Perspective
The world has suffered from epidemics in the past, but this Game Changing Moment came along just when American society had begun to right itself after electing a Washington outsider, a rogue non-politician, to the Presidency. Just after our citizens had rediscovered their patriotic origins, their American identity. Just after they had shrugged off the decades of gaslighting and psychological bullying the news media and the Democrat controlled cabal of academia and transnational corporate influencers had heaped upon us, relentlessly telling us the "lights weren't dimming" and the rapid decline in Americanism was all just an illusion, a faulty imagination.
We were just beginning to reinvent Americanism (see my book Trump's Reckoning: Bulldozing Progressivism, Rebuilding Americanism). It was a foregone conclusion that our President would see a second term. But the COVID19 sneak attack would blow him out of the water ( see my eBook f'd: For Your Own Good).
I have written extensively about how 9/11 was for my generation, the day the world stood still ( see my book Turn Right At Lost: Recalculating America). It was our Pearl Harbor, our Alamo, our Normandy Beach, our Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. And I still contend that much of the social instability our world has suffered, and especially here in the United States, is a direct result of that evil moment in history. That the mentality of fear and distrust that spread among us after the Twin Towers fell has permeated our culture ever since.
It has been over twenty years since that day, and those that witnessed it still remember the shock of watching our nation under attack. Those that came along since have learned to be less rigid in their protective nature: To be "more tolerant" and submissive about the concept of Americanism.
The world has had its share of major life-changing events. I am not talking about regional events like earthquakes and volcanoes, not tsunamis or regional wars. I am talking about worldwide man-made calamities like World War 1 and World War ll. Or the Black Plague or Chernobyl or 9/11. The kind of Game Changing Events that redefine cultural identities.
There are certain events that shook the world. Some come about as a growing disease of the human condition, such as pandemics, or terrorism. Others come out of nowhere, like the asteroid that hit earth at the Gulf of Mexico and wiped out the dinosaurs.
In January of 2020, the world got sucker-punched by a virus. Or at least that is what all of the FrankenMedia wanted us to believe. The whole world went down for the count. We are still trying to stand up and regain our senses. We really don't know what happened yet. We may never really know.
Humans were witnessing the most dangerous assault on civilization in modern history. There was no place to hide, no one was immune to the threat of the invisible army of killers that were determined to invade our most vulnerable populations.
Or so we were told…
While I was locked down, and staying indoors for the most part, I started thinking about some of the things that have occurred during my life that were 'Game Changing'.
It soon became an obsession! It is hard to differentiate between important moments, like the day I got married, from forks in the road I did, or didn't take. It may be an exercise in self flagellation to dig into all of those moments, days, events or unknowns. How far back do I go?
Plus, the concept of "Game Changing" is fluid. Every fork in the road is essentially game changing. Once you choose to follow the path in either direction, there is no way to know how the game would have evolved had you chosen the other path. That is the definition of change.
For example, at my fifth birthday party, with my second grade "girlfriend" in attendance, my dad showed a homemade film of me jumping up and down on my bed. That wouldn't be too bad, except that I was completely naked. I just remember being deeply embarrassed because Candy was present, and I had never actually told her I had a crush on her. And after that moment, I never would…
Or what about my Little League team manager, who undermined my faith in authority. He took me to a Dodger-Giant game at Dodger Stadium where we witnessed Sandy Koufax pitch a no-hitter. Later, just before the Pony League Draft, he told me he was going to place me on the "best" team.
The Little League "draft" is when managers select graduating players for the more advanced Pony League that I would be joining in the Spring, so I was shocked when he said he would "fix" the draft so I could play for his preferred coach, and the team he felt would be the best in the league. Wouldn't that be disingenuous? Isn't that a violation of league rules? My beloved team manager was trying to help me out, but wouldn't it be unfair to bypass a system whose purpose was to fairly and equally distribute players so all of the teams would be balanced and competitive? Wouldn't that equate to cheating?
I told him at that moment I was no longer interested in playing organized baseball because it was obvious the system was corrupt and I didn't like being a part of it. He was crestfallen and apologized, but it was too late, the bloom was off the rose. I have been suspicious of authority ever since.
Or how about the time I was arrested for drug possession? I was a sophomore in college, living in a rundown apartment on the wrong side of town because it was cheap rent. I was walking down the street minding my own business when suddenly a patrol car pulled up alongside me and my friend and two cops jumped out and threw us both over the hood of their cruiser and proceeded to illegally search us.
Later in court, the police claimed they had stopped us because they thought my friend, who was carrying a brown paper bag that could be a wine bottle, looked under age, and the nearby liquor store had a reputation for selling to minors. That testimony gave them legal cause to stop and question us.
He was definitely baby-faced, so they may have had cause to detain him, but I had done nothing to give them cause, or the right to search my clothing. I was not in visible possession of anything that could conceivably be mistaken for beer or wine, but I was holding three sleeping pills in a little prescription bottle in my pocket. The bottle had someone else's name on it. They patted me down, found the pill bottle and I went to jail. My friend, who had just legally purchased a bottle of wine, after showing his drivers license, was released.
I spent the night in jail with child molesters and gang bangers in downtown Long Beach. I layed on the concrete floor. I was scared to death and I never slept a minute the whole night.
I was using a variety of drugs at that time. I smoked weed, snorted coke, and occasionally I would do barbiturates as a shortcut to getting drunk. I was not a drinker. I would have a beer now and then, but my preference was pot. But I was always on the lookout for anything that would get me high.
