Then and Now

So I was sitting here and decided to draw a slip to answer before bed. Almost wanted to put the slip back but I will go ahead with it.

What thing do you enjoy today that you enjoyed doing as a child? Describe then and now differences, similarities etc.

This was a touch question really. I was trying to think of what there was that I used to like to do when I was a kid that I still like doing now. I guess there are a few things, but I was telling Roni that really it kind of depends on how far back you want to go when considering what it means to be a child.

One of the things that I really liked to do when I was younger was to read. When I was in elementary school, I would go to the library pretty much every morning to look around and find books that I wanted to read. I would go and check them out and then I would read them as fast as I could, turn them back in and get more. Some of my favorites were the Encyclopedia Brown books. These were short books that had the adventures of a boy called Encyclopedia Brown whose dad was the chief of police. He would solve mysteries during the summers with his friends, many times having to do with the same bully. The stories would conclude with him knowing the answer to the mystery and the reader would have to turn to the back of the book to get the answer and explanation. I thought they were great books.

These days, I still love to read. I was thinking about this just the other day in fact and how it seems that I always have some kind of book that I am reading or wanting to read. The difference now is in what I choose to read. Now I tend to read things like Blue Like Jazz and Searching For God Knows What by Donald Miller; The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning and other various books that deal with Christian living and growth. I also still love to read fiction. The fiction that read now is a bit more grown up than the Encyclopedia Brown books, but not always (some of my favorites are the Harry Potter books). I guess it is that in some ways our tastes and interests change as we get older.

Other than that I have always loved spending time with my friends both then and now. The similarity here is that some of the friends are still the same as when I was a kid. The difference is in what we can do. It's still one of my favorite things to do though, to spend time with friends.

I liked playing video games as a child. It started with Justin's Atari and progressed from there to the original Nintendo and then Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. As I have gotten older it has moved to the Playstation, Playstation 2 and XBOX. The graphics are better and the games more involved.

Finally, I liked writing when I was younger and I still like doing it now. The biggest differences I suppose would be what I write about and how I do it. As a kid I liked to try and be creative and create stories (I would still love to do this, I just don't seem to take the time to be creative I guess). Now I choose to write on here about other things like sports, family and faith. I still love to write, but I want to be sure that I have something to say when I do.

I guess that's about it really. Those are some of the things that I like to do now that I also liked to do as a kid. Funny how even though some things about them change, really the basics of it is the same. Peace and Love y'all.

A Place to Call Home

Here is my next letter.

Where did your parents live when they were first married? Tell about other places where they lived as well.

Well let's see now. When Mom and Dad (or Gran'maw and Daddy Bill) first got married they lived in Snyder in the Coleman Apartments. It seems that I was born while they lived there, but I have no memory of that seeing as how I was less than a year old at the time. What I do know about the Coleman Apartments is that by the time I was old enough to be looking at moving out and getting my own place, there were some ads for there and Mom and Dad both assured me that it was not the best place to live anymore and that there was a reason that they were cheap. So I didn't end up there.

Anyway, after that we lived in a couple of rent houses there in Snyder. I have vauge memories of a house on 31st street and then I can remember living in a house on 41st street. That was a house that I really liked. Well let me say that it is a house that I can remember. This is probably the first house that I really have clear memories of.

After that we lived in a trailer house both outside of Snyder and in Midland. This is one of the houses where I made a great memories. This is the house we lived in when I met Justin and James and Jamie and Derrick and so many others. It is the house we lived in when we would play football and baseball on a regular basis in the neighborhood. The house we lived in when I was playing guns and G.I. Joes and Transformers. This is where we lived when we built our ramps and jumped our bikes on them and the dirt hill and dug huge holes in the pasture behind us.

After a while Mom and Dad bought an actual house behind the school where we went. This was the house where I first kissed a girl and first learned to drive. It was where I first went wrapping and stayed up all night. It was the house where I lived all through junior high and high school. It was where some friends and I were chased while wrapping one night and where we hung out on so many occasions.

There have been a couple of other places since then. But those are the ones that really stand out in my mind. The houses that had the biggest impact for me. Peace and Love y'all.

Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself

What are you frightened of? Why?

I guess I could say that it is something easy like snakes or spiders or underlines that won't go away on here. Those would all be too easy really; spiders bother me more than really scare me, snakes are things I just avoid if at all possible, and the underline? Well that is just a pain in the butt really.

There are other things I could say too. Things like death and dying. But death itself has no real fear for me (I fear it for what it would mean for my family) and dying just depends on how.

The things that I am really frightened of are the things that I can't really control. I am afraid of something happening to my children- to Averi or Aspen or Knight. I am afraid of something happening to Roni and being without her. These are things that really truly frighten me. The reason is because of the fact that I love each of these people so much, so deeply, that I find it hard to envision what it would be like to not have one of them here with me.

