I want the last thirteen years of my life back, I have decided. I want them back so that I may invest them. Had all the facts been laid before me in 1998, I would have begun investing in gold, savings bonds, or at least opened a money market account for my life, right then and there, at that moment. I may have even followed the example of the lazy servant in the book of Matthew who buried his talent in the ground. But unlike that worthless loser mentioned in the Bible, I merely took it out and blew it in ways that make me cry a little more each day.
Let us reminisce a little bit...
I say 1998 because it was a pivotal year. While we are on the "investing" metaphor, we will just say it was the year I "opened the account". I got my first job. It was a low-paying job at a book store, but I recall being a scrawny, immature sixteen year old working as the sole, single man in a Christian bookstore filled with cute chicks. But it was also the year my parents ended their long marriage (God only knows why they waited). So the first thing I would have done was gone to the bank (remember, we're using the investment metaphor here) and opened my account as an independent under a false alias named Jorges LaPeu, so that I could have been free from parental controls. Let us face it...I was an old man at the age of five.
1998 was also the year some idiot muttered musings in my ear about joining the military and giving college the heave-ho...after all, "the military will pay for your college! We'll never go to war!" (circa 2000) If I were going to the bank, I would have reported that recruiter as a swindling insurance salesman attempting to hack into my account in order to exploit me and retrieve all the personal information I had so he could go back to his superiors and brag about his quota for the month...before spending his military pay on salty dogs and prostitutes. B*stard...maybe he's in Ohio someplace now.
Let us recollect 2000. That was a strange year. Sure, Y2K was a boatload of fun and the release of X-Men: the Movie, but the rest of the year was spent in a factory. The 'factory'. That word has taken on a unique definition in my personal lexis. It means 'the place I never wanted to be but I am; paying for all those times I back-talked my mother or got into trouble at school in fifth grade for writing dirty words on the desks'. Nevertheless, I had my first full-time job at a place that could easily be the portal to Hell (An aerial photo may have even shown that the place appeared to spell the word 'Great whore of Babylon'. It is not worth mentioning the name of the place. It shot steel pellets at my chest, crushed old ladies' hands in machines, and contained men who compared condom usage to 'washing your foot with the sock on' *shivers down spine*...) I worked from four p.m. until three-thirty a.m. The only souls who work those hours are centipedes, talking heads for radical right/left political newscasts on FoxNews and MSNBC, and college students. Since I was none of the latter, I was a sick human. Yes, for this ungrateful s.o.b. in this bad economy, factories are the worms that infect my intestine...were I to have a bad case of worms. Since that may be degrading to worms, who fertilize our soil and allow us to fish more effectively, I shall say a case of nematodes. So I would go to the bank once again, and say, "You know this 'factory job'...it is nothing more than an automatic withdrawal from some perverted American businessman in Thailand acting upon his perverted urges for underage girls...so CEASE AND @#$%ING DECIST WITH ALL UNAUTHORIZED TRANSATIONS!!!" Factories...*sigh* I am still in one by the way, at least while the Feds are on standby. I am not kidding.
I suppose the next few years may be summed up rather easily. I played music. Let's face it: I can play really well. I am one of those 'Nashville' guys who picked up guitar, vocals, theory, and what-not rather easily and can hold my own with some of the best. But let us shove the broggin' up the arse, as the drunken Scotsman would say. For had I spent time in college while it was still at half-cost in the early 2000s rather than chase pipe dreams of Christian rock-stardom (that term sounds as endearing as "Home Alone 6 : Kevin Comes Out"), I would undoubtedly be shouting down some student for referring to me as 'bubba' as opposed to 'Dr. Burney'. Seriously, if the hours spent jamming in some raggedy, warped-floored house had been invested in writing the next great romance novel as an English major, I'd be attending the next romance-writers convention with Nicolas Sparks, his wife, and mine...even joining them for tea, perhaps. I would have told the bank to give me another teller, because the one on the right stares at me in discomfiting ways.
This brings me directly to my next year of woebegon (via Garrison Keillor). But I proceed into this next passage with caution...my wife. I am happy I married my wife. I love her and I would never ask to replace the date of October 15th, 2005 with some half-baked fantasy of 'what might have been' with some Facebook ex-girlfriend...*shivers down spine* You know what? That's all I have to say concering that matter or that year. Marriage to my wife...that was a good one for the books. So I would go to the bank and leave a compliment, in writing, to the bank manager for an account well-managed for that year.
College filled the space for the dates of 2006 until 2009. But in reality, it should have been the entire thirteen years this blog covers. It took me ten years to practically execute a college education. The other three were wasted on the aforementioned paragraphs (read them and pay attention, you fools). But I tried engineering. God help me, it sucked something awful. You know, I used to be sensitive about this topic because I had some close friends who were engineers, but I will tell you of a truth. God only knows how it sucked so terribly. I dropped it after two months for two simple reasons: I had not the time nor willpower to invest in suckulus...i.e. calculus AND the guys I went to class with were the types I referred to as, how shall I put it post-high school: geeks. Sure...well-paid geeks, but geeks nonetheless. So I took my chances with the bold and the broke: the arts and sciences majors. I majored in history. I majored in history. I majored in history. Did I tell you about my worthless degree pursuit? I majored in history. I loved it, I was d*mn good at it, and I would do it again. God help me, anything to keep me away from those freaks I had in Calculus. So I would tell the bank a simple thing: 'You told me this was a free checking account. You charged me $1,000,000 a month. I do not yield an average income; therefore I cannot possibly pay this. Go write the next great American romance novel, you say? Well, let me think about it. Okay, I will try...but it's under protest.'
Okay, the last two years are a mixed bag. I have lost some close acquaintances, experienced some personal loss, personal gain (I have decent insurance again, albeit I am still at a factory with a bad case of worms...er, nematodes), and I have made some new acquaintances...most of them in my head. This is okay. But the greatest part of these past two years I want back is...well, answers. Answers are a tough call. There is never a guarantee they will be received or found. It is the 'not knowing' that makes this so hard to bear. There are some answers I am waiting on: have the past thirteen years been nothing more than a ruse to take precious time out of this already seemingly short life we will never get back?... did I really screw up so bad by playing my guitar with friends and not going to school like I should have?... should I have just kept drawing cartoons?... did I unknowingly blaspheme in church as a kid and automatically, but unwittingly declare all hope of divine intervention defunct? Who knows? What I do know is that those thirteen years are in the bank just like last Friday's paycheck. They are spent and they shall not return. The best I can do is check the records, read them, mourn them, learn from them, and repeat what was good and recant that which was bad.
I will say this. I have a beautiful wife and two awesome pugs. That, you can take to the bank.
Recommended listening for reading this blog: "River Flows in You" - Yiruma
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