F - Jayson Ferguson

I feel that I have to give a bit of a disclaimer before I start this post. All month, I have been participating in the A to Z Challenge. Each day I write a post based on a letter of the alphabet and my theme for the month has been people who have deeply impacted my life. It has been fun.

I expect today to be fun as well, but I have two concerns.

1. We have a friend visiting from out of town and we took her to the beach this morning. While there I holed up in a bar and drank many beers.
2. Today's post is about the man I consider to be my best friend and with all the alcohol in my system, I worry that it may be pretty sappy.

Here goes:

Today's post is about a man named Jayson Ferguson. The most arrogant and self-confident person I have ever met in my life.

I met Jayson about 20 years ago. After I was married and had two children, I decided to go to college (not the way I recommend doing it). I went to a Bible college and they had a side class called Spiritual Formation Groups. This wasn't really a class. It was a group of 10 to 12 students of the same year as you that you met with once a week. The time was spent doing a short Bible study and getting to know each other. This was typically your first group of friends since it was a small group setting. The members were expected to be there for each other, share advice, pray for each other and just generally be an encouragement as we all tackled school together.

The school did their best to put people of the same types together, but I had resisted. They had five main groups for each gender.

• Freshman
• Sophomore
• Junior
• Senior
• Non-traditional

They figured people of the same age would have more in common and (today) I agree. Now, technically, I was what you would call a 'non-traditional student'. There were three criteria to get this label. If you were married, had children or were over 30 years old, you were considered to not be one of the traditional students. I met all of those criteria. However, I had worked with youth for years before going to school and still considered myself young at heart. I insisted that I should be placed with the other incoming freshman.

Reluctantly, my advisor allowed this. It took about two weeks for me to realize I had made a big mistake. I may have had the ability to relate to the youth of the day, but they could not really relate to me. As we shared about our lives and the things we struggled with while in school, I was the only one who had children and was married. When I shared, the advice they offered was ridiculous. These guys meant well but had no idea what they were talking about. Our daily struggles were not at all the same.

I transferred to a non-traditional Spiritual Formation Group the next semester.

There, I met a whole new bunch of guys. Several of them I still talk to today. Jayson was a part of that group. The first week, I shared that I had been at school for a whole semester and I was a little worried about my wife. I was meeting new people every day in class, but she hadn't really made any friends. Jayson immediately invited us to his house for dinner that weekend to meet his wife. He had the same problem.

That weekend, all of us immediately hit it off. Over the course of the next years in college, we all hung out at each others' houses. We babysat each others' kids. We picked each other up from work when needed (poor college students). We went on double dates. We all got along great. I have hundreds of pictures of our children playing together.

Jayson and I had a similar sense of humor and loved to play practical jokes on people. We often sacrificed an entire night of sleep to sabotage the cars of our professors so they could not make it to class or bricked their office doors shut. In the summer, we got a group of other non-traditional students together to play Lazer Tag on the campus when there were no other students there. It was a great few years.

When I left school and moved to Puerto Rico, Jayson was one of the few college friends who kept in touch. Years later, after I had gotten divorced, my daughter and I moved to the same town as Jayson and Ellen (his wife) because I looked for a job in their area. It was great to be around my old friend again. While there, my daughter started dating his son.

Our careers eventually took us in different directions again, but years later I was remarried and we went to go spend a week with them in Florida. The bond was still there. It was a great week.

Today, we are twelve time zones apart but I still consider Jayson to be my best friend. We talk about once a month to stay caught up and look forward to the day when we can get together and cause a little trouble again.

Each of these A to Z  Challenge posts has been about someone who I feel has impacted my life and Jayson is one of those people. Jayson is the man who has reminded me many times when I am concerned about the way something I have done is perceived, "The lion never concerns himself with the opinion of the sheep." Jayson does not waste his time wondering about what other people think of him. He advises that as long as you are not hurting other people, then just let you be you. I try to remember that every day.

He and I were part of a search party in college looking for another friend who had disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Digging through drainage ditches at 3 a.m. and walking cornfields looking for a body leads to a lot of deep conversations and reflection about what being a friend means.

I got into some legal trouble while in college and Jayson immediately stood up to go confront my accusers and defend my character. We have each lent each other money in tough times and listened to each other when the other was going through a rough patch. He has been a true friend.

The plan for years has been to retire in the same town so we can make life difficult for our neighbors. That is still years away but I am really looking forward to it.

Jayson, I have to say "I love you, man."

I had to add the man onto the end. Otherwise, it sounds gay.

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This month, I am participating in the A to Z Challenge. Each day this month, people around the world are writing blog posts and working their way through the alphabet. Each person decides their own personal theme. I am writing about people who have affected my life.

E - ESL at John Wesley

For those of you who may not know, I live in Vietnam. Before coming to Vietnam, I spent two years in Beijing, China. I have lived in these countries because of my job. I teach English to non-English-speaking people. I actually have a Master's Degree in TESOL.

Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages

I have done a lot with this degree, but it didn't start out that way.

Working on the degree, I obviously had a lot of classes to take and papers to write. However, the most challenging part was getting my practicum hours accomplished. I had to complete 120 hours of instruction myself before getting the actual degree.

Unfortunately, I lived in a small town that didn't have many opportunities for me to be able to teach English. I checked around everywhere and could not find anything. The closest I came was the local high school. They had a 16-year-old boy who had recently moved there from India. He spoke a regional Indian dialect and had no knowledge of English at all. I went to the school and offered my services to teach the boy English since no one there was qualified in this type of education. They thanked me profusely and said they had been worried about what they were going to do with the boy. However, the background checks and legal hoops required to allow me to go through the school were quite extensive and the school really drug its feet on getting things done on their end.

I eventually moved to Indianapolis to have more opportunities. I even found an apartment in the middle of their unofficial Mexican district. This part of the city had so many Spanish-speaking immigrants that many of the street signs were in Spanish rather than English.  I figured this would be the perfect place to find what I needed.

