Fountain of Youth

There comes a time in every young boy's life when he decides, for whatever reason it may be, to enter a gym and realizes that he is the smallest scrawniest bony torso in the place.  This is usually the point where he decides on one of two things.  He will either run and do aerobics and not care if he is the smallest thing in the gym, or he vows from that day forward that he will work until he is no longer the smallest.

As I looked around our gym yesterday I realized that I have not made good on my vow.  11 years after I first started to work out with my father and I am STILL the scrawniest guy in the gym.  I didn't take the other route and decide to just run and be content being weak and fragile.  No I made that vow, the vow to not be the smallest any longer and I find myself reaffirming that vow every time I enter the gym because I haven't made any progress.

Maybe it's because all of the other guys in the gym also made the vow and so they were growing at the same time I was and i could never be the biggest because the guys that were bigger from teh start got bigger right along with thus negating any progress that I made in the right direction.  Or maybe it's because all of them are on steroids or some other performance enhancing drugs that I don't take.  But it could just be that I'm pretty inconsistent with my workout routine.

I've been going to the gym on a regular basis since I've been here.  Week in and week out,  I make sure that I spend 1 full hour on a certain body part once a week.  Okay so I've missed a couple here and there but for the most part I'm there flexing and tensing and stretching and groaning through a full hour's worth of exercise.  And it hasn't made me look any younger.

My father says to keep working out.  He says that it's "the fountain of youth" and looking at the shape he is in for his age I'd say he is correct.  Most people guess a younger age than what the truth is.  People
used to think I was younger than my real age at one time as well.  Not anymore.  Now everyone guesses my exact age, on the dot every time.  It's like I've aged double the years in the amount of time that my routine has become inconsistent.

I picture myself getting old and grey prematurely and my mother and father putting me into an old folks home while they trounce off to some exotic island.

"You'll be okay here, son", my father will say.  "We'd take care of you but geez you're so old and boring and we have fun and exciting things to do.  I told you, you should have worked out."

So right here right now I am making the vow once again to be a more consistent in the gym.  No more wasting time aging well ahead of time.  I'm going to go right in there and not stop until, well I guess until I die... starting next week... I swear.

Memories

"Well here you go again, you say we want your freedom.  Well who am I to keep you down?"

Fleetwood Mac.  I always thought Fleetwood Mac was a country band of sorts.  Little did I realize that it was the group that has been a steady nostalgic source for my father over the last couple of decades.

I remember coming home to this song on numerous occasions while living at home, and a couple of times afterwards as well.  It was always the same time of year and always the same setting.  It was always spring or summertime.  It was always in the early evening.  The "girls" as we say in our house were out shopping or getting their nails done or doing whatever it was that the girls in my family got together to do. The house was always quiet besides the music that was playing and there was always beer. 

When I entered the house he would get up as if he were caught doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing with a beer in hand and ask me if I was hungry.  This was always the first question he asked me.  He had always just ordered something or was just in the process of ordering something.  We would usually eat together and have some small talk before the girls got back from their outing.

These were the good times.  If my father had his Fleetwood Mac playing it meant he was thinking of another time that he thought of as the good times and it put him in a good mood.  It meant that we weren't going to argue when I entered the house.  It meant that he wasn't closing himself off in his comic books or entrenched in a program about the Yankees history that he has seen a billion times already.  It meant that he was open for conversation and that everything was going to be alright.

Music always has always been a big part of my father's life.  He likes playing this game with us where he says he'll give us 100 dollars if we guess the name of a group that sings the song that is playing.  It's usually some obscure one hit wonder disco band from the seventies that he knows we'd never know but the offer is always out there.  He knows songs and bands that weren't even very popular at the time that they were around.  He takes some sort of pride in it.  He knows music, he understands it.

Maybe that's because he played the violin when he was in grade school.  I remember hearing that he used to wear suits to school and get into a lot of fights.  I can't recall the source but I always pictured him being forced to indulge in activities that he didn't want to because his parents wanted him to be cultured. I always pictured a very strict and regimented environment that he had grown up in and him using music as a sort of escape.

And wouldn't you know that it was music that helped him relive this regimented environment and remember the good times when his father passed away.  I don't remember the song that played but I remember the dimly lit room and the somber mood.  I had gotten out of bed because his music had kept me up through the night.  I slowly entered the kitchen and made my way to the fridge to drink some milk.  My mother always put warm cinnamon milk in my bottle to get me to go back to sleep as a baby and as I grew the cure stayed the same.  Across the room I could see the shadow that was my father.  There he sat, a lonely silhouette in the dark with a beer in hand just listening.  When he saw the light of the fridge open he came over and asked me something or other and I replied with this and that. His red puffy eyes told me that this was not just a drunken music fest.  There was something more.

