Life is What You Make of It

Where, when and how did my life take such a drastic turn? I remember that at an early age all I ever wanted was to be liked, so I was an exceptionally well-behaved child. Later I discovered that if I made people laugh they’d like me even more. The die was cast. My career as a ersatz entertainer was launched. I had them eating out of the palm of my hand and began to believe all the nice things people said about me, and all the cute comments the cute girls wrote in my high school yearbook (“Stay as sweet as you are”, “To the funniest guy I know”, “Don’t ever change”).
Things began to change. I grew up in a small, quiet town in southeast Texas in the late 50’s, early 60’s. It was the end of the school year, the last days, when, typically no book learning ever took place. But something big took place: my civics teacher, Mr. Rector brought in an l.p. he was very excited about and wanted to share it with us, so we listened to music. He played Bob Dylan (“Freewheelin'” if I remember correctly). I was hooked. I was amazed. I was slammed to the ground and stomped on by this man, by his strange music, and by his unholy lyrics. Imagine! The man who had been charged with teaching us how our government works is punctuating his lessons by planting the seeds of protest in us! In all honesty, it took me decades to see the irony here, but the seeds had been planted; the damage done. Thank you, Mr. Rector, wherever you are.
After graduating high school, followed by a semester at the local Institute of Technology (a B.A. major — accounting was my goal), I, instead joined the Navy, intending to make that my career, as my father had done. So, off to San Diego for boot camp and “A” School, where I learned my specialty: Interior Communications Electrician (running wire for telephones, bells and whistles and such). Then, the North Bay Area, Vallejo, CA for nuclear power school, where I met my first wife, who began The Awakening: this was, after all, the San Francisco Bay Area in the middle 60’s. It was a far cry from the sleepy town of “Boremont”, TX. Six months in the high deserts of Idaho followed. That’s where the Navy’s reactor training facility was located — in the desert, where there’d be few civilian casualties in case one of us fucked up. Then I was sent to serve on the greatest warship mankind had ever known, the ship I had read about in Popular Science as a kid, the ship I was about to step foot on after a short chopper ride from the ship that ferried me there in the South China Sea — the USS Enterprise CVAN(65). My job now was to operate the nuclear reactors that powered this mighty ship on its mission to launch heavily armed jet fighters/bombers, whose sole function was to bomb the shit out of the Viet Cong (and any non-combatants who might happen to be nearby — collateral damage, they were called).
My life veered giddily to the left. The Big E (as she was called) returned to her home port in Alameda, CA, across the Bay from San Francisco, when our tour to Vietnam ended. It was the Summer of Love. LSD, pot, more Bob Dylan. The seeds planted in Mr. Rector’s civics class were sprouting like crazy. I protested the war even while in uniform. I protested being in the Navy, where I was prevented from letting my hair grow to my shoulders. So I got a smart lawyer and an un-hip psychiatrist and was honorably discharged a year and a half before the end of our contract. Now I could really let go. Sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll as far as the eye could see. There were no limits.
I learned to read Tarot cards; became a member of an “interdimentional studies” group; became a father; got a divorce; lived in a three-storey wood and glass pyramid overlooking the Pacific about 75 miles north of San Francisco (just north of Jenner by the Sea). I meditated; learned Polarity treatment; got my BA in Business Admin (which I only ever used to do my own taxes, which got pretty complicated in my later years, so I guess the degree was worth the effort); and, of course, more sex, drugs and r ‘n r. Much later I did the est Training, but that wasn’t until I left Nor Cal for my hometown again (to care for my aging, sainted mother, austensibly; but really it was to be with an old flame I’d left there long ago) I always thought it funny that I never did the est Training while living in the est heartland — it’s kind of like the native New Yorkers who never made it to the Statue of Liberty. The truth is that, having moved from the land of enlightenment back to the land of endarkenment, I desperately needed the life preserver that was est.
Fast forward forty years. That’s actually how it seems (fast forwarded), for I struggle to remember a great many of the details of those forty years. They say that when faced with death, your life flashes before your eyes. As I have slowly approached death, at the speed of life, however, my life seems to be slowly erasing itself before my eyes. Days bleed into more days. Events pile up in a forgotten savings account. My second wife is still with me (God knows why) and still encourages me in whatever idiocy I undertake. It took every mistake I ever made, every wrong turn, every stumble, every sane and insane thought I ever had to get me to this point.
They say that life is what you make of it. This is what I’ve made of mine. My life is blessed.