Benjamin Tomes's Blog: Recalcitrance: An Unapologetic Free Thinking Forum, page 13

Gonna be tough to leave the male offspring after a few days in...

Gonna be tough to leave the male offspring after a few days in #Minot. It’s strange to see your young one in an entirely new world, but hardly bad. I say that now. Taking the train back to balmy Milwaukee, and doing the sleep car for the first time. And by sleep I mean cry. Thankfully, I’ll be tucked away from the 3 or 4 other people on that thing not smart enough to travel to a place not resembling Hoth. All worth it, though. The coaching staff at @minotstatewrestling is amazing. They’re in a brutal conference, but treat everyone with importance and care. I’ve always appreciated that in a team, but lands differently in 2021. If you are interested in depositing your offspring into the Dakotan wilderness, and they altercate for sport, you would be hard pressed to find a better place to leave them. (at Amtrak, Minot, ND)
https://www.instagram.com/p/CLIrrP5HJBz0DXc05TfhtqhJDQt-dDj3l8cUAA0/?igshid=dhubkklx9kch

If you ever wondered what cold looked like, it looks like this. ...

If you ever wondered what cold looked like, it looks like this. (at Minot International Airport)
https://www.instagram.com/p/CLDRf9tnqkcqyqXh-XkrTTB7lBNtOE7o0Qq27s0/?igshid=18wdd3acsg2d

We had a nice long talk with all our miscreants before heading...

We had a nice long talk with all our miscreants before heading to #UFCVegas18, and really thought they’d behave whilst we were at the fight. Nope. Vegas Vacation turned to Vegas Placation, as they all just nodded, smiled, and apparently plotted a swath of destruction. Can’t bring fighters anywhere. Especially #Vegas. Oh well. Time to celebrate a big win. (at Las Vegas, Nevada)
https://www.instagram.com/p/CK-HHUEnZeCFj-DScLDQmhjQhvHiR2F9hId9ls0/?igshid=1046gjdalnjr7

Checked in, dialed in for #ufcvegas18 See you on the other side....

Checked in, dialed in for #ufcvegas18 See you on the other side. (at UFC Headquarters)
https://www.instagram.com/p/CK9rHyjnmp2SHyuNiGuuSKBjYp4FGoxrX7hZV40/?igshid=xt279qf3cm59

COTUM V4 Play: GTFOH

Chapter 1: GTFOH

It should come as no surprise to anyone that in my orchard, the apples are still stuck to the tree.  Both of my offspring are stricken with the ADHD.  While the disorder might be the same, the world around them has been vastly different.  They have not grown up as I did.

Standing in starkest contrast is the age and frequency of which they have been around other kids.  Having been born in the early 70’s, I was My children have been around other kids almost since the day they were born.  

The ADHD demon has been detected by the tractor beams of others; namely school personnel, doctors, other parents, other children, the neighbors, coaches, instructors, waiters and waitresses, and an untold number of hapless witnesses.  It doesn’t take long to recognize.  

As they grew up, the scramblehead was in a state of perpetual flux.  We curbed a lot of the really impactful behaviors, and cultivated a couple of decent kids.  We were blessed to have education on the subject matter and a pair of parental units, that despite a tough divorce and family split, worked professionally with kids.  Signs were there early with the male offspring, and we were on it right away.  I can’t imagine how it might’ve turned out if we lacked that experience.  

My involvement with other kids did not really start until I was in pre-school, which was at age 4.  Both of my kids were in daycare within a couple of months of birth.  Their socialization might have began just over 4 years earlier, but they’re highly pivotal years.  The difference between a newborn and a 4 year old is significant.

The difference between our generations is just as big.  

It’s not just that kids today are around kids at a much earlier age than kids in the past.   In theory, we had an adult that had chosen to be home with the life forms she concocted.  My Mom was a willing participant in the making of us babies, but as a 21 year old mother home with one, and a 24 year old with three children at home, the decision to be at home came with instant buyer’s remorse.   I suppose we weren’t purchased, so maybe fucker’s remorse is more accurate.  Either way, she never really said it.  She didn’t have to.  

To be clear, that’s not a criticism.  If I was saddled with all three of us for hours at a time in those years, I’d have put all three of us for sale on the black market.  We were bad, but we were kind of cute.  I’m confident we’d have fetched a pretty penny or two.

Being at home in those days meant you either played with yourself, your siblings, or cousins.   That is, of course, unless you reached the golden age of 5.   In Wausau, WI, where we lived, this meant it was time for me to learn to ride a bike.  Learn that, and my mother could tell me to get the fuck out of here, and I could happily comply.  

Being able to ride a bike was the ultimate liberator.  No longer confined to the shit-filled diapers and random fits of tyke insanity by my younger siblings, I was free to roam the area, and roam I did.  There was mutual excitement shared between me and my mother.  She was giddy to have one of her naughty-ass kids out of the house, where she toiled all day without a lick of help.  In fact, we were the genuine opposite of help.  I distinctly recall the woman trying to clean, only to have it undone in synchronous fashion.  We showed nary an ounce of chill while recontaminating that which she cleaned.  

It had to feel like she was drowning in a toxic tsunamic wave of Legos, Lite Brite bulbs, tipped over plants and bodily fluids.  It’s why 70’s mothers became like some animal species that run their young out the the second they can wobble on all fours.  Like beavers that had reached maturity, once the dexterity to ride a bike without wiping out for 50 yards was attained, we were pushed out of god’s damn and sent to go fetch sticks.  No judgment, no shame.  Was the 1970’s home version of Survivor.  The woman did what she had to do.  