I sat with him for a short while and don't remember the entire conversation but i do remember him saying that he just couldn't believe it.  He just couldn't believe that his father who had meant the world to him, the man who taught him everything and made him the person that he was, the man he so needed to escape from when he was a teenager had now passed away.  And now the music that helped him escape his rigid, confined upbringing was the same music that was helping him go back to those days when his father was around to give him a boot in the ass.

That was the first day I ever saw my father cry.  The second day was when I visited home after spending months in basic training and months more in AIT (Advanced Individual Training).  The setting was the same as the good times but the emotions were geared towards me more than his own past.  Or maybe it was seeing me and thinking of how I had followed in his footsteps.  His pride filled the whole room that day and my father showed me the love that I had always wanted from him as a child.

It's always been the music that has gotten him to that point.  Well, the music and the beer.  It's a pretty consistent and emotionally volatile combination.  But I don't need the beer.  The music alone has had me drifting back to these days and looking on my strict upbringing with the same fondness that I'm sure my father felt towards his.

The Hunter

I am The Hunter.  With my spatula-shaped weapon of mass destruction I lurk in the shadows stalking my prey, waiting for that moment, the moment when my strike will prove most effective.  A brief stop on the window is all I need.  I wind back my arm and extend the weapon letting the plastic webbing smack against the window.  Another helpless victim falls at the hand of The Hunter.

The fatalities have been increasing here.  The war has gotten ugly.  Frank as we call him here in the ranch has been really attacking at full force lately.  Leaving the door open mere inches at times, the enemy creeps their way inside our compound.  Their flying skills are far superior and cannot be overtaken with our hands alone.  Whizzing past my ear they play games.  They know that their flying skills are far superior to our hand speed.  It's like their evolving. They're getting faster and now it's impossible to catch them with a bare hand. 

I remember the days when my methods of catching Frank (the fly) with my bare hand was perfected.  The arch up and come down over technique that I employed had a 75% success rate.  Frank was scared of me.  When he saw that hand coming around he knew to run or he would soon be caught.  But not now.  Not these days.  Now Frank plays games.  He whizzes past my face lands on my head.  he'll walk around on the tabel right in front of me without any fear of the ancient weapon that I used so well in the past.

But we're learning to adapt as well.  They may escape the bare hand but our swatter is a force to be reckoned with.  But that's not all.  We lure them in at times with a cup with sugar at the bottom.  They can't resist.  Sometimes it'll be awhile before we see them but they stay in that cup.  They get greedy, and that's when we nab them.

I don't feel bad for them at all.  Not one bit.  They are the enemy and they'd do the same to me if they
could.  This is a war people and it isn't pretty.  I'm writing to you from the trenches.  I see what is going on.  I have come face to face with the enemy and had to put him down.  It's a matter of survival and so far I've come out on top.

The policy that we have around the ranch is "shoot first, ask questions later".  There are no prisoners in this war.  There are the living and the deceased.  I plan on emerging as one of the living.

I'm not heartless.  It's just the way things go.  I caught one in the bathroom the other day.  The bugger
was crawling around on my damn sink, the sink that I use to brush my teeth and wash my face.  And there was the enemy just crawling around on it like it was his own.  And you know what I did?  I opened the door and let him free.  I probably shouldn't have.  He'll probably come back and attack us again and when that day comes, there will be no mercy, for I am The Hunter.

The Hunter

I am The Hunter.  With my spatula-shaped weapon of mass destruction I lurk in the shadows stalking my prey, waiting for that moment.  The moment when my strike will prove most effective.  A brief stop on the window is all I need.  I wind back my arm and extend the weapon letting the plastic webbing smack against the window.  Another helpless victim falls at the hand of The Hunter.

The fatalities have been increasing here.  The war has gotten ugly.  Frank as we call him here in the ranch has been really attacking at full force lately.  Leaving the door open mere inches at times, the enemy creeps their way inside our compound.  Their flying skills are far superior and cannot be overtaken with our hands alone.  Whizzing past my ear they play games.  They know that their flying skills are far superior to our hand speed.  It's like their evolving. They're getting faster and now it's impossible to catch them with a bare hand. 

I remember the days when my methods of catching Frank (the fly) with my bare hand was perfected.  The arch up and come down over technique that I employed had a 75% success rate.  Frank was scared of me.  When he saw that hand coming around he knew to run or he would soon be caught.  But not now.  Not these days.  Now Frank plays games.  He whizzes past my face lands on my head.  he'll walk around on the tabel right in front of me without any fear of the ancient weapon that I used so well in the past.