The day after I unpacked I walked into a community center to see if they knew any place where a person could go to learn English. A woman there told me "I think the church up the road used to do something like that." So I headed up there to check it out.

I pulled into the parking lot at John Wesley Free Methodist Church and stepped inside. I met the Associate Pastor and explained to him what I was looking for. He broke into a huge smile and invited me to sit down so he could explain their English Outreach program.

They taught English once a week right there in the church. Every Wednesday night and the next session of classes would be starting in only two weeks. He was thrilled to see me because they were still a few teachers short. He gave me the books they would be teaching out of and asked me to come back the next week to help with the registration of students.

I was thrilled to have found a place to meet my hours so soon, but I knew it would not be enough. Teaching a two-hour class once a week would not add up very quickly. I contacted my academic advisor to let her know that I had finally found a place to teach but would need to find another also. She told me that preparation time counted as well as teaching. Awesome. That would add a bit more time, but I would still need more.

After two weeks of teaching, I realized there was a major problem with the church's entire English-teaching system. The church had six different classes being offered at three different English proficiency levels. There were one or two teachers in each class, but every teacher was just a well-meaning volunteer who had no actual idea of how to teach language acquisition. Plus, the book that was provided was basically just a nice picture dictionary. It was not a textbook and offered no guidance for a classroom setting.

This meant that there was no lesson structure provided. Each teacher just did the best they could from the book. For myself, I was writing up complete lesson plans for each week. Soon it was discovered that all of the teachers could use a lesson plan. Over the course of the next month, this program was basically turned over to me and I redesigned the entire thing. I put together lesson plans, worksheets, computer files, and instructional materials for each of the age groups and proficiency levels while also convincing the church to change to a different book for the classroom. I also taught a few classes to the teachers of the classes to help them know better how to teach this subject. It was amazing.

What had started as a search for a place to teach evolved into an opportunity to use much more of my education. I was doing program management, curriculum development, language assessments, and teacher training. It was a lot of work, but all this extra work meant that I met the hours needed for my degree very quickly. Plus, it gave me a lot of hands-on experience in a volunteer setting before actually entering into the professional workforce.

ESL is an intimidating field and I was quite nervous about how my career was going to work out. I am so thankful for having landed at John Wesley. They did not pay me for my services. This was a volunteer ministry, but they did thank me publicly several times. They wrote me glowing recommendation letters. They gave me some fantastic experience. And most importantly, they provided me with a safe environment where I could develop my confidence and learn that I really could do this.

So much of the awesome life I live today is due to the opportunity that church gave to me and being willing to take a chance on the stranger who just wandered through their doors one afternoon.

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This month, I am participating in the A to Z Challenge. Each day this month, people around the world are writing blog posts and working their way through the alphabet. Each person decides their own personal theme. I am writing about people who have affected my life.

D - Doug

Growing up I have the convenience of having my first childhood friend living right next door. Of course, it probably more true that my first friend was my friend because he lived right next door.

Until I was about 12 years old, we lived a few miles outside of what was already a very small town, Waltonville, Illinois. For several years, Doug was the only person my age in the area.

He was about 5 months older than me, so we were in the same grade at school. We started kindergarten together. His mother and my mother were friends so we often played together and spent the night at each others house. We even sometimes got off the bus at the other person's house.

It was typical kid stuff. We played outside. We played video games. We jumped on the bed. One time we got in trouble at his house for trying to ride his bean bags down the stairs. It didn't end well. We spent enough time at each other's houses that the other's parent had almost full disciplinary rights. My mom even slapped Doug once. It was an accident. She was aiming for me, but Doug's mom understood.

Occasionally, our family took trips together or one of us would get to tag along when the other family went on a trip. He was my best friend.

Doug (left) and me on the kiddie roller coaster at SIX FLAGS

When we got a little bit older and could play outside of the realm of our parents' constant supervision, we rode our bicycles all over the countryside we lived in. That's when I got to meet the boy that lived just beyond Doug's house. Gene lived about a mile down the road from my house and I hadn't really ventured that far yet, so it was cool to have another friend in the area.

However, about 4^th or 5th-grade things started to change. This friendship had been built out of location and the low density of people in the area. Plus, as a child, a person to play with is a person to play with. But as we started to get older, our personalities and interests began to develop. Doug and Gene were very interested in sports. And I was definitely not leaning that direction. Every time we got together, it usually meant they wanted to play basketball. And I did it for a long time because it was something to do, but sports just really weren't my thing. I wasn't good at it at all, and I really didn't enjoy it.

This change in interests also meant that we started developing different friendships at school. In the very early years, we hung out with each other at school because we already knew each other. After a few years, we started hanging with our own groups of friends. Doug's friends were the future sports stars of our school and my friends were the weirdos and social rejects.

I am not saying that any of this was a bad thing. Doug was always cool with me. We never had any falling out or anything. Our lives just went separate directions. We hung out less and less outside of school And when I moved to another house when I was 12, we were no longer neighbors. That ended the little bit of interaction we still had.

This story is not to lament a friendship that was lost. I do not remember feeling a sense of loss at the time. It was a slow process of us each becoming our own person. By the time we stopped hanging out, it wasn't really even noticed. And I'll bet he would say the same thing. We continued going to the same school all the way through high school. I can't remember a single conversation past our initial childhood interactions.

Looking back on this just reminds me that our life has many seasons. People and circumstances come and go. This is not a bad thing.

A few years ago, I ran into a woman who was very excited to see me. She gave me a big hug and started dropping names about mutual friends (she thought) and I had no idea who she was. It wasn't until I perused her Facebook page (we exchanged info) later that I remembered. She was part of a group of people I met through a work friend years before. We all hung out one summer when I was 16 (30 years ago). It was a great summer and I had a lot of fun, but those people were forgotten once the summer was over.

I have a few friendships that have lasted for decades, but most of the people in my life have come and gone as life changed. Whether it was due to a move or a change in jobs or just a slow drifting apart, most relationships don't last terribly long. They meet the need at the time. And for many, that's just the way it should be.

