Twenty-three in NoJoMo 2015

Write about being 23. Other than the fact that nobody liked you, write a bit about being 23. What were you doing? Where you were living? Relationship/who were you doing?

Let’s see....I was still working in radio, but with lessened on-air duties.

This would be a lot easier if I had access to my old OD entries, but they’re somewhere stuffed away on a powered-off PC at my apartment.

I should really move thoes to somewhere more accessible.

But, working from memory, I was single. I can’t even remember if there was anyone I was interested in. I think that would have been the summer my brother got married (for the first time), and I helped ruin the paint on his car after his groomsmen weren’t ready to decorate it. Cheap shaving cream from 7-Eleven does wonders to brighten faded paint.

I’d moved back home so I could concentrate on school, and didn’t have enough money to move out again. That certainly made me a magnet for the opposite sex....a weird work schedule, fat, and no income to speak of.

So, what else? I think that was also the first time my dad was really sick; if memory serves, tha was the first near-death scare. It would have been later that summer that I came to terms that he wouldn’t be around a long time. Heavy stuff for someone that young, with a newly-married younger sibling who hadn’t yet finished college.

That also probably would have been a summer of spur-of-the-moment trips. I think that was the summer I drove up to Redskins’ camp in Carlisle on a whim. I met Spurrier, Wuerffel, Matthews.

It’s been a long time. And, yes, if I had a lawn, I’d tell you to get off of it.

I was still on the air overnights three nights a week, and in the mornings on Saturday. I lived in a perpetual state of jet lag. It wasn’t as bad as it was a couple of years prior, because I wasn’t also taking a full course load in college. But it certainly wasn’t easy. When you live at night, things “normal” people do you have to plan well in adavance. Traveling. Going to the doctor and dentist. Meals.

That was also probably the summer I spent fishing. There wasn’t a lot else to do when you had two solid nights to yourself, and those nights were Monday and Tuesday.

Grab the rod, grab a box of squid, wander out onto the pier to try to bring in something worth eating.

Instead, I spent a lot of time listening to the radio, sweating in the 80F+ humidity.

When I find my old OD entries later this week, maybe I’ll revisit.

Incredibly, if I’d been in a relationship, fathered a child, then, he/she’d be in middle school.

What is this? I don’t even.

Last updated November 23, 2015