I had pilfered the 'downers' from the purse of a guest of my parents. During a recent visit, I stumbled across a woman's open purse in the bathroom, and her prescription bottle was sitting right on top. It was filled with yellow (pentobarbital) capsules and so I knew she would never miss three or four. I was living in a poor neighborhood, with very little money, making minimum wage washing dishes at the campus cafeteria, and getting high was becoming an obsession, so I stole a few.
If I had not gone through that nightmare, spending the night in jail, being outed for my drug use, and shamed for betraying the trust of my parents, I don't know where my life would have ended up. I was at a turning point in my life. Was I going down a dead-end street or I was going to be saved.
I can say the Long Beach Police, by violating my right to privacy and illegally searching me, probably did me a big favor. I had to decide if I was going to get my act together or not. They lied about the search, telling the judge that I had tossed the pill bottle under a parked car. That would justify them going through my pockets which is where they actually found the evidence. I had totally forgotten I had the pills in my pocket. I would never have walked to the liquor store with them in my possession, knowing the nature of the neighborhood, I knew it could lead to disaster. I was not at that moment loaded, but I was reckless.
Here's The Rub: There have been many other times that I should have been arrested for being in possession or for trespassing or any number of other reasons, but was able to avoid much more serious consequences. It was inevitable that I would end up in jail or dead if something didn't come along and change my perspective.
My dad was not too happy about having to drive to the jail in Long Beach to bail me out. We hardly talked as he drove me to his house. He was not going to let me go back to my apartment. That part of my college experience was over. After some serious soul searching and contrition, he was willing to give me a second chance.
When I eventually went out on my own again, I wasn't completely drug free, but I maintained a much more qualified approach, no coke, no barbiturates, no psychedelics. While many of my friends were getting addicted to cocaine or methamphetamine, alcohol or all of the above, I stayed just inside the foul lines. I eventually purged most of the more reckless drug users from my life because I felt like they were stuck in adolescence. I wanted to grow up, and they wanted to remain in "Spring Break" forever.
The final straw came when, during my senior year at Cal State University at Long Beach, after a party at the house I was sharing alongside Huntington Harbor in Sunset Beach, I woke up to a house full of police. They were in the process of pulling a dead body out of the water at the end of our dock. Sometime during the previous night's party a stranger had wandered in and mingled with the twenty-or-so attendees. He was inebriated, loud and obnoxious and one of my roommates had asked him to leave. Which he did.
Unfortunately, he left by the backdoor and walked off the end of the dock. He was found stuck in the muck on the floor of the canal. His death was ruled an accident. None of us had ever met the guy, but we were all very shaken. Within just a few weeks I moved out.
The Rub? There have been many transformative moments in all of our lives. Too many to count. In each and every one of those moments we make choices that will affect us for the rest of our lives. Some young people either ignore the moment or simply fail to recognize it when it happens, which is essentially a choice. Leaving that frat house in Sunset Beach wasn't an easy decision. It was such a cool place: 3 stories, 5 bedrooms, a huge living room and dining room. It had a pop out wraparound bar overlooking the canals and a wooden dock where we kept a small skiff. But it was toxic.
In this book, I have decided to create a montage, a series of anecdotal recollections that illustrate incidents, experiences, events, or people that have had a major impact on my life. Or perhaps should have but didn't. And most of them came into my life quite unexpectedly, from out of nowhere.
I will focus on some people who were just minding their own business, doing what they do, never thinking about trying to change other people's lives, just honing and perfecting the path that their lives were following.
I wonder if the folks that changed my life knew they were special to me? Maybe they never noticed at all. Did they too have someone touch their lives and point them in a different direction? And I want to understand why I was open to letting them into my life, and if that in itself, was the more important element of the dynamic that ultimately had major implications in the path that my life followed.
Maybe you have had similar Game Changers.
As I reviewed and researched my history, I discovered that most of the prominent people involved had no idea that they would, over the course of their life, exert influence on other lives. They were, like you and me, just everyday kids. Maybe they were gifted with some unique skill or undeveloped talent, but in the beginning, they had pretty normal childhoods. So I think it is interesting how they too had some turning point in their lives, some event or person that touched them or influenced them in a way that started them down the road to becoming 'special'.
I also learned that nostalgia is a mixed bag. Young people don't want to hear, "When I was a kid…" or "Back in the good old days…" We all have a history, so the data bank is already full in most people's minds. To plug mine into theirs could crowd out theirs. But talking to some of those influencers has also reminded both of us of forgotten experiences, so sharing our life stories can stimulate the memory cells that have otherwise gone into retirement.
As I get older, I notice my contemporaries pondering their past, and reliving some of the finer moments, over and over, like a broken record. They are not aware of the repetitiveness of their stories, because it is only in an effort to share their wisdom, not just a chance to brag. Those rose colored glasses make the painful aspects of the past less acidic, and brighten the often faded memories. Kinda like transferring old photos to digital: They immediately look better and last longer.
This scribe proves I am guilty of doing all of the above to the point of absurdity. For the record, I want to put my timeline in perspective, make it more accurate and get some of it off my chest and out there forever, so I can let it all go. To take a closer look at the people, places and experiences that have rubbed off on me. To restore my perspective.
I have been very fortunate, and some of the incidents I experienced appear like a mirage in my mind. Some came and went in a blink of an eye, while others tended to leave a skid mark on my soul.
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