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This month, I am participating in the A to Z Challenge. Each day this month, people around the world are writing blog posts and working their way through the alphabet. Each person decides their own personal theme. I am writing about people who have affected my life.

C - Crew

As people progress into adulthood, many of them have a time they look back on as being the 'good old days'. For me, it was those first few years after high school. I was no longer a child, but I wasn't really an adult yet. No real responsibilities and a lot of free time, but I have to also give some of the credit to the group of friends I had at the time. We called ourselves "The Crew".

The core members of this group were my brothers and myself, Bob McCormick, Chris Witges, Bill Laur, his brother John, and their cousin Eric Breeze. There were a few others who were temporarily part of the group over the years, but this was the main crew. There was about a three year period when it seemed we spent every waking moment together.

Most of that time was spent in Bill and John's garage. It had a wood-burning stove so we could even stay out there in the winter. We sat out there and talked about life, talked about girls, talked about cars and went through a lot of beer and cigarettes. When we felt like getting a little louder without actually going out to do something, we would go camping. Eric's parents owned a few acres out in the middle of nowhere. It was all forest, but there was a dirt road that could get us back there to a small clearing with a pond. It was a rutted-up, all-dirt road that required a four-wheel drive truck to get back there if there had been any rain in the last week.

None of us were 21 yet, so we would find someone to buy a few cases of beer for us and we would go out there to sit around the fire, drink all the beer and make a lot of noise. No one was close enough to hear us and the road to get there wasn't even on any maps. It was a place where we didn't really worry about police interference of our underage activities.

We would fish, shoot our guns, tell our stories and have the time of our lives. It was awesome.

One of our favorite activities out there was to dare John to do something crazy. If it was winter time, we would ask him to walk across the frozen pond when we knew it wasn't frozen enough to hold his weight. We would dare him to climb a skinny tree and try to get it to lean out over the pond so he could jump in. John was usually willing, but when he wasn't we would pool our money until there was enough to convince him. Once, he climbed to the top of a tall tree (about 30 feet up) and his brother pulled a chainsaw out of his truck and cut the tree down.

When one of us got a girlfriend, there was always the inevitable moment when she would be introduced to the group. Some of them fit right in. Others really didn't like our group dynamic. The ones that didn't fit in never lasted very long. We spent a lot of time together. If they didn't like their boyfriend's friends then they'd probably tire of him quickly anyway.

On Sundays, we would invite people to play football with us in the open yard beside the local grade school. Over the summer, this game grew from the small game of a dozen people to almost 40 playing every week. One of the draws to this game was how much we prided ourselves in its violence. This was full-contact tackle football and pads were not allowed in order to level the playing field for everyone. People wearing pads tended to hurt the people who didn't.

Banning pads was to prevent unnecessary injuries, but that didn't mean safety was a big concern to us. One of the out-of-bounds lines was a chain link fence. If you touched the fence, you were out of the playing area. However, that also meant that it was almost on the playing field. People got knocked into that fence all the time. On one end of the field, the road was the end zone. Tackles near the line on that end of the field often resulted in lost skin.

Being  stupid testosterone-driven teenagers meant we bragged about the injuries. And this brought in more teenagers who wanted to come and show how tough they were as well. There were injuries every week. Sprained ankles, huge bruises, concussions, and tears were a weekly occurrence. Occasionally, someone even broke a bone.

Eventually, we had to stop this weekend tradition. The police showed up to stop our game. After the third person that day had shown up at the emergency room (broken collarbone, broken finger, dislocated shoulder) explaining that they had been injured in a football game, the hospital called the police to investigate. That was the last game we played.

As tends to happen with life, we all grew up. Despite still living so close to each other, we began to start out adult lives. We all got married, started careers and had families. The Crew fell apart. We each ran into each other occasionally, but the group was no more.

No more drunken nights in the garage.
MISSING: Eric Breeze

Since the above photo was taken, we have become a police officer, trauma nurse, business owners, a military contractor, language teacher, arc welder, and a farmer.

In 2015, I was chatting with Eric on Facebook and it was suggested that we should all get together again. That night I put together a group Facebook message and we started hammering out the details. A few months later we all met for the Fourth of July weekend. This reunion included several of the extra people who had come and gone over the years. Only two of the core group were missing.

We had so much fun getting back together to rehash our glory days, we have done it every year since. They even scheduled the weekend last year to coincide with my visit back to the States. A great night.

I know that today I would never survive the nights we used to have. And things could never be like they were again, but I miss those guys. Those were some great years that we can never really go back to.

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This month, I am participating in the A to Z Challenge. Each day this month, people around the world are writing blog posts and working their way through the alphabet. Each person decides their own personal theme. I am writing about people who have affected my life.

B - Bullies

For as long as people have had to interact with each other, there have always been those people who prey on the ones who are weaker than them. And this dynamic will always exist. Bullying is part of life and it will never be eliminated. We can evolve our methods in how we choose to deal with bullying when it occurs and implement measures to prevent it as much as possible, but it will never be eradicated.

Bullying exists in virtually all aspects of life. It is not only on the playground, but it is in the workplace, in families, in churches, in social clubs and many other places. However, the place that gets most of the attention on this subject is the public school system.

I am no stranger to this practice. Throughout most of my school life, I was on the receiving end of bullies getting their jollies by picking on the weak or the different. I wasn't smaller in the physical sense. I was always rather tall for my age and I wasn't without strength. However, I was one of the awkward kids. Not strange or weird, but I just didn't quite fit in the way most of the other kids seemed to. And being one of the outsiders attracts extra attention for some reason.

My earliest memories of being bullied came from the kids who grew up to be the jocks. I didn't think of it as bullying at the time. It was just a near-daily barrage of being harassed or laughed at by the cooler kids. It was jokes at my expense, insults and "Hey, look at Minor" type comments when someone saw me doing anything that might register a laugh.

