Tag: aging

Reminiscing about my first car..

theycallmebettyLeave a comment

My oldest is almost sixteen, although that may be of concern to some parents for me it brings a sense of excitement and joy. The other day we ventured into the DMV so he could take a shot at passing his driver’s license written exam. I am proud to say he is now behind the wheel of any car we allow him drive. My son handles the pressure of driving a vehicle with incredible confidence. He remains calm and relaxed, very aware of his surroundings and for a new driver relatively smooth on the accelerator. The complete opposite of myself at his age. I was nervous. Terrified really, it scared the hell out of me driving down the roadway. I must have looked like a triathelete crossing the finish line when I finally drove on the freeway! Sweat pouring down my face, shirt soaked in perspiration! 55 mph seemed as though we were traveling at light speed! All those vehicles around me while moving fast, I swear looking out the windshield was like peering out the front of the Millenium Falcon at warp factor one! While we are on the subject of reported space junk, I was always relegated to driving my mothers 1972 Pontiac station wagon. Yuck! Major cool points lost! I prayed everyday that none of my friends saw me in that chocolate-brown hunk of poo with wood siding!

Yet my son doesn’t seem to care. Mini-van or truck, scooter or explorer it means nothing to him. As long as it has a steering wheel and motor he’s willing to drive. I don’t know if that means I had higher standards as a kid or he just enjoys the thought of driving so much he doesnt care. I really wanted to drive too! I started daydreaming about it when I was thirteen. I would spend endless hours on a Saturday just sitting behind the wheel of my dads 1963 GMC truck pretending to drive. I would close my eyes and see myself steering through town, waving at my friends, all while applying the clutch and shifting gears. My dream car was a 1966 Chevy Chevelle. Second runner-up was a 1968 Chevy half ton stepside truck. I dreamt about them, prayed I would own one. I knew exactly what they would look like, from color paint, rims, interior and stereo systems to where I would park them in the high school parking lot. I had it all figured out.

So what went wrong? Why doesn’t my son seem to care the way I did? Why doesn’t he have the same love for cars ? Why are his expectations so low? He has no answer to any of my questions when I ask him.

In my day your car was a rite of passage, a step into manhood, it defined who you were as a young male. Today no one seems to care. His friends don’t care! When I pick him up at the high school there isn’t one nice custom car/truck in the parking lot. Even the little Honda’s are bone stock! What the hell!

Anyway I wrote this a while back in regards to a piece about your first vehicle. I entered it and it was chosen as one of the final stories. The whole reason I looked it up and am posting it to my blog is simple. I am left pondering. Will my children have the same memories of their first vehicles as I did? Or have those days gone the way of cruising and eight tracks? Gone forever, replaced by video games and techno geeks?

Anyways here it is….

My Freedom

The day I brought it home I had no way of knowing the effect it would have on my life so many years later. This machine of dreams made of steel, fabric, glass and wood. It was green and had the smell of old vinyl which hit you hard as you opened the door. The body lines curved, rolled and seemed to run on with no end. The glass was large and bulbous, when you sat inside you felt as though you were a fish looking out at the world from a mobile aquarium. There wasn’t much chrome on this metal masterpiece and that was the way I liked it. Anyone could have a flashy ride with a little money and some elbow grease, but it took someone with confidence and grit to pull off the industrialized look that it held when your eyes fell upon its shadowy form.

My 1964 Chevrolet stepside had a three on the tree with a 289 V8 that rumbled at idle. The gas tank was right behind the seat, which left a hint of petrol wafting through the cab on a warm summers day. Right next to the fuel cell I had carefully mounted a motorized windshield wiper container, which I had filled with whiskey. There was small tubing running under the rubber flooring towards my glove box. When you opened the glove box there were three cup rings where whiskey was dispensed through a small metal wiper fluid nozzle into your waiting glass. The entire thing was wired to a marine switch which ironically in today’s age of not drinking and driving was located next to the ignition.

I loved this truck! I hardly slept at night waiting for the morning, just so I could drive it somewhere, anywhere! I made up excuses to run errands for friends or family just so I could be behind the wheel. It rode rough, had a steering wheel the size of a manhole cover, no air conditioning, and drum brakes that didn’t stop worth a darn. It was primitive, but I loved it! Whenever I see one drive by I am flooded with memories of first dates, parties with my friends, drag racing at the end of the boulevard (yes we still cruised back then) and loading up with my closest buddies then traveling where ever and whenever we felt like it.

