Gary – Page 14 – Deep Dark Thoughts

Honorable (sort of) Discharge

In the past, I have talked about my dad and my memories of him as I was growing up. He passed away about fifteen years ago, but I was reminded of him recently while I was cleaning up several bookshelves in my den and going through a few binders I haven’t looked at in many years. In one of the binders, I found a manila envelope with a bunch of yellowed documents. They were enlistment and discharge papers for my dad when he went into the army during World War II.

I don’t know a lot about my dad during those times. He didn’t talk about himself much, and it was before he met my mom, so she couldn’t fill me in on any details either. There was one story, however, that he told to me a long time ago about his service in the military, and that story is something I believe is worth sharing.

My dad was born in 1927. In 1941, my dad dropped out of school to get a job and help his family out. They lived on a farm in Arkansas and didn’t have a lot of money, so it was important that the kids went to work to help pay some of the bills. At fourteen years old, my dad dropped out of school and went to work with his dad (my grandfather) at the railroad yard.

He worked with the railroad for four years then, the day he turned 18, he enlisted with the U.S. army. This was in April of 1945. World War II was still an active campaign. Germany was done, but Japan would keep fighting until we dropped a couple bombs on them in August of that year.

My dad told his parents he enlisted because he felt it was his duty as an American. He told me years later he enlisted because getting shot at was still a hell of a lot better than living on a farm in Arkansas.

As soon as the army found out that he had four years of experience running a railyard, they shipped him to Okinawa to oversee several supply trains providing food and weapons to soldiers stationed in Japan. His superiors knew that no one was going to take orders from an 18-year-old private, so they immediately promoted him to Sergeant and told him he was in charge.

Turns out, nobody gave a damn what an 18-year-old sergeant had to say either. It was a bit of a rocky start, but as soon as he proved to everyone that he actually did know what he was doing, it got a lot easier.

Easier, except for the constant retreating and rebuilding as the army lost and gained the same ground over and over on the island.

In August, Japan surrendered. My dad remained in Okinawa for another year or so as the U.S. began the dismantling of the Japanese military. In Fall, 1946, the army decided it was time to start downsizing and sending soldiers back to The States. He received notice in the beginning of December that he was going to be discharged and sent back home.

The day before he was supposed to ship back to the U.S. my dad decided to go to a local bar and get drunk. Whether it was to celebrate leaving the army or out of depression because he was going back to Arkansas, I’m not quite sure. His motivations for the outing are a little muddy.

He told me that he got so drunk, he got into an argument with a few other American soldiers about how well he could shoot a gun, since all he did was drive a train while everyone else was fighting. To defend his damaged pride, he drew his service weapon and proceeded to shoot out the ceiling lights in the bar.

My dad told me he fired his pistol half a dozen times and he hit everything he was aiming at. He told me he wasn’t proud of what he had done, although as he told me the story, he did seem rather proud of his marksmanship.

His fellow soldiers were all very impressed at his prowess as well. His superiors … not so much.

The Summary Court-Martial did not last very long. Since he was already scheduled to go home the next day, the judge decided to allow him to keep his good-conduct discharge but busted him down from sergeant back to private where he had initially started his career.

He wasn’t in the army for very long, which is probably a good thing since my dad wasn’t great at being told what to do and he did have a bit of a drinking problem, which you might have already guessed from the incident I just mentioned. I think he was proud of his service time, however, and he used to joke that during his career in the military he was only a private for two days: his first day, and his last.

When he was shipped back home, his flight landed in California and rather than jump on another plane to go to Arkansas, he stayed put. In that respect, enlisting and going to war did successfully get him away from the farm as he had hoped.

While living in California he met my mom and, well, the rest I suppose is history. I came along in 1966 and made the remainder of his days a living Hell. He once told me that raising kids was more stressful and more difficult than going off to war.

I hope that was a bit of an exaggeration, but I can’t help but wonder if raising a kid like me ever made him wish he had stayed on the farm.

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It’s Not What You Know, It’s Who You Know

My oldest daughter, EM1, is out of school and trying to figure out exactly what it is she wants to do for the rest of her life. She currently works a couple of part-time jobs, but her goal is to have full-time employment by this summer.

We shall see how that works out.

