Mementos & Memories

    Memories are a great thing. They have the ability to warm our hearts or make us cold with fear. Majority of us don’t need mementos to hold on to those memories and yet we will cherish things for a lifetime because of what it makes us feel. I have 4 items in my house that I have held on to since I was a bright eyes piss ant spending half days at school. Allow me to clarify, that would have been when I was 5. 

   

    The first is a brown teddy bear that my mom tells me she found at a garage sale. I honestly don’t know what age I received him at but I remember this picture of tiny me holding him and having a hat on his head. He was my buddy growing up! I wouldn’t consider him my safety item growing up because I didn’t take him everywhere but I remember always cherishing him. Now, he sits in my closet waiting for the day that I can give him to my kid in hopes that he can be their buddy too.

    The second is my Elmo. Growing up I slept with him by my side every night. I loved it because my mom would come in at night and hold him in front of me and do the Elmo voice. She would move his head around and say things like, “Elmo says that James needs to go to sleep because he has school tomorrow and if he doesn’t sleep we will be in big trouble!” That damn shtick would crack me up every time.

    I remember when I was in my teens a few of my friends found Elmo and monster-napped him. One of them took Elmo back to her place (bow chicka bow wow) and tied him up from the ceiling. I remember having to walk to her place and steal him back. Maybe she let me steal him back and the mission just seems grander in my mind like an Oceans 11 heist.

    I hold on to Elmo in hopes of sharing the voice with my kids one day. I hope that when they want an Elmo I will not have to go buy the $80.00 scream and hump robot dancing Elmo but instead can show them the original I grew up with.

    I also have a patchwork quilt that I slept with every night from when I was 5 all the way through High school. It wasn’t my baby blanket or anything; it was just my favorite cover. My cat use to always come lay on me when I slept with it and nurse on the loose strings that came off of the cover. Today, it sits in my closet more worn out than a Civil War Flag. I don’t plan on passing it on, there isn’t much of it left to pass on, I just haven’t been able to toss it out.

   

    Lastly, is my Power Rangers Dragon Zord. That’s right MoFo’s I still own the original Dragon Zord! It was my favorite toy as a kid! I loved the color green growing up and the dragon was way cooler than that clumsy ass Samurai thing we called the “Mega Zord.” I owned the not so Mega Zord, and the White Tiger Zord but eventually gave those 2 away. I never understood why I held on to the Dragon Zord until my interpersonal communication professor in college asked me to write a letter about my favorite toy growing up. I wish I still had the letter because ti helped me learn a great deal about myself when I was going through a hard time. The letter helped me realize that I identified the color green with courage and the Green Ranger as a leader. I held on to the toy as a symbol to remind myself that I am a leader and it would always reinforce the qualities a great leader should embody. I still have that Zord on my shelf and every so often when things get tough or I doubt myself I look at that Dragon and remind myself who it is I need to be.

    Now, once again this all seems like empty rambling with no sense of inspiration, but bear with me…these mementos are all symbols. They all remind me of great experiences in life and allow me to reflect on the moments that brought me here and made me the person I am today. I want to urge everyone to take a moment and reflect on some of your greatest treasures, on items that mean nothing to anyone but you, and feel the emotions they bring to you. I invite everyone to write about their favorite toy and discover why it was so important to them while growing up. I would love to hear other peoples stories but only if you want to share those feelings and thoughts, sometimes they can be more than we are prepared to handle.  

 

Now & Then: Gatsby

    I enjoy a party as much as anyone else. There is a great deal of enjoyment in gathering people, mingling, and making new friends. In my past one could have considered me to be a young Gatsby. I would host parties for the simple reason of inviting over women that I had interest in with hopes of wooing them.  

    In my early twenties it was easy to get off of work at 10:30 (PM), grab a case of beer, some Boons-Farm, and invite all of my co-workers and friends over to party. I would give my roommate 15 minutes’ notice to get out of his PJ’s and spot clean the house. Within the hour we would have fifteen to thirty people over playing beer pong. There would be plenty of people smoking cigarettes on the porch and decent pop rock or top 40 playing on the lap top while everyone mingled. Usually a few hours in the roommate would end up on the roof with at least 2 other people while some drunken girl craving attention would have flashed her boobs at least 5 times by one o’clock.

    This method worked well for me and often led to me and some young lady in my room but I have never been a fan of the golden rule of sales…Always be closing. Almost always I would stop things before it went too far and while most guys would say this is dumb of me I honestly enjoyed knowing I have self-control and self-respect to not raise my number just because I could.

    Jump forward to 2015, I am now 26, living alone, single…again, and finally realizing the flaw in Gatsby’s master plan. Hosting booze fueled nights in hope of creating a relationship or connection of any form is a poorly laid out plan. It offers a great opportunity to catch all of the red flags but why even waste the time. I’m not saying that only bad things come from these situations, that is far from true, a great deal of amazing things happened on nights like this but it always had its flaws.

    Building a connection with a woman who is 5 beers and 4 shots in while she flashes the room will not lead me or many others to true happiness. These actions should be the writing on the wall that warn us of what we are about to get into. I am happy that I no longer find appeal in this Gatsby concept but also wish to pay my respect to what it has taught me. I learned that I have a great deal of self-control and that our intuitions and insight can save us from some really bad situations.

    I reflect on these nights and cherish that they are a part of my past. I hold memories of growing close to friends and a lover in these situations very close to my heart and often smile when I remember them. I will never forget the New Years that the roommate and I ended up in our birthday suits with glittery top hats over our junk while playing pong against each other. I will always cherish the Sunday cookouts with horse shoes and fajitas. I will always grow warm when I think back to my first surprise party thrown by someone who loved me even if the surprise was ruined. I know that I usually try to wrap these blogs up with some form of inspiration or call to action but not everything in our life has to be a step forward or a leap in a new directions, sometimes it is perfectly fine to stop, sit, and reflect on where we have been, instead of worrying about where we are going.