Remembering Bobby

It was early morning in the spring of 1987.  Bobby and I were walking down Firestone Road – walking away from Forrest High School and towards my house.  When we reached the part where Firestone passes over Interstate 295, Bobby looked down over the railing, glanced at his watch, looked up and said, “We gotta get off this road…NOW!”  He later explained that we were passing over the highway his mother took on her commute to work, and we were clearly visible on the overpass at about the time that she would be passing under.  We started running towards the end of the overpass trying our best not to look too conspicuous.  Two fifteen-year old’s RUNNING away from a school – not conspicuous at all.

Finally, we got to the part where we could safely jump over the rail and run down the steep grass-covered hill.  After a few steps we both lost our balance and tumbled all the way to the bottom.  When we finally stopped rolling, we were both muddy and bruised, plus bloodied by the stickers and sandspurs we’d picked up on the way down.   After a few moments of moaning and complaining, we looked at each other and just started laughing.  Bruised and bloodied but laughing in that way that only fifteen-year old’s on a new adventure can laugh.  It was the first time we ever skipped school.  It would not be the last. 

Bobby and I met in Jefferson Davis Jr High in the fall of 1985.  Besides homeroom, we had three classes together: English, Science, and Office Skills/Typing.  Science class is probably the reason we became friends.  The teacher had us sitting in alphabetical order, so Hale and Head shared a table.  It was an odd setup – instead of individual desks there were tables with two students at each.  Basically, everyone had a pre-assigned lab partner based entirely on their last name. Due to the unique setup of that science classroom, there was a lot of freedom for talking and goofing off, but inevitably the teacher would scold us when things got too rowdy.  Correction: the teacher would scold Bobby.  For whatever reason when Bobby and I were goofing off in school he was always the one to get in trouble, not me.   Bobby always claimed that it was because I was “innocent looking.”  I don’t know if that was true, but objectively speaking he was always the one to get in trouble when I was just as guilty.  It was a pattern that would follow us all throughout junior and senior high.

If you’ve known me for long you’ve probably heard the story that I’m about to tell about our Office Skills class.  It was one of the few occasions that the teacher was focusing on something other than typing.  We were learning how to file, so we all had huge stacks of 3x5 index cards.  For some reason Bobby and I decided this was the perfect opportunity to pass notes, albeit with 3x5 index cards.  Since we didn’t sit near each other, we came up with the bright idea of throwing the cards across the room.  Picture the flight of a Frisbee over the heads of multiple rows of students.  Inevitably, we started talking about girls, and eventually it devolved into the time-honored schoolboy tradition of rating them.   We were oddly specific with our ratings, so cards with things like “Melissa is an 8.53” or “Teresa is a 9.14” were flying over students’ heads every time the teacher turned her back.  When Bobby decided to rate Tina (a personal favorite for both of us) he wrote “Tina is a 9.77” and flicked the card my way like he’d done 5 or 6 times already that day.  As the card started my way it inexplicably shot straight up in the air towards the ceiling – maybe the air conditioner clicked on, I don’t know.  The card then did a huge loop like a Blue Angel FA-18 at an air show and started back towards Bobby.   But instead of coming back to its thrower like a dutiful boomerang, the card instead landed face up right in the middle of Tina’s desk.  Yeah, that Tina.  The 9.77.  Thirty-seven years later this remains one of my all-time favorite memories because it was so improbable, so ridiculous, and so absolutely funny.  Not that long ago I asked Tina if she remembered the event.  She did, but she only remembered that the card had numbers on it.   I told her what the numbers were and what they meant. 

Eventually Bobby became friends with my old buddy Ted who I’d known since the 6^th grade.   For the rest of the 9^th grade and into the 10^th at Forrest the three of us were great friends.  We signed up for many classes together in the sophomore year, including an odd new concept called Zero Hour where students could schedule a for-credit class before school actually began.  For some reason we all thought that would be a good idea, so we scheduled a Spanish class together.   At first, we liked out teacher, but as time went on our opinions changed quite a bit.   I don’t think Bobby ever took the class too seriously, but he absolutely enjoyed coming up with vulgar / offensive things in Spanish.  We foolishly considered Spanish our own little secret language, not really giving thought to the obvious fact that the teacher and hundreds of other students at the school would be able to read the notes we thought we had so cleverly encoded. 

I don’t believe Bobby took any more language classes after our experience in Zero Hour, but we kept our not-so-clever codes for the remainder of our time at Forrest.  Over the next few years, we would see that Spanish teacher in the halls, and he was always oddly rude to us - very oddly rude and definitely not appropriate behavior for a teacher.  Once he stopped us to talk for a few minutes and it all seemed friendly enough, but then inexplicably he just started telling me how fat I was.  It was odd because he just did it with a smile on his face like it was totally normal, acceptable, and appropriate – like telling a student that he’d gotten really tall or that his hair had grown long.   Bobby responded to the insult by advising the teacher how greasy his hair was.  He obviously could have gotten in huge trouble for saying that, but Bobby was a loyal friend, and he could see that this idiot teacher was being needlessly cruel.  Two years later in our senior year that teacher was removed from Forrest for breaking the window in a classroom door.  He was nuts.  And his hair was graso.  We may have told him that a time or two. 

Halfway through our 10^th grade year Ted moved out-of-state.  Bobby and I then had one of the strangest conversations I ever recall having.  As we were discussing what to do next now that the threesome had been broken up, Bobby said, “We should become rednecks.”  Some who knew us in high school might think that wasn’t much of a stretch from what we already were.   But what Bobby meant by that statement was that we should become friends with the redneck crowd at school – mainly out of protection.  He already had it planned out and had obviously given the idea some thought.  He mentioned two guys – Brooks and Jim – and suggested, “Those two are our keys in.”  

He and I decided to literally give it a trial run and decided to dress like rednecks the next day.  We both wore flannel shirts and hats – his a Redman tobacco hat and mine a “Southern By the Grace God” hat.  I can remember this because we took pictures that day.  The trial run was a success and the next thing I knew we were wearing boots, we were friends with Brooks and Jim, and we were dipping Copenhagen at PE as we walked the track.  Jim dropped out of school and Brooks moved to South Carolina the next year, so our “ins” were out.  But in the 11^th grade we would create our own circle of friends from scratch.

At the start of our junior year, we were both 16 so life was definitely changing.  Since only seniors were allowed to park on campus, I paid a church a few bucks a month to park across the street from school.  I can’t recall how Bobby got to school at that time, but I don’t think he drove himself yet.  Strangely enough we had some of our best times in that parking lot before school.  We’d show up early and goof off for a good half hour before classes started.  Shortly after the school year started, Bobby introduced me to his friend Chris.  I believe they met in Summer School a few months earlier.  Chris and I hit it off immediately, and at this point Brooks was still in the picture, so our circle of friends was growing.  Chris was from Ohio, so most assuredly not a redneck.  Bobby always marveled and laughed at the things Chris would say that were so different than how we said them.  Nothing vicious – he would just laugh at the way Chris pronounced “Mazda” or how he called a vacuum cleaner a “sweeper.”   Just regional/cultural differences, but definitely differences. 

