Your landmark events.

[Fireball]

Finding Jesus and realizing that all atheists are lost people that are in need of my merciful preaching.

He was under the sofa cushions, wasn't he.

Along with all the money he took from the money changers in the temple.

[The Grand Nudger]

-Killed a songbird chick when I was in the single digits with a daisy bb gun.  Right out of the nest.  They fall real slow.  The mom buzzed me...so I shot her too, point blank.  Then I hid in the tractor shed and cried.  Great White Hunter I am not.

-Threw a molotov cocktail into a competing boat that was the wrong shade of lipstick.  They were in our crappie spot.  I respond well to authority...even when that authority is ever-so-slightly unhinged.  Racism is bad yall.

-Boys and girls club....must have been 25 years ago.  I belted out A Whole New World, solo, and won a talent contest.  Runners up were a bunch of girls doing the tootsie roll.  They rushed me when I won.  Turned out I really like being pressed up between a bunch of girls.  I was suddenly..and forever from that moment..aware of The Peen. Also, that I really like to sing. Told my grandfather I'd won 100bucks. He said he'd give me 100bucks to shut up. LOL, pro!

-A redhead named Morgan in sophomore year at Bogie.  Played hooky after lunch and found out I like slow beats and slow rides.  #Success

-First contact with insurgents.  You can't get paid enough for that shit, it's not all fun and games...and I'm not immortal.  Dakkadakkadakka.

-Fresh off a multiyear deployment I saw a girl for the first time.  We discussed why the caged bird sings...I posted my personal best from @8pm till first light, we got married...had a kid...and then she divorced me and I lost everything.  Up to an including myself.

-A little more than a decade ago I took a shower, put on my nicest clothes, chambered a round in my sks...sat on the toilet and stared into the mirror....and learned that I'm not the kind of person who could off myself.  Then I went out to the bar across the street and spent a solid 1k usd on drinks for anyone within arms reach.  Too drunk to remember my name I plopped down in a plastic chair on the patio and saw a red shape sitting across from me.  "Thank you for your service" - she said.

-A couple of years later we had a kid.  Right arm paralyzed at birth.  We couldn't sleep for fear that she'd roll over and suffocate.  We put about 20 hours in the car weekly driving from state to state..specialist to specialist..until we found someone we liked - a gator from UF. She quit after four pt sessions, in tears, telling us that there was nothing she could do.  The brand new wife told me she just wanted to be best friends - but not married.  I laughed and told her that I was down for anything she wanted.

-Encouraged by the woman above, who began to regret her words as soon as they left her mouth, I replied to a post looking for people who wanted to be a part of a state program in alternative ag and who didn't mind being paid so little they couldn't meet their bills.  I quit my job, and found myself suddenly poor...but straight up happy for the first time in a long time.

-I grew my hair out, started playing open mics, and talking everyone's ear off about ag...whether they wanted to hear it or not.  Gave up on everything I'd built beforehand and moved 900 miles away to a place where it snowed.

-I joined the boards.

-We bought this place out of foreclosure on the back of bonds during the Great Recession.  

...and here I am.













-

[vorlon13]

hitting 'bottom' and getting in 12 Steppers

testing - for HIV (but it also triggered incipient PTSD)

Brian

1979 eclipse

Loss of Challenger

Successful first landing of Columbia

getting fired in 1985

Chicago vacation 2011

Missouri River flood 2011

Cerritos plane crash

Chicago O'Hare 1979 DC-10 crash

LA Airways flight 841 crash

Hyatt walkway collapse

Silver Bridge collapse

Three Mile Island