Alive in the Dead of Winter

Less than 16 hours to go till I do some crazy cold weather camping with many crazy like minded individuals. I loves me some campin'! Not that what I do is called camping by everyone. I drive a '79 VW Westfalia to wherever she leads me, put her in park, and set up camp. I like to think of it as sleeping in a tent with locking doors. Its really not much more than that. Sure, it has some comfortable beds, a sink, a stove, an icebox, and electric hookups, but it's not the 40-ft. behemoth of a traveling house that so many "campers" take up space with at many parks around this wonderful country of ours. It is little. And I like it. It is just right. Let me tell you, it is cold in February. I have seen snow here, and have prayed for a lot of it several times. But as much as I have wanted, it hasn't snowed us in, although there have been some pretty neat ice formations...


This weekend has been a tradition for 10 or more years for VW camping enthusiasts from the southeast region. Started by a club from Marietta, GA called the Peach State Transporters, it has grown from a small handful of folks to a double handful of folks camping at Cloudland Canyon State Park. Not much growth there. That's the way we like it. The campout is not announced on the internet nor are informational fliers sent out. Its just a given that the first full weekend in February is the weekend for the Dead of Winter campout. It grows like this: You tell your friends, they tell their friends, so on and so on. Somehow it still manages to be a small gathering of friends. Friends that are hard core bus camping people. Its the small group of people that like it to stay that way. You can spread the word that we will be there, but don't spread it too far.

Some of the people that show up here are people that I only see at this campout. Friends that I have known for years still show up. Others have fallen by the wayside, but I can always count on several known friends to be here every year. Its nice to see how they change from year to year. One couple I know (Chris and Beth) once sold their VW camper and moved to Dubai, UAE to teach at a university. They went from driving a VW camper to 4-wheel drive vehicles able to drive in sand dunes. A few years ago, they moved back to the states and immediately started the search for another camper. They emailed me and I was able to help them get the Vanagon Westfalia they drive now. It felt good to get them back into their element.

The dude who started it all is Dave Easterwood. He always has the rarest and neatest buses. From a 50's model "Barn Door" bus, to a early 60's Single Cab Pickup, he drives one of them to the campout. The one of his that I like the best is the one pictured below.


Then there are the friends that I take with me. Friends that I see all the time and interact with at least several times a month. Brian and Crystal, Moose, Anthony, just to name a few. These are folks that are in my local VW club, the Scenic City Volks Folks. Moose is my bud (pictured below) and it is not the same campout without him. Below Moose is Brian and Crystal, friends who have shown what good friends they are to me. I love them all.

New friends and old friends. This year I hope to have fun with them all. There's nothing better than to be surrounded by people having a good time, remembering past campouts with old friends, making new memories with new ones, and the companionship that is renewed each and every year. Speaking of new friends, I am taking one with me this year. You ready for a good time? I am. A nice fire, good food and great friends. Let's go!

Heart of Stone?

Why is it when a person is devastated about a failed love relationship, people say their heart is broken? Does the heart develop a crack that slowly spreads, widening and splitting apart until it falls into pieces? Does it instantly shatter into tiny slivers of fleshy shrapnel? If this really happened, wouldn't there be people all over the world keeling over dead as a result of a broken heart? I can see how the heart breaks, poetically. But literally, no.

I know there is pain from a broken heart. It isn't pain such as you get from a broken bone, but it is pain nonetheless. It is more of an ache that won't go away. It is a longing for something that has been lost. It is the feeling of losing love that you won't get back again. The heart and the head have a direct line of communication, I believe. My head sometimes is full of thoughts that make my heart ache; ache with the pain of an unknown future, loss of love, and feelings of rejection. It hurts. Then again, when my brain is full of happy thoughts, my heart has a fluttery feeling of warmth and loving kindness. The ache is gone and in it's place is a feeling that is like a swarm of butterflies trapped inside with flapping wings that flutter up against and tickle the walls of my heart. It is a good feeling.