My old man was a traditional one in many a sense for the era; he worked way too much, and rarely took diligent, meaningful time in those years to teach us things.  You know my beleaguered mother was excited to roll my instigating ass out the house when she somehow convinced him to try to teach me to ride a bike.  She was out of kids to barter for; even she knew three was probably 2.5 too many to handle.  If I were a betting man, I am guessing all forms of current and future procreation were riding on me learning how to use that bike.  I was terribly uncoordinated, grossly immature, and had no focus.  My old man lacked patience, tact and parental context.  

This wasn’t going to end well.

Teaching me to ride a bike was tinged with stress from my old man, who clearly had some form of a bounty placed over his head in exchange for putting me on wheels my mother could roll away on a whim.  

Now, to be fair, my dad did the best he could.  He grew watching his mother be beaten to the point of hospitalization on multiple occasions, and took several himself   He was never like that with me.  Physical, yes.  Abusive, no.  To that end, I am greatly appreciative of the cycle he broke.

That said, this cycle was going to break me.  And his lack of patience didn’t mesh well with my penchant to wipe out in graphic, repetitive, almost inexplicable ways.  

So, yeah, it didn’t go so well.  

Bike lessons were reserved for occasional Saturdays and, if lucky, an evening a week.  There are two ways to look at this, and almost no in-between.  

One, doing it this way might have spared me from skin grafts.   I recall intense excitement and the specific moment the training wheels came off.   That might not have been so memorable if I was aware of what was to come.  

Learning to ride a bike wasn’t going to be easy for me no matter what, but I clearly needed the repetition of daily attempts.  Hence, a dilemma arose.  Evidence suggested daily lessons might  lead to me looking like Slim Goodbody with open wounds.  He opted for a lesson or two a week at most.  It made it like starting over each time, though.

Early on, the wipeouts were immediate and spectacular.  He’d have his hand on the back of the bike, following me as I rolled away.  The very second my old man let go of the back of the light blue, western-themed dirt bike, my arms and legs were flailing as I bit it.  Why waste time if it isn’t gonna work out, right?

When I wasn’t wiping out, I was getting toes stuck in chains, forgetting to brake and using Flintstone stops,  or not stopping at all.  Once I got the independent rolling down came learning to stop.  That lead to a whole new round of skin deposits left on our unpaved gravel road.  If you’ve never wiped out on gravel, feel free to skip it.  I distinctly recall screaming like the little bitch I was as my mother pulled rock shrapnel out of my legs.  Good times.

I’d have had YouTube Star written all over me, if it existed and there were viable space not covered by scar tissue.  A highlight film of my best bike fails would have been epic.  

Most of the wipeouts would result in verbal frustration with my dad, who was not so impressed with my accidental slapstick.  

For my old man’s impatience with us, we were largely oblivious to it.   We idolized him.  One of the oft ignored aspects of having a stay-at-home-parent, is unfettered resentment built up by the unit designated to be home towards the one working.  We loved mom, but idolized our dad.  

Alas, he was hardly around for the hard stuff.  They didn’t argue around us, but my mom was not happy and it showed daily when he went to work.  

Eventually, with all limbs intact, I learned to ride the bike without help.   Upon mastering that bike, neither me nor my mother wasted a second in getting me the fuck out the house.  So long, suckas.  

We lived in a newer neighborhood in a village called Kronenwetter, not more than a few years old.   My parents had the house we lived in built when I was 3, and we moved in when I was 4.  While I was young, I paid extreme, almost fanatical, attention to where we were going, whenever we were going somewhere.  By an early age, I knew where I wanted to go with that bike and how to get there.  

The hood we lived in had kids everywhere.  It was like a midwestern version of Elliot’s city in ET; a lot of the houses were similar; yellow ranches with stone exteriors, big yards, and pine trees everywhere.  Kronenwetter was on the outskirts of Wausau; a small town by most standards outside of Wisco.  Here in the Wis, a town of 25,000 peeps is somewhat of a metropolis.  We weren’t in the big city of Wausau; we were more like the rural suburb of what was already smaller than most suburbs.  Places like Hatley, Birnamwood, Mosinee, and other towns that even sound small littered the area.  

I had been desperate to fully and independently explore my surroundings since the day we visited the lot where the house would be built.  This was consistent no matter where I roamed.  I had a penchant for wandering off in malls and at carnivals. I also had absolutely no hesitation to talk to strangers.  Bike freedom could have very easily spelled disaster for me and I was fortunate that it didn’t.  I had mailbox kid written all over me.  Fortunately, the area was safe enough to match the freedom my mother let me roam with.  It marks another massive change from how my kids grew up, as by the time I had kids, that type of freedom wasn’t issued in most houses, including ours.  

While much of Generation X longs for the old days of our youthful freedom to roam, I think reality has changed.  It was a mixed bag.   It all worked out for me, but can pinpoint many times when it could have gone terribly awry.   Age 5 is a pretty young age to be roaming rural Wausau on a bike by yourself.   I wouldn’t be so independently mobile for long.  