Not long into the 11 grade we were in the church parking lot one morning before school and Bobby walked up with another friend.  At this point I wasn’t ready for more.  I liked Chris a lot, but there were already four of us and that was really enough for me.  But Bobby was the linchpin of this group, and if he said the new guy was in, then the new guy was in.  He introduced the newcomer as Chad, someone who lived near him, and I believe they had had the same school bus stop at some point.  Anyway, Chad was there the next day and the next and the next.  And then Chris and Chad started paying the church for parking and it became our official every day before school hangout.  And since we were not on school property, we were free from the reach of nosy teachers.  There’s an unconfirmed rumor that we may have smoked cigarettes before class, which obviously was not allowed on campus.

Once the five of us settled into our new group we started skipping school regularly.  At the end of 10^th grade Bobby and I tested the waters by skipping once (and rolling down that overpass), but now that we had cars at our disposal there were no real impediments left.  And since we met up at an off-campus parking lot before school, it was easy to just jump back in our cars and just leave.  For some reason, the term “Let’s go” because our code for skipping school.   Sometimes I would forget about the code, decide it was time to walk across the street to school, say, “OK, let’s go.”  Hearing the signal Bobby would immediately jump into the passenger seat of my truck leaving the rest of us to just look at each other, shrug, and get in our cars. 

One evening in 1987 Bobby, Brooks, Chris and I obtained a bottle of Ron Rico rum.  After the bottle was rapidly drained, I ran to the bathroom knowing that rum, along with any other contents of my stomach, were headed back up.  As I threw up in the toilet, I glanced over to see Bobby throwing up in the sink next to me.  This started a chain reaction where we took turns puking in rhythmic succession.  It didn’t help my queasiness that Bobby was identifying and labeling the items he’d eaten earlier.  When it was finally over Brooks branded us “Bathroom Buddies.”  The nickname stuck and was brought up often over the next few years, especially any time we were drinking.

Brooks moved back to South Carolina right after Thanksgiving of 1987, our 11^th grade year – so really only a few months after school started.   After he was gone it was just me, Bobby, Chris and Chad for the rest of our time at Forrest.  We all had other friends – mine were from my job at Publix, Bobby’s were his childhood friends he still saw with his family – but as far as how things went at school it was the four of us.  Over time there were others who came in and out of our lives, and frankly there may have been a hanger-on or two who just kind of came with us sometimes against our will.    Including some nameless character who may have drank the remnants in a beer can we were using as an ashtray.  But once Brooks was gone, it was the four of us – anyone else was kind of floating around on the outside.

We skipped a few times with Brooks, but after he left, we started skipping even more.  We figured out that there were 9 weeks in a semester and students were allowed to miss 9 days.  Even with our Duval County public school education we pretty quickly figured out that this meant we could skip a day every week.  And from that point on, we pretty much did.  Early on we would go to Chris’s sister Debbie’s house on the days we skipped.   Chris would knock on her door and when she’d answer blurry-eyed and half asleep he’d announce, “Time to make the donuts!”  She’d call us degenerates and usually mix in a few other choice words, but she would always let us in. 

Once at her house Chris tried to make us some macaroni and cheese in the microwave and he cooked it so long that the macaroni lost its form, and just morphed into a big pile of cheesy goo.  We were broke teenagers, so we ate it anyway.  Bobby called it “Yankee macaroni and cheese” and from that time on that’s just what we referred to it as.  We would literally request it.  I remember telling Bobby that I was pretty sure Chris didn’t make it that way on purpose, and I was almost certain that wasn’t the standard way of making it in the north.  He didn’t care, it was Yankee macaroni and cheese is his eyes. 

Debbie gave all of us nicknames almost immediately.  Once I was at her house after work, so I was wearing my dress boots with white socks.  Debbie said they were milkman socks, and she immediately labelled me the Milkman.  Since my grandfather was literally a milkman, I accepted the nickname gladly.  She gave Bobby the name “Squirrelly.”  Which, on the surface seems like a bit of an insult to a short kid – akin to calling me “Fatty.”  But Bobby took it all in stride and embraced the name.  He spelled it “Squirley” and used that name as we continued passing notes over the years, and I think he may have even signed his name that way in one of my yearbooks. 

By this point we were all hanging out every weekend in addition to hanging out at school.  We spent countless hours in the Putt-Putt game room, on the Goony Golf go-kart track, at Burger King, Subway, McDonald’s, and the various movie theaters in Orange Park.  Bobby and Chris would sometimes engage in contests with each other at Subway to see who could eat their sub the fastest, and even though he was extremely out of his league in such a competition, Bobby could hold his own. 

Most weekends either Chris or I would pick Bobby up after dark, because he had to sneak out of his parents’ house.  He lived at the end of a long dirt road that could sometimes be intimidating once the sun went down.  We would show up at the pre-arranged time and start driving slowly as we neared his house.  We knew to look for his dog Buck, because if Buck was in the road, you knew Bobby was nearby.  Bobby would stay in the woods until he was sure it was us, and then step out at the last minute.  Bobby would explode into the car full of energy and excitement – throwing elbows and fists and yelling “VINSTER!” – a nickname I picked up somewhere along the line that I never particularly cared for.  I think maybe Brooks came up with it, but I’m not 100% sure. 

By the time our senior year started we were fully settled into our roles in our group of four, and into our routine, which by the way including a lot of skipping school if I haven’t mentioned that already.  I think we literally skipped a day in the first week of our senior year.  By this time, we were going to my house when we skipped, not Debbie’s.  Debbie may have been married by now, but I’m not sure.  Either way, we settled into going to my house once a week.  The skip days usually involved beer, cigarettes, and Little Caesar’s pizza.  We would sit on the back porch, play in the mud, chicken fight, whatever.   We also watched Spaceballs 20 or 30 times over our 11^th and 12^th grade years, cinematic masterpiece that it was.    

Midway through our senior year I got busted skipping, and to say the least the gig was up.  That was December of 1988 and I never skipped again.  Had I known our last time was going to be our last time I probably would have paid more attention.  But the memories I have are amazing and the hundreds of photos from those days are priceless to me.  In a way it's kind of weird to think that my fondest memories of high school are so tied up in skipping school, but that’s the simple truth.  My senior year Bobby and Chad were going to the Skills Center for half the day, so I didn’t get to see nearly as much… unless we skipped. 

Bobby was one of the cool kids, plain and simple.   Some of those redneck tendencies stuck with him, but he wasn’t one to be pigeonholed into a stereotype.  Bobby went to countless hard rock concerts with me in the 1980s – even if he probably left with a headache and didn’t even know the lyrics to any of the songs.  Bobby was fearless also.  I never saw him back down from anyone.  Never.  Once a guy at Forrest who literally must have been 6’4” or taller challenged him.   Bobby just looked at him and said, “Shut the hell up before I reach up and punch you in the kneecap!”  The guy laughed and walked away.  Crisis averted.   I saw Bobby explode in anger multiple times when someone would insult and/or challenge me.  It didn’t matter if it was greasy-haired Spanish teacher, or a fellow student, or some random guy in the mall.   If someone insulted me, Bobby would instantly shout “Shut the @#$% up!” before I would even have time to react.  Once on Blanding Boulevard the driver of a car at a stoplight next to me shouted, “The speed limit’s 45 fat ass!”  Guess I was speeding.  Without hesitation Bobby dropped his pants and gave the offender in that car next to us a rear-end salute.  The kid took care of business and defended his friends, no doubt about it.

Girls loved Bobby.  He was popular with all types – from the avowed redneck girls at school, to the random cashiers we encountered at fast food restaurants.  I can’t count how many times I stood there staring blankly into space as some girl we just met got all giggly and started flirting with him.  But Bobby never once abandoned any of his friends for a girl that he had just met.  Never.  Not once.   He’d talk to them, get their number, give them his, arrange to come back another time, but he never once turned around and said, “you guys go on ahead” to his friends. 

