I'm Selfish!

I haven't written anything for this blog since March, so you could assume I have a lot to say with five months of inactivity in my writing brain.  But I decided in March that I was going to side with my football brethren and not do anything until all the labor issues were settled.  In essence, I was going to be a part of the NFL lockout.  You may ask yourself, why would Andy want to do that?  What purpose does that serve?  What's wrong with him?  In order to understand all these things one needs to understand the history of me and sports.

I was born at a young age to my parents.  They met at Lake Havasu.  My dad was a part of a water-sking club called the "Ski-daddlers."  My mom was young and impressed by my father's skills behind a boat, skills on the dance floor, and, most likely, his good looks.  Years later they had me and I grew up, took naps in, and soon learned the joys of riding in and behind a boat.  Water-sking, knee-boarding, wakeboarding, wake surfing, and barefooting are all things that I can do and do quite well.  I also was fortunate to grow up in San Diego, CA and therefore spend a lot of time in the ocean.  I love the ocean, love the beach atmosphere and community, and love riding waves.  I can body surf (most people can), bodyboard (better than most), and surf (suprisingly not as well as I think I should).  When it comes to athletics I can ride most boards and I'm comfortable in the water.  That's it!  I enjoy running, but after running my 1st half-marathon, I realized I'll never be a competitive runner.  It's more of an enjoyable past time than a sport.

When people think of sports they usually think of the big 3 - baseball (yawn), basketball (better), and football (best).  I am not good at any of these sports.  I played one season of little league baseball where I received a pitch to the mouth and my front 3 teeth would've fallen out if hadn't been for the braces - now stuck to my lips- holding them in.  My favorite baseball memory was nachos, big league chew, and not playing a second season.  I never played basketball or football.  I did play years of soccer and thought I was pretty good until I got cut from the freshman team in high school.  Do you know how bad you have to be to get cut from the freshman team?  I was unaware of my lack of skills and the reality was a shock.

I did not grow up in a sports family.  My dad ran track and cross-country and my mom and dad are still impressive while water-sking.  I did not grow up watching sports with my family.  Although most of America watches football on Thanksgiving, I am still the odd man out in my family who wants to watch football.  My wife grew up in a sports watching, sports playing family, and still beats me at most games, but even she doesn't watch sports anymore.  She prefers to see games live, but who doesn't?

What does all this mean?  Not a lot.  But for some strange reason I LOVE football!  I can't get enough of it.  The NFL lockout and the idea of having no football this year depressed me.  Was I actually going to have to go outside on Sundays from September through January?  Was I going to be available on Monday Nights?  Was I going to have way more time to live life rather than research, argue, trash talk, and try to win at Fantasy Football?  As time went on I got more and more worried, but then last week things started looking up.  The NFL had a deal for the next ten years.  Then, today ,the players agreed to that deal. YAHOOOOOOO!  Football baby!  It also meant that I could go off strike from writing.  What do I have in common with football players that made me imitate their work troubles you may ask? Not a lot on 1st glance, but their are some similarities.  Here are some:

1.  I love football, but not as much as money.
The average teacher get paid about 40k a year.   http://www.payscale.com/research/US/All_K-12_Teachers/Salary

The average NFL player gets paid 1.9 million.  http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_06/b4214058615722.htm
Obviously, I love money. (I will never complain about the huge difference in these salaries, because I signed up to be a teacher.)
2.  I am part of a union.

I am an educator and therefore I am in a union. Depending on who you listen to, teacher's unions are responsible for the downfall of American economics and are a communist influence in this smooth running capitalistic society we live in.  Other unions responsible for destroying America are police, firefighters, and nurses.  Football unions, or other sporting unions, or even actor's unions are never mentioned in these rants.  Why?  Entertainment is #1.  It's that simple. 

