Four August in Sweltering Summer Month

This is one my wife asked me.

She gave me a few more this morning that’ll come up later on.

What did you think your life would be like at this point? How is your life different?

I guess this one has a follow-on question; when was it asked? I mean, if you’d asked me this at twenty, you’d have gotten a much different answer than at eighteen.

Of course, when I was a young kid, I dreamed of athletic prowess. Yes, I was fat. No, I couldn’t run worth a damn. But I was going to grow, and get better.

Yeah, about that…

When I was in high school, and the first bit of college, I was going to be a military officer.

The Air Force was going to pay for me to go to school, but they weren’t going to let me fly. They were also going to choose my major for me. Then after I finished, I’d be on active duty for at least four years, but they could keep me up to eight, all doing a job where I’m not flying an airplane.

I turned it down, and tried to do the Army thing like my dad, and his grandfather.

Of the sixty-some cadets in my group, one of them got a scholarship, and a commission. One out of almost seventy. My “battle buddy” dropped out of college, enlisted in the Army, went to Warrant Officer school, and flight school, and ended up a fucking war hero after he landed his helocopter with a bullet through one leg, and stuck in another, and a dead pilot next to him.

After it became apparent to me that the Army wasn’t going to do anything for me, I got a job in television, doing work I’d learned in high school.

TV didn’t last long; I got laid off after just a few months. Thank the Communications Act of 1996, and its subsequent consolidation for that one. I ended up in radio, where I was for the next seven years.

If you’d have asked me in late 2002, when I’d get out of radio, I wouldn’t have an answer for you.

If you’d have asked me in 2009, whether I’d ever see myself going back to work in radio, I’d have thought you crazy.

You never really know how things are going to end up.