My Life

It's just past 10pm on a Tuesday, I'm sitting by myself playing Xbox. I've been sitting alone for almost an hour.

You wish this was your life!

A Stunning Feeling

I'm watching the third episode of Civil War 360 and Dennis Haysbert is hosting and he is talking about his great-grandfather being born in North Carolina while his grandfather was born in Louisiana, meaning his great-grandfather was sold in the internal slave trade of the South.

It struck me, there is absolutely no way for me to understand the idea of knowing my ancestors were brought here to be sold as property. To know that they were in shackles, able to be sold at any time the slave owner wanted. Their family split up however was decided. I truly can't fathom what that's like.

I often hear white people say "my family wasn't even in America during slavery, why should I care". This is why, our nation allowed other human beings to be shackled, put on ships in conditions that weren't used for livestock and transported to be sold. Our nation treated a group of people as property based solely on the color of their skin. We have a large portion of our population that looks at their genealogy and has it end at a shipping manifest or bill of sale. There is no way we can understand this, that's why we should care. This is why we need to remember.

Tired

We moved here on December 2nd, five months ago. Apparently in that time my wife has given up. She's no longer trying to get her license for WV, she's not applying for work, she just sits on her tablet reading.

I don't know what to do anymore. She doesn't talk to me, she barely communicates at all. She's pulled away from me completely.

Sigh

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day, or as I like to call it, the day girlfriends and wives decide to give anal another try.

Wow, a Place to Spout Off

So this is it, my second attempt at maintaing a blog. The first one went down in flames, not in the least bit because the community became insular and decided to eat itself (yeah Xanga, I am talking about you).

I want to make it clear, this is my space. Everyone is welcome to comment on whatever they like but I will delete comments if I feel like it, or yell at you (well, LIKE THIS anyway), talk about religion, politics, sex, family and whatever the hell else pops into my head.

I cuss a lot. Sometimes I cuss so much I make up words (douchenozzle is a personal favorite). If it offends you there is the "back" button. If I post pictures you don't like, there is the "back" button. If my political views, religious views (or lack thereof since I am an atheist), views on marriage, raising children, pets or whatever the fuck else offend you then LEAVE!! Seriously. I am 42, you are (most likely) not going to change my mind.

If I think you are stupid, or behaving like it, I won't hesitate to tell you. Deal with it.

Anyway, here I am. For better or worse.

A Life Less Ordinary? Not Really, At Least Not to Me

IYou hear it all the time, "I've had a less than ordinary life" followed by some droll story. Well I am going to try to write about my life and let you, whoever you may be, decide about my life. Personally, I don't find it that weird, but I lived it so what do I know, right?

I will start by saying that I'm really unsure about a lot of dates and details from before I was 11 or 12, I just simply don't remember and never cared that much to ask. A lot of the stories and details have actually come from my wife who learned them from my Mother.

I was born in Huntington, West Virginia in November of 1971. My parents (who were married the previous April, you do the math) didn't live in Huntington or even in West Virginia, they were living in Ohio. I don't know why they were in West Virginia, I was just along for the ride. My birth was (apparently, again, don't really remember) relatively easy, to the point that a "Candy Striper" (hospital volunteer) wound up catching me as she was the only one in the room in a position to help. After the requisite (at the time) couple of days I was released (with my Mom) from the hospital, we left West Virginia and I didn't return until I was 42.

My father was working construction when I was born but I guess that the construction market in Eastern Ohio in 1971-1973 sucked because Dad rejoined the Army (he had served a year in the late 1960's) in 1973 when he found out Mom was pregnant with my younger brother. We were stationed in Fort Hamilton (Brooklyn, New York) when Little Bro was born (August, 1974) but didn't stay long. By September of 1974 we were in Merholz, West Germany.

My Father was stationed in Merholz, he was actually in Gelnhausen, however, there were no openings in the housing on base. As a result we lived "on the economy", which is (was?) the term used when military personnel lived off base, renting a home/apartment from a local. We lived in a red brick multi-story apartment building (weird that I remember that) on top of a hill.

We apparently arrived in early September of 1974, by the end of September things had gone sideways in my life (sort of setting a pattern for the rest of my life). My Father was deployed by the end of September, which was followed soon after when my Mother collapsed. She had an horribly infected kidney, the German hospital she was taken to expected her to die.

In 1974 the U.S. Army did not have the support system in place it did even in the 1980s, let alone today. As a result when my Mother collapsed and my Father was "somewhere" being a soldier my brother and I were left alone. Ok, that's not true, we weren't left alone, we were placed into GERMAN foster care. That's right, we became wards of the German state since the Army would not work with the German authorities to track down my Father in a timely manner.

At the age of 3 (ok, a month short) I was placed with a strange family whose language I did not speak. My brother, at the tender age of 2 months, came with me. I am sure that the family was nice, I can't imagine them not being, they took in two foreign children. Sometime in mid to late October the U.S. Army finally said "Shit, I guess we better this soldier his wife is on death's door and his children are being raised by foreign nationals" and my Father re-appeared. However, he was only back briefly, to try and find out what was going on with his family.

While Mom was busy dying, Dad was busy practicing to make other people die and the U.S. Army was ignoring the situation the German authorities had actually been productive. They had already contacted my maternal grandmother (who couldn't be bothered with her daughter's life, she was busy with her new "country club" husband) and my paternal grandmother (who had a toddler 6 months older than me and couldn't handle two more). At a loss, they proposed the only solution they could to my Father. Because of a lack of a translator the solution wasn't clear so for my 3rd birthday my Father signed adoption papers for the German family to take us in permanently. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!

Amazingly my Mother survived, thanks to the different laws regulating medication use in Germany compared to the U.S. Here doctors would be forced to watch a patient die even if they have a possible cure in testing while in Germany they were allowed to test an experimental antibiotic on her. It turned out that my Mother had a kidney infection severe enough that it developed internal gangrene. She had a kidney removed and the experimental antibiotic saved her from the rot slowly destroying her body. It took more than two months but eventually she was allowed to come home.

Imagine her surprise when she found out that her sons had been adopted by a German family!! HAPPY HOMECOMING!!!!

We were returned to our birth (original?) family right around the holidays at the end of 1974. My brother most likely didn't know the difference but I did. While with the new family my language development significantly changed. I went into September speaking broken English, I came home at the end of December speaking fluent German and knowing very basic English. I also had (and still have) intimacy issues.

From what I have been told I stopped speaking after being returned to my parents. We (literally) didn't even speak the same language. Talk about parents not understanding! The only "person" I would speak to was our cat, Cindy.

Wow, that covers until I was three years old. I think that's enough for part 1.