3.  Entertainment
As a teacher I think one of my best gifts is that I can entertain people with my personality and sense of humor.  NFL football is the ultimate entertainment.  It's unpredictable, full of mystery, suprise endings, and pain. 
4.  I watch NFL Network.
Although if the season was going to be cancelled, I'm not sure I could watch the same two NFL Network commercials anymore.  If you have watched in the last three months you know what I'm talking about.  The Play 60 "On the Bus" commercial and the "You Don't Own Me" NFL apparel for women featuring my junior high, high school, and current 37 year old crush - Alyssa Milano.

How am I selfish?  I'm willing to put all of this greedy NFL owners and players labor talks aside in order for me to enjoy my football.  I look forward to free agency, I look forward to pre-season, I look forward to the Chargers taunting me with their best team to blow it in the playoffs every year bit, I look forward to NFL Red Zone, I look forward to Fantasy Football, and I look forward to watching the playoffs.  Hooray for football!

Laughter IS the Best Medicine.

It all started with the closet in the upstairs bedroom of the cabin we rented every year at Bass Lake.  Inside were all the necessary items to make the night complete.  As we slowly pulled the items out of the closet, we realized that this was too good to be true.  I have never found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but this was the proverbial jackpot. 

I met Kenneth Robert Wootton in junior high even though we attended the same elementary school together since 3rd grade..  We were assigned to do a science project together.  We decided to poll people and make a connection with the amount of sleep one gets and the grades they earn in school.  It was the typical science project complete with a poster board, a hypothesis, some research, and a conclusion.  I don't remember much about the science project, but I quickly realized the connection I had with Ken.  He was another awkward junior high boy looking for his place in the world.  We soon started hanging out together and skating.  When I was in junior high I had only a few things that I clung to to try and form my own identity, they were: skateboarding, riding motorcycles and three-wheelers in the desert and in the hills around our house, and being the class-clown.  Ken skated and occasionally screwed around in class with me, but his mom thought riding motorcycles was dangerous. 

Ken was in advanced classes and got better grades than me.  Ken didn't need to be the center of attention, but Ken could be quite funny.  Kenny, as we called him in junior high, had a more distinct nerdy/awkward phase than I did due to his glasses, larger than average nose, and gawky body.  Ken and I met in junior high, but we didn't become best-friends until I punched him in the face during lunch our freshman year.

They say you are who you hang out with.  My freshman year I hung out at home with neighborhood kids younger than me.  Ken and another kid at school named Brooke picked up on this and started making fun of me and giving me the nickname "6th Grader Andy."  I even remember them calling my house and yelling "6th Grader Andy!" over the phone and then hanging up on me.  One day in September after a summer of being made fun of I was hanging out at lunch at Rancho Buena Vista High School with some friends when Ken, in a typical high school manner attempt to put someone else down to make yourself look good, hit me in the head with a Blow Pop and yelled "6th Grader Andy!" at me for the last time.  In anger and embarrassment I turned around and swung for his face.  I made contact with the side of his face and head.  He fell to the ground and said, "What the heck did you do that for?" 
I replied, "Stop calling me 6th Grader Andy!" 
He responded, "You didn't have to punch me!"
"Blow Pops hurt, you ass." 
"Ok."

I don't believe I have ever punched anyone else, out of anger, since.  I also have never had a friend as good as Ken since that moment. 

Ken and I experienced our "coming of age story" together and literally did everything as friends.  High school was filled with skateboards, skateboard ramps, motorcycles, motorcycle jumps, endless hours spent shooting at mockingbirds with pellet guns from his back porch, church and youth group, surfing, the most inside-jokes ever devised, Alberto's trips, concerts, The Crucified, girls, practical jokes, Spaceballs, camping, watersking, In-N-Out, farting, Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail, slug-bug games, farts, weightlifting, making each other laugh in class, burps and farts, talking about and discussing the joy of breasts, street bowling, off-roading, getting stuck, driving through mud, dust!, sagebrush, fire, fire and fart combos, making moto videos, snow sking, eating food, getting in trouble, acting like idiots, encouraging my mom to peel-out in the 1972 Chevy Nova, and much much more.