Can your heart break so many times that no glue or tape can ever hold the pieces together? Can it go so far that no surgeon's stitch can bring the shards into the shape that once resembled a heart? I hope not. My heart hasn't been broken like that I don't think. I once saw it laying on the ground in a thousand pieces, blood pooling around it like caramelized glaze on a trophy dessert, but those pieces have been put back together into a heart-shaped ghost of what it used to be. Although, since that day, I have felt the stitches holding it together pull taut, the twine start to unravel like the safety rope holding up the not-so doomed hero in an action movie. But just like that action hero who grabs onto the side of the cliff just as the rope breaks, the pieces of my heart latch onto each other and pull themselves back into a single organ. It remains whole.

There are ways to make sure that my heart doesn't break again. They are not practical or pretty ways, but they will do the trick. I could build a wall around it, don't let anyone near it, hide it from view, and keep it safe from hurt for years to come. I could put up a fence, one that you can see through, but are unable to climb over or open the locked gate to enter in. I could repel anyone who wants in, keep them away by hiding what my heart really yearns for...it yearns for someone to hold it, to caress it, to love it. I could do all those things. But not only is it not healthy, it is also not any fun. And it also creates a lonely life. No, I would rather have it subject to breakage yet again, rather than hide it or suppress what it desires and needs.

I hope that heartbreak doesn't happen again. I'm sure it will someday. You never know what the future holds. It could be filled with days of love and laughter where my heart feels warm and full of joy, yet strong as a heart of stone, a heart that only the most strongest of hurts could break through. Then there could be days of where it is vulnerable, weak and subject to pain and prone to shatter and scatter the land with shards of my once-again broken heart. But then again, it will most likely be a mixture of the two. I'm going to do what I can to make the future full of the former and less of the latter. I hope hurt stays away.

I really do.

True Blue, Through and Through

Acquaintances come and go, but friends are like diamonds. Forever.

I have had oodles and oodles of acquaintances. Very few true friends. The hard part of it is deciphering between the two. How do you know? Some people you can call your friends, but that's it, all you are doing is saying they are friends. Some people call themselves your friend, but that's their point of view. Just how can you tell them apart? Here's one way: let something happen in your life that is either the most devastating thing ever or is the most joyous occasion to date, and then you will know.

A true friend will be there for you. They will comfort you when you are sad. Even if you don't show that you are sad, they will know. You don't have to ask for a shoulder to cry on. They offer it up willingly. You don't have to wonder who will be there for you in a time of crisis. True friends will be there. If they really know you, they can tell how you are feeling just by looking at you. I have a friend (yes, he is a true friend) who asked me tonight, "Are you okay?" He asks me this every once in a while, and it seems that every time he asks me that, it is when I am trying to hide how I feel. I guess I don't do a good job of it. He sees it every time. I usually answer with an attempt to further hide how I feel, but it doesn't work. I am a bad liar. I can lie, but I never get away with it, so why do I even try?

A true friend keeps in touch with you. Whether it is a phone call, a text message, email, or even coming to see you in person, they try to keep in contact. I am the worst about keeping in touch. I do try, but I guess I need to work at it a lot more. I have several friends that I don't see all the time. They used to be real close to me, but over the years that closeness had been chipped away at for one reason or another. But they still call from time to time. I have one friend who calls just to see how I am doing. No other reason, just a "How are you doing?". I don't see him nearly as much as I used to. But he's just a phone call away.

A true friend can sense a need. I have a hard time asking anybody for anything. I am not willing to ask for a handout. It's not that I am above asking for help, I just don't do it if I think I can do it myself. Deep down, I really believe that receiving charity is for poor people, or those third world children you see on late night infomercials ("You can feed little Haji for just $.10 a day"), not for someone who has had a string of bad luck. Tonight, I went to a restaurant (China Moon...mmm) for my local VW club's monthly meeting. At the cashier's station, I had put my ticket down to get my wallet out to pay for my meal. In line ahead of me was a friend who was paying for her and her boyfriend's meal. No sooner than I had put my ticket on the counter and was reaching for my wallet did she snatch my ticket up and quickly gave it to the cashier, telling her to add it to her bill. She fought off all my objections and payed for it anyway. She must have sensed that I really didn't have the extra money to eat out. She must have sensed that the money needed to go towards gas or anything else except for the luxury of dining out. She was right, but never would have I asked for anyone to pay for my meal. I just don't do that.

