Forty One Years

December 12, 2006 My 40th year had been very productive. I took a semester of college classes at the University of Southern Indiana, and maintained the 4.0 average which I'd started in 1986. I spent 40 hours a week, sometimes, working on papers and speeches. I worked way too hard on classes I could have gotten A's in with a lot less work. Still, the teachers loved me, and I still keep in touch with some of them. I figured I had no excuse to get less than an A because I was still living at home. When classes ended in May, I began looking for a house. School was great but I needed my own space. I soon decided to build a home about 1 1/2 miles from Mom. After doing weeks of modifications to the plans, adding personal tweeks to the design, ground was broken on August 6. It wasn't until December 2nd that I was able to move in. On July 10, I started work at Vectren, the gas/electric company in Evansville, working as a call center specialist, answering phones. It's a lot harder than it sounds...we had six weeks of intense training, and I still have about 100 pages of instructions sitting around my desk as reference, and about 500-1000 pages of information I need to know. So far I've taken about 2700 calls in four months. My ears hurt. I worked on the campaign of six-term Congressman John Hostettler for months before his campaign, but had sent some 47 letters to eight different newspapers in the past year on various subjects, mostly in support of John when I believed he was right. The newspapers published 15 of my letters, and in the last week of the campaign I worked phones and attended campaign rallies--something I never thought I'd ever do in my life (although I handed out flyers for Mondale/Feraro in 1984). Mom wanted the other candidate to win, so it created a lot of tension with me still living at home. I knew John as a person and was very close to many who had known him all his life. He was a very unique politician who always seemed to pick what was right and not what was popular. Still, the people just didn't get it, and he lost by a landslide on November 7th to a copycat candidate. My girlfriend Amy and I broke up on January 22, but stayed close over the months. We got back together for a few days in April, split again, tried it again in the next month, split again, and then again on July 6, and are still bearing each others' company. Within a year we'd broken up five times. It was hard to stay apart...we went to the same church, hung out with the same people, were in the same small groups, our mothers were taking exercise classes together and our dogs were dating. Gizmo, of course, was still my constant companion, and my baby was now four. I pray he'll outlive me. So on December 12, Amy and I jumped into my car after work and sped down to Patties, a nice restaurant on the edge of Kentucky Lake, about 100 miles south of Evansville. It was one of our favorite places. Here I showed my friend what I thought of the candle from my birthday dessert. 2006 was productive...now I'm hoping 2007 will be fun! I can't take this civilization!