Perhaps it’s a mistake to try and “wrap up” any of…

This.

This journey, this road, this series of adventures, encounters and decisions. This account of this part of my life. A time of life rife with distractions, toxins, motivations, maneuvers… magical moments, first times, fucked up times, times of unimaginable fright, times to unavoidably fight…

THIS!

Wrap up this? HA!

This (as I’m sure you are quite aware, my dear reader) didn’t just start that summer forty years ago and it hasn’t ended yet. This blip of time that was/is my life had this teeny tiny blip of time that is this, of what I now write.

Somehow, and for some reason, I left Omaha and went home.

At some point I decided to end what was beginning to look like yet another futile attempt to stay on this crazy road. This road away from home. This road I had been on since leaving my home town of Rochester, Minnesota in late July of 1978. This road that started with me in a blurry haze and now seems to have ended with me making an unmemorable move.

Unmemorable indeed.

I remember nothing of my decision to make that call and make that move. I do seem to have a faint, feeling of fondness and joy when I heard my fathers voice on the phone. I seem to recall his not so slightly relieved sigh, when he heard mine. I imagine he may very well have even jumped for joy when he heard me say that I was going to work all summer and raise money so I could go to collage.

I remember nothing of my departure from Omaha. What I said to my new boss (Mama?) at Mama’s Pizza, my crazy friend Allen or any of the gang. I don’t remember if I even saw Maria again.

I KNOW I never saw Fred again.

I also know that I was home before my twentieth birthday. (April 18, 1979)

The move home changed everything, and yet my twenty-year-old self was beginning to see some of those things that never seem to change. I still worked in more than a few toxic environments and would soon be among more toxic lifestyles and encounter more than a few more predators and scammers.

I imagine that my young self was becoming a bit less naive. A bit more aware, aware of the predators and scammers of the world and while I can’t change the fact of their exsistance, I can at least do something to minimize their effect on me and those around me. 

My adult self would like to think that my young, twenty-year-old self was finally beginning to see how my actions can actually make at least some positive difference in the lives of others. How I can do more than just respond to whatever is happening around me. Even if I’d responded well in the past. Yes, before this, this journey… my young self had often responded well indeed. As the good boy I was and the good man I was becoming (and am now) I had, have and do often respond well. 

But my adult self tells me that the challenge is to actually do more.

My adult self tells me (as do a few of my adult and quite aware friends) to look for how I can do more than just respond instinctively. More than just react to whatever is happening around me by helping where it’s obvious or walking away when it is not. My adult self tells me to look for ways in which my help can make a difference that can last. That can help others to better navigate their journey while I continue to try and better navigate mine. Perhaps then there will be more of us to help. More us to learn (and to teach) how to better navigate our world.

My adult self would like to think that one of us navigators might even actually challenge ourselves to try and find ways to reach out to some of the predators and scammers of the world. To try and convince them to perhaps try a different road. A different way to navigate their world. One that might actually help. At least it might help reduce some of the obstacles those predators and scammers inevitably create in our world.

“Our” world… heh.

Sounds like another a challenging journey.

Actually eh?

The End.