Job hunting is never fun, and it can be quite a beating to your ego as you hear people tell you “no” over and over. I still recall when I was in my twenties and I was trying to get my first job in law enforcement. In the early nineties, jobs were scarce and there were hundreds of people trying to get hired for every two or three jobs out there. I applied to dozens of police departments and most of them simply put my application in their files and I never heard from the again.

Even the departments that brought me in for testing and interviews were just establishing hiring lists for positions that didn’t exist. My name was on so many lists I lost track of the agencies I had applied to, but my phone still never rang.

Finally, tired of waiting for someone to hire me, I decided to put myself through the police academy on my own and hope that with an academy certificate I would be a more desirable candidate.

Okay, honestly, I didn’t put myself through the academy. I didn’t have any money. My grandfather agreed to pay for my training, so I guess you could say that he put me through the academy. He also told me that if I could get hired by a police department before I graduated the academy, I did not have to repay him for the loan.

Of course, he was also pretty confident I wasn’t going to get hired anytime soon.

While in the academy, I met a guy who had been hired by the Hillsborough Police Department (HPD). HPD was paying all of his expenses (unlike myself) and as soon as the academy concluded, he had a job and a paycheck waiting for him. His name was Steve.

Steve and I became friends while we were in the academy. We hung out during most of the breaks, partnered up during scenarios, and then, during classes, he would try to get me kicked out of the academy.

Steve was the guy that will talk to you continuously while an instructor is giving a lecture, or write notes and pass them over to you, never getting caught or drawing unwanted attention to himself. I did not have that same skill. The first time I said something back or opened the note to read it, I would find the instructor standing over my shoulder and asking me if I thought I had more important things to do than pay attention.

Steve would sit next to me with a stern expression on his face as if admonishing me that, “Yes, Gary, you should shut up and listen. Can’t you see the rest of the class is trying to learn something?”

Sadly, this sort of thing happened to me on multiple occasions. Steve wouldn’t let up, and I was incapable of learning how to ignore him.

Somehow, I managed not to get tossed out, despite Steve’s best efforts at sabotage. And as the final weeks of the academy rolled around, it appeared that I was going to make it to graduation. I did not have a job to look forward to, but at least I would have my academy certificate.

One day, Steve came up to me on a break and told me, “I have some good news.”

I wondered if that meant he had figured out a new tactic for getting me in trouble or thrown out of the academy. Turned out, however, that he actually did have good news.

He told me that the Hillsborough Police Department was hiring. He said they had only one position open, but he told them about me and suggested that I would be a good hire for them. He also said the chief at HPD wanted me to send him my resume.

“Um, when?” I asked.

“Now,” he told me.

“Now, now?”

“Right this second, now,” he confirmed.

Well, I didn’t have a resume with me, so with a pen and a sheet of binder paper, I wrote a mostly blank page of reasons why HPD should hire me, then put at the bottom: “Almost graduated from the police academy.”

Next, using the fax machine at the academy office, I sent this illegible sheet of scribbles to Steve’s bosses. It was the most embarrassing job application I have ever submitted. It looked like a ten-year old was writing an essay for his teacher on, “Why I want to be a policeman.”

That should have been the last thing I ever heard from HPD. However, three weeks later, exactly two days before I was scheduled to graduate from the academy, HPD called to tell me that they wanted to hire me.

Steve, the guy I thought was secretly trying to guarantee that I never made it through the police academy, had found me a job. To this day, I still can’t believe the sheer luck it took to be in the right place at the right time with the right person on my side to get me hired.

I found out later that fifty people had applied for that single opening at HPD, but it was Steve’s recommendation that opened the door for me. To this day, I am grateful to him for that.

When I got hired, I called my grandfather that night. I was excited about finding a job and I wanted to thank him again for paying the tuition for my academy training.

I also wanted to let him know that I would not be paying him back.

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Trying to Fit In

I went to a fund raiser for the Sacramento Children’s Home last weekend. The event was a crab feed and auction for some of the bigger supporters of the charity. I have to admit I felt a bit like a fish out of water during much of the evening.

Throughout the night, I was surrounded by doctors, attorneys, business owners and even a few retired, high-ranking military members. The only reason I was there was because I was invited by my wife’s cousin, Lila, who has been a huge supporter of the Children’s Home for years. Not only did she invite us to the fund raiser, but we got to sit at the VIP table, which included unlimited drinks and came with a dedicated waiter whose job it was to make sure we never had to leave the table. I’m quite sure he would have brought me a bedpan had I requested it.