I exploited the newfound freedom immediately, and my mother wasn’t too far behind me.  Jettisoning me out the yard and into errant orbit went so well, she sent the youngest one with me.  Before long, my brother would be told to get the fuck out of here too and sent rolling away with me, albeit on 3 or4 wheels.  Ironically, his wheel count was about the same as his age at the time.   As an adult, I’ve retraced some of the places we’d meander off to, and they were often a mile or more away from the house.   What could go wrong with hyperactive free range pre-schoolers on a shitty Shopko bike and Big Wheel?

That freedom led to some amazing discoveries; first and foremost, my first BFF.

It would take the bike to realize it, but a boy my exact same age and grade lived through a small patch of trees in front of the house.  It was an uncleared lot still full of signature pine trees, thick enough that it obscured view of his house from our front yard.   This would prove to be a pivotal discovery that had a profound impact on me.  

To date, the only kids I had played with by age 5, were my two siblings and my cousins; the closest of which were 3 hours away.  Pre-school was brief and came when my mother tried to GTFOH too, and took on a part-time job.  Not so fast, vixen.  We didn’t handle the job well and she was forced to quit, which ended the pre-school experiment.  My earliest friendships would come with simple proximity, not daycare or school, as it does for most kids today.  

My friend’s name was Scott, and our friendship was a perfect storm.  Between our houses stood about 80 feet of mystical forest.  The mere jaunt over to his house was a magical trot.  Not only was he my neighbor, Scott would be in my Kindergarten class with the same teacher.  This would start a lifelong trend bringing unhappy endings for me when in class with my closest peers.  This includes college and especially professional developments as a veteran teacher.  Like, as recent as this past year.

Sweetening the deal, his parent’s reproductive patterns mirrored our family’s, save for our evil sister in the middle.  That was for the best for everyone involved.  I know what gas does to fire.  

Scott had a younger brother the exact same age as mine.  This a key development for children locked in on a War on Boredom.  It buffered being saddled with the siblings your parent had grown weary of raising all day.   Additionally, we’d learn quickly that Scott would be in my kindergarten class with the same teacher.  We became pretty inseparable as friends that summer before the advent of compulsory kindergarten that fall, which ended life as we knew it.  

From the beginning, there was not a single second of time I spent with Scott that was boring.  Not once, not ever.  The mere act of going to visit him was an adventure all on its own.  The 80 feet of maturing pine trees between our yards might seem small now, but to a 5 year old, I might as well have had something out of the Game of Thrones in between us.  For whatever interesting things to be found in the woods, time spent at Scott’s house was even better.  

My first BFF in life exposed me to a number of things that are still major parts of my life today or make up a significant part of my personality.  Among them: the sport of baseball, an affinity for fights, mocking bad people and the intrinsic value of an unrelated co-conspirator.  I was capable of bad things and erratic behavior on my own, but was just so much more fun with an echo-chamber of questionable thoughts.

Beyond the aforementioned items, hanging out at Scott’s taught me some crucial life lessons I am truly grateful for.  One, not all households had parents that held back with one another.  Not once throughout my childhood did my parents get loud with each other in front of us.  I did not know this was not the case in everyone’s home.  You learned this quickly upon entry into Scott’s house.  

At Scott’s house, everyone yelled; the kids yelled at the parents, the kids yelled at each other, the parents yelled at the kids, the parents yelled at each other.  If they had a dog, they’d have all yelled at it, and likely, the dog back at them.  It took me awhile to realize they weren’t yelling because they were upset or bad.  It was just how they communicated.  After a while, I realized to separate the anger from the yelling.  

This proved to be true most of the time, but not all.  

Scott ’s younger brother was named Danny.  He was about the same age as my brother.  Danny was socially awkward as a young kid, which was evident before the time he had turned five.   It’s not something we failed to recognize when we played with him, as we had keen insight into siblings who were not well adjusted.  We had the cross-eyes in our home too.  Our sister was worse, though.  The difference between Scott’s sibling-related cross to bear was that he was a boy, was kind of funny, and wasn’t trying to trash whatever we were doing.  He was just kind of a smart ass and sort of goofy.  

Scott had no patience for his brother Danny. I liked Danny, and can’t recall a single situation where I was unhappy with playing with him.  Still, that didn’t prevent me from finding the kicking of Danny’s ass at the hands of his older brother a fascinating ritual.  And ritualistic it was, as just about every trip over to their house resulted in violent beat-down that was so gripping, it left you unable to intervene.  Their brotherly in-fighting left me paralyzed in amazement, as did the constant arguing that went on in the house.  It was like there was a Civil War reenactment going on there every day of the year.  

Or so it seemed.  

The lack thereof in my house simply masked bigger problems.  By the time things would get emotional and loud at our house, we would be older and at an emotional point of no return.   Fortunately for Scott, nature and karma would go easy on him.  It’s funny how those things have a way of working things out.  Danny might have been an undersized, awkward kid, but he grew into a massive body that earned him the nickname “the Vanilla Gorilla”, along with a scholarship to play Division 1 football.  I’m guessing the brotherly beat downs faded in conjunction with a growth spurt that never ended.  There’d be no such spurts for anyone in my diminutive family, but beating up on my younger brother had already proven to be pointless anyway.   He was one strong, little bastard.

Scott had no such fear of is brother in the early years.   Nothing caused more anger between them than competitive games of baseball, football or kickball in the backyard.  

No matter the sport, you were guaranteed to see a mixed martial arts contest before it was over.  Typically, it would start out in trash talking between Scott and his brother.  Scott had a mean streak, something that Danny lacked.  That’s not to say that Danny was a completely innocent bystander.  Danny was well aware that his brother lacked patience to deal with him, and instead of shying away from triggers, he wielded a fully automatic mouth.  