When we graduated, I didn’t think much would change – a naïve assumption that I suspect many graduates have made over the years.  For a while, it didn’t.   Bobby went to work immediately, and I enrolled at FCCJ – the local community college.  By this point Bobby had brought another friend into the mix – Mike.  We all liked Mike and he fit right in with all of us immediately.  But, for whatever reason, we all started drifting apart as the 1990s crept in.  Bobby and Mike started hanging out more together, while Chris and I got jobs at a baseball card shop.  In January of 1993 I left for college in South Florida, and at that point I didn’t even see Bobby anymore and frankly didn’t know how to contact him or Mike. Chad came to South Florida a few months after me.  I have no memory of the last time I saw Bobby in the 90s, nor why specifically it was the last time.  Again, had I known it would be the last I would have paid more attention.

I saw Bobby twice in 2000s.  Both times were mini-reunions at restaurants with a few high school buddies – I believe Chris was at both.  We talked about old times of course, and shared pictures of our kids.  I remember thinking how sad it was how we’d never met each other’s kids, and didn’t even know their names.  I enjoyed both meetings and both times we vowed to “do this again sometime,” but of course that never really happened.   Through Facebook we were able to reconnect, and we chatted a few times.  He started each message with “VINSTER!!!”  Some things never change. 

It’s not a stretch for me to say that Bobby literally changed my life.  Not just because he was kind of the ringleader of our little group of friends, but because he was responsible for bringing those other people into my life.  I never would have met Chris and Chad had Bobby not forcibly inserted them into our group (against my stubborn anti-social wishes).  Chris was the best man at my wedding and the godfather to my first child.   To this day Chris’s younger sister is a dear friend who may or may not have named her child after me.   There’s a human on this earth who would have a different name had Bobby and I not sat together at that lab table in 9^th grade science.

I still see Chad often and we talk most days.  He and I were drinking beer a few weeks back and we talked about Bobby a bit.  I couldn’t help but think how nice it would have been had Bobby been there with us.  That squirrelly (sorry, I mean Squirley) yet fearless little 15-year-old who tumbled down that overpass with me 35 years ago.  How interesting would it have been for the 51-year old to be there with us talking about old times.

On May 12^th at 8:13 PM I received the following text: “Don’t even know how to ask, but have you heard about Bobby?”  Needless to say, I knew this was not going to be good news.  No one starts a conversation that way and ends it with “He won the lottery,” or “He got remarried.”   

It was indeed bad.  Worse than I imagined, to be honest.  I immediately called Chad to let him know.  Chris already knew, because he was actually the conduit through which the news flowed, and it was his sister Mary who told me.

My last words in the text to Mary were: “All this growing up business kind of sucks.”  And it most assuredly does.  When I told someone (who didn’t know him) that my best friend from high school had died, he said, “That’s sad, but high school friends are there for a reason.  They serve their purpose and then you move on as you grow up.”   There’s some truth to that, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t devastating news.  I spent the next few days seeing things everywhere that reminded me of him.  When I drove past Kingsley Lake, I thought back to the great time we all had one sunny Saturday on the slides and platforms at Stickland’s.  Later, I saw a hat in a gas station and thought, “That’s something I could see Bobby wearing.”

I don’t wish to be melodramatic – I saw him twice in the last 20 years.  There are literally hundreds of people whose day to day lives have been impacted by Bobby’s passing, so I do not wish in any way to try to jump undeservedly into that sympathy pool.  But Bobby was my best friend in high school.  I can say that without fear of offending Chris or Chad because they were the class of 1990 -  one year behind us.  So that caveat gives me the wiggle room to claim Bobby was my best friend.  There may be others who will tell you that he was their best friend in the 1980s, and I would not dispute that.  As I mentioned earlier, he had another set of friends that he grew up with.   But I know that it was me driving down that dark dirt road nearly every Friday and Saturday night from 1987-1989.  I know that it was my car that he rode in to our high school graduation.  And it was me who tumbled down that hill with him in the Spring of 1987.

Before I met Bobby, I used to slide down that overpass on big splayed-open cardboard boxes – kind of the Deep South version of snow sledding.  For years I would think about that if I ever found myself in the old neighborhood.  I suspect that from now until the day I die I’ll only think of Bobby and me rolling down that thorn-covered hill whenever I happen to see it.

When I look back on my high school days, I consider them some of the very best of my life.  My memories are plentiful and full of so many good times.  And I can say with 100% certainty they would not have been so special had I never met Bobby Joe Head. 

The day we had our redneck trial run

In the church parking lot before school

Bobby and Ted in the 10th grade

Did you know it's possible to chicken fight while smoking?

Brooks, Bobby, and me on Halloween 1987

Graduation Day with our favorite teacher, Mr. Ruoff

Remembering Uncle Bud

One Sunday in the fall of 1993 I received a call from my Uncle Bud.  There was nothing unusual about this.  I was going to college 300 miles from home, and he would often call to say hello and check in on me.  After talking about the weather and my non-existent dating life the conversation inevitably turned to the Florida Gators football team.  If you knew Bud, you know that all conversations eventually led to the Gators.  He asked my opinion of the Gator’s victory from the day prior.  I told him that I didn’t watch the game, but from the highlights I saw on Sports Center they looked pretty good.

Here’s where it gets interesting.  He asked the question that was obvious in his mind, “Why didn’t you watch the game?”  I told him that I had been watching the Florida Panthers hockey game instead.  I wish I could adequately express to you the layers of emotion in his voice as he replied, “You watched WHAT?!?!?”   I heard confusion, disappointment, shock, maybe even anger in his question.  To Bud, it was incomprehensible to choose ANYTHING over the Gators, but hockey?  HOCKEY, are you kidding me???  I don’t think he could have been more baffled if I’d answered him in French, more shocked if I said I’d been watching professional bowling, more repulsed if I’d said I was watching the Octogenarians sunbath at a retirement home in Delray Beach.

My favorite picture of Uncle Bud

I took this at one of the many parties at his house

                              

In my defense this was the Panthers inaugural season in South Florida, and I may have gotten caught up in the hype.  Fortunately for me, Bud quickly forgave my indiscretion and continued calling me the rest of my time at school.  We literally never spoke of it again.

James Leo Hale was my dad’s older brother and to say he was a character would be a monumental understatement.  Bud just had a way of saying and doing things that were just somehow different than most others.  To this day when my dad tells me I’m doing something that reminds him of Bud I know there’s an insult there just beneath the surface, but it still makes me smile.  

My dad had two brothers and two sisters, and when I was growing up, I saw my extended family multiple times a month.  It stands to reason that I would have literally hundreds of stories and memories about Uncle Bud.  I could probably write a 300-page book of memories, but I’ll try to hit on just a few highlights that are important to me personally.  

Let me start by telling you just how goofy I am.  In the spring of 1989, we visited my Great Uncle David in Tallahassee.  During the visit David asked me “How’s your Uncle Jim doing?”  I suddenly felt that awkwardness you feel when an older person is confused, and you don’t want to embarrass them.  So, I lowered my voice and said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t have an Uncle Jim.”  Fortunately, my dad was nearby and said, “He means Uncle Bud.  His first name is James.”   So much for the older person being confused.  This 18-year-old didn’t even know his uncle’s real first name.   He was, and always will be just Uncle Bud.  