I have had friends that have turned out to be just acquaintances after all. Some who I thought would be here when I needed them have gone away. I haven't seen some who I called "friend" in several months. It's not that I haven't tried to keep in touch, I have. One that I shall not name is AWOL. He went through a divorce this past year. I tried to be there for him, but I didn't have much advice, having never had the experience to share. I could only tell him that I am here, anything you need, just ask. I don't know where he is now. Oh, I see him from time to time, usually passing on the road. I call him when I think about it, but I haven't heard from him in quite a while. Maybe he just doesn't think about it...

And then I have had acquaintances that turned out to be real friends. I didn't think we were close at all, but they have been here for me when I needed them...when I never expected them to be.

When times are good, you know who your friends are as well. Say, for instance, you win a large sum of money in the lottery. All of a sudden, everybody is your friend, whether you know them or not. Old acquaintances crawl out of whatever hole they have been hiding in and all of a sudden, they are your best friend. Only your true best friends would have been there all along. They don't disappear in bad times, or suddenly reappear in good times. They love you for who you are, who you have been, and who you will be.

A true friend has one more quality that makes them real. They forgive you when you wrong them. They may not do it immediately. It may take some time. But they do forgive.

Even when you think you know who your friends are, you may not. You just have to figure it out. Most of the time a true friend will give themselves away...make it easy for you to know. Sometimes they do a good job of hiding it. It's up to you to know in your heart the difference between the two.

Here's to all my good friends. And to my acquaintances...here's to you too.

Turn It on, Turn It up, Tune out

"Let there be songs to fill the air." - Lyrics from Ripple by the Grateful Dead

I love music. There is something about it that makes me feel emotional. It doesn't matter what song is playing. If it is a happy one, I feel elated. If it is sad, I start feeling all sad and weepy. If it is an angry one, well, I turn all Mr. Hyde on your ass. There are songs that take me back to places I have been, with memories associated with that certain song. There are some that I don't want to remember, but oh, so many that I do.

I will never forget my first Phish concert. It was at the Tennessee Theatre in Knoxville in the fall of '93 (ok, that I can't remember...was it spring or fall? I think it was fall). A good friend had turned me on to Phish that year by giving me some live recordings of some shows. They put out some great albums, but to hear them live is better than chocolate covered chocolate with a creamy chocolate center. Those first tapes led me to collect more live recordings, from '93-'99. It was awesome to hear them grow musically in that time period.

So, back to my first show. We drove to Knoxville and arrived about an hour before the show began. I had heard of the "lot scene" from others talking about Dead shows. I had never experienced it. Hawkers selling their wares ranging from homemade burritos to homemade T-shirts. Brave souls trying to enlighten others by selling them mind altering substances (sorry dude, already got mine!) and sweet smelling and even sweeter looking buds (sorry dude, already got that too!). Unlucky ones who were doing whatever they could to get just one extra ticket (who's got an extra?). It was an experience that I had never seen before, but was about to launch into 6 years of it, and I didn't even know it at the time...but it was on it's way.

Ok, Phish was in Knoxville. What song do I remember most from this show? Nothing but good 'ol Rocky Top. Also, Linda was into Prince at the time. When they started the first licks to Purple Rain, the smile on her face widened from ear to ear. At the end of the first set, they were playing a song called The Squirming Coil. Near the end of the song, each of the members, one by one, stopped playing, put down instruments, their spotlight faded out, and each one walked off the stage, until only the piano player was left. They did it so that if you weren't watching intently, you didn't even notice them leave. The final refrains from the piano solo still ring in my ears to this day. It was beautiful. That was the beginning of the Phish fanatic phase of my life. Oh, I still like them, I really do. But I can't even remember how many shows I tripped into in that 6 year period. Yep, there sure are a whole lot of them that I can't remember.

