January 29th (A 9-year affair)

Since 2001, the date January 29th has held a significant meaning in my life; it was the date that my brother disappeared.  My family and I suspect it was the date of his actual wrongful death.  I’ll never forget that Superbowl weekend for as long as I live.  An Oklahoma State University plane carrying basketball players and some media personnel went down that Friday killing ten in total.  In Superbowl XXXV The Ravens beat the NY Giants,  34-7.  While watching a rerun of Law & Order, life flung the words “Jeffrey is missing” into the zeitgest of that 2001 weekend.

The commemorative weekend comes every year in the pecking order of “Jeffrey is missing,” Superbowl, and the OSU crash.  It reminds me of one of the birthday cards you get that has all the meaningful events of your birth year listed out in a souvenir manner. 

The first year (2001) I spent in a dreamlike state watching planes, people, cadaver dogs, police officers, horses, and my family searching frantically yelling “Jeffrey” over every inch of a mountain.  The second year (2002), we brought flowers to the site where the truck my brother was driving was planted found.  The third year (2003), we released balloons for him.  The fourth year (2004), we continued our ritual.  A few months after the last year we did that (2006) his skull and less than a handful of bones were retrieved from a remote place (approx. a mile from my uncle’s house) in the mountain.  In our minds, Jeffrey was graduating from missing to dead, while he should have been graduating from college.  In 2007, January 29th officially became the anniversary of his death.

While his presence never leaves, the cyclic mourning of a missing person has subsided and found closure in his death.  Unfortunately, many families do not have the morbid blessing of knowing whether or not their loved one is dead and continue to live in the abysmal cycle of grief and hope, which can be a crippling mixture at times. 

Many families of the missing begin extraordinary journeys in life because of our loved one’s indelible spirit and inexplicit parting from our world.  You can find some of these to the left of this blog posting, and in January 29th, 2010, I will be embarking on mine. 

LOL, no really, LOL!

Children of Twitter

True Christian.

A dear friend asked me, “At least twice now, in your blogs, I’ve see you use the term “True Christian”. How would you define that? What makes a “True Christian”?”

My reply:

I define a true christian as a person with a spiritual understanding that exceeds that of man-made religion and teachings to truly uphold the word of God. Their personal relationship with God helps them to be compassionate and to love thy neighbor as himself/herself and to do unto others as they would like done unto them despite religious propaganda. A true christian loves without prejudice and lives their life sharing goodness and wanting peace, love, and happiness to all of God’s creation.

That’s how I define a TRUE CHRISTIAN!

The People of The United States of discrimiNATION

As a child, I had no experience with discrimination so therefore I did not have any prejudices (other than food).  Around the age of five or six while vacationing with my family in Truckee, California, I saw my first transgendered person.  I was playing on a pile of lumber (yes, my parents let me play in a lumber pile which is more dangerous than the hello I shared with the transgendered stranger) and a deep orange VW bus putted along the back road as the passenger took in the breathtaking scenery that the Truckee River offers.  I was immersed in my own world of play as the Doppler Shift of the hippie music pulled me out.  I turned around to see the passenger’s hand making hand waves out the window as the VW bus inched closer to my makeshift playland.  The Dr. Frank-N-Furter looking person watched me watching him with a curiosity that was frightening.  As his/her face softened into a loving smile, my scared feeling faded into a safe smile and I turned to run into the house.

Initially, I was afraid of the stranger because he/she was different and I didn’t know why he/she looked like that.  As the hippie music moved closer and I saw my first transgendered person, I can’t say I innately had any prejudices other than why is this person different looking?  With my own experience, THAT moment was a defining moment of whether or not I would be a product of my environment and carry on a legacy of discrimination because my experience was a smile and a ‘Hello little one’ out the window.  My experience wasn’t hate-filled, but it certainly was one I had never experienced before.

My mom told me that just because someone is different from me doesn’t mean they don’t feel the same things I feel.  I asked but why did the boy look like a girl.  She told me that sometimes people have to figure out who they are in life.  In a defining moment, my mother asked me if the transgendered person scared me.

“Yes, mom.”

“Why?” She asked.

“Because he wasn’t like us,” My sponge-like brain awaited answers.

“Did he do something to hurt you?” She hugged me.

“No.”

“So then why are you scared?” She continued.