Bud in the Navy

When I was young it was common for the cousins to spend the night at each other’s house routinely.  I always enjoyed my nights with my various cousins, but what made spending the night with Cousin Grady unique was that you were also spending the night with Uncle Bud.  Meaning, he wasn’t the seldom-seen dad off in another room reading the newspaper and only showing his face at mealtime. If you were spending the night with Grady, Bud was involved and Bud was going to have a plan.

I distinctly remember one time I spent the night with Grady when Uncle Bud took us to the Cedar Hills dollar theater on the first night Raiders of the Lost Ark was playing, presumably 1981.  When we got to the theater the showtime he had planned on was sold out. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones interested in seeing the blockbuster for only $1.  So, Bud bought tickets for the next showing, probably 2 or 3 hours later.  To kill time Bud took us for pizza and then we walked around the shopping center.  We found our way into a T-shirt shop and Bud let me pick out any shirt I wanted.  Any shirt as long as it had a Gator on it, of course.  This wasn’t my birthday, but I got dinner, a movie, and a gift.  

Going to Uncle Bud’s house was always a good time, no matter what the occasion was.  When he first moved to Callahan, he had a large patch of undeveloped land on his property.  My cousins and I created a trail through the woods to drag each other around on a wheelbarrow in the dark.  After the property was completely cleared, he had a beautiful fresh-water pond full of huge catfish.  They were basically pets.  He allowed us to catch them with a fishing pole, but we always had to throw them back.

Of Bud’s four siblings, three of them had birthdays in March, so as I kid, I always looked forward to the inevitable party.  The party wasn’t at Bud’s house every year, but to me the most memorable ones always seemed to be.   One that sticks out in my memory is the year everyone spent the night at his house.   Some slept in his house, but many slept in campers and tents strewn around his back yard.  Let’s be honest, the appeal for a sleepover when you’re an adult is that you can consume mass quantities of adult-beverages without having to worry about driving home.  At some of these parties, a few of us under 21 may have even snuck a few beers.    There’s an unconfirmed rumor that Uncle Bud may have slipped me a drink or two after the sun went down. 

The mischief in this photos just oozes from the page

Some of my favorite memories of all time involve watching the Super Bowl at Bud’s house.  He would run an extension cord to the fire pit so we could watch the game while roasting oysters.  During one of the Dallas / Buffalo Super Bowls, I’m not sure which one, I remember it was extremely cold.  Some of the men, who shall remain nameless, cashed in their man-cards and stayed indoors with the women.  Those of us who braved the cold had a monumental time.  As the night went on and the sun went down the temperature really dropped, so Bud pulled out a beat-up old metal coffee pot that we could sit right on the fire next to the oysters.  When it was ready to drink, we passed around the coffee but realized that Bud hadn’t brought out a spoon for the sugar.  After a round of arguments over who would go get a spoon, we gave in and just tossed handfuls of sugar into our coffee.  Best coffee I ever had.  

Another great memory I have with Bud came at the Gator Bowl game on December 31, 1993.  Uncle Bud called me a few days before the game to ask if I wanted to go.  I wasn’t particularly a fan of either Alabama or North Carolina, but a game with Uncle Bud on New Year’s Eve sounded good to me.  Especially since it would be historic because the very next day the stadium would be all but demolished to renovate for the upcoming NFL expansion team.  I remember being happy that Bud had thought of me for his extra ticket.  I honestly have no idea how far down I was on that list.  Was there a list?  If so, was I number one or number ten?  It didn’t matter then, and it doesn’t matter now.  This was just a few months after the infamous hockey call, so I was happy to even be on the list.  

When I graduated from college in 1994, I had aspirations of breaking into the media.  Bud, of course, steered me towards a career in sports.  He once told me that I should try to get a job in sports talk radio because I “have a face for radio.”  It took me a few moments to realize that he didn’t say I had a voice for radio, but a FACE.  It was a fantastic line and I still use it today.  In fact, you could say I have a face for blogging, right?

Bud with his cousin Peg in Newfoundland

                                                     

One night in the early-90s the extended family met for dinner at a pizza restaurant in Callahan.  When we walked in a few family members were already there.  I went to sit down at the first chair I saw, but Bud caught my eye and said, “Come sit down here by me, my boy, so we can talk about sports.”  That’s it.  That’s the end of the story.  You need to know my temperament and mindset to understand why this memory is important to me and why it even qualifies as a memory.  I always assume that people don’t want me to talk to them or sit next to them.  It’s why I’m usually quiet and often sitting alone in social settings.  I’m the guy that can walk into a gathering and see a friend across the room who’s been to my house 50 times, but I’ll still go sit somewhere else because I assume he’d prefer to talk to others.  So, Uncle Bud wanting me to come sit next to him was and still is a big deal to me.  I don’t know what we talked about.  Maybe baseball.  Probably the Gators.  I just remember that I was touched that he called me down to his end of the table.

I could go on and on and on.  I could mention how we went to the first Jacksonville Bulls football game together.  Or the Gator Orange and Blue spring practice games.  Or how as a practical joke he bought Uncle Claude a compass after he got lost on a vacation in the 80s.   Or the dozens of times he pulled up to the baseball card shop where I worked inexplicably driving his camper.  Or the time he caught a dishrag on fire as he and Aunt Mary aggressively took turns pushing and pulling a pie in and out of the oven, debating if it were done. 

I honestly think of Uncle Bud every day.  It’s impossible not to since I have a son who looks so much like him.  And every time I do think about him, I think about fun, and laughter, and quite literally the best times of my life. 

When I was a teenager, I was riding in the back of a truck down a dark dirt trail at Camp Blanding with the expressed goal of looking for deer.  At one point one of my cousins made a comment that the whole thing seemed kind of lame.  Another older family member chimed in and said, “You should appreciate it, not all families do this kind of thing.”   I am very fortunate to have grown up with an extended family like the one I had, and I truly do appreciate the good times.   Especially the times with Uncle Bud.  

Shirl's Eulogy

When Shirl passed away last week it wasn’t shocking.  She had been sick for some time and it had become obvious that the end was near.  But it was still jarring.  Losing a loved one always is, even if it’s expected.  One of the ways that I found to cope with the loss this past week was by talking to many family members about her.  We remembered the good times, reminisced, and talked about how much she had meant to us.

After my grandmother contracted dementia, Shirl filled in almost seamlessly as our family’s leader and matriarch.  She planned and coordinated all of our family gatherings, regardless of whose house we were meeting at.  If everyone brought a covered dish, she brought 9 or 10.

She was our family’s communication center.  If you wanted to know what was going on with someone, you could just call Shirl instead of calling that person, because she always knew what was going on with everyone in the family.  

Shirl always had a cheerful demeanor.  So much so that we would refer to her as the cheerleader of our family.  She could find the silver lining in any situation and always seemed to find a way to uplift those around her.

But what came across the most as I talked to people was how much Shirl enjoyed doing things for others.  She was a sounding board for those who knew her, and so many came to depend on her for guidance and advice.  From the time Shirl was teenager she took on the role of second mother to her younger siblings and continued in that capacity with her nieces and nephews.

Over the years she drove siblings to job interviews, took her in-laws to doctor’s appointments, and always seemed willing to give up her most precious commodity – her time.  She planned her sister’s wedding and organized her bridal shower.  If you asked for her help, she would give it.  If you didn’t ask, she would volunteer.