Today, I recognize that I was not a weird little kid. I had just gotten tagged as one of the "not cool" ones and it is hard to shake your reputation when you go to a small school. I was in the 5^th grade when I noticed how this worked. It was right at the end of the day when one of the students was up at the teacher's desk and suddenly exclaimed, "Brett has his shirt on inside out." I looked at my shirt and he was right. It was inside out. We had just gotten back from P.E. and had gotten in late from the ball field so had to change quickly to get back to class. Honest mistake. Especially since it was a solid colored t-shirt.

However, the entire class erupted into laughter and everyone was pointing at me. I couldn't crawl under my desk because that would only make it worse, but I really wanted to. I grinned acting like I was laughing at myself also and made my way to the closet to grab my jacket and cover my "unforgivable mistake."

I made my way back to my seat and the laughter died down after a few minutes. Soon, I heard someone say, "Greg, what are you doing?" There was a guy in the back of the room who had tried to put his jeans on over his shoes. Remember when I said we had been rushed out of the locker room. He had not been able to get one of his pant legs past his hi-tops and the denim was still caught on the shoe.

Stuff like this happens, but I couldn't help but notice no one was laughing at him. In fact, several girls ran back to help and they were all giggling as they tugged on his pant leg.

We had both experienced a public wardrobe malfunction, but I was the one ridiculed for it. The only difference was, he was one of the cool kids. I was used to being laughed at but hadn't noticed the hypocrisy until that day. I never forgot it.

There were a few guys who picked on me and knocked me around daily, especially in P.E. The locker room was the worst since the teacher was rarely in there and no one ever stepped up to stop someone from being picked on.

I do not want to paint a picture like it was a horrible, miserable experience. Being bullied sucked, but I was a reasonably happy kid. I was being battered. I took hits now and then, but it was mostly intimidation and ridicule. That doesn't make it right, I just want to paint an accurate picture.

These patterns continued on into high school. I was one of the nerds and I knew it. I had accepted it and that really just made things worse. I had developed a bit of a superiority complex. I was smarter than everyone else and I knew it. Whether this was true or not didn't matter. I certainly believed it at the time.

Whether I was smarter was never proven, but it was true that I had a quick wit and a sharp tongue. This meant that as soon as anyone started anything with me, I had a quick retort. And it was usually a good one. I loved the fact that I could get people to laugh at my bullies instead of laughing at me. If a comment was lobbed at me, I shot back quickly and the crowd around us burst out laughing at the embarrassment I had just delivered to my aggressor.

I loved knowing that I had won intellectually, but it also greatly increased the probability of this becoming a physical altercation. I took more punches in high school than I ever did in junior high and I totally believe it was because I couldn't keep my mouth shut. I am not shifting blame here. Bullies are bullies and they were the ones in the wrong, but there were many times I could have avoided the beating by taking a different approach.

By the time I graduated high school, I had morphed out of being an outsider. I was not one of the popular kids, but I wasn't at the bottom of the social ladder anymore. My last two years of high school were actually pretty cool and I almost never got picked on. Or maybe I just learned how to deal with it better.

Those same bullying tactics would never work on me today. It's much more difficult to get under my skin these days. I can more easily laugh at myself. I can also laugh off situations that at one time would have been socially traumatizing.

Plus, all those years of dealing with difficult people gave me the skill set to have a pretty successful run in sales as an adult. I used to ask management to send the angry and mean customers to me. I just had a way with the customers who wanted to throw their weight around.

Once again, bullies are bullies. I am not letting them off the hook for their behavior, but in many situations, they only have so much power over their victims because the victim allows it. Most (not all) bullying can be easily walked away from or shaken off. Quite often, if a bully is not getting the desired effect of intimidation or humiliation that he is aiming for, he will move onto another person who might provide him with the intended response. However, this is often difficult for a child. These are skills that are learned (by some of us) as we grow older.

My posts this month are about people I feel have affected my life and I believe that my bullies had a definite impact. I learned a lot from them. Yes, being bullied sucked but it influenced how I interact with people and how I handle difficult situations. It also affected the way I view the world and the people in it. I wouldn't wish to go through it again, but I really do believe that the experience when coupled with time and maturity helped develop me into a stronger person

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This month, I am participating in the A to Z Challenge. Each day this month, people around the world are writing blog posts and working their way through the alphabet. Each person decides their own personal theme. I am writing about people who have affected my life.

A - Amanda

I have one person in my life who I consider to be a life-long friend. I have several friends who I have known for many years, but only one who I met in childhood and stayed close to well into my adult life. Her name is Amanda Dycus. But my brothers and I always called her Mandy.

Mandy was three years old when the Dycus family moved in next door. I was eight. My two brothers were five and three. My youngest brother Trevor and Mandy were the same age. Her father Eddie went to the same high school as my father and currently worked in the same coal mine, so they were already friends. Our mothers quickly became friends. Over the next few years, they were on a bowling league together, belonged to a couple of different women's clubs and eventually worked at the same place. Because of the close relationship of our parents, she wasn't just the girl next door. Our families spent a lot of time together. She was one of my playmates despite being so much younger.

The first time I met her was when we had them to our house for dinner. While the adults talked, all of us kids went down to the basement to play. Now…I don't really remember what happened next, but the events of that night in the basement almost stopped our future family friendship from ever getting beyond that first dinner. It is still talked about between our families today.

Apparently, the next morning Mandy had a horrible rash all the way around her neck. It was a large scab that was sensitive to the touch. After her mother, Shirley asked Mandy a bunch of questions the got a story about having a rope tied around her neck. Mandy was only three, so she couldn't tell a story very well. Shirley calls our house to confront my mother and find out just why her boys tried to hang her daughter in our basement. After questioning us, it was discovered that we had all been playing some sort of horse game and pulling each other around the room. The rash was rope burn.

Not a smart game to play, but we were all kids and most importantly there was no devious intent. Shirley eventually got over it and we were all allowed to play together again, but could not use ropes anymore.