Another thing we did together was take trips and go on vacations.  Our families went to the desert together once his mom allowed him to start riding motorcycles.  We went to Lake Havasu, Bass Lake, Oahu, Hawaii, Yosemite, New Zealand, and many other places.  The summer we graduated from high-school, and a few years before we moved out together, we went to Hawaii, Yosemite, Bass Lake and camped on the beach all in one summer. 

Bass Lake was a family tradition and every year we were allowed to bring a friend.  Ken was that friend.  We always stayed in a three story cabin that had enough beds for everyone and whose centerpoint was the pool table.  If we weren't on the lake or eating; we were playing pool.  The pool table was a spot for games, jokes, farts, and fun.  I might have laughed harder around that pool table than anywhere else in the world.  It was near that pool table that Ken and I found a closet of old clothes late one night.  The clothes were not only old - they were hilarious.  There was no choice, we had to put them on in the most ridiculous fashion and take pictures.  We laughed until we had sore throats, until we woke up my parents, until my stomach hurt, until we were sweaty from changing clothes so much.  When I think of pure unadulterated joy, I think of Ken's laugh.  There was no laugh ever like his.  It was dorky. It was hilarious.  It made you want to laugh as well.  It was contagious.  It was entertaining.  It was funny. 

It is missed.

Random Running Thoughts

When I say random, I mean it.  Today I ran with the purpose of remembering what I thought about.  Unfortunately this means my thoughts were a bit contrived.  It was like going to bed with the intent of remembering your dream the next morning...difficult.  Today's running soundtrack was the Jimi Hendrix "Blues" album.  I find that if I listen to certain music, thoughts flow more freely.  I've never been on an "Acid Trip" but Jimi has and today's thoughts could be inspired by the randomness of a drug induced experience with Jimi.  So without further ado, here are my random running thoughts.

1.  Why do my knees and ankles hurt now that I've decided to run a half marathon?  I ran 3-4 times a week last year with little to no pain.  Now running is painful.

2.  Who was cooler, Jimi Hendrix or Sly Stone?  They both played guitar quite well, they both had amazing messes of hair, Jimi was a gypsy, Sly was the master of funk, Jimi died in rockstar fashion, and Sly dissapeared for 20 years before proving that drugs do have a permanent effect by making an ill-advised comeback. Hmmmm.

3.  When Darth Vader says, "I want that ship!" in Empire Strikes Back about the Millenium Falcon when he was on his way to owning two Death Stars, isn't that a wee bit too greedy?
4.  Inside jokes, unlike football, frisbee, and fireworks, are not cooler when outside...they are awkward.
5.  Speaking of awkward.  When someone does something socially abnormal and then someone else says, "Awkward" and their voice goes up at the end of the word awkward. That should be considered worse that awkward.
6.  I should have taken ibuprofen before I left on this run.
7.  "Amazing" has become one of my least favorite over-used words.  Amazing means to affect with great wonder; astonish.  Amazing should be reserved for seeing your children born, Lake Powell sunsets, carne asada burritos, Teahupoo, the female form, and God's grace.  When you start to use amazing to describe everything from the new season of a tv show, to a slam dunk, to the newest release of your favorite band...amazing loses its... amazing-ness.

8.  I like "Band of Brothers."  I watch the series once a year and enjoy it everytime.  Who is your favorite band of brothers?  Jonas', Nelson's, or any collection of African-Americans in a musical group together.  Speaking of which...

9.  Why is Jimi Hendrix so confident about his female situation in "Red House?"
10.  Why is it acceptable to run on coast highway in Carlsbad, but not on E. Vista Way in Vista?  You should see the looks I get. 
11.  My right knee, ankle, and left small toe hurt.
12.  Is it really necessary to get as close as you can to the white line I'm running on the other side of with your car when no car is coming from the other direction?  Your tempting me to explain, in certain terms,  my belief that you might be number one.
13. The Vista Community Clinic seems to be the most poorly planned location for those who have poorly planned.  C'mon... 14 parking spots for 30-40 cars every afternoon, pregnant mothers running across a busy street with hand out stretched to runny nose little children who need medical care, construction work constantly blocking half the exit/entrance area.  Reminds me of a certain sign.

