Hugh’s Notebook

In 1992, I had the opportunity to marry a girl and did not. It was not that I did not love her, because I did (not sure I fully realized that at the time). It was not that I did not think we would have been a good match, because we probably would have. No, the reason we did not get married is because I was scared.

Like Brave Sir Robin, I ran away (ran away, ran away). I was all of 20 years old, I was a United States Marine, I was in love with a beautiful strawberry blond nymphet who just wanted to be with me and I blew it because I was scared. In infantry school they had taught us how to bayonet a man, how to drop 3 stories to the street below, how to locate, close with and destroy the enemy, but I had nothing in my experience that taught me how to handle a 110 lb redhead who thought I was the Bee’s Knees.

It is a sorry tale; how I quit calling her (I did not even have the guts to let her know I was scared), how she was hurt by that, how she ended up with another guy who would take her away from it all, how she almost immediately got pregnant, how she married him, had 2 more kids, the whole damned sordid mess.

I wonder sometimes if she is happy with the way it all turned out, with the way things went. I wonder if I had it to do all over again, but knew then what I know now what I would do differently. What would our kids have looked like, would we still be together, is there such a thing as happily ever after?

Links:
People regret getting married due to low income housing
. Couples dream of large houses with amazing lighting
. However after marriage, they end up living in a small apartment with an old carpet
. But dreams can come true if you have a well-paying job. And those don’t include jobs like flower delivery
. These jobs require customer service
. If you have professional handy man experience, pick up your plumbing supplies and start your marketing.

No Comments » Posted by Hugh / @me

A friend and I were talking about this last night. We are both aging gen Xers and were reminiscing over such things as we remember from childhood and, as it always does, cartoons came up.

Let me get this straight: Popeye was a Sailor Man, right? And there is this kid running around who he is taking care of and raising, but who is not his? And he claims the kid came in the mail?* Am I the only one that thinks maybe Popeye is covering up?

Ahhh, it was a much simpler time then.

*I actually found out he allegedly came in the mail from wikipedia, so it must be true, right?

2 Comments » Posted by Hugh / fun

I was 16 the first time I ever read anything by Walt Whitman. I was on a search, as I suppose all children that age are, for who I was, what I wanted to be. I, like the neighbor in Frost’s poem, could not forsake my Father’s teachings, for better or worse. In the Transcendentalists I found a uniquely American way of thought (or so I thought at the time), and an identity I could embrace and aspire to.

Over the next few years I read pretty much the entire corpus: Channing, Alcott, Emerson, and of course Thoreau, but the preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass has always left me breathless.

Here is my favorite excerpt:

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body… .

The entire preface can be found here; for reasons known only to him he did not include the preface in later editions.

No Comments » Posted by Hugh / Jesus

The more and more I think about it, I am less and less concerned about being a “Christian”, at least as it is commonly understood in 21st century America. I think instead, I will focus more on being a follower of Jesus.

Christians do things like meet in beautiful buildings with stained glass windows and plush cushions on the pews and look pious on Sunday morning.

Jesus did things like feed the hungry, love marginalized people (like lepers, prostitutes and minorities) and give people hope.

Which are you?

6 Comments » Posted by Hugh / Jesus

[current as of 04/2008] 