Mandy's house was close enough, we did not have to seek permission to go. Especially since it was on the same side of the road. No traffic to worry our parents. Our horse pasture separated our houses, so we only had to cross the pasture and hop a fence to get to her house.

About three years after the Dycus's became our neighbors, Eddie (Mandy's father) was killed in the coal mine. Losing a family member is devastating, but this event for me and my brothers meant that our access to the neighbor's house was temporarily restricted. We didn't need to be running in and out of their house while the family was grieving. At least, not for a little while.

A few days later, my youngest brother Trevor (5 or 6 y/o at the time) was hanging out by the horse pasture fence that bordered Mandy's yard. Mandy was soon standing on the other side of the fence. They hadn't been able to play together for the last few days. Choking up, she confided in Trevor that her dad had died. Trevor reached out to take her hand and told her, "I can share my dad with you."

Mandy has shared that story many times over the years. Thirty years later, she still choked up when she told it.

Eventually, we had full access to each other's houses again. Sometimes there was trouble because we came from a house of all boys and Mandy only had her little sister. We got grounded from going over there for a few weeks after Mandy's sister Ellen wet her pants because she tried to pee standing up like Trevor does.

Since Kyle (my other brother) and I were the oldest, we were the unofficial leaders of our little group. Mandy and Ellen and Trevor followed along with whatever we wanted to do. And we wanted to do country boy stuff. Sometimes, we would disappear into the woods all day and come back covered in mud, scratched skin and torn clothing. We played rough and tumble games as boys do. We climbed in the roof of the house, wrestled with the dogs, and jumped off of the top of the garage. They were right there for all of it.

As we all grew up, we stayed tight friends. Occasionally, me or one of my brothers would take one of the girls to a school dance or other event. It was never romantic, always platonic. Although, there was one summer when we all played a game of "you show me yours and I'll show you mine."

When I was 12 years old, my parents bought my grandmother's house and we moved into it. It was five miles away, but we still stayed close. We went to each other's houses whenever we could. The friendship never faded even as we went into adulthood. Mandy (who had been accepted to Julliard) not only played the piano at my wedding, she even wrote an original song to sing.

When I had been talking to my future wife (online only) and trying to convince her to actually meet me in person, I asked for help on my blog in the post Evidence That I Am Harmless. I asked people who knew me personally to vouch for my character. Many people stepped up to say something, but Mandy wrote this:

She loves me

Of course, as the years went on an everyone started families and moved to other cities, we could not see each other as often but we never lost contact. We were always on each other's Facebook pages and giving our two cents on what was going on in each other's lives.

A few years ago, my parents were going to go camping with Shirley and decided to invite all the kids to get together for a cookout. I hadn't seen Mandy or Ellen in a few years and jumped at the chance to go. I drove three hours to see them and introduce Mandy and Ellen to the woman Mandy had helped me meet with her kind words. My wife got to see how much this friendship meant to me and my brothers. We all sat and told stories of the 'good old days' while our parents were shocked at some of the things they were learning about our adventures together. I mean, we are all adults now. What could they do?

Mandy is in the green shirt laughing too hard.

This was a great day. We all agreed that we had to do this more often and made a few tentative plans to make it happen again the following year.

It didn't work that way. A few months later, Mandy got very sick with a deadly blood disorder. I made the trek back to my hometown with my wife and Ellen fought to allow us in to see Mandy. She had been in a coma for a few days before we got there, so she was not conscious. I spoke to her for a few minutes, held her hand and kissed her forehead. I think it's the one time my wife has seen me cry.

That was the last time I saw her.

She died a few weeks later and I hated that I could not get there to see her again for the short time she was out of the coma, but have always been so grateful that we got to have that cookout get together. She will never be forgotten. I love you, Mandy.

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This month, I am participating in the A to Z Challenge. Each day this month, people around the world are writing blog posts and working their way through the alphabet. Each person decides their own personal theme. I am writing about people who have affected my life.

2019 A to Z Theme Reveal

In a few days, I will be starting the A to Z Challenge.  This is the 10^th year of the challenge and I have participated in three of them (2013, 2016, 2018). The basic premise to to write a blog post every day (except Sundays) for the month of April. Each day should correspond with a letter of the alphabet.

Pretty simple, right? Thousands of people all over the world take part in this challenge and the numbers keep growing every year. All of the people participating also sign up on a Master List so we can see who else is writing this month. We can visit each other's blogs and find new online friends as well as discover other writers we enjoy. Today marks the Theme Reveal Day for all participants.

My theme for the month is very personal. Each post will be about a person or group of people who I believe has heavily influenced my life or way of thinking. There will be a few of the obvious posts (siblings, parents, wife, etc.), but I wanted to dig deeper. I already have the 26 posts (and people) selected. A few specific childhood and college friends made the list. I will write about a couple of mentors and one of my high school teachers. Not every post will be positive. I had a bad business partner from whom I learned some life lessons and a crush that did not go the way I would have liked. Good or bad, these will all be stories about how my way of thinking or looking at the world was altered because of my experience.

For the people who I had a positive experience with, I will praise them and show how they influenced me. A few of them probably have no idea how much they affected my adult life. I look forward to sharing these posts with them to let them know.

For the negative experiences (I will  be writing about two), I will refrain from using their real names. Although, I do not intend to speak bad about anyone. It will be more about what I have learned and not what they did. I expect to genuinely search my feelings and get real with these posts and do not plan to seek out the humor as I normally do. I have prided myself on this being a humor blog, but I am not going to push for the laughs in the month of April.

Because I will be talking about real people, I have decided that I will not post the links to Facebook. I generally throw every post I write to Facebook. However, many people who personally know me would be able to figure out the people I am talking about even if I do not name them. Of course, whatever I say will be publicly on my blog, but I will not flirt for a bigger audience among my personal associates.