You see this was my first truck, my first car, rolled into one. It was the epitome of teenage masculinity, my identity, my solace. It opened the door to freedom from my shuttered world and behind its closed doors it held all the secrets of our journeys together.

Maybe he shouldnt have memories of a first vehicle after all. Sounds like trouble waiting to happen. A Honda civic will do nicely thank you….

Its more than a shirt..

theycallmebettyLeave a comment

This started as a story I wrote for my son.  I felt he needed to understand the importance of staying true to yourself.  That people spend their whole lives wasting time on phony images.  I also felt if he understood who I had become, he would understand we have all been in that awkward position at some point in our lives.  Sometimes the things we try to live up to only bring failure.  Sometimes, remarkably they bring success, but in the end I wanted him to know he will become a wonderful person by using all the tools he has been given by his mother and I.  How he uses them will help him to define who he is and who he wants to become…

So here it is…..

 IT’S MORE THAN A SHIRT

It started when I was in high school. I came from a small rural community and at my high school wrestling, football and basketball were the followed sports of choice. I had friends that were on the wrestling team and during the school week they always wore their wrestling shirts or Letterman jackets.  I would marvel at the way people treated them when we were out in public getting something to eat or just hanging out.  (Joe citizen) So you’re on the wrestling team Huh? How’s the season going? (Followed up with) You boys need something to eat? And; don’t let us down at the next match ok! The questions and admiration from adults never ended.  I used to think; if I could wear a team shirt or Letterman Jacket, people would respect me as well.. 

I went to all the wrestling matches and during one of those matches a friend of mine who wrestled varsity, asked me to hold his Letterman jacket.  I ended up putting it on and instantly I could feel other kids and parents alike staring at me as I walked by! It was strange, like I had been instantly transformed into someone special.  I could hear them talking in my head too.  Saying things like; oh that poor boy must be injured, or look at all the markings on that jacket that kid must be some kind of athlete.  As I strolled around the high school gym I also noticed something else.  It didn’t feel right, it felt fake, a sham, this wasn’t my jacket, I hadn’t earned the right to wear it, and I was a complete fraud.  The feeling I had that day stuck with me as I went into adult hood. I always remembered the feeling of shame whenever I had an opportunities to portray myself as something I wasn’t to gain acceptance and admiration. 

There’s more to this than wearing the shirt. 

As I became an adult, I applied and was accepted to a firefighter academy. After several long weeks of intense training, I had the opportunity to become a firefighter upon completion of the class. I succeeded and so started my probationary period with the department. One of the proudest moments of my life was finally being able to discard my red fire academy t- shirt for an official fire department t- shirt.  I wore the navy blue t-shirt around with confidence and pride.  I always felt when people looked at me they were thinking to themselves; “there goes a fireman “with a smile upon their faces.  I had finally arrived. I was now wearing the equivalent of that Letterman jacket from so many years ago.  The only difference was this fire department t-shirt was mine, I had earned it!  All the long academy hours, training at night and in the rain, I had earned it! It was mine to wear when I wanted, where I wanted and everyone was going to see me as someone special! Just look at the large, block letters printed on the back “FIRE DEPARTMENT”.  I mean that alone must mean I’m someone special!  

The truth; I was still a fraud, still a poser, still a fake.  You see it’s not the t-shirt or Letterman jacket you wear that makes you special. It’s what you do with the responsibility bestowed upon you the minute you wear that t-shirt.  The Letterman jacket from so many years ago was earned with dedication, honor, integrity and sheer will.  Matches were won and matches were lost, my friend had numerous injuries along with a few broken bones.  There were skirmishes that went outside the ring and friendships inside the ring that were forged for life.  He honored the sport by always giving one hundred percent and never letting himself come before his team.  The reason people admired him and the others were because they knew or at least hoped they were upholding the honors and traditions of the great wrestlers who walked the matt before them.  They did…

The fire service is no different.  I thought I was on top of the world the day I donned a fresh new navy blue t-shirt emblazoned with our departments name upon the back.   I felt I had arrived to a place of instant respect.   Like so many other young misled lads and lasses I was wrong.  You see my journey had only just begun. For the only thing I had truly earned that day was the right to purchase my uniform shirt.  I was very quickly going to learn that being a fireman was much more than wearing a cool navy blue t-shirt.