Danny had a white-blonde, tangled hive of hair to go along with extremely pale complexion.  His voice was somewhat high and erratic, something that grated on Scott’s every nerve.  As we’d start a game, it would inevitably disintegrate into Danny’s high pitch, goofy voice taunting Scott, usually inferring he was a girl.  At some point, whatever we were using as a ball would be hurled at Danny’s head, which usually missed.  The taunts would only intensify after the ball sailed past his head, leading Scott to sprint towards him, beating him mercilessly.  In contests of waffle ball, the bat would most certainly be brandished as a weapon by one or both of them.  You haven’t really lived until you’ve heard the glorious hollow thud of a waffle bat pinging someone’s head, followed by an unintelligible mix of snarling profanity between whimpers from crying.  

Danny would laugh for parts of it, which only made Scott angrier.  Eventually, Scott would get the better of him and then some.  This would result in Danny taking off for the house, where he would tell his mother about the beating he endured at the hands of Scott.   When he’d make his break for the house, he was typically crying and occasionally bleeding; both profusely.  Timing mattered here.   You knew the visit was on a short shelf-life once he got in the house  and still crying.  Hence, after taking the beating too far, Scott would often sprint after him, trying to apologize, tackle, threaten and block his brother from going in the house to tell on him.  It was similar to my cousins on my mom’s side of the family, but we lived three hours away from them.  This show ran as a matinee every single day, and was right next door.  

To this day, I love fighting.  I am fascinated by the sight of people arguing, having a domestic dispute or open disagreement.  My interest is deep enough to scope in on sublime acts, such as dirty looks, between couples.  I am not sure why that was such a fascination, but if I were a betting man, I’d place a few bucks on the slot that says, “Because there wasn’t much of that in my home.”   I never saw my parents fight or even argue.  In fact, I don’t think I heard either of them ever express displeasure towards one another.  It was crazy because in both of their families, folks didn’t hold back much at family gatherings.  Go to one of those, and you are going to know immediately who was pissed at whom, and why.   Not at my house.  My parents made a concerted effort to never even disagree in front of us.  It was bizarre, and not for the better.  I would contend houses like Scott’s, even if they’re a bit dysfunctional, are much healthier than ones where parents never so much as raise a voice to one another.  Now, at us, was a whole different story.  They let us have it at their whim, usually for good reason, but occasionally for no reason at all.  

Strife wasn’t the only lifelong fascination that I carried out of my first experience in having a close friend.  

While we would often end up playing at Scott’s house, it was usually after we had spent several hours wandering around the greater Wausau area on our bikes.  Scott was a vagabond; not content to stick around and talk about doing something.  He was intent on doing, seeing and exploring.  This resonated with me.  

Our penchant for wandering around the neighborhood left somewhat of a literal impression.  We only lived in Wausau until I was 8 years old, but I never forgot how to get around the neighborhood and well beyond.  I remembered the entire city of Wausau and where everything was.  This included where my neighborhood friends lived, what their first and last names were, and other unique aspects about them.  With the advent of the internet, it’s pretty amazing to be able to go back and check and see that your memory didn’t do you an injustice.  In fact, it’s kind of eerie to have so much etched in my head that turned out to be the way I remembered it.  I didn’t realize quite how rare that was until having kids of my own.  It was a skill I’d have a lot of opportunity to practice.  My parents would develop a penchant for moving  that would kick into high gear a few years later.   Exploring the area where I reside has stuck with me.  It morphed into a more adult form with me, such as learning the history or unique nearby locations.  It was another life item I got from Scott, and it never left.  

For a kid that was all of five years old when I met him, Scott had already developed a legitimate biting sense of humor.   It would prove to be another element I resonated with Scott on.  I don’t think I’d have ever developed that on my own, but was clearly given a life predisposed to embracing it.  He found great enjoyment in the misfortune of others, even in people he liked.  He didn’t care for every adult in our life.  He hated our Kindergarten teacher, and I wasn’t really sure why, but it made the day a lot more palatable as Scott uttered lines of disrespect her way, under his breath, and with a fluency in mockery that would make a comedy writer proud. Would-be tormentors, bullies, tattle tales, teachers or simply a person that tripped and fell were all perpetually fair game.   As were you or anyone willingly hanging out with you.  

Hanging around Scott presented an equal opportunity in the mocking department.  You could be making fun of an elderly man with socks and sandals on one second, and have your cowlicks the source of mockery the next.  If you hung around Scott, you were on your toes all the time.  For as much as I resonated with Scott on a lot of levels, kids in the area were not exactly lining up to play with the two of us.  Most kids are too thin-skinned to handle mockery wafting in their direction, let alone being the direct source of it for periods of time.  Not everyone shied away, though.  

Across the street from Scott lived Mike, who was also our age and also headed towards the same kindergarten classroom we had been assigned to.  If there were stark contrasts between my home and Scott’s, both of ours would seem like planets from another galaxy in comparison to Mike’s.  Scott’s house was loud.  Mine was dysfunctional and weird.  Mike’s was…well…pretty fucking normal.  