My intention is not to just tell stories about my life. I want to concentrate on my personal growth using my interations with other people as the springboard. My first post will be on April 1 about a dear childhood friend who died too early.

Go Back Where You Came From

My parents moved to Florida several years ago to satisfy American retirement law.

There are some things to be expected from living in Florida. It is incredibly humid. The rural areas are crawling with mosquitoes and meth-heads. Occasionally, you lose a dog to a hungry alligator.

However, one thing they did not anticipate was the presence of huge freaking snakes.

The Burmese python is one of the five largest species of snakes in the entire world. They are indigenous to Southeast Asia, but somehow they are now breeding like rabbits in the Everglades. Which is ironic since these snakes basically decimated the marsh rabbit population of the area.

They have no natural predators. They can eat basically anything and they multiply pretty quickly while having a 20+ year life span. Plus, they are not easy to locate or track. These snakes are wreaking havoc in the area and there doesn't seem to be a solution in sight.

Plants and animals being introduced to parts of the world where they are not from often causes issues. Sometimes major issues. The Midwest waterways are being destroyed by the Asian carp which showed up a few decades ago. They are voracious eaters who reproduce quickly and have no natural predators in the area. They are choking out many of the local species and actually changing the condition of the water making it unlivable for many other species. This is just one of many examples of how placing living things where they don't belong is never a good idea. Much like how Maroon 5 should have never played the Super Bowl halftime show. Who thought that would be a good idea?

The cane toad was brought intentionally from Central America to Australia to help curb the crop pest population and it was great at keeping bug populations down. However, it also oozes a toxin from its skin. The predators in Central America were immune to this toxin, but the animals in the new habitat of Australia were not. Now there's poison frog goo all over the ground killing the local plants and animals.  And, in my opinion, poison goo is one of the worst kinds of goo.

There are tons of stories of invasive species ruining ecosystems all over the world. In fact, stepping outside your home is a virtual nightmare of foreign monsters everywhere. However, there is one invasive species that seems much more out of place than any of the others.

When the drug kingpin Pablo Escobar was shot dead in 1993, the Colombian government took control of his estate which included a large number of animals from all around the world. They captured and relocated all the animals. Some back to their native lands and some were placed in zoos and animal sanctuaries. However, there were four hippos that were left behind in a pond to fend for themselves. Click here for the story.

Since then, these Columbian cartel hippos have escaped that pond and gotten into the local river and started multiplying. There are now several dozen members to this hippo harem and the local authorities have no idea what to do about it.

I propose a solution. All the hippos should be given full scholarships to Florida State. I believe cocaine-fueled, sex-crazed hippos would fit right in with any of the fraternities there and they would become Florida's problem.

Now if we could just get Piers Morgan and Justin Beiber to go back to where they came from.

Life is Good

Several years ago, I made the fateful decision to combine my gift for teaching with my love for foreign culture and entered into a graduate TESOL program. I started working on my Master's Degree to teach English to speakers of other languages. I had always been fascinated by people from other countries and thought this would be a great way to get to work with them on a regular basis.

This decision led me to move to a bigger city where there would be more opportunities to work with foreigners. Soon after updating my Facebook profile about my intentions (not only for a job, but for school requirements also), I got the attention of someone in China.

After completing my degree, I accepted that job and the adventure began.

Five years ago, the furthest I had ever traveled was Puerto Rico. I had never even needed a passport. In the time since I made the above Facebook post, I have been to Germany, China, Canada, Turkey, Taiwan, Vietnam and Hong Kong. My wife and I have spent the last two and a half years living outside the United States. We currently live on the coast in central Vietnam.

My life is far from perfect, but I love it. This is the happiest I have been in my entire adult life. I love the house we live in. I love that we are in a small coastal town where it never gets cold. I am one of the lucky few in the world who actually loves his job. And I am married to a beautiful, intelligent woman whom I adore. Life is good.

Expressive Elocution

I spent almost two years in Beijing working in a public school teaching English to third, fourth, and fifth graders. I have lots of stories from this experience, but my biggest challenge was trying to promote creative thinking.

I'm not going to get into a lot of detail here, but the Chinese educational philosophy is radically different than American philosophy. One of the areas this is most apparent is in creativity. Chinese schools typically teach their students to learn facts, memorize, and then state them. They will spend hours hammering words over and over again.

Many times upon entering class some excited student would want to perform for me a monologue he had delivered at some competition over the weekend. He would then launch into a speech or recite a poem in perfectly executed English. Afterward, I would ask him about the content of the words he just said and he typically had no opinion and didn't even know what he had said. He had memorized a bunch of sounds and regurgitated them for the judges.

I had no intention of producing English-sounding robots. I wanted to help my students effectively communicate in English.

The problem with communication in this type of environment is that it requires independent thought. This was a foreign concept to the students and it took months to break them free. In the beginning, if I asked the class a question, no one would answer unless there was already a pre-programmed response.

If I showed a picture of a boy walking a dog and asked them what they saw, a few might volunteer that they saw a dog or a boy. The more adventurous ones might even point out that it was a sunny day. However, if I asked where the boy and dog were going, silence fell over the room. I would try to elaborate. Tell me a story. A boy and his dog are out for a walk. Are they going to the park? Are they going to the beach? Is that actually his dog or is it someone else's? I would get nothing because there was not a 'correct' answer that had already been taught to them. They honestly had no idea what was expected of them.

To answer those questions would require some imagination. It would require using the words they already had in their heads and creating a unique sentence formulated on their own. That was not the way they had been taught to learn. They had only been taught to read the script and keep saying it until you pronounced it correctly.

I soon changed my strategy by presenting them with the words I wanted them to use. I used words they already knew but asked them to produce a few sentences using the words I provided.

I had this screen up in the classroom and asked for sentences. It was brutal. No one seemed to understand what I wanted. The few who timidly agreed to give it a shot would say things like, "I have many homework." or "My teacher is tall." or "We had cheese for dinner."

