A note to the Cincinnati Reds

Okay now I admit I am no sports writer, but i just had to come out of blogging retirement to comment on What an amazing job the Reds have done this season. For years baseball fans like me have been starving for a season like this. At first some of us didn't want to believe it, didn't want to get our hopes up only to see them lost before our eyes. But as the end of the season drew near and the Reds stayed on top and the lead over the Cardinals began to grow, some of the excitement we have all been feeling slowly seeped out. The conversations at the sports bars began to discuss who our possible post game match ups could be, excited texts between those at the game and those stuck at work began flying with increasing frequency, every television airing the game seemed to turn itself up just a smidgen, and all of Cincinnati waited with baited breath as Jay Bruce stepped up to the plate Tuesday night. Then something happened we haven't seen in fifteen years, the Reds have made it to the playoffs. At that moment it was all worth it, the whole season came flooding back to me in a tidal wave of memories. This moment, the moment when the ball hit by Jay Bruce rocketed over the wall, that moment will forever be etched in my memory. At that second i knew it had all been worth it, the standing in line for tickets, the cold and rainy game that i had stubbornly stayed in my seat while those around me headed for shelter, the overwhelming heat of that day game that drenched my well worn jersey. It had all been for this one moment, this tiny fraction of a minute. From a humble bartender to every member of the Reds team, and staff i just want to say thanks, thanks for a great season, thanks for a memory. To all those fans that endured, that stayed till the games were over, that cheered at that batter in the bottom of the ninth, that made signs, that skipped work to sneak off to the games, thank you as well. As long as I'm around the Reds will always be on the TV's at our bar.

P.S. I really meant to come down early one day and have Jonny sign this for me. Well maybe next season.

To DMS wherever you are...Thanks

This as you may have already guessed is a two Piso note from the Philippines.




Altogether not really amazing on its own, the story of how it came into my possession is what I can only compare to divine intervention with a little blind luck thrown in for good measure.




I like so many other young American boys had the amazingly brilliant idea of joining the Navy. Now to be completly honest with you, school was never really my cup of tea. My father had been in the Navy, as had my sister, and numerous other distant relations that i did not know. So after graduating high school but what can only be considered the skin of my teeth, I was off to boot camp. I want to make it clear before we go any further that I joined the Navy with full enthusiasm and it was something that I wanted do to and to this day still believe it was a great choice. It was during my time in the Navy that I was stationed aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise.

And like all Navy ships do we went out to sea...for seven months. It was only supposed to be six, but there just happened to be a little hitch in that plan, "Operation Enduring Freedom". It was during this time out to sea that a few of my shipmates and I were chosen to help clean out our berthing (for those of you who are nautically challenged, thats the place we slept). It would be a good idea for me to back track a bit here so that you can really grasp how interesting this story is. The Enterprise is now stationed in Norfolk Va, however years before it was stationed on the west coast. Just give me some time and you will see why that's important. During our time out the majority of the crew worked for twelve hours on, and than had twelve hours off. By the end of the seven months we were all getting very board, and more than a little anxious to be home with our loved ones. In my case starting the day before I left i had been emailing, and calling a certain young woman who I had become totally infatuated with. ( and yes we could even make phone calls back to the states from out there, it just cost us a dollar a minute). It was a living remake of the Bill Murry Movie, Ground Hogs Day. So Now we come to it, a group of us in the berthing. Not a single one of thinking about what we were really doing; instead we had our minds on things like a warm hot dog at the ball game, seeing our families, having a day off. No one was talking, we didn't need to. We had said everything that we could have ever wanted to say to each other over the last six months. Instead we all stood in silence, staring of into space. The silence hung in the thick hot air full of thoughts. It was as if you could reach out and feel the thoughts of the guy next to you. We wanted to go home. In my work induced trance of all that i missed, I was slowly wiping out the inside of a foot locker. As i was wiping, I came to a small lip on the inside of the locker, and was pulled out of my trance as my fingers caught hold of something that didn't belong there. It was just sitting on the lip tucked away out of sight. It was a roll of tightly bound notes, much like the one above. On every single note this was written.