Years ago, she coached one of her nieces in the Ms Englewood pageant.  She spent hours practicing with her, coaching her, and even lent her one of her own dresses for the pageant.   She guided another niece through the purchase of her first house, and offered sound advice on everything from relationships to finances.

She also helped my wife and I purchase our first house, and since it was For Sale By Owner, there were no real estate agents involved.  Shirl guided us through every step of the process – even coming with us to the closing to make sure no one took advantage of us.

Once I had a financial emergency.  I didn’t tell her about it, but when she found out she sent me a check in the mail.  A few weeks later when things straightened out, I sent her a check to repay her, and she returned it with a note that simply said, “It was a gift, not a loan.”

When I was looking for job many years ago, Shirl sent my resume out to her vast network of local business contacts, and even got me a few interviews.  

When her brother was sick in 1990, Shirl was there every step of the way.  Not only caring for him, but supporting her mother who was losing a son.  She continued in this roll when her sister and father were both sick at the same time in 2000.  She spent all day, every day, for months chauffeuring her mother back and forth between the two hospitals and continued to do so until both had passed away.

When her mother starting declining from the effects of dementia, Shirl immediately stepped in to take care of her.  Almost totally on her own Shirl did the hard work, the dirty work and the thankless work that comes with caring for a person suffering from Alzheimer’s.  Many times I heard her say that taking care of her mother in her final years was what she was put on earth to do.  She truly believed that.  Because Shirl always looked so young, it was easy to forget that she was a 70 year old woman effectively doing the work of a team of full-time private duty nurses.

Shirl was with her every step of the way until the bitter end.  That’s Shirl’s legacy.  Not just caring for her mother, but taking care of all of those who were in need.

My house is full of reminders of Shirl.  From the pictures on the wall that she gave me to the Holy Family statues she gave my wife, to the numerous shirts I still wear that she gave as Christmas gifts over the years.   They’ve lasted a long time.  She bought REALLY GOOD clothing.  

Shirl regularly sent cards to the children in the family.  Not just on Christmas and birthdays, but also on Easter and Valentines Day and Halloween.  I would find three cards from her in the mailbox and I’d have to stop to think about what holiday was coming up.

Shirl often gave me career advice, and she had this one saying that I’ll always remember.  She would ask me, “What is it that I always tell you?  You have to make people feel special.”  I suspect that others here have heard that saying also.  That was good career advice plus it was good advice for everyday life.  Shirl made people feel special not by hollow and meaningless words, but by her actions that clearly showed her love.  Shirl WAS special.  She was loving and she was loved.  And I will miss her greatly.

                     Remembering Cousin John 

“Cousins are like celebrities for little kids. If little kids had a People magazine, cousins would be on the cover.” – Jim Gaffigan

Before I even begin, let me tell you what ARE NOT the reasons I’m writing down these memories of Cousin John.  I’m not writing this down to insert myself into the story.  Many, especially in the age of social media, try to insert themselves into every tragedy to tie themselves to the story or somehow literally make the tragedy about them.  That’s not what I’m doing.  When John died in 2019, I hadn’t seen him in a decade.  Literally ten years.   So, to say that my day-to-day life was impacted by his untimely death in 2019 would not only be false, but it would also be offensive to his children, parents, and siblings.  John’s death was a blow to my childhood memories, and a sad reminder of how we had let time slip away.  I’m writing this today so that the stories and memories won’t be forgotten.

John and I were both born in April, just over five years apart.  Five years doesn’t really seem like that big of an age gap when you’re adults, but when you’re kids it’s huge.  When I was in the first grade, I thought that kids in the 3^rd grade smoked cigarettes and had serious girlfriends.  That was only a two-year difference – so five years would have seemed like an insanely huge gap.

John was my oldest cousin on the Hale side.  I was right in the middle – three male cousins older than me and three younger.  My first memories of John are that he was immeasurably and unfailingly cool.  I suspect many kids think that about older cousins, particularly their oldest cousin, but objectively speaking John was very cool and charismatic.

Until just before my 8^th birthday I lived on 48^th Street in Jacksonville and Uncle Claude and Aunt Linda lived on 45^th.  It wasn’t until I was older that I realized that we had literally lived in the same neighborhood, and we probably could have been playing together as kids.  But for whatever reasons, I only saw John at larger family get-togethers and I genuinely had no clue that he lived on just the other side of the tracks – literally. 

Whenever my family was at my aunt and uncle’s house, I always found my way to John’s room.  John’s room was covered wall to wall with posters of the famous actresses and supermodels of the day.  My mind remembers Catherine Bach, aka Daisy Duke as a personal favorite.   When I was 11 or 12 John was 16 or 17.  So I was just on the cusp of being a teenager, and he was right at the apex.  For me, John completely represented what it meant to be a teenager, or better said what it meant to be a wildly cool one.   So, in my mind I needed to emulate him in every way possible.  Just as John was blessed with natural charisma and charm, I was cursed with an unbridled dorkiness that could not be remedied by emulating his dress or speech.  But one thing I could do was decorate my room like his.  And by the time I was a 16 or 17 I had done my very best to duplicate his room.   Anyone who visited my room in the late 1980’s can attest that it was indeed a den of impurity with wall-to-wall posters – just like John’s bedroom several years earlier.

One of my very favorite memories of my childhood turned out to be a lie – but in the best of ways.  One night at our grandmother’s house, the male cousins were boxing in the front yard.   I was probably not much older than 10 or so.  When my turn to fight came, I was paired against an older cousin (not John) and after a few minutes of exchanging punches, he staggered and fell to the dirt.  I spent the next few days telling everyone I knew how I had knocked out an older cousin.  Who am I kidding, I spent the next few YEARS telling that story. Four or five years later we were again in my grandmother’s front yard and once again the boxing gloves were brought out.  This time two of my younger cousins were squaring off.  After a few minutes I saw John subtly motion to the older boxer to go down, which he of course did (no one questioned John’s authority).  I would have liked to have seen my face at that moment when the realization suddenly hit me that John had done the same thing years earlier in my moment of glory.  My legendary knock-out of an older cousin had all been a sham, a set-up, a lie.   I know John orchestrated it to give the younger cousin more confidence, or maybe just to make the younger one happy.  All I know is that it was a fantastic memory of mine, and it remained one even decades later after I learned what had really happened.

Not a lot of people know that John was my godfather.   I don’t believe that John ever took his faith particularly seriously, but I think he liked the honor associated with the title.  I wasn’t baptized until I was ten years old, and John was fifteen.  Ten is late to be baptized for a Catholic, but fifteen is pretty early to be a godfather.  I don’t remember a ton about the ceremony, but I remember that John was very quiet beforehand and not in the mood to joke around.  Looking back I suspect he was probably tense about it all.  Even super cool older cousins get nervous, I guess.

Another fantastic memory of my early childhood involves a trip to Disney World with some of my cousins.  I specifically remember that it was Mickey Mouse’s 50^th birthday, so that would mean it was 1978 which feels about right.   The funny part is that I remember nothing about actually being in the park.  Not the rides, the food, the weather – absolutely nothing.   What I remember, and remember very fondly, is the 3-hour drive to and from the park.   The boy cousins were in the back of a blisteringly hot truck (with a topper) and the girls were up front with the mothers.  I remember nonstop laughing and joking and just having the time of my life.  I fondly remember laughing at the things John said/did in the hotel room too.   At one point in the back of the truck, I made an extremely lame joke that involved the word “ass”, and I remember John laughing at it.  Emboldened by my success, I said the same line again and again and again.  And John continued laughing.  You may be thinking how it could be possible that I can remember a specific joke I told 43 years ago when I was only 7 years old.  It’s possible because I had just made the coolest guy in the world laugh – so, of course I’m going to remember that.