There are times when I am listening to a good song, it feels like magic. It doesn't matter what song, there are so many out there, but when it is really good, I get a shiver that runs through my entire body. An ecstatic feeling of utter joy permeates my being, goosebumps crawl over my flesh, and every hair follicle tingles and stands at attention. This happened many times at Phish shows. I usually have my eyes closed, envisioning the story happening within the song, maybe doing a little dance consisting mainly of swinging to and fro, arms doing whatever they want to do, and a perma-grin on my face. It is at times like that when I think that this is what it must feel like to have an out of body experience. I envision myself slowly rising above my body and the thousands of revelers surrounding me, the music muted just a little, maybe even a bit muffled. I look down and see this person who I don't know, but is strangely familiar. It is me. I have my arms outstretched and face towards heaven. On that face is a look of complete jubilation and happiness. All because of a good song. Ok, maybe the acid had a little to do with the joyous feeling, but that wasn't the complete answer. It was the music. I know it was, because it happens even today, and my acid days ended in the late '90's.

Music. I love it all. I'm not going to go into the sad or angry songs. I don't want to be sad or angry. But sometimes it happens. It's inevitable. That's why for a time period (oh, for that past 8 months or so) I didn't want to listen to songs that had lyrics, especially lyrics about love. I really got into some jazz. I've always been into jazz, but during this time, I immersed myself in music that didn't have a story. Well, at least a story that was being told to me. While listening to this music, I can create my own story. I can make it as happy as I want it to be. I can make it be whatever I want it to be. Because it is up to me to make it what it should be, and do whatever it takes to push away unhappy thoughts. I love to be happy. Everyone should love to be happy.

I'm listening to music right now. Time wise, I have 17.2 days worth of music on my computer. There are almost 5,500 songs listed in iTunes. 32.07 gigabytes worth. That's a lot of music. Sure, some of them are doubles, but I don't care. Just put that puppy on shuffle and let it go. Let the emotions rise and fall like kingdoms, like ocean waves, like the breast of a sleeping woman. Let the music take me back to the past, here to the present, and into the future. Close my eyes and dream...

Just let it go.

A Corner of Hope

Sigh. Ho-hum. Too many thoughts going through this brain. And many of those thoughts are dark. Not evil-suicidal-killing rampage dark, but moody-poor-little 'ol me dark. Not the normal happy-go-lucky thoughts that have built a metropolis filled to the top of the tallest skyscraper with feelings of joy and love...those thoughts must have taken a sabbatical.

I miss someone. Immensely.

Dictionary.com says that "miss" has numerous definitions.
1. to fail to hit or strike
2. to fail to encounter, meet, catch, etc.
3. to fail to take advantage of
4. to fail to be present at or for
5. to notice the absence or loss of
6. to regret the absence or loss of
7. to escape or avoid
8. to fail to perceive or understand

Those are just the verb definitions. That's good enough. I'm not talking about "miss" as in failure to hit or strike; failure to meet, or take advantage of. Nor am I talking about failure to be present for, to escape or avoid, nor failure to understand. I am talking about to notice and regret the absence of...

Who do I miss? I have a list. One person is a dear friend of mine who lives in Cleveland, but is in California for MacWorld (for all you Apple users). He is a big man, someone who is good to have in your corner in a fight; one who has my back covered when I need it. He is one of my few best friends. I haven't seen him in a while, so the news he gave me last night was disturbing. He has had some medical issues arise in the past few months. He suffers from psoriasis and has been taking injections for it. I guess a side effect of the injections is a potential for liver damage. He now says that he is probably looking at a liver transplant. It's pretty serious, I would think. It's not like the liver is one of those organs you can do without. It's on the same level as say, your heart, at least the way I see it. I just want "Gerald" to know that I am here for him...love ya, man.

Who else? This person is someone who I met near the end of last year. A wonderful lady, yes indeed. House full of cats; shelves and shelves of books; and oodles and oodles of knickknacks. One who taught me that there is life after loss...there is a reason to go on. One who also taught me that as long as you have a great tiller and three little birds, that's all you need to be on your way to happiness. You know who you are...I do miss you.