I also have a fear of not being able to take care of my family. This scares me because of knowing that I am responsible for lives other than just my own. I want to be able to give them all the best that I can and to be sure that they are provided for. The thought of not being able to do this is something that scares me on a very deep level. I will do whatever it takes to be able to make sure they all are taken care of to be best of my ability.

So there it is. That is what really frightens me above all other things. Probably not the most insightful of writings, but it's the truth. Peace and Love y'all.

That's the Color of...

What is your favorite color?

This one should be pretty easy I would think. I am not going to say that just one single color is my favorite, but I will give you what my four favorite colors are. This way I can feel like I am very diverse.

1) Black- This one has been one of my favorites for a long time really. I know that it would be more accurate to call it my favorite absence of all color, but we don't usually see it that way do we? I'm not sure why it is that I like black so much. I'm not of the "Gothic" persuasion, nor am I of the "vampire" persuasion. It is just a color that I found that I like to wear. Perhaps this is due to the fact that it goes with just about anything really. Whatever the reason, it is and has always been one of my favorite colors.

2) Gray- Again, I'm not sure what it is about this color that I find so appealing. I guess that it is just that I wear it a lot and it seems to go with everything. On top of that, maybe it is that in athletics this is what our shorts and shirts were that we wore in off season. Regardless of the reason, it is one of the colors that I find most often in my closet.

3) Blue- This is the universal color of males everywhere right? Really I like all the shades of blue I guess...except maybe that real light pastel color. This is the color of my car, and it is the color that Superman wears. It is one of the colors in our flag, and it is the color of yonder (it's wild). I wear it on occasion, and I have been told that it looks good on me.

4) Columbia Blue & White- Yeah I know, that is two separate colors, but together they make up one of my favorite combinations. It is the color combo of the North Carolina Tar Heels (not the reason), but above all else it is the color of the Greenwood Rangers. This is my high school Alma mater, and I have a lot of school pride. To the point that if there was anyway I could get my kids in school there I would do it in a heartbeat. It is what I wore on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday nights for six years playing sports. If is the color I wore when I walked across the stage on graduation. It is a color combination that I have many memories in. It is a good combo and probably number 1 on the list if it were in order.

So there it is. A list of my favorite colors. Peace and Love y'all.

Activity

Well here is another of the love letters. I decided to post twice today. Again, the goal and point behind these is to have something to pass on to my kids in the future. For now, I'm sharing these things with you dear readers.

Between the ages of 5 and 10 what was your favorite activity?

Well, I guess that I had a few favorite activities in that time span. Here are a few of them I will tell you about.

Saturday Morning Cartoons- Man back when I was between 5 and 10 there were some great cartoons that came on. I remember that I was very willing to get up as early as possible to start watching these shows. One of my favorite ones was the Super Friends. This was a great show that had all kinds of superheros like Superman, Batman & Robin, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman. These were the original episodes. After a few years they expanded the show and added some characters, like Apache Chief, and Green Arrow. They also added the Legion of Doom. There was also Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends as well as the Incredible Hulk. These were some of my favorite shows. There were of course others that I really liked on Saturday mornings.

Weekday cartoons- During this time of my life there were also cartoons that came on in the afternoons that I watched all the time. Early on the favorite was Scooby-Doo. As I got older, there was G.I. Joe, and the Transformers. There was also He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. One of my favorite things was to watch the cartoons and then go out and play like I was one of the people from the cartoon. There was also the morning when The Bozo Show was on and they would show a segment of either G.I. Joe or Transformers every morning before school. It was great.

Playing with G.I. Joes and Transformers- Man we had tons of these things. The G.I. Joes were 3 1/4" figures and they were the greatest toys every made for kids. They had all kinds of places where they would bend and twist. On top of that they were army figures and that was all kinds of fun to set up adventures for. The Transformers were cool too, seeing as how they would go from being a car, or a jet to being a robot...how cool is that?

Playing "guns"- Man there was a time when me and all my friends would get together and just play guns. We all had toy guns and we would more or less divide up into teams and run around playing like we were in the Army or were cops of something like that. It was one of the most fun things that we ever did. It was just good times.

Riding Bikes- We would do this all the time. Myself, and James and Justin and Derrick, and Bryan. We would ride up and down the street of Pecan Grove and just hang out. There was a large mound of dirt behind my house, affectionately known as "the dirt hill" and we would go over there with our bikes and ride over it and try to jump it. One of our favorite things though was to find old boards and to set up ramps. We would build them as high as we dared (about 6" to 2 feet) and then we would ride from far enough back to feel like we were gathering a good amount of speed and jump the ramp. We did this over and over, even when we busted it on the street.

Playing football and baseball- Living in a trailer park in Midland was fun. There was rarely any time that we lacked an empty lot to play in. We would find one of the lots and we would play football or baseball. It was fun, but it did lead to some competition issues at times. It was good times on a regular basis.

I guess that those are some of my favorite activities when I was between the ages of 5 and 10. Those were great times in my life and I have very fond memories of those days. Peace and Love y'all.