I felt like a raccoon that had wandered into an AKC show for purebreds and I was just waiting for one of the regulars to glance over at our table and notice the trash panda that had infiltrated their ranks.

Around the outer walls of the venue, tables were set up with donated items for a silent auction. Jewelry, sports and vacation packages, alcohol, and spa treatments were all solidly out of my league, but I placed a few bids on a couple of things just to blend in. I didn’t want to get tossed to the street before I got to eat.

Trash pandas have their priorities, after all.

Despite the large number of items available, the silent auction wasn’t the big fund raiser. The real money started to flow when the live auction began. My wife wanted me to win her a pair of diamond earrings that were being offered. The earrings came with a bottle of champagne and two crystal goblets; I guess the booze was so the winner could celebrate the acquisition of their new jewelry. When the bidding went to $1500 in the first ten seconds, I told my wife she needed to set her sights a bit lower. Maybe we could offer fifty bucks for one of the glasses.

Her next suggestion was that we buy a football jersey signed by the quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers. She thought her mom would really like that as a gift. I gave that one a hard pass as well since it went for over $1000 before I even had time to offer a bid. The people at that crab feed were not playing around. They showed up with checkbooks at the ready and their game faces on.

Then, things just got weird.

After we all had time to stuff ourselves with as much crab as possible, it was time for dessert. The auctioneer brought out four cakes and put them up for sale. The cakes were nice, but nothing special. You could go to just about any bakery in the city and buy something similar without having to mortgage your house to do it.

Here at the crab feed, however, rules of normalcy no longer applied. The first cake sold for $1500, and that was just the warmup. The second cake started a bidding war that didn’t end until the auctioneer called out, “Sold! For six thousand dollars!”

No, that wasn’t a typo.

It was a lot of fun to watch, but it was also sort of terrifying at the same time. At one point, I took my bidding paddle off the table and sat on it so I couldn’t even accidentally get involved in the craziness going on around me. I mean, I like cake, but I also have kids to feed and a mortgage to pay.

I just kept my head down and tried not to draw attention to myself.

I’m glad the auction went so well. The Sacramento Children’s Home is an amazing organization and they deserve every dollar they raised that night. The only unfortunate part of the evening was that the seat I occupied could have gone to someone else more able to support such a remarkable cause.

After the cakes all sold ($15,000 for the four of them) the auction was just about finished. There was, however, one last item to auction off. The VIP table where my wife and I were sitting is offered for sale every year at this annual crab feed and fund raiser, and it was time to find out who was going to have the privilege of sitting there next year.

Another round of stratosphere-level bidding started up as the guests all tried to claim the prestigious eight-chaired table with gold-colored silverware and unlimited booze. When the dust settled and the gavel fell on the final offer of $3400, my wife’s cousin was the last person holding up her bidding paddle. For the seventh straight year, she had claimed the VIP table.

Perhaps to be more accurate,I should clarify that she had claimed one of the four VIP tables available. That doesn’t sound as dramatic as a cage-match battle to the death for one table, but whether it was four tables or one table, the bloody carnage was over and the outcome remained the same.

Thank you, Lila. Thank you for supporting the SCH, and for being related to me.

It looks like this trash panda is going to be at the crab feed again next year.

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Another Toddler in the House

My three-year old nephew stayed with us the other night. My wife agreed to babysit for a couple days and told me about it at the last minute so I couldn’t make other plans. She knows me too well.

Having a three-year old in the house again was quite an experience. The last child I had running around me was EM2, and she turns 20 this year. I haven’t had to deal with a toddler since Friends was still making new episodes on TV. I’m not cut out for it anymore.

So, when the kid showed up, I did what anyone in my position would do. I let my wife take care of him and I hid in the den. Problem solved. Apparently, I haven’t yet lost my touch. I have a feeling that I am going to be as good at being a grandparent as I was at being a parent.

Not that I’m in a hurry to find that out.

This experience was eye opening. I had forgotten a lot of the things parents of young children go through. Fortunately, my nephew was happy to remind me.

