of the event. It’s been one year since my Valentine’s day car wreck, and even Albina who was physically far worse than me, has healed physically. I can’t speak for her, but a year out and I still find myself from time to time trying to grasp what happened. The details, the feeling, the atmosphere, the music of that night are crystal clear to me. Often, at the strangest times I will start thinking of it again. In slow motions I can hear the impact of the van on my tailgate, feel my eyes clench as pebble sized pieces of glass shower us. I can feel the panic as the realization of what happened hits me and the first thing I think of is “Is she OK?” Why write about this? Why bring back the terror? I don’t know…it’s like a catharsis for me, an abreaction. I have a hard time sorting things out lately. Breaking my neck in October only compounded everything. I think about it all over and over. I think hard times make us stronger, but that’s only when you stand up again. I feel like I haven’t really had a chance to catch my breath. I try to look at the big picture, how does this look on the graph of my life? (It was only 4 years ago that a lady pulled out in front of me on Broadway and I T-Boned her totaling my truck-the same week my girlfriend broke up with me) How does this compare to the “average” life of people around me? Many times I fall victim to feeling sorry for myself which I hate. Have these things happened to me because I’m stupid? (No one else would pull over on the shoulder of the Interstate, no 29 year old climbs trees, etc.) I feel like bad luck follows me around (at White Out one of the guys in my cabin’s brother was killed in a car accident that Sunday, my co-counselor’s son got a concussion snowboarding and had/has amnesia) (Not just recently either, in college in one week my bike was stolen, my car’s alternator melted down and I burnt my foot on a cigarette butt) I try to think about ways to salvage good from it all. I want to convey the message that I still believe and trust in God through it all and if you had half paralyzed hands, you mom got cancer and your Grand Dad died all in the same few months, would you still hold on to your faith. But I feel like my shout is but a whisper and in the end I’m just bottling it all up. I don’t want to burden anyone with my troubles, you have enough of your own. I don’t want anyone to feel obligated to do anything or say anything. What do I want? I just need some kind of outlet…something that matters. If one person got through their tough time because of what I went through it would feel like there was purpose to all of this. My ultimate catharsis would be influencing someone, changing a life directly because of what I went through. Can I get some good news? Anyone?

I’ve never seen a dead person before tonight. When I walked
toward room 408 I was thinking how painful it’d be to see Dad, Uncle Donnie and
Aunt Laurie possibly crying because their dad had died less than hour before. I
wasn’t thinking about how it would hit me. There was Granddad…or Granddad’s
body kind of looking like he was asleep but his mouth was open and his skin was
yellow. I stared a moment as the realization hit me: his eyes weren’t going to
come open, his chest would not rise, he would not move, not even a little bit.
He was frozen like a mannequin. What really rocked me was the incredible sense
that he was gone. Granddad was not there. My dad had said this about Smokey,
our family dog, when he died. I can’t explain it, it’s just this sense that is
entirely different than looking at a sleeping body.

I looked at his bushy eyebrows and remembered last Thursday as Wes and I stood
by his bedside trying to convince him to eat. “If you eat, you’ll regain
strength and then you can go to Florida and go fishing with Donnie,” I
told him. He said with his toothless gums “Yet, that’s what I gotta
do,” and leaned forward and finally took a sip of his shake. When Wes or I
said something funny he lifted his bushy eyebrows and his eyes smiled. This was
something I noticed him doing these past 2 years when he moved in with mom
& dad right after my step Grandma died. It seemed uncharacteristic of the
harsh Master Sargent he had been. Then again the weak man in the hospital bed
was nothing he was in Vietnam. Wes and I took his hands and prayed for him.
That was the last time I would see him alive and awake.

Saturday Wes and I went into to the Critical Care unit where he was back on the
breather as well as a feeding tube and million other wires, electrodes, IVs,
monitors, etc. Wes was asking the nurse about his personal belongings and made
mention of Granddad’s Vietnam Veteran hat. This got us talking about the man he
once was. Roland Andersson had come to the United States at 17 not knowing a
word of English. After almost being killed by being overworked on a farm he joined
the US Army. He had so many stories but he never talked about these things with
his family. He just barely began to open up to my mom these last two years and
told her stories that even my dad had never heard. Stuff like the fact that he
knew the real men that were being
portrayed as the main characters in We Were Soldiers.

One night Wes, Rebecca and I had dinner with him at
Applebees and we tried to get him to tell us stories while I recorded them on
my phone. Now he’s gone and so are the stories.

.. ……

When It Rains, It Pours

.. ……

It’s so weird how this happened the very same week that
mom’s test results cam back regarding the stomach problems she’s been having.
Mom called me up Tuesday night and said “I have some sad news, it’s
cancer,”. It’s one of those moments
when everything you were doing or thinking comes to a screeching halt. No, no,
no I thought. God, why? Hasn’t she had enough? Growing up and living life with
one arm wasn’t enough? Pancreatic cancer in 1984 wasn’t enough? More cancer in
88? Breast cancer in 1999? Hasn’t she dealt with enough? My mom is the
sweetest, most loving person on Earth, what has she done to deserve this? After
I said goodbye, I went for a long long walk. I prayed, I sorted things out. Wes
is out of a job right now in this crappy economy. God, what is going on? I
honestly didn’t think 2009 could be worse than 2008 was for me. I really wish
if I were going to break my neck, it wouldn’t be while all this is going on. My
family is drained. We are out of gas.

.. ……

Moving On

.. ……

Last night at Bible Study I remembered something I said
several months ago. Something along the lines of “I will always trust in God,
no matter how horrible things get. Granted, I’m saying that and I’ve never had
anything too terrible happen…” And then, as if my words caused it, I broke my
neck like a month later. And then all this happened. I believe this is
spiritual warfare and if I were to lose an ounce of faith because of my
circumstances, then the enemy would be winning. I challenge you, that if you
ever finding yourself losing faith because of bad things happening to you or
loved ones, then you have put your faith in the wrong thing. Consider this:

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth
comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. (Romans 8:18) Place your
faith, your TRUST in God. That no matter how confusing this situation is, His
plan is still being done. We might not ever understand what these situations
are about, but I trust Him.

Yesterday Dr. Clifford told me it was OK to take my neck brace off after 2 and a half months. After he walked out of the room I gathered my coat and hat with the brace in hand and went into the waiting room to call my ride. As I put my coat on the full realization hit me…for the first time in 2 and half months I could look left and right, up and down. I have my independence back, I can drive again! There should have been that music like the “fever breaking” moment in a movie. Like that point in the night when the darkest is finally over and the dawn breaks.

Do you ever get struck by profound little moments in a movie that stick with you for a long time. And that situation…or the essence of that situation pops up in your mind as a perfect illustration for a situation in your own life?

At the end of American Gangster (stop reading if you haven’t seen it) Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) walks out of jail after 15 years to the song “Can’t Truss It” by Public Enemy. The year is 1991, he is “significantly older and out of place”.

This was how I felt last night.
I got into my truck and drove out of my neighborhood for the first time since October 19th. I picked up my brother and had to get gas. Of course I had been watching the gas prices for months – but the last time I filled up it was over $4 a gallon. As my receipt printed out I read the total $20. I absolutely couldn’t believe it! Had I actually filled up my whole tank? OK, so Frank Lucas’ situation was much more dramatic…but you get the idea