Flames wax and wane like the sea. Air is life. Suck out the oxygen and it will slowly die, but fan the flames and it grows quickly.- Some Guy Called Jack
Daughter asks if it is ok if she goes to hang out with a girlfriend at a nearby outdoor mall.
She says she doesn’t need a ride and later texts to say her friend’s father has offered to take her home.
A few hours later she calls to say she needs to be picked up because she has been left standing outside the movie theater.
It is the second time in a month the friend and her parents have left her by herself in some public venue.
I tell her not to bother asking to be allowed to hang out with this girl again unless her mother or I can be guaranteed to be available to be nearby the whole time.
She doesn’t like it but I tell I am wrestling with faith in too many other areas to add another.
“Be glad I don’t track down her parents to tell them what I think. Scorched earth and skid marks will all I will leave behind if we do that.”
Got the boys singing about America and people asking me if I would consider leaving here if the dunce in D.C. manages to swing another election his way.
“You know it is not just him, it is the delusional dolts that think his policies are good and won’t hold him accountable for his behavior.”
I nod my head and ask if I have ever been one to walk away when things got tough.
“Nope, but not being afraid of a fight isn’t necessarily a good thing either.”
“I am always afraid until I get hit the first time or two and then it all goes away.”
*****
A friend asked me what took Pelosi so long to agree to looking into impeachment and I said maybe she is emulating Rocky, maybe she was just waiting to get mad.
“You know that is just a movie and that the good guys don’t always win in real life.”
“Truth is stranger than fiction. No one thought a two bit hack reality television star would become president or would be as awful as this guy is. No one thought so many Americans would support demagoguery but they do.”
We go back and forth about what can be done and what should be and then move on to other topics but he circles back to the political arena.
“You know what helps me here? I have been through hell. I have gone through some ridiculously tough times and I survived them. I have survived every bad day I have ever had.
I have a perfect record of surviving bad days and I use that.”
He shakes his head and tells me this is different.
“Not to me. I have been through the depths. Been so far out of work it felt like I would never come back and been in hell worrying about the survival and parents and kids. You know fragments of what I have experienced and been through.
Surviving that gives you a certain amount of faith that you can get through other tough times. Doesn’t mean I don’t worry but it does mean I’ll figure it out as it comes. It is the only way I know how to live.”
Sometimes I wonder how honest I should be in these posts. Experience has shown people respond to posts that are educational, entertaining and informative.
It has also shown people respond when you write honestly about love, romance, heartbreak and life in general because they/we can relate to.
What is the Stephen King quote about successful writers about rudeness? Something about successful writers not being concerned about being a member of polite society.
I think about that because I have a scrap or two of skill in writing and a love for doing it. If I could pick a job one of the top three would be to get paid write posts like this or to at least just write.
There are some good stories stuck inside the giant cavern between my ears. Some of them are fiction and some aren’t.
I know a tale or two the world would love and love to hate.
There is no doubt in my mind that one or two could and would be best sellers and or movies but they are not my stories alone.
To tell them would raise some issues and thus the question for me has always been is there a time and place in which they can be shared?
That is always followed by should they be shared?
The answer is maybe and perhaps this is why I sometimes write elsewhere. Why I sometimes say there what I might not say here.
Maybe.
I suppose it comes back to wrestling with faith and the choices made around it.
Maybe.