While my nephew was in the house, cartoons ran on the television set 24/7, half-eaten snacks were scattered around the floor as well as in his hair, and the shrill cry of, “Read a book?” echoed throughout my home every ten seconds.

When we fed him dinner (grilled cheese sandwich with some chips) he finished his chips first then dropped half his sandwich on the floor. Next, he asked for more chips.

I told him he had to finish his sandwich (not the part he dropped, I’m not a monster) then he could have more chips. He looked at me, nodded as if he understood, then said, “Chips?”

I told him again to eat his sandwich. He responded by pushing the plate away and saying, “all done.” I asked if he was really done eating, and he assured me he was. I took the plate away and set in on the kitchen counter. My nephew climbed down from his chair, walked into the kitchen with me, then pointed at the bag of chips on the counter and said, “The chips are right there.”

You can’t argue with that kind of logic.

Another joy of having little children in the house that I had long forgotten, was the late-night panic attack that comes with wondering if you are suddenly going to have to jump out of bed. My nephew wasn’t feeling very well when he stayed at our house, so putting him to bed went fairly smoothly. He complained a little, my wife read him another thirty or so bedtime stories, then he passed out like I had drugged his hot chocolate.

To be clear, I did not drug his hot chocolate. He didn’t have hot chocolate. I gave him water.

At about one o’clock in the morning, we were all sound asleep when I woke to an unfamiliar noise. My nephew was coughing in his sleep. I could tell my wife had woken up at the sound as well, so we both lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and listening for a repeat of the coughing. I spent at least fifteen minutes, breaking out in a cold sweat with my heart racing while I wondered if the kid was going to fall back asleep, or wake himself up.

I had flashbacks to all the sleepless nights of my own kids waking up suddenly and deciding that if they had to be awake then so did everyone else in the house. I kept waiting for my nephew to start crying or yelling for somebody to come get him.

Fortunately, that did not happen. He eventually fell back asleep on his own. After my wife and I exchanged a celebratory high-five, so did we.

The next morning, my nephew woke up before the rest of us. He must have had plenty to think about, because he apparently sat in his room and kept himself occupied for half an hour before anyone else moved.

That was the good part.

My daughter, EM1, poked her head into his room to check on him.

That turned out to be the mistake.

As soon as my nephew saw her it was as if someone finally pulled his string. Suddenly, he was Talking Tina with a broken volume control, and any hopes the rest of the family might have been harboring about further sleep were quickly dispersed.

Cartoons went back on the tv, my wife was reading picture books again, and my nephew was asking why I wasn’t making waffles yet.

That’s the other thing about three-year-olds: they never forget to remind you of the things you wish you hadn’t said. The previous day, I had mentioned that I might – might! – be willing to make waffles for breakfast. You would think the kid and I had agreed to some sort of blood oath the way he kept reminding me that he was getting waffles because I had told him he was getting waffles, and why weren’t there any waffles in front of him when I clearly promised waffles would be happening.

And, did I mention waffles?

Before you ask, yes waffles happened. What choice did I have at that point?

Over the weekend, one thing became abundantly clear: my decision not to have any more children was absolutely the right one. I don’t have the strength for this anymore. Two days was more than I could handle, and let’s be honest, my wife did the lion’s share of dealing with the boy. I stood in the room with my nephew for a couple minutes at a time, like I was trying to hold my breath underwater in a swimming pool, then bolted for my den to decompress and get ready for the next attempt.

When my own children start having kids, I may have to move to another country. I just don’t have the patience or skill set to deal with toddlers. We have nothing in common.

Or, perhaps we have too much in common. We’re both extremely self-centered, egotistical, and expect others to do our bidding without needing to so much as say please or thank you. We both want total control of the house around us and all the people in it. Maybe it’s not that I don’t like kids, maybe I just don’t want the competition.

I do have one thing, however, that most toddlers do not.

I can make my own waffles.

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A Dearth of Common Sense

My daughter, EM1, will be turning 23 this month. Not only does that make me feel very old, but it makes me wonder if her mother and I have done everything we can to prepare her for going out and making her way in the world.

The fact she still lives at home with us argues that no … no we haven’t.

I recently told her she has an absolute dearth of common sense.

She said, “thank you.”

Which tells me that she also has a vocabulary that does not include a correct definition for the word, “dearth.”