CVN-65 is the hull number for the Enterprise. DMS would have been someones' initials, and the last part, FEB 27 83 is of course the date. That would mean that those rolled up notes had been sitting there untouched since 1983, when the ship was stationed on the west coast and would have made trips to the Philippines. On a ship of five thousand people this small thing had been undisturbed for almost twenty years until i blindly found it. I called the others over to see what I had stumbled across, they too felt an instant connection to that brother sailor who had been in our shoes. Who ever it had been must have meant to take the money, or to spend it and had simply forgot it was ever there. It was an odd feeling, almost like that old sailor had secretly been watching over us and all the others since. We each took one of the bills and went back to cleaning. later when no one was watching i took the remaining bills neatly rolled them back up, put the rubber band back on and gently placed it back where I had found it. Those bills had sat there for years and would continue to sit there long after I was gone, Forever a reminder that DMS had been there.

The One Limb You can Never Lose.

I have a problem, i Have a secret invisible limb permanently attached to me. If this was something abnormal growth, maybe i could just go to the doctor and have it removed. Not only is it invisible, but it is intangible as well. I encounter hundreds of people throughout the week, no one sees it, no one feels it, no one but me is even aware that it exist. Survivors of horrible accidents report that even after they have lost a limb, sometimes they feel like it is still there, an itch on a unscratchable non-existing limb (A worse fate i can not imagine) . Yet all the limbs i was born with are intact. In fact over the course of my life i seem to have grown a new one, and it shows no sign of slowing down. This new appendage is my past. Despite my best efforts to remove it, it has held firm. No matter where you go, how far you go, what you do, or what you believe, our past is with us until we are no longer with this place. The good and the bad, the painful, the pitiful, the joyful, it is always with us, somewhere deep in that brain of your threatening to reveal itself no matter what circumstance you currently find yourself in. Every single moment of your life has been recorded and documented first hand. Even the things you don't remember right now are hiding, just waiting for some random event to jog that random memory out into the glorious sunlight of consciousness. This morning I sat drinking my coffee watching the cold winter rain fall on my porch. I suddenly remembered being a young child sitting in my mothers Citation watching the rain drops falling into large puddles outside. I was the only one in the car at the time, and the solitary feeling of the moment mirrored my current one to the most finite degree.
For a moment I pictured myself as a four or five year old boy starting at the forming puddles and placed it juxtapose my current self and a wave of indescribable emotion washed over me. The day before something else made me remember a embarrassing encounter I had with a girl as a young teenager, yet the memory was so strong that I could feel the hot flush of blood on my cheeks as if it had just happened. Why do our memories haunt us so strongly? Remembering that fire is hot, or that you can't breath under water...all very useful. But why so strongly? Do i need to feel the pain of old relationships, to remember the day my step father was thrown in jail, the phone call i got when someone committed suicide. Not all are bad, there was my first kiss, the love i felt for another person, the thrill of my first roller coaster. I'm not sure about the rest of you but even these supposed good memories are tinged with a bit of remorse, and sadness. Sadness of good times gone and never to be seen again. Each precious memory we pull out is unique and special, there will never be another like it ever again. We may try to replicate some once in awhile, but even those are just fabrications of the original.
Some times i feel like Bill Bixbys' character.
No, no not the Hulk, Bill Bixby

At the end of every episode he had to leave the people and friends he just met behind. He was constantly on the run, both from his past and the people looking for him. No matter where he went his past always would catch up with him. Our past is ours, its part of us. Running away from it, trying to hide from it only makes it more emphatic when it does find us. The trick is to learn from it. Keep it with you embrace it. Being ashamed of your past is about as silly as being ashamed of your arm. No matter what it will still be your arm so learning to live with it is the only option. To some the past is a wonderful path full of different adventures, stories, and experiences. To some it is a deep dark and dirty place that they want to hide from everyone around them. I can't say I blame them there are horrible things that happen in this world, once they happen there is nothing we can do to change them. What you do with your past influences your future. Take your past, make it yours. Believe in yourself and know that the past is the past it will never be exactly reproduced. tomorrow is the future that is what we all should be looking forward to with smiles on our faces. The past is set in stone. The future...oh the possibilites the future can bring are as endless as the dark sky above. Don't be haunted by a past you can not change. There will always be a tomorrow.