Could there be more? Oh, yes. I miss another person. A friend made a few years ago...whom I lost contact with...and just recently found again. A friend who showed me that smoked oysters from a can are actually not that bad. And that Scrat (from Ice Age) is super silly. A multi-faceted diamond. Why do I miss what has been found? Because visual and physical contact has been suspended temporarily for reasons I shall not mention. Things happening too fast; feelings of fear of being hurt arise and yield signs get erected. I don't think I saw stop signs...those things scare the hell out of me. Communication is not entirely cut off, but I have lost the use of my senses used in close contact communication...touch, sight, smell, taste, hearing. I miss using them. But that's where we are and I wait until I can use them again. Soon I will. Do you hear me? I miss you.

You know who else I miss? Me. The person who I used to be. I remember a time when I didn't have a care in the world. Love was all around me and I inhaled it's sweet scent deeply, like the scent of fresh goodies in a bakery. Mmmm...delicious. I wouldn't trade my children for anything in the world, but my adulthood responsibilities doubled when they came around. I had more than myself to look after, care about and love. Do I love myself? You bet I do. I have always said that I could never commit suicide...I love myself too much. It's true. I may not love myself as much as I used to, but I still love me enough to keep on keeping on in this cruel, ugly, but mostly beautiful and sensible world.

There are two things in the world that can give you strength to carry on when things get you down. They both begin with the letter H. One of them is happiness. The other is hope. Hope is a wonderful thing, yet at the same time it can be defeating. You can see a brighter future full of magic and wonder with hope. It can lift your spirits when they are dashed upon the rocks of despair. When it is true, it can be a kick-starter for happiness. But it can also fill you with dread and possibly put you right back on those rocks if the hope is unfulfilled.

There is snow on the ground. The kids are sledding, building snow men, making snow angels, and tossing snow balls. It is enough of a happy thing to raise my spirits. They can raise my spirits with their youthful innocence and beauty. I know they can, and they do.

But nevertheless, I do hope. And I do miss.

Oh, to be a loser

Good Lord O' Mercy! It's Monday again. The beginning of my work week and the second to the last day before the paycheck is handed to me. I had a good day at work. I didn't break anything or mess anything up. But of course, my boss says that if you don't mess anything up, you aren't really working.

Life imitates art. They (being the powers that be) started a program at work that COPIES The Biggest Loser from that television channel that it shows on, you know that one? Those who signed up for it have been separated into different 5 person teams. Once a week, we have an on-the-clock pep rally and weigh-in session to update the records for the team. The team that loses the most percentage of weight after 3 months wins a paid day off of work, and the person who loses the most weight wins a one-year membership to The Rush. Pretty good incentives, I must say.

No secrets here...I weighed in at 212 lbs. last week and even after a weekend of pasta and good 'ol southern biscuits and gravy, I weighed in today at...212 lbs. Not bad, I guess for not having even exercised. I hope to lose about 15-20 lbs. in this contest. I have a history of dropping weight when I want to. I also have a history of putting it back on, too. Doing that is a lot easier than dropping it, I tell you what. But when I put my mind to it, I can lose weight like a prostitute losing her panties when the Navy comes to port.

At one point in my life I weighed nearly 250 lbs. It was one summer in, oh, I think it was 1990, I felt like I was carrying a sack of potatoes on my back, and the weight of it pulled me down. I felt down too. But thanks to the Jim Morrison weight loss program, I lost over 70 lbs. that summer. You see, the Jim Morrison program consists of eating this little square piece of paper (or gelatin, or sugar cube, or just a little drop of liquid) and wandering about in the woods or on the Ocoee river bed all day long, every weekend for 3 months. Not only do you wander aimlessly about, laughing at every little thing, seeing colors in the clear water, and talking to backwoods yokels about the finer arts of bear tracking, you also have no appetite! The weight just drops off! I was in the best shape of my life...and I felt like I was improving my mind as well. If not improving it, I was at least opening up doors and windows to new thoughts and ideas that were never open to me before the diet plan. And my artistic abilities became more pronounced during this weight loss program...weird.

