There are so many people from before. You know when. Before. Before, the time when the goals or the hopes or the next achievement started to be more important than and shadow the very people that make those desires a possibility. How do we lose touch with them? People that we were close to, people with whom we shared some of our most vivid memories and life experiences, gone in what seems to be a blink of the eye.

I’m not talking about the ones that die. They have an excuse for being out of the loop. We get a bye for letting them escape. What about the rest? Where and why do they go away? Is that part of the larger plan? Are they just bit players sent in to add depth to our character? Is that why they leave? Is that why they can’t stay? Because staying would somehow lessen their impact on out lives?

I can’t reach out and touch the memories of the ones you have misplaced, although I believe that would be easier. Just let someone dredge up the memories for you… that way we could insulate ourselves from the fact that we willingly allowed these people to fade into the background.

I can only look back over my past forty-nine years and dig around in the dark corners for the ones that fell through the cracks of my life. I hope that by revisiting some of these people I can reinforce the seams of my being that they helped to weld… before.

They might not always be good memories but they are memories of people involved in events that in some way shaped or molded my life and contributed in making me who I am. Some may even be funny. Funny in a laugh kind of way not funny in a “I better show this blog to someone at Homeland Security” kind of way.

First the ground rules. If, in the next few posts I mention your name and you too have been sifting through the memories and you would like to let me know where you’re at or what you’re doing now, or would just like to say “Hey” please feel free to send me an email at randy@randysblog.com or car_part@swbell.net .  If you have self control issues, are a stalker and or have been a guest at a psychiatric hospital for anything other than drug or alcohol addiction that’s cool too. Know though that there is a limit to my patience and if you jack with me I will smite thee about the head and shoulders with the jawbone of an ass or a Glock, whichever is more handy.

I will try to stay in chronological order but no promises. Inspiration could strike at any moment or more likely I will forget what I am working on and start posting about interesting ways to incorporate your navel into a new tattoo. Yep… I’m still fighting the ADD monster.

(I may have told parts of the following story before but I can’t find it using the search. The previous post may have been caught up in the “great purging of innocent posts that could be used against me by closed minded political opponents.”)

When I was about five years old we lived on Country Club Drive in Elk City, Oklahoma. A couple houses up the street was a girl. Not just any girl, no this was a very special girl. She was the first girl I ever played doctor with and I will never forget her. I don’t know why she got to be the doctor and why I was relegated to being the patient, probably because I had a lower co-pay. But for whatever reason I was the one that was laying face down on the wooden table in the back yard. The same table we used to cut up the watermelon on hot Oklahoma Saturdays when family came to visit. Yes it was me that my mom saw laying face down on the table, naked with a stick in my ass as she came around the corner of the house.

After threatening her with a malpractice suit, Mom sent the girl up the street packing while at the same time retrieving the stick from its place of lodging with catlike reflexes. She told me to gather up my clothes and she then dragged me naked around to the front door and into the house with one hand while she held the stick in the other.

Most kids like me grow up believing that there are three kinds of trouble that we could get into. The kind that gets you yelled at, the kind that gets you a spanking and then there is the kind that allows a parent to legally kill you. There was no yelling, there was no belt in sight so I was afraid. I was really afraid. I realized that it was bad but who knew that a stick in the ass was punishable by death.

Instead she bent over and looked me right in the eye, held up the stick and said, “Why was this in you bottom?” (Mom didn’t say ass. Though she would say “Shit fire and save your matches.” Go figure). To which I answered, “She was taking my temperature and I didn’t want to put the stick in my mouth cause it was dirty.”

To this day when I see a thermometer I cry uncontrollably.

My doctor that day was Diane Moppin. She had a brother named Bobby. I have no idea if that is the correct spelling of the last name or not. Diane, if your out there I would love to hear from you.