It happened 21 years ago.  I was sixteen, a strong, athletic young man.  I had plans to attend Case Western Reserve University on an ROTC scholarship and hoped to try out for their football team as well.  My family didn’t have the money to send me to college, so all of my plans hinged on my physical abilities getting me there.  At 3:00 PM on March 7, 1989, I was in perfect health.  I weighed roughly 220 pounds, bench pressed 325, squatted 500, and ran three miles every day.  In my teenage mind, I was invincible.

At 3:30 PM of that day, I lay on the ground, bleeding from a gash in my head and quite literally dying in front of my track and field teammates.  During warm-ups, a fellow shot-putter hadn’t seen me retrieving my shot and had let his fly.  If you tried a thousand times to hit a target with a shot-put, you couldn’t do it consistently, but on that day, he hit me in the forehead on the right side just above my hairline.

The blow itself didn’t hurt much, and I didn’t really lose consciousness fully.  Had I been a boxer, I would’ve been counted out because I barely knew my own name and couldn’t stand without help, but I remember everything that happened, albeit a little fuzzily.  Over the next twelve hours, I fought for my life and nearly lost, but by what can only be considered a true miracle, I pulled through.  At one point, my blood pressure was 200/140 and pupils had quit dilating.  That was when the doctors and nurses thought I was a goner.  At the time, I didn’t realize the seriousness of my situation and couldn’t understand why everyone was so upset.  Over the next three days, I lost twenty pounds and never fully regained my strength.

Over the years, I’ve told the story thousands of times.  People react in a variety of ways — some laugh; others gasp; some are incredulous.  The only long-term effects I’ve suffered are a little difficulty recalling a specific word on cue (The irony that I’m a writer who can’t think of words is beautiful to me), an occasional tremor in my left hand, and a few holes in my long-term memory.  All in all, I’m pretty lucky.

It took me several years to realize that.  For about six or seven years, I was very angry about all I had lost.  Then, as I matured, one day I woke up and realized that just that fact was enough of a gift.  I woke up.  An inch in any direction and I wouldn’t have even stood up from that blow.  Whenever I meet a Marine, I’m still a little sad because that’s what I wanted to be, but I’ve come to terms with the fact that it wasn’t meant to be.  I was meant to be a writer and a teacher, and in some ways, the accident is what steered me onto that course.  By taking away any opportunity to use my physical abilities to excel, it forced me to focus on my mental abilities.

I’ll be with my sons on Sunday and hopefully won’t have time to write a blog, so I wanted to write this today.  Bobby, if you should happen to ever read this, please know that I never once blamed you.  We were kids, and it was an accident.  Janice, if you read it, thank you for yelling look out.  That really did save my life.  Dr. Olivera, thank you for giving me guidance and helping me find the good.  Even though I grumble and complain, life is beautiful, and I’m grateful for every second.

www.thirdaxe.com

This topic dovetails nicely with my blog the other day about teenagers deflecting blame.  According to an article I just read, Karl Rove admits to a mistake in the Bush White House handling of the Iraq War, but the mistake is not about losing focus in Afghanistan or further destabilizing an already unstable region or fueling global hatred for America by projecting an unreasonable, unilateralist viewpoint.  No, his mistake was in not handling the media better after no weapons of mass destruction were found.  This is the Bush administration in a nutshell.  The invasion on false grounds wasn’t the mistake; it was the spin game in the media that was the problem.

If these pompous, egomaniacs aren’t the most evil collection of jackasses the world has seen in three generations, then I don’t want to see who’s worse.  Rove has spent his entire career spinning lie on top of lie on top of lie, yet he’s convinced that he actually occupies the moral high ground.  That dick wouldn’t recognize morality if it scalded his ass.

According to the source, he also defends the Federal response to Katrina.  Nevermind that FEMA manages major disasters and that the Bush administration fired career professionals who knew how to run the organization and replaced them with incompetent golfing buddies.  That wasn’t the problem.  Nevemind that it took FEMA three days to get its bearings after the storm passed because the director was more concerned with his wardrobe than the people on the ground.  Nevermind that the Army Corps of Engineers had repeatedly ignored warnings about the levee system in New Orleans and didn’t take proactive steps to protect the city.  No, none of that really matters.

Karl Rove, the legacy of the Mistake from Texas is and always will be failure on an epic scale.  Fox News can spin it however they want and call their one-sided bullshit factory “Fair and Balanced” all they want.  The facts are that before the Mistake, we had the most robust, prosperous economy the world had ever known.  Now, we are in shambles.  Eight years of pillaging the coffers and swindling the Middle Class are what put us here, you lying, arrogant, elitist swine.

www.thirdaxe.com

This week has been brutal so far.  For the last week, I’ve been grading and giving back papers, and as anyone who has ever taught an English course can attest, the process is tedious.  The act of grading, when it’s done seriously and sincerely, is exhausting.  It takes roughly 15 minutes to grade one paper, and after three or four in a row, I need to take a break to clear my head.  After 12 to 15 papers, I’m fairly well spent.  Over the last week, I’ve gone through roughly 110 essays and still have about 15 go.  My brain is complete mush.

In addition to that, I’m missing my sons terribly.  Both of the trips I’ve wanted to take over the last couple of weekends have been canceled because they have been under the weather.  That’s nobody’s fault, but I’m frustrated and angry because I feel like I have no substantial role in their lives.  I’m just this guy they talk to on the phone and see in person from time to time, and that hurts more deeply than I can describe.  I feel like they will never understand that this was not my choice, that I was cornered and bullied into an arrangement that has progressively excluded me more and more.  Because I actually pay my child support and keep insurance on them, I am punished by not having the funds to see them more often, but they don’t see that part.  All they can see is that I’m not there.

So basically, I’m mentally and emotionally drained, and it’s only Tuesday.  I don’t mean to whine or be negative or seem ungrateful for the good things.  I just need to vent a little.

www.thirdaxe.com