Another memory that still makes me smile to this day happened at John’s wedding.  At the reception he was dancing on stage after a drink or two, and for whatever reason the CD kept skipping backwards so the song just went on indefinitely.  I was standing off to the side of the stage watching John dance at this ridiculously fast pace and I could see the sweat literally flying from his face.  When the song finally finished, he looked over at me, took a deep breath and exclaimed, “That’s the longest damn song I’ve ever heard.”  Of the thousands of times he made me laugh, that was probably the only time he did so unintentionally.

Some of the most fun I had in my late teens and early twenties were at our Uncle Bud’s house in Callahan.  He had multiple parties for birthdays, Super Bowls, and probably other reasons that I can’t recall.   At one of the Super Bowl parties in the early 90s John inexplicably started referring to me as Guy #1 and my younger cousin as Guy #2.  What made it funny was that he just said it so matter-of-factly that you’d have thought these had been our nicknames since birth.  John labelled himself Guy Extraordinaire on that day, and we, obviously, did not question or challenge his authority.  The names stuck and we continued using them for the next 25-30 years.  On the day he died my Facebook status read “RIP Guy Extraordinaire.”

I have another memory of being at Uncle Bud’s with John, and it’s special to me for different reasons.  I feel like it was the late 90s, so it’s possible that it was shortly after Bud’s death, or maybe even the day of the funeral.  All I remember is that John said he needed to make a run to the store for more beer, and he invited me to ride along.  Of course, I said yes.  If Guy Extraordinaire chooses you for anything, you accept graciously and without question.  What made this night stick in my memory is that after John bought beer from the corner store, we just drove around Callahan talking.  The topics of conversation were nothing earth-shattering.  We were just two cousins swapping stories and reconnecting after many years.  At the end of the night, we exchanged numbers and vowed to keep in touch.  Amazingly, we did.

Not long after that night driving around Callahan, John called to invite me to his house to watch an FSU game on television.  Of course, when he called he tried to prank me with a fake voice.  He probably would have succeeded if not for Caller ID.  I remember having a great time at his house and saying that I couldn’t wait to do it again, and maybe he could even come to my place.  I can’t recall exactly why we never did, though.  All I can figure is that this must have been about the time I started dating my future wife.  If not, I can find no other reasonable explanation.

Years passed before I saw John again, and as I just mentioned I can’t really explain why that happened.  In fact, I didn’t see him again until our grandmother’s funeral in 2009.  A few days after her funeral John invited everyone to his house for a Super Bowl party since the out-of-town relatives were still in town.  It ended up being the last time that I ever saw John, and since it was the Super Bowl, I know the exact date - 02/01/2009.  Our grandmother’s funeral was 1/27/2009.  At his Super Bowl party, he asked me the name of my five-year old daughter.   I don’t blame him for not knowing her name since there was no real reason that he would, but it was a glowing example of how we’d fallen out of touch.

I didn’t see John once in the last ten years of his life.  At least not that I can recall.  But like most we were able to reconnect and stay in touch through social media.  And for that I will be eternally thankful.  When I think back on John I, obviously, have regrets about losing contact with him.  But my memories of him are all positive – every single one of them.  John never once picked on me, bullied me, or made me feel bad about myself.  Maybe that’s setting the bar low, but the truth is I can’t say that about every cousin I have.  I can say without even the slightest tinge of hyperbole that John was the most charismatic person I’ve ever known.  He was the walking talking stereotype of “guys wanted to be him, and girls wanted to be with him.”  Maybe he was arrogant behind closed doors.  Maybe I’m seeing my oldest cousin through hero-tinted glasses.  All I can say is that this fat kid with glasses and braces never felt self-conscious around him.  With John, I never felt like I had to keep my guard up in case of incoming insults.   That fat kid with glasses and braces once got invited to the coolest man on the planet’s house for a football game, and even got to ride around with him in his car.  And once I even made him laugh hysterically with an ass joke.  Seriously, that really happened.

Vince and Football: A Love Affair in Jeopary

It was the fall of 1979.  I was 8 years old and I was running down the hall of my uncle’s house.  It was as Sunday, the men were watching football, the women were doing whatever it is women do, and the kids were causing the usual commotion that kids cause.  As I passed the room where the men were watching a Dolphins game, I heard the men erupt into a loud roar followed by a lively debate.  Curious, I peaked in to see what all the fuss was about.  A player had just caught a football, spun around and fell backwards into the end zone and ended up literally sitting on the goal line.  As the men debated if this was indeed a touchdown, one uncle shouted over the others, “His ass was in!  His ass was in!”

I was fascinated by it.  I didn’t understand it, but I liked it.  I liked the camaraderie.  I liked the excitement.  I immediately identified that it was an adult thing, that it was a guy thing.  I sat down on the floor in front of my dad and watched the rest of the game with wide-eyed amazement.  I know it was the Miami Dolphins, but I don’t know who won the game that day.  I don’t even remember if that unique play that drew me in was ruled a touchdown or not.  But I was immediately hooked.

From that point on I watched football each and every Sunday that it was on television, with the only exception being a Sunday in 1990 when I spent the entire day flying in airplanes and running through airports. Other than that, an unbroken streak of complete obsession exists.

But over the past few years something odd has happened.  I can feel my interest starting to wane, and in some ways I feel like I’m “keeping the streak alive” just so I can say that I did.  So, lately I’ve tried to figure out what happened – tried to figure out what could cause this decades long love affair to be in jeopardy.

When I first got married I can remember being at my in-laws’ house on a Sunday afternoon and NASCAR was on TV, not football.  I was just stunned.  Shocked.  I couldn’t fathom that anyone would watch ANYTHING over football, let alone NASCAR.  It was one of those life-altering moments when you realize that not everyone lives the same way that you do. On both sides of my family, if a game was being broadcast, the TV was on and the men were huddled around it.

Just a few years later I found myself switching the channel from football to baseball, hockey, or even, gasp, soccer when the game got too uninteresting.

Is it just a process of aging and the shifting priorities that come with your participation in a different life situation?   A few years back I sacrificed Jaguars tickets to attend the baptism of a friend’s child. Obviously, any decent human being would choose a friend over a football game, but in my younger days I’d have probably done it begrudgingly.  If something similar were to happen today I probably wouldn’t even bat an eye at the prospect of missing a game.  Am I just more mature, or has my opinion of football changed?

Hopefully I have matured, but truthfully I have started to lose interest in football and there are multiple reasons why.

First and foremost, the teams I follow are horrible, so it’s simply not very fun anymore.  I don’t know if this makes me a bad fan, but I just don’t enjoy watching my team lose every week.  In the last NFL season, 2016, my impatience with the Jaguars reached personal milestone levels that led to progressively less time with the game on.  For the first few weeks I would turn the game off in the 4th quarter once the game was already out of hand.  After a few weeks of that, I found myself changing the channel or turning the game off at halftime.  And then by the last half of the season I literally would not turn on the game at all.  Until last season, I had never intentionally missed a Jaguars game, and had almost never turned a game off before the final whistle.  But last year, I just found that I had better things to do.