OK. We are getting closer. Can anyone use more than just one word? I have six words here? I called on one of my more outgoing students and prayed he might push this a little further. He stood and stared at the board for a long time. After what seemed like an eternity, he whispered: "I have math homework."

This may be a very simple sentence, but I had been at this for weeks. I exploded with excitement. I jumped and cheered so loud, I scared a couple of students in the front row. I ran over, picked the kid up and introduced him to the class as a genius. HE USED TWO OF THE WORDS IN ONE SENTENCE!

I put him down, told him how great he did and I saw the light bulb go off. He looked at me at said "Teacher, can I do THREE?"

Yes! Give it a try.

"I want to play, but I have math homework."

This time the class joined me in cheering for him. They understood what had just happened and a couple of hands shot up. "TEACHER TEACHER! I can do four."

Let me hear it.

"My Math teacher told me not to sleep. Do homework."

YES! You got it! Good job!

More and more hands flew up as kids decided they wanted to give it a shot. "I can do ALL words" was yelled from the back. I quieted the class and he marched to the front to stare at the screen. He didn't have his story yet, but he had decided he could do it.

He thought for a bit and started slowly. "My math teacher gave me homework so I could not play. After dinner, I went to sleep."

HE USED EVERY WORD!!! YAY!!!

I put him on my shoulders and we ran around to high five everyone in class. After the celebration, I flipped to a new slide with six new words and the students actually fought over who would get to make a new sentence first. It became their new favorite game to see who could come up with the silliest story. We were soon even able to switch back to the default pictures. Look at the picture and tell me a story. And once these kids creative sides were released, they went nuts with it. We were soon able to recycle the word slides and start making new sentences.

A month later I had turned my classes into improv groups. I would bring kids up and give them scenarios on slips of paper they had to improvise. They did a mock radio show, gave out awards for silly talents in class, pretended to work in restaurants and convenience stores, and made up silly songs. The purpose was not to be funny (although that happened a lot). It was to create their own independent thoughts rather than just read a script out of a book. Although, the class auditors (officials who observed my classes) never understood what I was doing.

This is where we got to eventually, but first, it was months of just staring at students who were waiting for me to tell them what to say. I was so happy to get past that stage.

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The words in blue print were the ten words created by a random word generator. I had to incorporate them all into this post. Just a little challenge I added for myself.

Colors of Purpose

A long, long time ago I was eighteen years old. Wow! That was 30 years ago. But my aging body is not the point of this post. I had graduated high school the year before and just started dating a girl who was still trapped in there.

On Valentine's Day, I dropped my brothers off at school and noticed that one of the school clubs was selling roses to be delivered to people in classes that day. I hopped out of my car and looked over their choices. They had several kinds of flowers, but it was mostly roses. After all, it was Valentine's Day.

I figured my new girl would be thrilled to get some unexpected flowers in the middle of her school day.  After a quick scan, I immediately knew which one I wanted. There was a beautiful blue rose that was almost exactly her favorite color. Plus, I didn't think I had ever seen a blue rose before. It was unique and it was perfect.

I paid my money and was told it would be delivered to her at some point before lunch period.

I left the school pretty proud of myself and looked forward to seeing her later.

I dropped by her house after work that night and she greeted me at the door with the rose in her hand. She thanked me for the unexpected gift and placed it back in the house as we left to take a walk.

As we walked hand in hand enjoying the crisp February air, she suddenly stopped and turned to me, "What does blue mean?"

I was confused by this abrupt question. "Being blue? You mean 'being sad'?"

She lowered her eyes to the ground. "What are you sad about?"

"I'm not sad. It's actually been a really good week for me."

She brought her eyes up back to mine and asked, "So, that wasn't a sad rose?"

"Oh," the context of her question finally hit me as my face broke into a smile. "No. That wasn't a sad rose. Do roses get sad?"

I turned so we could start walking again, but she held me in place. "Then what does blue mean?"

I had no idea what was being asked and she could see the confusion on my face, so she continued, "A yellow rose is what you send to a friend. Peach roses show gratitude and are typically used as a thank you for something. Orange is usually for celebration and a red rose is obviously for love."

I was beginning to realize this was going somewhere but still didn't know where. "Wow. I didn't know all that. What does blue mean?"

She paused and looked hard into my eyes. "I don't know. Blue roses don't occur in nature. They have to be dyed that color. You sent it to me. So, what does blue mean?"

"I didn't know the color has all this extra meaning."

She was visibly disgusted by this answer and quickly released my hand. "You have never told me you loved me and there were red roses right there. Why did you choose a blue one?" I could see the tears beginning to build in her eyes.

I wasn't going to address the 'I love you' part. We had been dating less than a month, but I thought I could tackle the rose debacle. "I picked that flower because you love blue. It is your favorite color and it is almost exactly the same shade as that dress you love."

Her shoulders started to shake, "But what does it mean?"

I could feel the blood rising to my face. "Seriously? It meant I listen to what you say. Here is a flower in her favorite color. She will love this. It is Valentine's Day, so I sent you a flower."

She took my hand and started back toward the house. We walked all the way in silence. The gentle chill to the air had grown cold. When we got to the front door, she turned to me, planted a gentle kiss on my cheek and whispered, "Next time, send me the red ones."

I got back in my car and tried to figure out what just happened. How was sending a girl flowers a bad thing?

The next day, I drove to a florist and ordered six red roses to be delivered to her house after school. I wanted to be entirely sure that this time she understood my intentions so I included a note that read "I hope this color is more to your liking. And now that we've seen each other's true colors, let's not see each other any more."

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Say CHEESE!

Today's writing prompt is brought to us by the good people at Writers Write.

Years ago, when my daughter was teenager, she and I shared a loved activity. I have always dabbled with taking pictures and trying to be a bit artistic about it. I've never owned a decent camera and I'm nowhere near professional level, but I have always gotten great compliments about the photos I took.

My daughter did the same but also loved having her picture taken. These two activities go very easily together.