I think she is a smart kid, but although by all accounts of law and society she is a grown adult, I feel like she is still exactly that: a kid. I remember vividly how naïve and clueless I was when I was her age, and I am betting that in the thousand or so years since I was in my early twenties, kids have not advanced all that much.

It doesn’t help my opinion when I see her exhibiting the same type of decision-making skills I used to demonstrate at her age.

When I was in my early twenties, I recall a little road trip I took with my buddy, Wes Blalock. We both decided that taking off for a weekend to hang out in a cabin for a couple days sounded like a great idea, so we loaded up my Buick Skylark (I warned you this was a while ago) and headed out. We drove out of San Jose and made our way a few hours up into the northern California foothills.

A couple hours into our drive, we were cruising along some two-lane highway in the middle of nowhere when Wes turned to me and said, “What’s that noise?”

I had no idea what he was talking about and said so. He rolled down his window and that’s when I noticed the soft, thwip-thwip-thwip sound outside the car.

Wes started to laugh and told me, “Wouldn’t it suck if we got a flat tire right now?”

That was when the entire rear end of the car started to shake back and forth and the soft, thwip-thwip-thwip became a God-awful Whang-Whang-Whang! I swerved onto the side of the road and skidded to a halt in the dirt and gravel. When we climbed out of the car, we discovered that Wes had cursed us, and I did indeed have a flat tire.

A completely flat tire. The rubber was missing in places, the hole was big enough to put your fist through, and there were so many strands of wire sticking up from the shredded steel belt of the tire that it looked like a Halloween fright mask.

I glared at Wes because, of course, this was all entirely his fault.

Next, we unpacked the spare tire and repair kit, and by “unpacked” I mean we searched the car for three hours until we were able to locate the spare tire and repair kit. I was not terribly savvy about automobiles at that age. I’m still not, if I’m being totally honest. I can usually find where the gas goes in and, on occasion, I might replace the windshield wiper blades. Other than that… Nope.

Anyway, we pulled out the repair kit and went to work jacking up the car.

We got the tire off, and even successfully attached the spare tire without losing any lug nuts in the gravel. I am still amazed by that outcome, but grateful for it. Wes and I loaded the repair kit back in the trunk, then I looked at the ruined tire laying on the shoulder of the road.

I asked Wes, “What do we do with it?”

He shook his head.

“Do we leave it here?”

Again, a shake of the head.

We ended up deciding to take the tire with us because we thought leaving it behind might be littering.

Let me repeat that: We ended up deciding to take the tire with us because we thought leaving it behind might be littering.

We kept the tire because we did not want to leave any trash behind. Not because we might need any part of it later or anything logical like that.

We limped into a nearby town on the tiny spare tire and found an open garage. The mechanic working there said he could sell us a new tire, then asked us where we put the rim.

“The what?” I asked.

“The rim. The metal thing in the middle that the tire goes around.”

Wes and I glanced at each other, realizing for the first time just how close we had come to leaving it on the side of the road fifteen miles away.

Because we thought it was garbage.

Like I said, I was a moron at that age.

Next the mechanic told me it was going to cost about $250 for the new tire, old tire disposal fees, and balancing the new wheel on the rim. Neither Wes nor I had any cash with us. At least, not that much.

I told Wes, “I have a credit card, but my parents told me to only use it in emergencies.”

Wes stared at me as if I had just told him, “I have shoes, but my parents told me I should only put them on my feet.”

“Emergencies?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“You mean, emergencies like getting a flat tire in the middle of nowhere and needing to buy a new tire?”

“Um… yeah. I guess those kinds of emergencies.”

“Good,” he told me, “because I was starting to wonder exactly what the hell your definition of an emergency was.”

Sheepishly, I took out the credit card and paid for the tire. An hour later, we were back on the road and on our way.

Anyway, the point of my whole rambling story is this: That idiot kid that I used to be, is now my daughter, and it worries me when I think back to all the stupid stuff I used to do. I look at her and I see myself at that age.

Well, I see myself except for one important difference.

EM1 still hasn’t learned how to change a flat tire.

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A Moment of Inattention

I’ve heard a lot of stories from couples about how they met. Everyone seems to have a cutemeet story about how they got together with their soulmate while at a concert, or at a bar, or swimming with sharks, or whatever ridiculous activity they were doing at the time.

