Live Free Or Die

For those of you who no nothing about the great state of New Hampshire...where I grew up... Check this out!!



Who many of you have been to NH?
...And if you have not been there...you want to go now...right?!

Adversity

My son has been going through some mild bullying in pre-school. For the most part, he seems to shrug it off, but every now and again he complains about being hit on the head with a toy shovel or being pushed. He still likes the kid who is aggressive with him, but I can tell that it sometimes bothers him.

I wasn't bullied a whole lot growing up. I was only in one true fist fight. I was threatened by a thug with a knife one other time. I mostly had run ins with boys who saw me as a meek and easy target and attacked my psychologically. But I don't think my experience was anything more than typical. Nonetheless, there were a lot of times where I felt like an outcast. I was lonely and felt ignored. There were times when I was supremely unhappy. Enough so that my teachers called my parents in for a conference or two.

I've been thinking a lot about this time in my life while WonderWife™ and I have tried to figure out how to best handle my son's situation. As much as I want to protect him from being hurt, is that the best course of action? The world is not always easy and people are not always nice. There is nothing that is ever going to change that. So it is better to be bullied than not at all? Running afoul of somebody can teach an important lesson in survival. It can teach you how to adapt.

To be clear, I'm not talking about severe bullying--the cases you read about. I'm am not talking about those kids who have been bullied to the point of suicide. Or beaten within an inch of their lives. I'm talking about the inevitable brushes with people that I'm sure most of us have experienced.

Learning to rise above adversity is a good lesson, but it's a hard one to learn. And it's a hard one to watch your kid go through. But when I stop to think about my life, I would not change those turbulent times for anything. They made me stronger.

So is it better to be bullied than not bullied at all?

--Daddy Geek Boy

The Pauli Girl Was Nice, But...

I do not remember for sure the first time I ever had a beer, when I was growing up. I know it must have been sometime around when I was 15 years old, typical adolescent hijinks and skullduggery involved to “score some brewskis”. I know it was with a group of my friends, my drinking buddies, if such a thing could be said of kids who were years away from being able to legally drink. We didn’t have much money then, and even less common sense, so the emphasis was on whatever we could get. My buddies drank Budweiser; I was the holdout for Pabst Blue Ribbon (in bottles, thank you very much). We didn’t much care, as long as it was there.

I do remember the first time I became aware of how much I liked beer, and it happened on a late summer evening, sitting at a picnic table with a bottle of PBR in my hand. I remember sitting there picking at the label and joking with my friends, watching the sun go down behind the trees and houses across the road. I titled that bottle back and swallowed a big mouthful: it hit me that this tasted so good, I couldn’t believe it. I wanted more, but not so much to get drunk. The buzz was certainly sought after, but I just really dug the taste, the slightly stinging bitterness, the faint sweet taste of the malt. Although I certainly wouldn’t have been able to describe it that way at the time; I didn’t know anything about it. It took years and a lot more beer before I knew what really was in it. But I never forgot that first moment of illumination.

It was also about the same time that I had my very first kiss. I very clearly remember that moment. It also happened while sitting on a bench, on a fall afternoon, in a park not too far from my boyhood home. My best friend and I, along with our girlfriends, had gone for a walk in the park to “get some fresh air” (wink, nudge). There was a little pond there next to a garden amongst some very tall pine trees, with benches scattered about. We were walking around in the garden and my friend, being more forward thinking in these matters, quickly made a beeline for a more secluded section of the garden, girlfriend in tow. Before I knew it, I lost track of them, leaving me alone with HER.

Not knowing what else to do, we found a bench and sat down, close together and barely touching. It was like we thought we would explode if our bodies came into contact, matter and anti-matter. But contact was inevitable; the gravitational pull was too strong. We held hands and watched some squirrels, sitting there in the afternoon sun, and then it happened.

Ka-BLAM. I think we turned to each other intending to say something but the momentum just carried us right into a kiss. Just like that. I was so stunned (and dizzy) that all I could think to do was to put my arm around her and just keep on kissing. Which we did. To the point of not being able to breathe.