The college team I follow, Florida Atlantic, has been equally woeful.  My alma mater started playing football in 2001 and has been to only two bowl games (both very low-tier) in their 16 year history.   They have had a winning record only once (one of their bowl seasons they went 6-6) and have gone 3-9 for three seasons in a row.

I can still remember the first time the Owls were on TV.  It was some high-numbered cable channel that I’d never heard of, but, by-God we were on TV just like a real school.  I popped a beer and reveled in the wonder of watching my alma mater on TV.  It was surreal.

Last year the FAU game versus Miami was on national TV.  By halftime I had turned the game off.  In the last game of the year, FAU gave up 77 points to Middle Tennessee, my wife’s alma mater.  Thank goodness she doesn’t follow football.

The flipside of my teams being so bad is the fact that the two teams that have dominated football for the past decade have been so unlikable.  The New England Patriots are led by Bill Belichick, the most unlikable coach of my lifetime and Alabama is coached by the pompous and irritating Nick Saban. They are both extremely unlikable men, and their respective successes only adds to their already overflowing egos.

I’ll probably be accused of simply being jealous over the success of these two dynasties, but that’s simply not true.  I’m not jealous of the success of the Pittsburgh Steelers, the only team with more championship rings than the Patriots.  In fact, I’ve pulled for the Steelers in more than one of their recent Super Bowl appearances.  And I didn’t hate the 49ers who dominated the 80s or the Cowboys who ruled the 90s.  In other words, my hatred of the Patriots is based on their jackass coach, intolerable fans, arrogant prima donna players, and their documented history of cheating.  And Alabama?  I used to own an Alabama T-shirt and I’ve pulled for them in literally hundreds of games. I’ll probably become a genuine fan again once Satan finally retires.  That’s not a typo, I refer to him as Satan.

Another possibility for my waning interest is that the players are just becoming so difficult to identify with or even like in any way.  As fans we always talk about who we like as a player, but liking someone as a person is a vastly different thing.  As a teenager I liked Dan Marino.  I liked him a quarterback and I liked him a guy.   Now he’s a 55 year old television commentator and guess what? I still like him.

Maybe it’s just because I’m older that I can’t identify with these younger players, but I can barely think of any current NFL star that I’d want to have a conversation with or would want in my house.  There are, of course, a few exceptions, but those would be guys at the extreme end of their careers who are closer to my age like Phillip Rivers, Eli Manning, and Drew Brees.

I can say that I like current players Blake Bortles, Allen Robinson, and Allen Hurns, but if I found myself forced into a conversation with any of them I’d just stare blankly into space with absolutely no common interest to draw upon.  And with Hurns’ public anti-police stance in 2014, I would probably walk out of the room when he walked in.

I belong to the generation of Brett Favre and Mark Brunell, and Drew Bledsoe.   They are of my generation and even though we led starkly different lives, we still have some common cultural similarities.  We could identify with the same music, TV shows, and historical events that shaped the years that we grew up in America.  But is that really that important to being a fan of a professional athlete?

I believe it’s not just the age-difference that makes it harder to identify with, or even tolerate, the current crop of NFL prima donnas.  For the most part they are a bunch of spoiled, arrogant, self-obsessed jerks who have no solid sense of reality.  From Ndamukong Suh to Tom Brady to Richard Sherman the NFL seems to have more jerks per-capita than any other subculture in America.  And the advent of social media has made it much easier to know which players suffer from the highest levels of jerkitude (just made that word up).   How often have you just assumed you liked a player only to realize through his comments on social media that you actually can’t stand the guy?  I used to like Colin Kaepernick, for goodness sake.   Maybe in the 80s and 90s the NFL was full of jerks too, but we just didn’t know it because each one of them didn’t have a smartphone in is hand ready to insult you and your personal beliefs.

So here we are two weeks from the start of NFL training camp and one month away from the start of another college football season.  The Jaguars and Owls have new coaches – a seemingly annual event for these two horrible programs I’ve been burdened with.  If the two teams miraculously find success in 2017 will I be reinvigorated in my love for the game that’s literally been a part of my life since I was 8?  And if they continue to remain two of the worst football organizations in America, will my interest fade to the point that my glorious viewership streak is finally broken?  And will I even care if it is?

I truly don’t know.  And I don’t know if it even bothers me if I’m called a fair-weather fan.  Life is hard.   Life is hectic.  Life is challenging.  Professional sports are supposed to be a source of entertainment and a diversion from the toils of everyday life.  But when it ceases to be fun, I question why I’m so loyal to organizations that have no real loyalty to me.

I remember those first few years of football when it was so new and exciting.  I remember how fun it was when I found kids at my elementary school who followed the game also.  I remember playing fantasy football back before the Internet when my buddies and I would huddle around a newspaper and add up the stats with a pencil and paper.  I remember the excitement I felt when I attended the inaugural Jaguars and Owls games (both losses, of course).  I remember the days when just having a team was enough, when just being on TV was enough.   I remember all of these things, and I miss them.

I guess I’ve got that 37-year itch we’re always hearing so much about.  But my mistresses of baseball and hockey aren’t exactly holding my interest anymore either.  Of course, that could be because the Marlins and Lightning aren’t any good either, but I digress.

Greg, I know just how you feel.

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Sibling Building, the MLS Cup, and an Insatiable Desire to Be Liked

Last Saturday as the majority of the sports world sat down to watch the various college football championship games I plopped myself down on my couch to watch the MLS Cup (Major League Soccer’s championship game).  By the time the game had progressed to sudden death penalty-kicks, I was sitting cross-legged in wide-eyed amazement on the floor two feet in front of the screen.  When the game was over and my team had won I was overflowing with excitement and I desperately tried to think of who I could possibly call/text/email. The answer, sadly, was no one.   I know not one human being who would care in any way about the winner of the MLS Cup. 

Sure, I could text a friend and force him to pretend to be interested – I am fortunate enough to have friends willing to do that – but is it really that fun when you have to force someone to pretend that they are interested in your hobbies?

As I moved back to the couch to watch the postgame celebration I thought back to nine months ago when I ordered MLS Live – a viewing package that allows you to watch nearly all of the MLS games through a streaming device like your phone, tablet, or Roku.  I mentioned to a friend that I had signed up for this package and his response was, “That is the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard.”  That’s an exact quote.  I saved the email.  His point was simply that it was inconceivable that anyone would watch soccer of his own free will, let alone PAY FOR IT.

I’ve spent the last nine months wondering where my love of professional soccer originated.  Obviously since I know not one person who likes it, it’s not like I have some great family history or childhood memories of watching soccer on TV.  Dad and I weren’t exactly driving down to Estadio Azteca on weekends to watch our favorite team in my formative years.  So why?  Where did it come from?

It came from nowhere.  It came from me.  It came from a pure love of the game and the enjoyment I get from watching it.  Many sports fans like a game, or a team, because it represents some link to happy childhood memories.  Watching Steelers games with Dad.  Going to a Yankees game with Grandpa.  Whatever, you get the point.  Me and soccer?  I just like it.

But, oh if only soccer were my lone unusual entertainment preference.  I tend to walk the narrow path when it comes to TV shows, books, and music, and just about everything else you can think of.  Think I’m exaggerating?  OK, my favorite TV Show is Inspector Lewis and my favorite musician/songwriter is James McMurtry.  Not exactly mainstream tastes, is it?

I watch Inspector Lewis by myself when everyone else in the house has gone to bed, and I listen to McMurtry on my iPod when I’m alone.  I don’t know anyone who has even heard of this show or this musician, let alone  who likes them.

