...while wondering what ever happened to the Guatemalan schoolteacher

The day started like any other in the life of a fifteen year-old in West Columbia, South Carolina. Up at seven or so, a really bad breakfast, out the door and on to school. At least that's that I think happened. I really don't have any idea, so unremarkable was this day.

At about 10:00 or so I was called to the office. This was not an infrequent occurrence. When I got there, they told me my mom was on the phone.

I knew it was over.

He had gone in for a physical the week of the Fourth of July and received a clean bill of health. By early August the lump he felt in the area up and to the right of his breast had grown to about the size of a grapefruit. Now here, about seven weeks later I was on the telephone with my mother, who was telling me the cancer had spread to my father's brain. She was coming to get me.

There were signs over the weekend that something wasn't right. He stopped me midway through selecting the week's games on our football pool, something we had done since before I even knew how to write.

"I just can't think right now. Sorry, buddy."

Then on Monday he got mad at my mom for disagreeing with him when he insisted that I was just there at the hospital, going so far as to describe what I was wearing -- on Saturday. For her part, mom chalked it up to the morphine.

My mom showed up and we zipped over to the hospital. He was downstairs having tests when we got there, so we just kinda waited in the room until they brought him in.

Wow.

Eyes rolled into the back of his head, breathing labored, drool out the side of the mouth. I had never seen anything like that in my life, and certainly not my dad so compromised. It didn't take long. It may have been an hour, it may have been a week. But soon enough, the breath got shallower and he began to slip away.

My mother held his left hand; I held his right. I told him over and over again how much I loved him. And I could swear that for a moment, just a scintilla of a second, he focused. Probably just wishful thinking. Eventually, he took one last lungfull of life...then passed to the great beyond.

My life fundamentally changed that day twenty years ago today. It also had a lot to do with many other things that have happened on other September 25ths in my life.

My dad was a great guy. The kind who everyone truly liked. Cancer nurses are a tough bunch. They see death every day and many of those that die are patients a much longer time than my dad was. Yet as we left, they were a mess. There was not a dry eye on the floor. I don['t remember her name, but there was a large, black nurse who was particularly upset. She kept sobbing, telling my mom how much she loved my dad. I was really proud to be his kid right then.

I never really questioned why my dad died. I just figured it was his time. My life would have been different had he not, and I would have been spared a lot of pain and bad decision-making, to be sure. But I was blessed with sixteen years with a wonderful man. And never in those sixteen years did I ever feel unloved, unrespected or -- most importantly to an insecure little kid -- uncool.

_____

I graduated from Basic Training at Lackland Air Force Base on 28 July 1990. As I was to go on to the Security (Military) Police Academy from there, I only had to cross the base, as it too was at Lackland.

In Tech School, you have more freedom than in Basic, including pretty much free reign on the weekends. Technically you were supposed to stay within a certain radius and be back on base at night unless you let them know, but it was rarely enforced. Unless you fucked up. Beyond that, it was pretty much, don't ask, don't tell.

Shortly after Tech School begn, I struck up a friendship with an Airman Rooks, from Grapevine, Texas. His first name escapes me after all these years, but in the military you rarely use them. Now Rooks and I soon became running buddies. Our normal routine had us leaving base on Friday after training and heading down to the Riverwalk, where we would sit at the bar at Olive Garden and scarf down as much salad and breadsticks as possible, while knocking back strawberry daiquiris. Yes, I said daiquiris. Never was a big drinker. After that we'd take in a movie then head back to base. They were good times.

So one Friday night we're at the bar and I ask, "so where's Arlington, Texas?" Rooks is like, "That's outside of Dallas, man". I had always thought it was out west somewhere, like by Odessa. Anyway, the next Friday we went AWOL after class. Downtown to the Greyhound station, up to Dallas, bummed a ride (I still have no idea how he did it) over to Arlington and we were in our seats by the third inning. By the fifth we had girls with us. By the eighth we were making plans for after the game. And once the game ended (Texas 6 - Oakland 2), we jumped in their car and headed to the West End in Dallas for dancing and drinking.

These chicks could drink. His was Tiffany. Mine was Regina. Much alcohol, much dancing and a good bit of debauchery later, it was Sunday afternoon and I needed to get back to Lackland. Rooks had headed back on Saturday. I had also fallen in love. OK, I guess at that stage it was merely lust, but it quickly evolved into love. After that weekend, almost every Friday I would head back up to Dallas to spend the weekend with her in Irving, where she lived.