As a result, Mike didn’t quite operate at the speed that Scott and I did.  This was probably a good thing, too.  Even at a young age, Mike was more intellectual than either of us.  He was also infinitely more laid back.  He didn’t come back with the same volume of jokes and mockery that we did.  Not withstanding, what he came up with had a sting to it that only extreme intelligence and life stability can bring.  For a kid that would grow up with lackluster grades, I had a surprising knack of befriending the brightest kids in my vicinity.  He’d be the first in a long line of people I’d serve as an unintentional court jester of sorts for.  It’s a role I’m okay with.  It fits.  It’s probably no accident that Scott and I became teacher/coaches and Mike became a pediatrician.  Either way, it was a total bronus.  We were now a trifecta most days.

Mike’s foray into things was interesting.  He was everything that my cousins and Scott were not;  soft-spoken, polite, and held a normal activity level.   Mike was from a caring family.  They gave the impression that they genuinely liked one another.  Clearly, we’d not be hanging out at Mike’s house very often.   For real.   By grade two, we instinctually gravitated towards the most drama filled home like moths to a flame.  I mean, Mike’s family was a’ight, but you weren’t going to see brotherly fight sports or hear the great roar of the bipolar bear there.  They say kids flock to structure, but that’s not true.  Kids thrive under structure, but that doesn’t mean they’re drawn to it.  It’s like kale.  Sure, it’s so good for you.  But it’s fucking kale, and it tastes like yard.  Mike’s house should have been the magnet which we clung to daily, to soak up the sunny rays of normalcy there.  Keep that normal shit to yourself.  We wanted to experience the rush of a crosseyed brother or sister throwing tools  at you.   We weren’t getting that at Mike’s house, but it was a sure thing at either of ours.

Mike’s easy going nature and willingness to roll with a joke made him a perfect third party.  Mike also had the unfortunate distinction of looking like a dead ringer for another girl in our class; a girl we loathed, and for ample reason.  She had a boy’s haircut; the kind of which makes you wonder if the stylist was trying deliberately shape their client’s head like a human penis.  She dressed androgynously, also making it hard to tell the difference between the two.  They were both somewhat tall for our ages, and lived a mere couple of blocks apart.  I’m not suggesting they shared a father, but it wouldn’t shock me of postal records showed they had the same fertile carrier in the early 70’s.  

It was virtually impossible to tell the two apart, until they spoke, anyway.  Once they open their mouths, the difference was clear.   Mike was kind and spoke coherently, politely and rationally.   His accidental twin was the antithesis of him.   She was rude, bossy, and spoke in a permanent sneer that tailed off in a tattling vibe that punctuated anything she spoke.  She was venomous, angry, and displayed Karen-like tendencies years before it was recognized by science as a disorder.   Her name was Kim. If you encountered her in the confines of the neighborhood, your parents were most certainly getting a call to tell on you for something, whether you threw rocks at her or not.  Sure, we usually had, but not always.  Besides, that bitch never had any proof; no proof at all.  

 The more miserable Kim was, the more fun it was to remind Mike of his unmistakeable resemblance to this noxious neighborhood war monger.   We might have been young, but we learned at an early age the joy of mocking others, even if they were your close friends.  We’d have directed the vitriol at the source, but instinctually shied away from hanging near her, almost as if she were a dangerous invasive species.  I had a sister with similar traits at home, and had stockpiled quite a bit of good material from that.  Scott didn’t need any help.  Between the two of us, Mike got singed by Kim jokes in a high-frequency, almost calibrated pace.  It was the first thing outside my home what was always funny, no matter the circumstances.

Be it at school or in the neighborhood, being anywhere near Kim, was instantly miserable.  She was a militaristic calumniator with dominatrix tendencies and an incessant need to control others.  While she had no interest in playing with boys at recess; she sure loved to dictate how they should play.   And by dictate I mean compel, with force, if necessary.

For as much as Mike took flak from me and Scott for looking like her, he never got upset about it.  A few valuable lessons were taken from this.  One, even if something is bothering you or it upsets you, don’t play those cards and the problem will likely go away.  Two, when boys poke fun at each other within a chosen social circle, it’s probably a sign that all are accepted.  Three, Mike really looked like Kim.  I’m sorry, but they were really identical, and amazingly not related, in any capacity.

Mike might have looked like he shared DNA with this aspiring sea hag, but it didn’t make him find tormenting her any less funny.   Normal instincts would direct a sane human being to avoid the human potholes encountered in life.  Such is not the case for scrambleheads and their associates.   Knowing a clash was inevitable when in her vicinity, Scott went right for the jugular of the Great White Kim on the playground she patrolled, looking for fun to ruin.   I learned early if a fight was inevitable, it was best to throw the first punch.   He made fun of everything about her, from her bad, boyish haircut and beady eyes, to how she smelled, the size of her mom’s ass, the way she ate and how she talked.  

It was for the best that Scott did not have a sister at home, especially if she had been like Kim or the one we kept chained up at my house.  Scott had the aptitude to invoke a level of anger in others that is hard to replicate.  Empress Kim was no exception.   Scott could get under her skin like a deer tick.   She might have had a boy’s haircut, but sported nails worthy of a honey badger, and wielded them frequently.  Scott would initiate a verbal offensive or retaliate sharply, to which she’d instinctively grab the nearest wrist and attempt to carve her signature in them.  I don’t know what ever happened to Kim, but if I were a betting man, I’d place a few bucks that she runs a jungle cat rescue society in Florida.  If she ever married some poor soul, there’s two things you can all but guarantee; one, that his testicles were removed or missing from birth, and two; he vanished sometime in the late 1990’s, without a trace.  