I can't do that plan anymore. No way. The last true diet I was on was the South Beach diet. I lost over 40 lbs. in a few months, with 15 lbs. being lost in the first two weeks. It does really work if you stick to it. The first two weeks, you have no sugar, the right kind of carbs, no breads or starches (bye-bye potatoes!), low selection of fruits, good raw veggies (only the right ones now, no sugary veggies like carrots), and just about all the dairy and lean meat you could put down your gullet. I tried to make the first phase last longer to increase the weight loss, but man is not designed to live on meat and cheese alone. You do introduce the forbidden fruits and veggies back into your diet, but when you do the weight loss dramatically decreases, if not stabilizes.

I am going to try to do something different this time. I will do an alternate version of the South Beach diet. I will cut out the breads and sugars. I will increase my intake of the right kind of carbs. I will decrease my dependence on Diet Dr. Pepper (do I have to?), and drink lots and lots of water. One thing that I will add which might improve my chances of losing weight and keeping it off will be exercise. I have a weight machine in my garage that is collecting dust and doing sit-ups and push-ups doesn't cost a thing. I do have a membership to the Y, but getting there is more like a chore than trying to do this at home. But they do have better equipment, and treadmills to boot. Hmmm...I don't know. Either way, I'm going to exercise. Even if it is shifting my weight from one foot to the other while at work, I'm going to exercise. No doubt about it. I want that paid day off of work. What better incentive could there be...well, I guess besides improving my health?

But a paid day off? Hell, yeah. I'm game.

What I want is what I want...

"I never know what's going on". - Patrick Star

In the dark. Clueless. Grasping at straws. Sometimes I feel like that. It just seems that I have been feeling like that a lot lately. A whole lot more than I want to. I always thought I knew what I wanted. I'm not talking about what I want in life...what I want in life is always changing like the sand dunes of the Sahara, never in the same place, but there's always sand there. I'm talking about what I want. This want is what I want to cherish forever.

I've messed up a lot in the past year. I've gone from happy house husband to clueless soon-to-be divorced back-in-the-workforce man in the span of about eight months. Talk about a shock to the system. I have hurt more people this past year than I care to think about. Unintentional hurt, but hurt nonetheless. If I could go back and redo the past four years, there are lots of things that I would do different. I would definitely try to recognize my wants and strive to get them.

Let's see, first I would still become a stay-at-home dad. Never in my life have I felt more involved with the hands-on raising of my children than when I was in that position. Nothing is better than to have control over how your children are raised, from the good days filled with enjoyable moments to the bad ones filled to the brim with grumpy, back talking youngsters who don't listen to a word I say. What I would change about it is the way that I just let the days go by without deeper interaction with my family. I did spend all day with my kids, but I didn't fill them with memory making moments; I didn't work on teaching my kids more respect; I didn't try harder to teach them as a teacher who is genuinely interested in their intellectual growth would do. I regret that deeply.

I suppose another thing I would change would be my relationship with Linda, the woman who I fell in love with, married and had two beautiful children with. I believe that I let time slip by, watching it nonchalantly grow smaller and smaller in the rear view mirror of my life without noticing things that would make the journey more enjoyable and easier. Time that I could have spent deepening my relationship with her was wasted doing things that I thought was bringing us closer together, but in reality was building the biggest wall of my life between us. Things that I thought we were both enjoying turned out to be just things that I enjoyed, not thinking that maybe, just maybe she didn't enjoy them like I did. I took her silent assents as joyous agreements. I was wrong. Oh, so wrong.

Wants. In the past few months I have messed up again in trying to get what I want. I developed new friendships, and watched some crumble to pieces. I regret things that I have done in the name of what I wanted. Not all things, but most things. I never meant to hurt anyone, or make them believe one thing (which I believed in myself) while ending up going another direction. I do believe that in order to make others happy, you first must make yourself happy. Doing what is best for yourself is a basis of making yourself happy. You can't be happy if you don't follow what you believe is best for your own mind and body...and most importantly, what is best for your heart. Others may get hurt in the process, and this is an unintentional consequence, but you have to hope that the hurt isn't so strong that it destroys good friendships or good people's spirits. Sometimes it's unavoidable, as I have found out.