An ankle injury held me in training longer than anticipated, so Rooks' class moved on without me. I finished in late September but was able to spend Regina's birthday with her: September 25th. Maybe when God takes something away, he gives something back, I figured.

While I was in Tech School, Saddam Hussein had taken his troops for a little stroll through the desert, into Kuwait. About two weeks after I returned to South Carolina, my Air National Guard unit was activated to go do something about this. In December we left for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Before I left, Regina had flown in to see me twice and I had flown out to her once, to see a Billy Joel concert -- her early Christmas present to me. While over in the middle east, she wrote to me every day and sent me packages weekly. Her love played a large role in getting me through the war.

The day after we got back stateside, I flew out to Dallas to see Regina. I bought a car and drove it back. Three weeks later, my things were in a U-Haul and I was headed back west, moving to Texas.

About three weeks after that, it was over. Unrestrained passion, frenzied sex, but in the end it was a fantastic supernova, destined to flame out fast. The first adult heartbreak of my life. Certainly not the last.

I was at the Gingerman a few years later, drinking off my September 25th blues when several women and I got to talking about what had brought us to Dallas. Jobs, school, relationships. When I told my story, one of them said, "Regina S...?"

My jaw dropped.

"She has a little kid?"

Now she was freaked out too.

"Well, he's almost a teenager. Might be one already."

Now back to me being freaked out.

And at the same time we said, "named Chris?"

It turns out she used to work with Regina.

"So I guess you don't know the cancer came back."

Regina had died the previous fall. She wasn't even 35.

_____

The sun was clear, and it was just a little bit chilly as we sat at Fountain Place, on the west side of Downtown Dallas. We had last spoken about a week prior, in another little downtown park, just off Jackson Street, about a block from the Manor House, where I was living at the time.

Elsa and I had been together for two years. We had met at Trees in Deep Ellum, at a Cowboy Mouth concert. As I was currently in a dying relationship with a very good woman who I did not want to hurt, I didn't call Elsa until about a month after meeting her, after I had ended the other relationship.

Our courtship was fast. And passionate. She was a high school English teacher, the first of her family to have been born in the United States. She was brilliant, well-read and one of the most fundamentally good human beings I have ever met. And she was stunning. Not a day passed during our time together that at some point she would take my breath away. The hair, the eyes...the nalgas!

But we had problems. We argued often. And with different styles, me the yelling and screaming irrational one and her the slow-burn "you don't know you really pissed her off until it was too late" one. It was a combustible mix. When it was good, it was amazing. When it was bad...

A big problem was that she didn't feel as though I respected her views. And I probably didn't. It's ironic that the guy I am now probably has much more in common with her than the guy I was then did. Another was my daughter. While Elsa accepted her intellectually, in practice it just wasn't the same. She would say -- and I have no doubt that she truly believed it at the time -- that should she ever become Chelsea's step-mother, she would then be more involved. My view was that you can't turn maternal instincts on and off like a switch. Either way, it was a constant underlying source of tension.

Then there was Matt, or as I call him, "the Lurker". You know the Lurker, he's the guy -- the "friend" -- who waits in the background for you to blow it. This cat was out there for seven years. Seven years!!

Anyway, the tension got to be too much after about a year, I completely exploded, told her to go to hell and never call me again.

I know, subtle.

Well, she didn't call. Imagine that. Soooooo, I start groveling. She took me back, but I had given up so much ground in the negotiations that my original issues, the ones that drove me over the edge, were never addressed. So there remained some bitterness, I suppose. I'm pretty sure she and Matt bumped uglies while we were apart, but didn't really figure that out until much later.

In any event, we spent another year together and it was actually really nice. Still, often times it was one step forward, two steps back. Around the end of the summer of 1998 it just got to be too much. Elsa had decided to convert to Catholicism and had asked Matt to be her sponsor. Not me, her boyfriend of two years.

This is what probably got me really thinking about the relationship and where, if anywhere, it was going. I had told her I loved her about three months into the relationship. Her reply was, "don't say that". So I never did again. She later claimed that she meant, "don't say you love me for the first time in bed, right after doing the deed." Not sure I buy that one, but it doesn't really matter because she never said it either.

It came to a head in late September when we had a huge fight right there in front of 20,000+ people at the Stars game at Reunion Arena. The next night we walked to a park and talked honestly for the first time. we decided to give it a week then get together and see where we wanted to go with things.

So a week later we're sitting at Fountain Place and I say, "Elsa, outside of Chelsea, you are the most important person in my life. I love your mind, I always enjoy the time we spend together and the only word I can use to describe the sex is 'Olympic'.