My parents were married, but my dad had somewhat disappeared from our lives for the entire five years we lived in Wausau, Wisconsin.   Mike and Scott provided an awful lot of things that should have come from my father, but didn’t.   My old man was a confessed workaholic, and a somewhat reluctant father.   Upon our births, he retreated into work and graduate school.   I know he had an interest in sports as a kid and even through college, but that was long gone by the time we entered the picture. He rarely watched sports, but I was instantly hooked the second I met my two friends and through TV.  

To say Mike and Scott got me hooked on sports is only partially true.  What they really got me hooked on was cardboard sports.    Mike and Scott introduced me to the world of baseball cards.  Playing the game was a few years of for me, but they both were already playing on teams.   I wanted desperately to join, but my parents were too far off in their own world for me to have been signed up for tee ball.   The inability to get on a team only increased my zeal for baseball cards, which was the one form of the sport I could take part in formally with them.   I had never even seen a real baseball game; but that didn’t prevent me from finding instant fascination with the colorful cardboard cards.  They featured people I had never heard of, in cities I had never been to, in a sport that I knew nothing about and had never played.  Still, I was hooked the second I saw them.

At the time, I really had no idea what baseball was.  I didn’t quite make the connection to the game of softball that my parents played a couple of times a week.  This was probably because it resembled nothing of baseball.  It was more like a full-bodied drinking game with drunkards brandishing heavy clubs in polyester shirts that accurately accentuated their overall lack of physical fitness.   Everyone in the late 70’s was out of shape, even the players on the baseball cards I craved like a grizzled drug addict.  

For many boys with ADHD, baseball cards proved to be like crack cocaine on hard stock paper.  You opened a pack, and there was variety in the pack, coupled with a stick of alleged gum that stuck to everything, including your teeth.  Different cards with colorful pictures of even more colorful people, wearing cool uniforms.  You had a 1 in 24 chance of getting one from Milwaukee, which was like winning a twenty-five cent lottery.  I had actually been to that city.  Brewer cards were never worth very much on the open market to anyone else, but to us they were tradable gold.    

I instantly fell in love with baseball cards, and eventually the game itself.  Getting Brewer cards was a huge bonus for me, even though I had never been to a game, or seen one on television.  The fact that they said Milwaukee and were named after beer was more than enough for me to be mildly interested.  The hook for me though, was that you had no idea what team and what players you’d get in each pack. They even issued checklists for you to employ in trying to attain all of them.  

For not exactly having a grasp of ADHD at the time, the people at Topps were innovative, if nothing else.  They knew their type.  Give me a checklist of items to go through at school and I’d have rather dreamt about comic books or stared at the kid picking his nose, or picked my own nose and pretended to be listening otherwise.  Make it for something like baseball cards however, and you can check me off as addicted.

Eventually, I worked up the attention span to actually follow the game.  Today’s scramble heads don’t often gravitate to baseball.  Most kids with ADHD seemed be fascinated with  fake wrestling, football, fighting; all of which are faster paced.   I don’t have a specific reason why baseball resonated with me, but it clicked.  I speculate that having multiple things to follow and enough time within the game to tor check them all was a big part of it.  Football, as I’d learn over the years, had too much going on too fast, and it took me years to be able to see through the cluttered action and understand the game.  

Baseball and its cheap cards gripped me.  So too did the short bike ride to the grocery store that had been built in our bourgeoning subdivision.  Things were changing in Kronenwetter.  Not only did we get a small supermarket in biking distance, we got paved roads to ride on.  This was great news for my abysmal bike riding skills and penchant for road rash.   Red granite gravel just isn’t the best riding material for an accident prone, easily distracted, uncoordinated, and undersized kid rarely under careful watch of an adult.  

While I was instantly fascinated with baseball, my parents did not make any type of move to put me on a team.  Both Mike and Scott were playing, but my parents didn’t do a thing to get me involved.  My old man was pretty wrapped up in my old man.  My ol’ lady must’ve been in survival mode, because now that I’m 19 years in as a parent, sports could’ve been a godsend for her.  I learned early that busy kids meant less busy me.  Sure, there are rides to make and games to attend to, but anyone who has invested time into parenting knows the immeasurable value to 45 minutes to an hour of one less kid to watch.  For as fascinated with baseball as I was, my mother was choosing the club used to konk her own head; probably right after knocking ours together.  Why they didn’t sign me up for more sports is beyond me. 

Despite frequent 4 hour trips to the city of my birth in Milwaukee, we didn’t make the trek to a Brewer game until my 8th birthday in 1980.   My old man always said he was so bitter over the Braves leaving for Atlanta he just couldn’t get into the Brewers.  While I get that, I didn’t know who these Braves he spoke of were, and didn’t really care.  The team there now is what I wanted to see in person.  They were named after beer, for fuck’s sake.  How could anyone, especially a kid that had been sneaking beer gulps from his parent’s frosties while they played in their drunken softball league, not love a team named after beer?   I also don’t think that it’s why my dad wasn’t throwing a ball to us in the yard or taking us to see games in Milwaukee.  

I think it was because were were tiny, energy sucking, endlessly moving, exhausting little mother fuckers.  My old man was distracted and aloof at times, but he was no dummy.  He knew the collective power my brother and I wielded from our scrambled cerebral cortex, and the damage we could do to one’s sanity at home.  I’m sure he wasn’t dying to test the waters of a cavernous stadium with 50,000 other people drinking and carrying on.  We got lost at the grocery store.  I mean, I get that hesitation.  What I don’t get is the reluctance to put our overactive asses into some kind of activity, if for no other reason than to run some excess energy off of us. 