I am in a position right now where I know what I want, but I am clueless about how to go about getting it and retaining it. I want this "want" to happen so bad, and I do believe that it is happening, but I still have doubts. Not doubts about what I want, but doubts about what it is. I need to make sure that this want is not just something that I have been missing and want to have again, or if this want is a new want that I want because of what it is. I really believe that it is the latter. I also know that this want is not a replacement of an old want. That could never happen. Many hours of self reflection and prayer have gone into this new want. I have feelings that I recognize as new ones, and they are new because the want is new. In the rush to get what I want, I may have gone too fast. Slow and easy is the way to get things that you want. This I do believe. Time to become the turtle.

I want. Of that there is no question. I just hope that what I want wants my wants as well.

A Pox on Triskaidekaphobia

A little late here, but Happy friggin' New Year. Good riddance to the old one. 2007? The year of the death, burial, and rebirth of love. The year of pain and the end of one life as I knew it. The year of surprise. If I would really look at the whole year as a whole and count all the good things against the bad ones, I'm not really sure it would even out. For the better part of this year, I have made very fond memories camping in both freezing temperatures and in A/C enhanced summer heat, going to numerous VW shows, and growth enhancing time spent with my children, the trip to Florida and Disney World, and new friends made along the way. But if I was to put the good memories and what I would call the "super incident" on a set of scales, the "super incident" would just about tip the scales so hard, the good memories would go flying toward the castle wall like a flaming petard from a catapult. I call 2007 "The year of lucky number 13" for me.

I have always given the number 13 the benefit of the doubt. It seemed to me that it had been getting a bad rap all these years. Being associated with bad luck, omens, demons, and whatever else scared, small-minded humans can dream up. It can't help that it is the number between the perfect 12 and ordinary 14. It didn't choose to be an unlucky number. I pick it when I play the lottery. I secretly leap for joy when I end up being the 13th person in line. A baker's dozen doesn't sound so bad to me...you get to eat one and leave the honest dozen behind. At 13, you are no longer just a child, you are now a teenager. There were 13 people sitting at the table at the Last Supper (Judas Iscariot is considered the 13th, though...oops). King Arthur had 12 knights, bringing the number at the Round Table to 13. There are 13 main constellations in relation to our sun. There were 13 original colonies here in the "New World". The American flag has 13 horizontal stripes. 13 is the atomic number of aluminum, which without, we wouldn't have lovely aluminum siding or Diet Dr. Pepper 12-packs in a convenient fridge pack.

Perhaps the reason 13 has become such a bane in not only our society, but in societies around the globe is fear. Supposedly, the Knights Templar were arrested and executed on Friday the 13th, 1307. Although somewhat inaccurately, it has been highly regarded that this is the reason that Friday the 13th is considered unlucky. In Tarot decks, the 13th card of the Major Arcana is Death, while not always taken literally, it perhaps gave 13 some more credibility in being an unlucky number. Most of this fear of the number 13 originated in the Roman age. Way before that, though, the Egyptians had a superstition of the number 13, although not in a negative light. They believed that there were 12 steps on the ladder to eternal life and to take the 13th step would be going through death and stepping into eternal life.

You think the above stuff just came out of my head? Thank the Good Lord for giving us the internet...great references there, I tell you. But anyway, I'll leave the reasonings behind the superstition to those who really care. I just think that the number itself has no significance, even though there are those who really think that it does. For me, the number 13 has a meaning all it's own. This is where I have my only negative feeling for the number...my marriage to my wife, the mother of my children, ended after 13 years. That's it. I don't believe there are negative connotations associated with a mere number. Just because my marriage ended in it's 13th year, I still can't bring myself to be afraid of or have a superstitious feeling towards it. After all, it's just a number. Maybe I can look at it this way: After 13 years of marriage, a new beginning arises. A new life emerges from the wreckage of the old one. It is the heralding of the age of a new me, a person reborn. I can look at the number in a new light, and still it is not in a negative way.

Goodbye 2007. I hope you have a good retirement. Thanks for all the good memories as well as the bad. I appreciate the way you flipped my life upside down and for filling it full of mistake after mistake. And thanks a lot for making me doubt one of my favorite numbers. You threw in a mustard seed sized bit of doubt, but you know what? I still like 13. I really do. I even have new reasons to like it. Here's to those reasons!