Oh sure I had passed the academy, yes I had been assigned a shift, I now had a Captain an Engineer and a firefighter to work for and alongside.  What I didn’t have, what I didn’t realize after all those years of watching others and thinking “I could do that”, was experience.  I needed to put in the time. Time to prove that I really deserved to wear a department t-shirt, time to honor those that came before me with actions not words, time to show my crew and the department that I could give one hundred percent of myself and always put the team first.  I needed to place my co-workers and my community first, ensuring that I would perform flawlessly each and every time an alarm went off.  Earning my stripes meant, staying calm during emergencies and thinking clearly, it meant not getting angry as a citizen is yelling at you for taking too long to arrive on scene of their emergency.  Keeping a straight face as a drunk driver tells you why he parked his car in the living room of someone else’s residence. Telling a patient its ok they vomited on you for the third time, then afterwards calmly letting them know it happens to you all the time.  It means holding a little kid and comforting them while CPR is being performed on mommy.  Telling that child it’s going to be ok, even though you know mommy is never coming home again. Picking up a homeless man and letting him know that you appreciate the warning he gave you in regards to him contracting AIDS. Knowing the law states he isn’t required to tell you a thing as he is bleeding all over you. Carefully picking up body parts off the freeway at 2 in the morning or unlocking a car on a 104 degree day with an infant in the backseat.  It means coming to work even though you don’t feel good or you hurt because you know someone today is going to hurt much worse than you do now. Spending holidays and birthdays, family occasions and children’s sporting events away from your family. Sometimes 48 hours turns into 96 hours and there is nothing you can do about it.  During the summer or “wildland’ season you may end up spending weeks in other parts of the state as part of the Office of Emergency Services response matrix. Its knowing and I mean knowing, that at any moment in time it could all be over!  That we dont live forever and this job at times seems to take additional seconds away from that clock.

After 17 years there are things I have done and seen that are too unbelievable to even mention.  Events more gruesome than any person should have to endure. Pictures lodged in your mind that sometimes rear their ugly head for no good reason at all. Yet there they are and before long you have transposed other people’s tragedies upon your own families’ day to day operations! I have had the misfortune of burying former colleagues, friends and family members.  I have tried my hardest to pay homage to those that have come before me and instill the simple qualities of honor, dedication, and respect into the “new ones” that arrive every couple of years. 

You can always spot the “new ones” too. I see them; they are in every city, in every firehouse, in every town across our nation.  They have “the look” it gives them away every time.  They stand tall and proud, their shirts are shiny and blue, they walk with a certain step that right away identifies them as a “young firefighter”, they’ll try telling you stories even though you haven’t asked.   They end up walking away frustrated with you if you seem indifferent.  They want your respect, they are yearning for your respect, and the problem is they have to work for that respect. They have a long way to go and many experiences to endure.  Obtaining knowledge from actual hands on work in conjunction with countless hours of training, before they even get a hint that there’s more to being a firefighter than wearing the t-shirt.

When that happens, when they have reached the tipping point of knowledge and experience, something else happens.  They calm down, their shirts aren’t quite so neatly pressed, they talk a little quieter, and they brag a little less, they understand the people they serve are not just faceless images erased with time.  It’s then and only then they obtain a different demeanor.  One of confidence mixed with a hint of exhaustion and humility.  When they go home they will stare at their duty shirt as they put it in the wash with pride.  And they will spend the rest of their careers trying to keep the “new ones” on track by passing down all the same lessons and wisdom they were exposed too.  Then and only then the shirt wont define them and it won’t seem so important after all. 

I still wear an occasional retired job shirt from time to time when I am off duty.  Usually they have been relegated to “work shirt” status because they are too destroyed to be used on duty.  But for the most part it’s only around my property.  I hardly ever wear one into town.  It’s not because I am embarrassed or ashamed of what I do, I love being a firefighter! Being a firefighter to this day is still hands down the greatest job in the world!  I don’t wear them because I have finally earned the respect I was looking for, the funny thing is, the respect I was looking for didn’t come from co-workers or the citizens in our town. It didn’t come from family members who are always interested in my job when I see them, or even the wonderful and not so wonderful people I have helped over the years. 

The respect came from me. I have respect for myself and for that there is no t-shirt.  

Retirement…

theycallmebetty1 Comment

What is retirement?

Some view this as a magical time of elderly enchantment! A period of time that is often spoken about in private hush-hush circles. An assumed reward for years of hard work and exasperation resulting from the mounting pressures of day-to-day living both personally and professionally.  I prefer to see it as a magical island where old people go to feel young and appreciated.  Where drinks flow freely and dinner is served promptly a 5pm.  I can wear my finest to dinner and a sport jacket to breakfast! Where daily adventures keep me busy and I can relax in flip-flops and beachwear! Oh wait.. That’s a cruise?