Whilst living in the Greater Wausau Metro Area, there were a bevy of sports offerings to choose from.  Be it my beleaguered mother not having the wherewithal to put me in them, or my old man’s oblivion, we were all missing out; be it the sports I was missing out, or the freedom from my bullshit for a few hours a week that my parents could’ve enjoyed.  Eventually, when the weather stopped being so nice and the reality struck of what it was like to be trapped in a ranchtangular box in Kronenwetter Fucking Wisconsin.   When we were all relegated to staying indoors, it infringed on my parent’s right to some sanity.  It was the impetus to dumping me and my brother into our first formal sport; wrestling.  

My old man didn’t really play a lot of sports as a kid either, and his father certainly wasn’t the type to play catch in the back yard.  My paternal grandfather was a violent man with a bad temper and a raging drug problem.  I had none of that with my old man, but the tradeoff was that he was pretty detached.  I can’t imagine the horrors he lived with growing up, and the best I could really hope for was an avoidance of that; and I got it.   I might’ve wished I was playing baseball with Mike and Scott, but I was happy to be involved in something.  At age 5, my dad enrolled me in the D.C. Everest Evergreen Seedling Wrestling Club.  

To say I didn’t pick wrestling up fast would be an understatement.  Despite my long-standing relationship with the sport; one that now lasts over 40 years, I was not a natural at it.  In fact, it’s tough to ponder being able to beat someone in wrestling when you’re the oldest at your house and can’t even win there.  My brother, all of three years old, would beat my ass anytime we roughhoused.  It didn’t take long for my parents to suddenly embrace dumping us off at activities, and that led to my brother also being dumped off at the hell that is a youth wrestling practice.   The few times I could muster anything successful against him, the little bitch would bite me.  Yeah, you read that right.  He was a biter.  

And a hammer.  Which meant I was usually the nail.  If you can pick one of the two, the hammer’s the better choice.  It would take me a long time to even reach the stage of a rubber mallet.  While I didn’t know it at the time, it would prove to be the only constant in my life to last through adulthood.  Parents, family, interests and locations would all prove to be fleeting.  Wrestling was always there, which is more than I can say for a lot of the entities in my life.

Having moved to the Wausau area when I was three, our neighborhood was essentially the only life I knew.   We were there for about five years;  the seemingly short stint would actually prove to be as long as we’d spend in any one location the rest of my childhood.  The time there was highly impactful and would influence my relationships and friendships for the rest of my life.  That was good, because unbeknownst to me, there was quite a bit of turmoil in our household.  

My mom wasn’t happy in the marriage, and was frustrated that my father worked so much.  In her defense, he had been largely uninvolved in much of our upbringing and left her to deal with the perpetual fallout.  And let me tell you, there was fallout.  Routine trips to the hospital for stitches, a stomach pumping of my brother after ingesting a bottle of iron pills, and more yelling than the stock market floor marked life at home with my mother and siblings.  What my father was lacking in contributions, my mother lacked in coping mechanisms.  Her management of it was not productive.  My mom had penchant for taking a reaction nuclear when she was upset.  At one point, upset with my dad over being at grad school in Milwaukee, she sold the figurine he used to give her engagement ring to her at a garage sale for a quarter.  

She also would take out her frustrations on us at times.  As the oldest, might seem like I bore the brunt of that the most, but was not the case.  I got the That distinction went to my sister, whom my mother would go extra with, as the kids would say.  I watched my sister get spanked with a pan, slapped really hard, and get dragged to her room by shirt collars and her hair.  I would’t call it an abusive household, but it toed the line at times.  Fighting would get your heads konked together, which results in a sound reminiscent of a coconut hitting the floor.  All three of us were annoying little mother fuckers, and we all got it at one time or another, but my sister definitely got the worst of it.    

My father was also distressed with my education, which he viewed as lacking.  I was a very bright kid, having decoded the English language very early and on my own.  The size of the school my father was working as an assistant principal at was large; one of the bigger ones in the state.  It was 3.5 hours away from the closest family members, and my mother was not content to be at home all day anymore.  Something had to change.  

Change came at the end of the summer before third grade would start for me.  My father took another job and we’d be moving a significant distance away.   The job he took was in Sturgeon Bay; a beautiful small town in Door County; a famous tourist destination.   I wasn’t shocked; my dad had interviewed for several jobs around the state, and even one out of state in Colorado, which he packed us all in the car and dragged us along to.  While I knew it was coming, it still hit hard when he told us the news.   We would start school in Wausau that fall, but he’d be living in Sturgeon Bay Monday through Friday.  He might not have spent a lot of formative time with us, but we typically saw him nightly.   For kids, that’s a big deal.    It would be temporary, just until they sold the house.  

We lived in Wausau without my dad for several months, until the house sold in November, moving mid-year.  It was a difficult time period.  Anxious over the move and upset to be without my dad at home, I withdrew quite a bit and was much more reserved.  My academics suffered.  I was 8 years, and for whatever instability and hidden angst existed at hour house was made up for in stability with the only neighborhood I really knew.  I was familiar with my surroundings, be it with people or locations.  It was painful to know it was being lost.  For not being old enough to remember much about the move there, I had a surprisingly good grip on what moving really meant.  I knew it was a big deal, and presented a massive unknown.