"But something's clearly missing. I don't like ultimatums and I'm not big on having to hear specific things, but I need to hear two things from you right now or I need to go. I need to hear that you will accept my child in practice and the words 'I', 'love' and 'you' -- in that order."

And much to her credit she replied, "I can certainly make the effort with Chelsea. But I can't say that I love you and I don't know that will ever be able to."

She and Matt moved in together about a month later. They are now happily married.

_____

I tell my friends to avoid me now on the 25th of September. I try not to drive. I have a small child serve as a taster. (He's only been around what -- a couple of years? They won't miss him).

Seriously, this a day that makes me take stock of my life. It makes me thankful for the capacity to love, to laugh and yes, to suffer seemingly unbearable pain. For if we don't walk up to that edge, if we don't risk the agony of having our beating heart ripped right from our very chest, have we really ever lived at all?

~

They say that these are not the best of times

But they're the only times I've ever known

And I believe there is a time for meditation

In cathedrals of our own

Now I have seen that sad surrender in my lover's eyes

And I can only stand apart and sympathize

For we are always what our situations hand us

It's either sadness or euphoria

So we'll argue and we'll compromise and realize

That nothing's ever changed

For all out mutual experience

Our separate conclusions are the same

Now we are forced to recognize our inhumanity

A reason coexists with our insanity

And so we choose between reality and madness

It's either sadness or euphoria

How thoughtlessly we dissapate our energies

Perhaps we don't fulfill each-other's fantasies

And as we stand upon the ledges of our lives

With our respective similarities

It's either sadness or euphoria

--B. Joel, 1971

...while wondering what ever happened to Pascual Perez

So many idiots, so little time. Who do we go with this week? Do we honor this gem from Wolf Blitzer? Or this rant by Babs Bush? How about FEMA head Michael Brown who accomplished all of the following: turned down AMTRAK's offer to transport evaccuees, turned away volunteer firefighters from seven states, denied entry to Wal-Mart supply trucks, blocked the Red Cross from delivering food, barred morticians from entering New Orleans, told the City of Chicago to send just one fire truck, turned away generators and had the following message posted on the FEMA website: "First Responders Urged Not to Respond". Nice. How about Rush Limbaugh calling New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, "Mayor Nager"? Yes, he really did. Of course there is the comically idiotic, as well. Take John and Rhonda Till, of San Antonio, who named their newborn son Parker Duncan Ginobili Till. Thank goodness my child was a girl. Poor kid would be walking around as Iuzzolino Harper Hodge Bates...John Cazano of The Oregonian reports that the entire mood around Blazers headquarters has changed in recent months. Said Cazano, "This isn't the same as when Zach Randolph cold-cocked Ruben Patterson two seasons ago, breaking his eye socket, then was chased around the facility, and later had to spend the night, in hiding, at Dale Davis' house because Randolph feared for his life." Ah, the good old days...With all of the amnesty cuts this offseason, espn.com's John Simmons wonders what would have happened had Vince Carter known the possibilty existed that he could have been cut by Toronto, still been paid and picked up a second check elsewhere, a la Michael Finley. Simmons asked, "what would he have been capable of? Would he have just started launching 3s at his own basket? Blocking the shots of his own teammates? Showing up naked for games? Where would the line have been drawn?"...So, upon hearing of Barbara Bush's comments, Juelz Santana told SOHH.com that Bush's comments sounded like the words of "a stupid bitch." "No disrespect and I really don't mean that, but that sounds like something a stupid bitch would say to me," Juelz offered. "For that to come out of somebody's mouth at a situation like this, the first thing to come out of my mouth would be 'Which stupid bitch said that?' I don't have no personal vendetta against her, so for anybody to say that at a time like this, I would reply with that answer like what type of bitch said that?" OK. 1) Who the hell is Juelz Santana? 2) What the hell is sohh.com? 3) How does one call someone a "stupid bitch", with no offense?...OK, I tried. I really did. I actually sat down with the intent of watching an entire WNBA game. I figured, "this is the championship -- the best of the best. Surely it must be watchable. Wrong. It's just horrific. Turnovers, missed five-foot jumpers, horrible fundamentals. In all honesty, the game is not appreciably better than a junior high school girls game. Garbage. Absolute garbage. But I tried...Could the ChiSox really choke? Can the Padres hold off the Giants? Will God do the right thing and strike down Barry Bonds before he hits number 714? Will Maureen's Phillies make it back to the post-season?...Shaquile O'Neal has personally rented 600 Dallas apartments and offered to pay rent, food, utilities, clothing and furniture for six months. Wow. Be kinda neat if the federal government had some type of agency to help peaople in trouble, wouldn't it? You know, like a Federal Emergency Management Agency. I wonder why no one's thought of that...We didn't fare so well in Week One of the NFL season, going 7-9. So don't bet on us until we work the kinks out. This weeks winners (straight-up, no spread): Vikings over Bungles, Jags over Colts, Steelers over Texans, Ravens over Titans, Lions (and Tigers) over Bears (oh my!), Pats over Cats, Cards over Rams (St. Louis vs. Cardinals -- weird), Falcons over Seahawks, Jets over 'Phins, Bolts over Broncos, Packers over Browns :(, Raiders over Chiefs, Giants over Saints and 'Pokes over 'Skins...until next time:
Paz