But we're learning to adapt as well.  they may escape the bare hand but our swatter is a force to be reckoned with.  But that's not all.  We lure them in at times with a cup with sugar at the bottom.  They can't resist.  sometimes it'll be awhile before we see them but they stay in that cup.  They get greedy, and that's when we nab them.

I don't feel bad for them at all.  Not one bit.  They are the enemy and they'd do the same to me if they
could.  This is a war people and it isn't pretty.  I'm writing to you from the trenches.  I see what is going on.  I have come face to face with the enemy and had to put him down.  It's a matter of survival and so far I've come out on top.

The policy that we have around the ranch is "shoot first, ask questions later".  There are no prisoners in this war.  There are the living and the deceased.  I plan on emerging as one of the living.

I'm not heartless.  It's just the way things go.  I caught one in the bathroom the other day.  The bugger
was crawling around on my damn sink.  The sink that I use to brush my teeth and wash my face.  And there was the enemy just crawling around on it like it was his own.  And you know what I did?  I opened the door and let him free.  I probably shouldn't have.  He'll probably come back and attack us again and when that day comes, there will be no mercy, for I am The Hunter.

Happy Birthday Dad!

"Well here you go again, you say we want your freedom.  Well who am I to keep you down?"

Fleetwood Mac.  I always thought Fleetwood Mac was a country band of sorts.  Little did I realize that it was the group that has been a steady nostalgic source for my father over the last couple of decades.

I remember coming home to this song on numerous occasions while living at home, and a couple of times afterwards as well.  It was always the same time of year and always the same setting.  It was always spring or summertime.  It was always in the early evening.  The "girls" as we say in our house were out shopping or getting their nails done or doing whatever it was that the girls in my family got together to do. The house was always quiet besides the music that was playing and there was always beer. 

When I entered the house he would get up as if he were caught doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing with a beer in hand and ask me if I was hungry.  This was always the first question he asked me.  He had always just ordered something or was just in the process of ordering something.  we'd usually eat together and have some small talk before the girls got back from their outing.

These were the good times.  If my father had his Fleetwood Mac playing it meant he was thinking of
another time that he thought of as the good times and it put him in a good mood.  It meant that we weren't going to argue when I entered the house.  It meant that he wasn't closing himself off in his comic books or entrenched in a program about the Yankees history that he has seen a billion times already.  It meant that he was open for conversation and that everything was going to be alright.

Music always has always been a big part of my father's life.  He likes playing this game with us where hesays he'll give us 100 dollars if we guess the name of a group that sings the song that is playing.  It's usually some obscure one hit wonder disco band from the seventies that he knows we'd never know but the offer is always out there.  He knows songs and bands that weren't even very popular at the time that they were around.  He takes some sort of pride in it.  He knows music.  He understands it.

Maybe that's because he played the violin when he was in grade school.  I remember hearing that he used to wear suits to school and get into a lot of fights.  I can't recall the source but I always pictured him being forced to indulge in activities that he didn't want to because his parents wanted him to be cultured. I always pictured a very strict and regimented environment that he had grown up in and him using music as a sort of escape.

And wouldn't you know that it was music that helped him relive this regimented environment and remember the good times when his father passed away.  I don't remember the song that played but I remember the dimly lit room and the somber mood.  I had gotten out of bed because his music had kept me up through the night.  I slowly entered the kitchen and made my way to the fridge to drink some milk.  My mother always put warm cinnamon milk in my bottle to get me to go back to sleep as a baby and as I grew the cure stayed the same.  Across the room I could see the shadow that was my father.  There he sat, a lonely silhouette in the dark with a beer in hand just lsitening.  When he saw
the light of the fridge open he came over and asked me something or other and I replied with this and that.  His red puffy eyes told me that this was not just a drunken music fest.  There was something more.

I sat with him for a short while and don't remember the entire conversation but i do remember him saying that he just couldn't believe it.  He just couldn't believe that his father who had meant the world to him, the man who taught him everything and made him the person that he was, the man he so needed to escape from when he was a teenager had now passed away.  And now the music that helped him escape his rigid, confined upbringing was the same music that was helping him go back to those days when his father was around to give him a boot in the ass.

That was the first day I ever saw my father cry.  The second day was when I visited home after spendingmonths in basic training and months more in AIT (Advanced Individual Training).  The setting was the same as the good times but the emotions were geared towards me more than his own past.  Or maybe it was seeing me and thinking of how I had followed in his footsteps.  His pride filled the whole room that day and my father showed me the love that I had always wanted from him as a child.

It's always been the music that has gotten him to that point.  Well, the music and the beer.  It's a pretty
consistent and emotionally volatile combination.  But I don't need the beer.  The music alone has had me drifting back to these days and looking on my strict upbringing with the same fondness that I'm sure my father felt towards his.