When we had a free weekend, we would often grab a couple of her friends and take a road trip somewhere. I would get to snap hundreds of pictures. They got to be models for the day and we all got to see someplace new.

Kirsten being a window mannequin.

Kirsten and Taylor under a railroad bridge.

Sometimes Photoshop was used afterward.

Always been a fan of graffiti.

During her emo phase.

So sad.

Kirsten and Kayli in a sculpture park.

A little overdressed for the lake.

I love this photo.

We had a habit of breaking into abandoned houses.

My son didn't usually take this activity as seriously.

As much as I loved taking these pictures and trying to come up with creative places to go and angles to use, the best part was hanging out with my daughter and her friends. It was a lot of fun. Plus, it happened during those teenage years when it is typically difficult to get time with your kids. We got lucky and found an activity that we both enjoyed and were able to share it together.

Unfortunately, sometimes we took pictures in less than safe or legal locations. We trespessed into abandoned houses, factories, and hospitals. We loved old decrepit buildings. Now as an adult, she is still breaking and entering onto private property. My bad!

Today, I live twelve time zones away from my children. They are grown now and and have their own lives. And I am quite content with where I am now and what I am doing, but I miss these times with my kids. We get the occasional phone call together, but that's all we can do. I'm not someone who gets homesick, but I would love to see them more often.

Hopefully, they can come see me here sometimes. I live right on the coast in central Vietnam. I am surrounded by natural beauty. I would love to take my daughter out for another photoshoot in this part of the world.

My son and I could just hit the bar. A beer here is less than a quarter.

Call Me...Maybe?

I received the following writing prompt in my inbox this morning and knew exactly what I would be writing about.

A phone ringing in the middle of the night is symbolic of something terrible has happened. Everyone knows this. A phone call this late is reserved for emergencies. Unless you had idiot friends when you were a teenager who had no concept of manners time. I always hated having to go to my school to yell at some idiot who was inconsiderate enough to call my house in the middle of the night. In the '80s, we didn't all have cell phones. You called the house phone which woke everyone up and my dad would answer. I would then get in trouble for having stupid friends.

So, if you don't have idiot friends, then a late-night call meant something terrible has happened. The pulse jumps before the first ring has even finished as you imagine all the terrible news that is awaiting you on the other side of that receiver.

However, a middle-of-the-night call doesn't have the same meaning for me any longer. I have lived in Southeast Asia for the last two years. This means 98% of the people I know are on the exact opposite side of the world than I am. My hometown is 12 hours behind me in Vietnam. This means that midnight for me is noon where my parents and kids live.

A phone call in the middle of the night means someone forgot about the time difference. Plus, I don't have to worry about this because my kids never call me anyway.

Additionally, neither my wife nor I keep our cell phones in the bedroom. So, it becomes even less of an issue. If someone does call us in the middle of the night, we won't even know about it until morning. Plus, what good does it do to call us in an emergency anyway?  We are freakin' 12 time zones away! What can we do about it? A couple of extra hours before we get the "bad news" wouldn't make any difference.

Accountability.

In my last post, I stated that I would be blogging every day (except Sundays) for the rest of this month. I also showed a picture that may guide many of my posts to make sure I have a topic.

Today is the 14^th in my part of the world. So, my word for the day is ACCOUNTABLE.

This is perfectly appropriate for being my first day jumping into this new challenge. The entire reason I posted saying that I would be writing every day for the rest of the month was for a little accountability from other people.

Not that anyone actually says anything to me. I just know that it's out there. I have said it publicly, so now I take making sure that it happens a little more seriously.

I don't know why this works for me, but it does. I can easily come up with excuses not to do something. It's one of the few things I actually work hard it, but I'm a natural so it's easy for me.

I've always had a love/hate relationship with accountability. Every job I've ever had, I  have always felt like I was about to get in trouble at any moment. Even when I was doing jobs where I was confident and really knew what I was doing. I would be crushing it, but still always looking over my shoulder waiting for the shoe to drop. I always wanted to please my bosses but also felt like I just wasn't doing it well enough.

I don't perceive all aspects of life this way. Just work. However, making a public declaration of my intentions does give me more drive to make sure it happens.

So there it is. I'll be back every day. Just like hunger.

Maybe This Time

I have an issue with motivation.

It's something I have been aware of my entire life. My parents used to tell me I was lazy. And they were right. I have an extreme aversion to having to put out effort to do anything I don't want to do. I just don't want to do it. In fact, I often have an aversion to doing things I actually do want to do.

Right now, the thing I want to do more than anything else is to write a book. Several books actually. And I have done this already. Sort of. I joined this National Novel Writing Month competition last year and competed again this year. The goal of the competition is to complete a novel (50,000 words) within the month of November.

I accomplished this both years. It was so much fun to toil over the creation of my worlds and come up with the rules of how things operate in my reality. To come up with the little twists and turns the plot was to make. Thinking up the little idiosyncrasies of my characters and how they interact with each other. That was the creative part. I loved it.

So I have two novels sitting on my computer that no one has ever seen. And they have not been seen yet for a reason. They just aren't ready for that because now I need to go through and re-write them. Edit them. Re-edit them. Scrutinize the plot trajectory and the character arc. Check for plotholes and logical inconsistencies.

All of this stuff sucks.

What editing your book feels like pic.twitter.com/MWfnE3ljPj

— Jenna Guillaume (@JennaGuillaume) August 2, 2018

However, it is part of what must be done if these writings are ever going to see the light of day.

 So, once again, I am working to develop the habit needed to get back to work and get this done. I am going to blog daily for the next few weeks (maybe even months) to kickstart the writing habit again. And to give me no excuse about not having something to write about, I will be using this graphic as a suggested daily topic.

On any given day, if I do not feel that I have a topic to write about, I will use the topic for that day from this list.

Now, I intend to write every day, but I may excuse myself from Sundays. Sunday is the one day that I work all day. Basically, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. I get a couple of short breaks in there, but may not use them for writing.

Let's do this.