Forty Years

I left my Air Force and moved to Evansville, Indiana to live with my mother and my son, Gizmo (the dog). Retired life had been stable, smooth, secure, and very boring! I missed having a challenge but was firmly entrenched in gluttony and staleness. I liked the respect I received after I mentioned, in introducing myself, that I was retired from Air Force Intelligence. I had to start somewhere--it was my only identity. Once I grew my hair long and showed up with my cute Yorkie and my mother whom I was living with, it was hard to get anyone to take me seriously. It made me feel sad but dangerous at the same time. I looked like a punk out of high-school. And why shouldn't a punk out of high school be treated as well as an Air Force retiree if he addresses with respect and speaks with clarity and intellect? I don't know, so I bought a bullhorn. I tried being active. I participated in my church activities, joined neighbors (and Mom) to fight a developer who wanted a 1200-bed apartment complex behind our back yard, sold my father's things on ebay from January to June and grossed $23,000+ to split with my siblings, becoming an Ebay power-seller, and I became the secretary of my church group, putting out a much requested bi-monthly newsletter. I became known as the biker guy (surprise!) because I rode my bicycle to church a few times. Some people are just too easy to impress. From July to December I'd been interviewed by the local newspaper, two television stations, had three letters-to-the-editor published (Mom's friends usually voiced protests over my opinions), probably a dozen or more anonymous comments published in the Opinion section, and the battle with that developer was in local news and on television. Let's say I received a lot of face time. My thoughts would always get more attention than I would. But it was just kid's play--a small voice crying in the basement for attention, which is where I spent most of my time. Others were out living life while I commented on a life unlived. In November a killer tornado passed within six miles of the house and killed 25 people in nearby Newburgh, all the while I slept in bed. The next day I pondered my good fortune at having dodged this bullet and wondered--if you don't run after life, will death catch up with you? Far better to die for something than to live for nothing. All this thought and swirling attempts at being profound led to nowhere. So to mark my entrance into the world of old people, I tried to go skydiving again! No luck... then I asked my very special friend Amy if she wanted to go to Chicago with me and get a picture of me standing at the top of the Sears Tower. I was going to get high one way or another. She said,"Uhhh, okay". And that's what we did! I just wanted to show that, although it's great to build your own empire, it's almost as fulfilling to climb to the top of someone else's empire and smile.