Hugh…

1. …weighed 10 pounds and 11 ounces at birth, and was just over 24 inches tall.
2. …once performed 72 dead hang pull-ups.
3. …has two brothers, both of whom are handier with tools than he is.
4. …was raised a Methodist, although he mostly reads Catholic authors.
5. …thinks most denominations are much more about the members than they are about God.
6. …dislikes Mimes and Carnies.
7. …wore a size 10 shoe in the 9th grade, but now wears a size 9. No idea what that’s about.
8. …was baptized as an infant in a church that had his Grandfather’s name on the cornerstone.
9. …loves email, walking in the woods, and anything to do with water.
10. …did not learn to swim until he was 18.
11. …likes chamber music, hair bands, jazz and delta blues.
12. …prefers dark chocolate to almost anything.
13. …likes poetry that rhymes, except when it shouldn’t.
14. …had for his first car a 1971 Ford Torino (think Starsky and Hutch, only his was green)
15. …reads 2-3 books a week.
16. …was born by cesarean section (him and MacDuff).
17. …got high smoking corn silks at the age of 9.
18. …actually knows people who go by the names Tater, Scooter, Junebug and Hoss.
19. …hates video games, television and talk radio.
20. …was clinically dead for almost 4 minutes when he was 18 months old.
21. …was most influenced as a teenager by Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
22. …currently finds inspiration in the writings of Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day.
23. …speaks English and a very poor sort of Texican.
24. …came very close to dying by incineration in March of 1998.
25. …placed 12^th in the nation in an extemporaneous speaking contest, in which he talked about how to instill a work ethic in young people of today.
26. …can not remember any of the suggestions he made in said speech.
27. …prefers piano to guitar.
28. …loves New York City and New Orleans.
29. …is a self-taught speed-reader.
30. …overhauled a manual transmission by himself at the age of 18.
31. …wrecked truck that said transmission went in at the age of 21 (but it had nothing to do with the transmission).
32. …thinks the best Southern writer since William Faulkner was Peter Taylor.
33. …would not give two figs for Robert Penn Warren.
34. …really wants to write a novel, but doesn’t, because he has no idea how he would end the thing.
35. …has helped deliver 4 babies, one of them in the pouring rain and one in the back seat of a 1972 Buick Electra.
36. … took a year of Hebrew because of a girl. (Shalom, ya’ll)
37. …once considered moving to Great Falls, Montana because of a girl.
38. …lived 8 months in an underground house…because of a girl.
39. …joined the Baptist Church (briefly) … because of a girl.
40. …once went deep sea fishing in 10 foot swells in advance of a Hurricane.
41. …caught more fish than anyone else on said trip (not getting sea-sick helps).
42. …graduated Marine Boot Camp in the middle of the pouring rain.
43. …watched the girl he had recently asked to be his girlfriend die in a ditch in the pouring rain.
44. …got a black eye at the homecoming game because he had reported another student for cheating on an exam.
45. …only owns four pair of pants.
46. …had ADD before it was cool to have ADD.
47. …rarely worries, even when it would be good to worry.
48. …has three favorite movies: The Godfather, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and Mary Poppins.
49. …is not a morning person, unless your morning starts around 9am.
50. …sleeps less than 5 hours a night in the summer, about 6 & ½ in the winter.
51. …wishes he could read Latin.
52. …regrets not taking the girl to the prom that he had asked after he found out she was pregnant with someone else’s baby.
53. …once seriously considered entering the Clergy.
54. …now realizes he was called to Ministry, but not to the Clergy.
55. …would rather read than do almost anything.
56. …really gets off on classic crime fiction.
57. …does not mind crowds unless he is with children, in which case he gets freaked out about losing the kids.
58. …once had his hand sliced open by a box cutter when he was attacked in a parking lot.
59. …drinks an obscene amount of coffee every day.
60. …once wrecked his car and blamed it on a dead cat.
61. …had a girlfriend who left him because she discovered she was a Lesbian.
62. …gained a girlfriend who had thought she was a Lesbian (different girl).
63. …cringes every time he hears the words “like” and “you know” used in conversation.
64. …worries about kids these days.
65. …wanted to own a used bookstore since he was 12.
66. …owned a used bookstore before the age of 30.
67. …wants to see every Vermeer in the world with his own two eyes before he dies.
68. …agrees with Truman Capote that the Beat writers were not writing, they were typing.
69. …once flew so often that the employees in the China Wok on the second floor of Concourse C in Atlanta International Airport thought he was an airport employee and regularly gave him a discount.
70. …had a Grandfather who was shot down behind enemy lines and stayed hidden from the enemy for 21 days until he could get rescued.
71. …had a Great Grandfather who was gassed in France in WW I
72. …had another who flew planes over Europe at the age of 17, also in WWI, and came home from the war to be a barnstormer.
73. …hates boredom.
74. …feels intensely protective of the women in his life.
75. …has a recurring nightmare in which he is a salesman in a credit jewelry store.
76. …loves to cook.
77. …was once called a ’serial monogamist” by a girl he wanted very much to go out with.
78. …was confused when she thought that was a bad thing.
79. …hates to wash dishes.
80. …prefers cats to dogs.
81. …wishes he were more organized, but thinks it is not effective to worry about it.
82. …wishes he was handier than he actually is. His brothers wish so, too.
83. …refuses to drink dark liquor or gin.
84. …was the arm wrestling champion of Independence, Mississippi.
85. …strongly wishes he was better about keeping in touch.
86. …misses the 1980’s.
87. …prefers travel by train over all other options.
88. …would dig his own well before he would drink Perrier.
89. …believes his favorite author is Ernest Hemingway
90. …thinks his favorite novel is “A Movable Feast“.
91. …dreams about living in the country again, but loves the city too much to do it.
92. …learned to drive on a three-cylinder tractor.
93. …likes wearing suits, but hates occasions when you need to wear suits.
94. …has a strong distrust of organizations, movements and –ism’s.
95. …has a birth defect that affects both pinkies: one won’t bend, the other will not straighten.
96. … is prone to lethargy, with random, unpredictable bursts of extreme hyperactivity.
97. …once broke a ceiling fan with a cat, a piece of string and a sheet of paper.
98. …was very shy growing up. Nobody believes this now.
99. …prefers to wear sandals whenever possible.
100. …believes Love Wins.

8 Comments » Posted by Hugh / fun