I thought of his different face and how his soul beamed through his eyes as he looked at my fear dead on and with a caring heart smiled a warm smile at the little girl in shock.

“He smiled at me.”  I answered.

“So even though he was different he was a nice person, a good person maybe?”

I thought for a moment and replayed it in my head, “yep, he was nice.”

There is a moment like that in every one of our lives; a moment that shapes our perception.  Truth be told, I later found in life I was the one different and having been on both ends of the potential discrimination table I can tell you that discrimination is inherited.

I feel very fortunate that my mother, A TRUE CHRISTIAN, had an infinitely open heart to teach mine to be just as open and is currently teaching my little brothers the same.   Many parents are not like her and hand down discrimination to their children  and so on and so forth.  I told you this story because deep down somewhere you too have a moment like the above and if we can educate children about the facts of discrimination and stop spreading it, the world will be one big open heart.

Please read these facts and then join our fight for equality.

In 1909

The average life expectancy was 47 years.

Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.

Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.

There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads.

The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

The average wage in 1909 was 22 cents per hour.

The average worker made between $200 and $400 per year.

A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year,

A dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.

More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME .

Ninety percent of all doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION! Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press AND the government as ’substandard. ‘

Sugar cost four cents a pound.

Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.

Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.

Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.

Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason.

Five leading causes of death were:

1. Pneumonia and influenza

2. Tuberculosis

3. Diarrhea

4. Heart disease

5. Stroke

The American flag had 45 stars.

The population of Las Vegas , Nevada, was only 30!!!!

There was no Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.

Two out of every 10 adults couldn’t read or write.

Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.

Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores. Back then pharmacists said, ‘Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health’

 Eighteen percent of households had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.

There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE ! U.S.A. !

RIP Jeanette Spanarkel.

My wife’s grandmother passed away last night at the age of 50 (she never told us her real age but she was about 80ish).  Jeanie was a spunky, white russian drinking, Atlantic City-loving, Obama hating, shrimp loving, cougar of a character that will be very missed.

We never got to bring her the shrimp we promised her, but that stubborn woman’s last words to my wife were ‘move’ as she was trying to escape from her hospital bed. 

I suppose now, as she watches from above (giving them hell up in the big house, mind you), SURPRISE WE’RE GAY!

Rest in peace, Jeanette Spanarkel.  

Tadpoles and Clovers

I could never cup my hands just right to catch tadpoles.  The slippery suckers would weasel out at the cup of my hands.  I must have tried to catch a million tadpoles when I was a kid, but every time it slipped out.  Had I known then what I know now, I could have chalked it up to simple OCD for not wanting to really touch them but pretend I did like all the other kids.  I used to do the same things with frogs, crawdads, and fish. 

Once my cousin made me touch a frog, and although I never got a wart I kept washing my hands just in case.  My mom used to tell me that frog’s pee gave you warts even though my cousin swore no frog ever peed on him, but he had the ugliest wart on his hand I ever had seen.  It was a flesh colored bubble on his thumb that was as hard as a rock just like his head.  I tended to think it was contagious so everytime he went to give me something I would run away from him, but for some reason he thought I liked to play tag. 

I once spent an entire day sitting in the middle of a clover field.  There I would sit, hours upon hours, with a large wooden salad bowl picking them one-by-one looking for four-leaf clovers.  No one ever told me to watch what I ate when I was younger, and clovers tasted a little sour.  When I got older I thought it was in the bean sprout family, so anytime we would go to Circus Circus in Reno, Nevada, I would pile the bean sprouts on my plate and eat them like a grown up.

Nowadays, my hands barely touch the organic side of life.  Instead of tadpoles slipping through my hands, it’s money.  I don’t find many four-leaf clovers anymore, but that doesn’t keep me from looking in clover patches.

I leave you with my words of idiocy…

As your week winds down and perhaps you find yourself on my often-rushed blog may you laugh at my  idiocy (if you can call it that).

Fontana: We’re going crabbing this weekend on Long Island.

ME: OHHHH I want crabs!

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ME (to my analyst): I’m following you on Titter, oh wait…Twitter, sorry.

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ME (to my analyst holding a LEGIT BOX): Let me see your box.

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My analyst (after putting a whoopie cushion in my chair with the NICKELODEON logo): I got it from the closet.

ME: I want to go in the closet.

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I swear it’s NOT REAL sexual harassment.

The best thing EVER – Real Housewives NYC brilliance!