14.  If I walk now, will it lessen the pain or increase the difficulty of running?  Second choice.
15.  I'm in Brengle Terrace Park and I see brown people...why?  Don't white people enjoy free entertainment, grass hills, and childhood memories too?
16.  You should rent and watch The Tillman Story.  I watched it last night and it was nice to get some pictures, videos, and faces to the names of the people I read about in Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer and Boots on the Ground by Dusk by Mary Tillman.  It furthered my distaste for politicians and war.

17.  Even though it is in the 50's, a sweatshirt wasn't completely necessary.
18.  Does anyone care?

19.  I took my family to Ocotillo Wells this weekend to meet some friends who had desert equipment.  I loved the desert as a kid and riding motorcycles became my identity when I was desperately searching for one in middle school.  I rode well into high school and even did some open desert racing with one of my best friends.  I, not trying to brag, thought I was quite good and pretty fast.  Even without practice for a few years, I outrode my friend in a team race one time.  This weekend I took both my kids on a quick ride on a quad in the desert and quickly showed them my "skills".  After popping a wheelie for quite some time down a road and then putting the quad into a doughnut, Brock asked me, "Where did you learn how to do that Dad?"  What skills do you have that your kids don't know about? 

20.  I should write about my friend Ken sometime.  I miss him.

21.  4.5 miles done and random thoughts complete.

Until we meet again.

When Do You Think?

I think a lot more now.  I think best when I am alone and not entertained.  Life has become filled up with so many forms of entertainment that don't inspire thinking.  I am not against those forms of entertainment, I just realize that they don't inspire.  I can spend an entire day watching television, checking my e-mail, reading Facebook updates, playing the Wii, and trying to figure out why the Angry Birds are so angry.  That day can go by and I really didn't have to use my brain.  In high school and college I used to body board a lot.  I can remember that the time spent out in the waves was where a lot of thinking occurred.  For some reason, physical activity done in solitary seems to get my brain moving and allows me to think.  In the last two years I have started running for health reasons, for entertainment, and to challenge myself.  One of my favorite aspects of running is time alone to think.  While I'm accruing mileage, losing weight, and getting faster, I'm also deep in thought. 

One of the things that I've been thinking about lately is some sort of creative outlet.  I'm not very good with my hands at creating things, building things, being artsy, or actually making anything I'm proud of (except beer). I'm much better with words, humor, and physical accomplishments. I'm proud when I can be clever, make someone laugh, and pull off a new trick on my wake board.  This all being said, I enjoy writing, I enjoy reading, and, as an English teacher, I enjoy teaching people the love of reading and to find their own voice in writing.  But...I don't write very much.  I've dreamed of writing screenplays, I picture music videos in my head when I hear songs, and the idea of a novel both scares and entices me.  I thought I might start with this blogging thing.

To be honest, I didn't know what the term "blog" stood for until right now when I Googled it and copied and pasted it here:

Blog

read, write, or edit a shared on-line journal

web log: a shared on-line journal where people can post diary entries about their personal experiences and hobbies; "postings on a blog are usually in chronological order"
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

A blog (a contraction of the term "web log") is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

I knew it, but I didn't know the history of the word...I just forgot about the whole web log thing.  The cool thing is that I'm way behind on this blog thing.  I have read a few from my friends and edited for another, but I've never read blogs on a regular basis.  It's also a bit confusing.  Why would you want to share your thoughts with random people who don't know or care about you?  I guess, for me, it is going to be that creative outlet I've been looking for.  If people are going to read or not read it, I really don't care...I want to write and that's what I've been thinking.

Next time, what do I think about when I run?