For the shy, dorky kid that I was (and in some ways, still am) that moment was transcendental. I had never done anything so intimate, so personal, so physically intoxicating, in my life to that point. I still recall the golden light from the sun, her hair swirling around my face and tickling my cheeks and the sheer heart-racing power of being so close to a female who seemed to like me too. To quote Monty Python, from The Martyrdom of St. Victor:

“…but on the sixteenth day, he cried out, saying “This is FANTASTIC! OH, this is TERRIFIC!”

And it was. I was dizzy, I was swooning, and I felt drunk. The irony of it is, she and I broke up not too long after that. Even so, the taste of strawberry lip gloss never really left me after that day, much like the taste of barley malt swallowed on a summer eve. For me the first beer and the first kiss had a lot in common. They both opened my eyes to a larger world of possibilities, awakening my senses to delightful things previously unknown. They both impressed upon me the ecstasy and the agony of pleasure, making it clear that in drinking deep of certain things one must be very careful not to lose control.

They made me aware of the power of touch, taste, smell.

The secret to enjoying a beer or a kiss, really, really enjoying I mean, is to approach each one as if it were the first you ever had.

But, seriously? If I could have the opportunity to do one again, I’d take the first kiss over the first beer, any day…both may make you warm and fuzzy but a kiss is the stuff of life, my friends, the stuff of life…

Childhood Adventure - Part 2

If you have not already...Read Part 1 first

He first peered inside. Not seeing much of anything, he remembered his difficulty in getting out of the trench. Finding a few large rocks that he could roll, he one by one, rolled them into the bunker to use as a ladder if he could not find a door. Then he dropped to his belly and began descending into the bunker, feet first. Inside the bunker it was dark, the air was still and…he had no flashlight. Walking around the room feeling the walls for a door, he noticed that there was a bunch of stuff on the floor. In the dim light he could not make everything out so he lifted items, one by one into the light from the sliver of window. This room was a gold mine for shell casings…he even found 2 belts of shells…where they were all held together by little metal pieces. These, he knew, were used in the large machine guns.

Finally he found what seemed to be a mini door in the wall that opened to a stairwell. He could see nothing in the stairwell. It was pitch black. He sat there for a moment, contemplating whether he would brave the stairwell or go back the way he came. The internal argument was brief…he’d come back another day with a flashlight for the stairs. Climbing up on the rocks that he’d pushed down into the bunker, he was able to emerge from his first explored room with ease. Once back on solid ground, outside the bunker, he searched for something to mark the bunker with so that he could come back to see where that stairway led. The only thing that he could find was a bunch of rocks. He grabbed them, one by one and piled them on top of the bunker, in a pile that he’d be able to see from a ways off.

At that point, he decided to head inland from the cliff to see what was there for him to explore. Passing by several flat cement circles, each with a few sets of holes in them, he noticed huge amounts of spent shell casings and knew that there must have been machine guns mounted there. He took a few minutes to pretend that there were still guns mounted in position. With his hands up in front of him, he shook back and forth and turned back and forth, making machine gun noises. With that, he thought to himself what a great vantage point that spot was. He had a great line of sight up and down the beach…as well as the ocean to the east.

Moving on, the boy came to a set of stairs which led down about fifty feet to a large open area. Seemingly an old staging area for the military personnel, to him it looked like an un-kept playground …with no equipment. Reaching the open area and turning to look at the hillside toward the ocean he marveled at the number of stairways, doors and open passageways that riddled the embankment. As if he were a trained soldier, he squinted his eye, peered back and forth and then seemed to KNOW which direction to head.

As he started to the north-East, he noticed something that stood out to him. It was not the shape of all of the other things he was finding…and it looked to be halfway stuck into the ground. Crouching down in front of it and brushing some of the dirt away from the sides…it became clear what he had found.

To be continued….

Posted By BedsideTalesMan