Seriously though, what is retirement? It feels as though retirement is a sunset on the horizon.  It’s there, you know it’s there, you can see it with your eyes, but know matter how hard you try, run as fast as you can, you just cant seem to catch it!

But yet we are told constantly we need to prepare for “retirement”. Like Domesday preppers waiting for the great apocalypse we “elders” need to be prepared for every aspect of being retired (kicked out of the workforce)! What am I supposed to do? I am not some crazy whack a doo with an AK-47 and a five-year supply of yams in my basement!  There are no buried cans in my backyard filled with money and penicillin! I am not hoarding gold, and I don’t carry a money belt with specific details to my estate!

Yet, the sad thing is we are bombarded with commercials letting us know that it is right around the corner! And guess what buddy? You are not prepared sir! With the climbing deficit and poverty/unemployment at an all time high you have not adequately prepared yourself for the twilight of your life.  All of this got me to thinking maybe they are right!

Lifetime healthcare!I don’t have it!  Savings? Kids have it all while they are finishing up college! 401K ? Hey now that’s a dirty word in this household! We have PERS (Public Employee Retirement System)!  Ha ha ha ha ha! I laughed really hard typing that one! Thats ok I have social security to fall back on right?  AH NO!  As a public employee I dont recieve Social Security!  Well thank goodness I have an inheritance to keep me safe and secure right? No mummy and daddy left me nothing of monetary value.  Although I value what they gave me in life lessons learned.

What am I to do? WHAT THE HELL AM I TO DO!!! I am slowly starting to panick! Late night TV is not helping either! It has me watching Robert Wagner divulge the secret to reverse mortgages! Oh God! Wilfred Brimley has me worried about whether or not I am going to have diabetes! Oh Geez! Susan Lucci wants my skin to glow and Dan Marino wants me to eat using Nutri-system! Then there is Chuck Norris, him and Christie Brinkley just want me to stay in shape so I will live longer! Live longer? I apparently can’t afford my elderly pathetic lifestyle the way things sit now! Why would I want to live longer? But its Chuck Norris? I can’t possibly go against anything Chuck Norris says! I am doomed…..

So I am back to the root of my original question.  What is retirement? Lets put all the financial worries aside and focus on the question.  Really think hard now, what is retirement? I know there are many theories about what retirement means, and in todays ever-changing climate it takes on a different connotation depending on the individual.  But after many nights of lying in bed worrying about whether or not I am prepared for the day I “pull the pin” on my career I have come up with this explanation.

Retirement to me is the day I have decided to fulfil my own personal wishes!  The day I say thank you to the wonderful people I have spent the better portion of my life working alongside and walk off into a world where I am the boss.  A place where I report only to me.  (ok my wife too)! After working my entire life for someone else, after keeping my job and excelling at certain aspects of my career over a 25 year period.  I am going to walk away and find out who I really am.  I know it sounds corny, but having never gone to college, having never traveled the world in my early twenties, having always put everyone else first because it was the right thing to do! I don’t believe I know who I really am.  Writing this blog has helped me a lot in that department and I believe going to Haiti is also going to enlighten my thirst for self discovery. But I still feel the need to explore my brain a little deeper and find answers to many of my life’s little mysteries. I am going to work when I want to work and play when I want to play.  I am going to finish building a personal dynasty that says;I am Betty! One that my children and grandchildren can look back upon and say wow! Dad/Grandpa was freaking cool! He did it all and he did it his way!

Maybe it shouldnt be called retirement after all! Retirement is defined as: The act of retiring.  

  1. The state of being retired
  2. Withdrawl from ones occupation, work or office
  3. Withdrawl into privacy or seclusion
  4. The act of going away or retreating

I wish to do absolutely NONE of that! Ok Number 2 is a definite, but the rest of them, NO WAY!

Maybe it should be called: Retrospective rejuvenation?

Yeah! I can see the party now! The chief standing at our distinguished podium, recounting my many years of service, and closing his lengthy humbling speech with; we wish Betty God Speed heading off into the sunset and starting a new life of retrospective rejuvenation! Yeah it has a nice important sounding ring to it!

 

Retrospective: As I look back and recount all I have learned while carrying that knowledge forward into my future.

Rejuvenation: I am born again! It’s a whole new life. One that I will live and love until my untimely passing of exhausted happiness!

So I will no longer stress about retirement! I promise to put my crazy little A.D.D brain to rest knowing that its my life and with a little for sight I can ride of into retrospective rejuvenation land with my head held high, the wind at my back, and my brain shifted into full gear!  The world is my oyster!!!!!

Shoot, I didn’t budget for oysters in my retirement financial planner…..