Frank is more than a metaphore

I'm a bartender, yes that means i sell the devils water in large quantities to anyone and everyone within reach of my bar. Its a job, not the most moral or healthy job, but a job it is none the less. However being a bartender never really gets in the way of my hefty moral code (you can take that any way you like). Naturally this job comes with a few pitfalls, long nights, rude people, and the occasional sob story from half drunk people who have the mistaken impression that i care more about them than I do their tips. Don't get me wrong I have a good amount of regulars who i care a lot about and not just because they pay my rent. There are also a good amount of people who come in that I've never seen before, nor will see again. All that included I do in fact love my job and enjoy it almost every day.
One of my regulars, who for now ill just call Frank, came in several times a week. May not seem like a lot to you, but in fact thats more than i see some of closest friends. Frank like most regulars had his favorite spot at the bar, a beer of choice, and standard tip. Unlike most regulars who would stop in grab a beer or two and head out, Frank stayed. It was not uncommon for Frank to be one of the last out of the bar. It was quit obvious that Frank did indeed have some sort of a drinking problem. How far and how problematic his drinking was I don't know. While at my bar though he was well behaved and stayed fairly quite and never really made a scene. Sometimes he would even bring his young daughter in they would sit and enjoy a meal and talk with some of the other regulars. Frank was very happy to have his daughter with him due to the fact that he only got to see her once every two weeks, the rest of the time I believe she spent with her mother. Frank it seemed was going through a rather tough time. A divorce, a pending legal battle of which i still am unclear of the exact nature. There were a few other things going on that wont get mentioned here, because just stating that he had some issues is enough.
A few weeks ago he came in and to my surprise turned down a beer, instead opting for a cranberry juice. Turns out he was not drinking anymore. Slight conflict for myself here, seeing as my job is to serve alcohol. Yet I was happy for the guy. I wanted to see him pull himself out of his mess and to be there for his daughter and to become the great guy I knew he was. I consulted with a close friend of mine who has a much superior sense morality than I. We came to the conclusion that as a bartender I have a unique position in the community and that I could do a lot of good. When I told him I don't know what to do, he looked at me and said, "I think you know what to do". And so for the past few weeks Have been trying to pry information out of Frank, to get him to open up a little, maybe be a shoulder for him to lean on, or just to be someone he can talk to. I was really starting to feel like i could help him...some how.
Well the other night Frank killed himself. Never in my life have i felt so helpless. Haunted by thoughts of things i could have done or said. I should have done something. So often i talk about right and wrong, what's wrong with our government, the decline of America. If people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, well maybe i should just have my hands tied behind my back. Or maybe I should keep my overly opinionated mouth shut.
I may be the first one to climb onto my high horse and start spouting idealists rhetoric, but the truth is I don't know how many people get a chance to prove that they are a good person, let alone a second, or my case to many to count. Every single time, every chance I've had to prove my "goodness" I have failed. Being a good person is not something you can learn to do. God knows I have tried. I have made some awful decisions in my life, and some were bad enough to make me realize that the things i had done were not things a good person would do. Good people are born not made. Frank had some issues, some people thought Frank was a bad man. To me Frank was just a guy, neither good nor bad, just a guy with some issues to work through. After a lot of thought, I have come to decide that I am a lot like Frank, so are you, and so are we all. No one wants to look at it like that but its true. We like to have bad people so that we can have good people. Frank I'm going to miss you and i will always be sorry that i couldn't have done more for you. But I hope that i can take something from this and better myself and others. Franks' struggle to be good mirrors my own, I may never be a "good" person, but that will never stop me from trying. Remembering Frank, means remembering the fall of man, that no one is perfect and that sometimes just trying something may be enough, and that sometimes failure is just another path to success of another kind.