...while wondering what ever happened to FEMA

When push comes to shove, we are a generous people in the United States. We can be petty, picky and spoiled but when a situation arises where people are truly in need, we tend to stand up and do the right thing. Ethiopia. Afghanistan. Wherever a true crisis arises, we help. As the wealthiest nation on Earth, this is as it should be. Now we need to help our own. Even if it's only ten bucks, give what you can to the Katrina relief effort. This area was dirt-poor before the storm, with crumbling infrastructure, crooked politicians and rampant poverty. Help is desperately needed. These people are not a burden. They are our brothers and sisters. And there but for the grace of God, go we.


Now, political persuasions aside, am I the only one concerned that the president wants to make a guy who has only been a judge for two years the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court? How can this possibly be a good idea? I mean, it would be like making a guy who has only been governor of a state for a few years the President. Oh, wait a minute...Professional athletes get a pretty bad rap these days, what with drugs, crime and selfishness, some bad apples have spoiled the proverbial bunch. The outpouring of generosity that we have seen over the last two weeks however, has been amazing. From local heroes coming home to give aid to Stephon Marbury -- who has never lived closer to New Orleans than New York City -- breaking down and absolutely bawling on live television -- while personally donating $500,000 to the relief effort, the reaction from the professional sports community has been truly inspiring, particularly when compared to that of our government...Idiot of the Week goes to Ann Coulter who said the following: "I'd rather fight the terrorists on the the streets of Baghdad than fight them on the streets of New York City. The New Yorkers would probably lay down and surrender." apparently Ms. Coulter forgets that much of September 11, 2001 actually happened in New York City. By the way, Ann, there's this really neat new thing: it's called food. You might not look like that if you ate some...I never thought I would write these words, but Hero of the Week goes to Dallas Mayor Laura Miller, with a big assist from Bishop TD Jakes of The Potter's House Church. Saying to hell (no pun intended) with the federal government, the mayor and the messenger have set a date of 18 September for moving all evacuees out of Dallas' Reunion Arena and Convention Center and into private apartments and homes. The coalition of private, public and religious benefactors will pay for rent, utilities, food and furniture for all evacuees for sixty days. Hopefully by then the federal government will be able to help some...Are you ready for some football?!? The NFL is back and life is good. Here are ten things to look for:

1) The Arizona Cardinals will make the playoffs.
2) The Green Bay Packers will not.
3) Ricky Williams will rush for 1,000 yards.
4) Peyton Manning will throw 50 touchdown passes.
5) He will once again fail to do anything in the playoffs.
6) The Minnesota Vikings will have NFC home-field advantage.
7) They will once again fail to do anything in the playoffs.
8) The San Diego Chargers will prove that last year was no fluke
9) Buffalo rookie QB JP Losman will be the real deal.
10) My beloved Browns will go 5-11.
You say you want useless playoff predictions? Why sure, we can do that. NFC division winners: Philadelphia, Minnesota, Atlanta and Arizona. Wild Cards: Seattle and Carolina. AFC division winners: New England, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis and San Diego. Wild Cards: Jets and Jacksonville. NFC Championship: Philadelphia over Carolina; AFC Championship New England over San Diego. Super Bowl: New England over Philadelphia...Again, as we look for source material for Scattershooting each week, we come across some pretty strange stuff on the internet. Like this. Or this. We find the funny, as well. And if you ever want to win an argument about the web being chock full 'o porn, just google images of Ann Coulter. Who knew?...In closing, disasters can have strange effects. For the first time in a very long time, I can say I am proud to be a citizen of this country. Being 36, I have only heard stories about how the nation worked together toward the common goals of surviving the Depression and winning World War II. While many tales have been terribly romanticized, looking into the eyes of my countrymen over these last two weeks, I can finally see the grain of truth embedded in all I have been told of these seminal moments in our history. And I am proud to be amongst those who call themselves Americans.