My school and neighborhood experiences with peers had been largely positive; something I was very fortunate to have.  Kids with ADHD have highly varied experiences in this capacity while growing up.  It was no easier in the era before anyone knew what it was.  I was bright, but chronically immature, easily distracted, and socially awkward.  That said,  Honestly, other than a few occasional jokes, I got a free pass on my eccentricities and quirks from the kids in our neighborhood.  Familiarity doesn’t always breed contempt;  for kids, if you started the educational journey with a group of students from the beginning, you were spared ass kickings and torment in most cases.   I recall one new kid coming into our class after 3rd grade started, but to tell you the truth, he had red hair and I just figured that all kid with red hair were disliked.  Turns out, maybe he was disliked because he had red hair AND he was new.  Either way, kids didn’t like him at all.  I didn’t have red hair, but I was about to be the new kid.  And, to be clear, my hair was pretty shitty.

I had been treated fairly well through elementary school, but was undersized, wildly unathletic, and talked way too much.  If you were going to predict a type of new kid to become the target of ass kickings, I was a safe bet.   Ass kickings have a way of teaching you where you stand on the social scale, and I wasn’t going to come out ahead on any scale I was placed on.  Being new isn’t helped by much in the world of third graders, but being small and new is a recipe for receiving snot-nosed gang style initiation.  

My last day in Wausau would stand in stark contrast to the reception I’d get at West Side Elementary in Sturgeon Bay.  My last day  at recess that November, we played kickball.   Like all things that required athletic ability, I sucked at kickball.  After I made an out, I overheard Scott chastising kids for putting me out on my last day.  He pulled them aside and told them that they should let me get on base for my last game there. I don’t recall if it worked, but it’s the thought that counts.  

I’d come to appreciate it more a few days later, after having to run home from school to avoid an ass kicking every day my first week.

The desert sun rising slowly over the glimmering neon of the...

The desert sun rising slowly over the glimmering neon of the porn shop and fork lift station outside my #LasVegas hotel room can mean only one thing; it’s fight day. What a beautiful day for caged altercations and bloody fisticuffs. @odeosbourne is dialed in and focused, and kicks off #UFCVegas18 on #ESPNPlus at 4:00 PM WI time/5:00 PM FL time.

#PalmBeachGardens #Milwaukee #Jamaica #jamaicansensation #MMA #Dwyer #DBlock (at Residence Inn by Marriott Las Vegas South)
https://www.instagram.com/p/CK9JTqEnyp0PmBQRUTLvgao2cW2nOvkMzx6snY0/?igshid=19036567syv8k

Was impossible not to be excited about coaching on this card...

Was impossible not to be excited about coaching on this card when I saw @clayguida was fighting on it. A longtime friend of @waukesha_mma and Reese Shaner, any time we can get a piece of Reese and his past in our present, it’s a great thing. Happy to see Clay’s scrap tomorrow with Michael Johnson on the Main Card, where it belongs.

#ufc #ufcfightnight #milwaukee #wrestling #jamaicansensation (at Residence Inn by Marriott Las Vegas South)
https://www.instagram.com/p/CK8Ly08n4QlgoTWRJXp82uJYZ94QzU65w3tvvk0/?igshid=uu8yxr7gfazw

All weighed in and ready. Official Weigh Ins done. Should be...

All weighed in and ready. Official Weigh Ins done. Should be the first fight tomorrow and on right at 4:00 PM WI time, 5:00 PM FL time. (at UFC Headquarters)
https://www.instagram.com/p/CK6zw4inYGysvNLwnEQv2oDh3EvvjtAts6EmaI0/?igshid=tmiqu2py26w0

We packed all the @puravida_bjj_mma kids up for their field trip...

We packed all the @puravida_bjj_mma kids up for their field trip to Carson City, where they got a tour of #TheBunnyRanch. Everyone was on their best behavior, until @whoisnellythompson.a realized there were no actual rabbits on site, so he hit the owner with a spinning back elbow. Unfortunately, not all of our friends made it there. A little photo opp turned ugly when the photographer mistook @leahnidasmma for Ronda Rousey. Won’t make that mistake again. Lastly, no cap needed. You can guess why @schauerben didn’t make it to the Ranch.

#UFC #ufcfightnight #milwaukee #puravida (at The Bunny Ranch)
https://www.instagram.com/p/CK6p–wHizPHBoenHB7az5nVS2tLQONEqIouRo0/?igshid=1nvzfj85v6y8n

Poor @odeosbourne. All he wanted was to live out his dream of...

Poor @odeosbourne. All he wanted was to live out his dream of performing with other Elvis impersonators. How were we to know that both @whoisnellythompson.a and @wesleyandrichard have a long-standing and scathing hatred for all things #Elvis. I think we need to get outta Vegas for a bit and try some rural activities. #TheJamaicanSensation will be fine; he has #ufcfightnight to worry about. @white_tyus on the other hand, he was inconsolable after. Can’t take the @puravida_bjj_mma guys anywhere. Especially not #LasVegas.

#Milwaukee #ufc #mma #vegas #flyweight (at Las Vegas, Nevada)
https://www.instagram.com/p/CK5DsS-HXmAAmosgi8MKQvbDw7oxvbdFLbH5U00/?igshid=10uamspcegj7z