I hate those stories. They are only entertaining to the people that experienced them. The rest of us listen politely, nod our heads, and wonder how long it will be before we can get some alcohol into our system to make the pain go away.

For this reason, I am not going to tell you about how I met my wife. Instead, I want to tell you the story of what I did that almost made her leave me. To be more accurate, I want to tell you how I almost lost my wife … literally.

Back in college, my roommates and I enjoyed water skiing. My dad had a boat that he kept at Lake Don Pedro, and we were allowed to take it out whenever we wanted, as long as we kept it gassed up and didn’t run it into a pile of rocks on the shore. One weekend, we all decided to head for the lake and do some skiing.

My (future) wife and I had only been dating for about a year. I thought it would be a great idea to invite her along with us since she and my roommates seemed to get along pretty well. My roommates, Dave and Steve, agreed.

My wife had never been water skiing before, and I figured this was as good a time as any to teach her how.

We all drove up to the lake and, with a full tank of gas in the boat, a cooler full of beer, and miles of open water, we started skiing.

My roommates and I went first. We spent the first hour or so taking turns in the water while those of us in the boat experimented with ways to transport a can of beer to the guy at the end of the rope. It didn’t always work out the way we hoped. A couple beers got lost in the water, never to be seen again, and there was a near miss incident during an attempt of “Just throw it to me and I’ll catch it.”

Apparently, a full beer can thrown at a skier who is travelling at 30 miles per hour across the water can be considered a lethal weapon. Who knew?

Finally, it was my wife’s turn in the water. We showed her how to hold the rope and keep her skis in front of her as the boat started to move. The first time she tried to get up, the rope pulled right out of her hands. I told her that she needed to hold on and not let go of the handle if she was going to get up on the skis. She nodded and we tried again.

To her credit, she did not let go this time. We dragged her face-first behind the boat for quite a while and nearly drowned her before she released the rope on her second attempt. When we went back to try again, my wife didn’t want to play anymore. She told us she had had enough fun for one day.

My roommates and I convinced her to try one more time, mostly by refusing to let her back into the boat until she agreed. With no other options, she grabbed the tow rope and waited for me to reposition the boat.

On the third attempt, she managed to get up on her feet. It only lasted a few seconds, but she was so excited by the success she wanted to do it again. On the fourth attempt, she got up and stayed up.

This is where it all went bad.

With my wife hanging onto the tow rope and me driving the boat, we set off across the lake to see how long she could stay upright.

My roommates were sitting at the back of the boat and were supposed to be watching to make sure my wife didn’t fall. I heard Dave say, “Hey Steve, hand me a beer from the ice chest.” He also asked me if I wanted one, but I said I would get one later.

I heard two beer cans pop open behind me. That was when I asked Dave, “Is she still up?”

I didn’t get a response.

When I turned around to look, I saw my roommates enjoying ice-cold beers and laughing about something one of them had said, and I saw an empty tow rope bouncing along the water in the wake of our boat.

My wife was nowhere to be seen.

I yelled, “Where is she?”

Steve said, “Who?” Then, “Oh, yeah. I don’t know. I didn’t see her fall.”

I turned the wheel, bringing the boat into a sharp U-turn and headed back the way we had just come. I slowed down because I didn’t really know where we had lost her, and I didn’t think driving over the top of my wife’s head while she was bobbing in the water would make her feel any better.

We eventually found her a couple of minutes later. We had apparently travelled almost a mile after she fell.

I tried to explain that we didn’t see her fall because beer seemed to be more important to my roommates than she was. She failed to find any the humor in the explanation.

I asked if she wanted to try another run. Not surprisingly, she said no. What was also not surprising was the amount of colorful language she used during her refusal.

The rest of the day was pretty chilly, and I’m not referring to the weather.

I drove her home that evening and apologized for about the thousandth time when we got to her house. I expected that was going to be the last time I ever saw her, but for reasons known only to my wife, she agreed to go out with me again despite my attempts at murdering her in the lake.

It wasn’t until years later that she finally admitted why she didn’t break up with me that day. She told me, “If I broke up with you, I would never see you again. Then how could I make you pay for what you did to me?”

True love is a beautiful thing.

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