I don’t, however, want to give the impression that I’m some mysterious loner who marches to the beat of his own drummer and considers himself too good for popular culture.  I read Stephen King (350 million books sold) and I listen to Van Halen (96.5 million albums sold).  So no, I’m exactly the poster boy of the counterculture rebel.

But for the most part, my day-to-day life involves things you’ve never heard of.  And when I want to talk about the MLS Cup, the latest episode of Inspector Lewis, or James McMurtry’s newest song, I find myself having a conversation with the fat face in the mirror.  Sometimes the cat, but I can tell his interest is only half-hearted at best.

So, why is this?  How did this happen?  I am firmly convinced that my “unique” tastes are a direct result of being an only child.  Without the influence of siblings I was left alone to pick and choose what I liked and didn’t like.  I’m a father of three now, and I see this even clearer than before I had kids.  I see my 4-year old asking for Batman toys for Christmas because his older brother is REALLY into Batman.  I didn’t have an older brother influencing my tastes and I didn’t have to share my TV or radio with other kids.  I made up my own mind about what I liked from the time I was old enough to talk.

Now that I’m a 42 year old, I find that my tastes are in line with almost no one I know.  Sometimes it’s frustrating, but I’m not going to pretend that I like The Voice, Duck Dynasty, or Dancing with the Stars just to fit in.  There’s a saying within Catholic culture, “Be in the world, not of it.”  That fits my lifestyle, even if I lived that way long before I went around quoting Catholic culture.

Last March (right about the time I ordered the MLS Live package) I found myself in my back yard with a distant Canadian cousin discussing all of the important things in life.  As the night wore on, and the empty bottles stacked up, he posed the question of the year.  He asked me what had caused me to reach out to try to forge a relationship with my Canadian cousins (himself specifically) over twenty years ago.  And he wanted to know why I had been so committed to keeping those relationships in tact all of these years later.

At the time I mumbled something about staying in touch with my roots, but I’m sure my answer was somewhat incoherent.  Now that I’ve had nine months to ponder it (he probably has no idea that I’ve thought about it daily since he asked it) I finally have an answer.  I was sibling-building.  I was jealous of those who had brothers and sisters, so I was reaching out across national borders to find some fake siblings of my own.

And when I examine my own history with friends and relatives here in America I can see a sad pattern of failed sibling-building emerge.  I have a history of desperately, and often pathetically, trying to find a meaningful relationship with friends and cousins over the years and meeting with failure at every venture.  And quite frankly, I made a damn fool out of myself in the process.

I married well, and I don’t have a history of bad relationships with women, but oh man do I have a history of bad attempts at sibling-building.  There’s a disturbing trend of me latching on to acquaintances and relatives who simply show no desire in being a loyal friend, let alone a fabricated sibling. 

Even now I find myself tempted to interact with people who have treated my poorly in the past.  Maybe that’s not sibling-building as much as it’s an insatiable desire to be liked.  But even if it’s the latter, I still say my history as an only child factors heavily into it.

When I was very young I grew up with a cousin who was seven months older than me.  We saw each other daily in the summers and even when school was in session my mother would babysit him in the afternoons.  We spent holidays together and he went on vacations with us.  When we were really young, Santa Claus would deliver his presents to our house.  He would even come with me and my dad on Father-and-Son campouts with the Florida National Guard.  I can truly say he was as close a thing to having an actual sibling as I’ve ever experienced.

Twenty five years ago this month, shortly after he had just turned 18, he died in a house fire.  It would be melodramatic for me to say I lost my best friend on December 11, 1988, because truthfully we had been drifting apart for many years prior.  He wasn’t a REAL sibling after all, and his life had begun to go in a different direction than mine by the time we were in our early teens.  I lived in a new subdivision with both of my parents, and he was raised by a single mother in a neighborhood that was dangerous and drug-infested even thirty years ago.  The last time I saw him was in the summer of 1988 in a chance encounter at the Aladdin’s Castle game room in Normandy Mall.  The mall, just like Kenny, is long gone now and relegated to a special corner of my memory.

Sometimes when I really allow myself to think about it, the idea of having an actual sibling is kind of creepy.  From my world view there is only one combination of Hale and Sauls, and Vincent be thy name.  I can’t even totally fathom another human being having the same parents as I do.  It seems weird and creepy and maybe even a little bit wrong somehow.

In one of my international sibling-building forays I was lucky enough to stumble upon a kindred spirit.  I was able to manufacture a sibling out of a distant cousin who wound up being someone who to this day knows me better than just about anyone else.  My pretend sibling is female and six or seven years younger than me – honestly not who I would have thought would fill the role.  Now, when I refer to this person as a pretend sibling, you need to understand something: for years I told people I had a sister.  Literally.  I know, that’s pathetic and a sign of a significant emotional instability.   But that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you – I have always REALLY wanted a sibling.

My weird insistence on telling people I had a sister did lead to one funny story.  I was talking to some friends at work in the late 1990’s when the subject of being an only child came up.  One of the participants in this conversation said, “Yeah, they’re WEIRD.  They never learned how to share and they’re just not well adjusted.”  When I told her that I was an only child, and that my sister was of the manufactured variety, she was obviously embarrassed.  And probably a bit concerned for my emotional health.

There’s a concept in product development where the analogy of grenades and missiles is used.  Grenades are thrown hoping they hit something, whereas missiles are guided specifically to a precise target.  When I engaged in sibling-building all those years ago, I was definitely just lobbing grenades.  I sought a sibling-like friendship with neighbors, classmates, first cousins in Jacksonville, and distant cousins in Canada.

My pretend Canadian sister has filled this role for well over 20 years now and I couldn’t be happier about it.  In a very real way, all of those grenades lobbed across the continent are quite embarrassing in hindsight.  I basically made a fool out of myself to people who had their own lives to lead and had no interest in forming this fake siblinghood with me.  But, because I was actually able to find someone who has played an important role in my life – even if I only do get to see her once every few years – it was all worth it.  Would I suffer the humiliation of all of those grenades that never made contact all over again if it meant hitting this one target?  Absolutely.  No hesitation.

As the years, and decades, have rolled past I’ve seen my share of people weave in and out of my life.  Friends that I called brothers have vanished into thin air.  Coworkers that I seemingly have nothing in common with have become lifelong friends.  But I’ve reached a point in my life now where I can finally put an end to the sibling-building.  I am very comfortable with who I am now, and I know that I am blessed mightily with a few good friends who have stood the test of time.  And those few carelessly tossed grenades across the Canadian border have yielded special friendships with some very special cousins – including the aforementioned pretend sister, plus the one who started all of this soul-searching with his simple question in my backyard last March.

Part of the maturation process involves accepting things that you cannot change.  I now accept that I won’t have any REAL siblings.  And I won’t ever be a REAL uncle.  I have also accepted that I can’t do anything to erase the humiliation of those sibling-building grenades that never made contact.  It is what it is, and it’s astoundingly unhealthy to dwell on unfortunate past actions.

Now that I have my own kids it’s kind of like I’ve created my own allies in life.  Heck, some of them even look a little bit like me.  Just this past week one of them paused briefly to glance at the James McMurtry video I was watching on YouTube.  There’s hope after all.

I always like to end with a video, so here's one of my favorite songs of all time - Levelland by James McMurtry.  And while I don't know for sure, I'd be willing to bet this song is about an only child.

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