Why are we, we?

Finding the ability to be the person you think you are, is tough.

There is something I have discovered about us, as human beings, (that gawd-awful way of lumping us all together, so that we are one thing....) that though our lives have changed, in these five point two/three/four decades we have been milling smartly or dumbly about this earth, there is little in us that has changed.

Now, not to consider that we are not different, oh I think we are strongly different than we were in our youth.  But in the "big scheme" (another overly used reporting term) of things, we are in this wonderful age (gasp gasp) able to carry out our plans, find the world turning in mostly the correct direction, find our needs are simply and easily met, but that, with time and energy, we must fit those plans, to the larger plans, that the world has put upon us.

Or just sort of be freaky and keep things the way they were.

Gray (greying) Hair

Hair.  If you are female, chances are you have it.  Chances are greater there is a dribble of gray in it. There are those that's heads are covered in gray, and you have learned to deal with that.  Long hair, short hair, its in fashion, in feels good, and by golly you must, or I must say, it is pretty.

On the other hand, there are those of us who, by natures choice, not ours, have been left without any hair to speak of, at least from the top if the knoll down to the little paths over the ears, and off to a startling stop in a wavy little choice along the back of the head.  Now there are remedies for this, you  could get a hair piece, you could have some scalp removed and moved to the top of your head, you can take pills, dye it, whatever the case may be, but in all reality, it is just frigging gone.

Not Me

The only rebuttal I have is in growing and maintaining a beard.  'Maintain' means I have had no choice about the color (gray) that it has all gone.  36 years this summer, my face will not have been uncovered, not for three surgeries, two kids, a wonderful grandson, nothing.  In fact, the only time I even considered doing something about the beard, the scissors fell from my shaking hand so hard they broke, and they have never been back.

Now who would of thought all that in high school?  No one.  Ever.

There are friends whose lives have changed.  At least from the outside looking in, they've changed.  There are friends that are dead and gone, close friends.  There are people that have disappeared from the face of the planet.   There are friends whose loves have meant nothing to us, to me, whose return into my life or my return into theirs, has made the heart jubilant, made it fun, made it someone you can be with, and around, and know when you have said the right things and said the wrong ones, but being able to find those folks again is a blessing.  At least for me.  Maybe just for for me.

There have been times when, out of the clear blue sky, I will say something or do something that is sooo freaking weird for me to say or do, that the people I have been close too for 35 years find it impossible to believe that I would even act or talk that way.

That is me.....on the left.

There are people on this bloody computer, who, if they think for two seconds, well that is me.  he he he  yep that's the ole guy coming right out again, and if he didn't, we would think him as weird as could be.

So there you have it.  A split personality.  Two men living in one body, that figured out the best way to handle living was to split the time fairly between the reality of home and family, and the time spent on the computer with the rest of my family.

1955 Three Years Prior to My Birth
(Thomas, Roy, Roy and Roy)

But are we, all of us persons, are we not the ones who can claim that piece of soul that we lived, once again?  I think of my Dad and Mom, coming from that wonderful age of "the bust" when Dad's dad was a sharecropper who moved rocks by horse and buggy to provide beans and bread, of Dad growing in up in the dust bowl of western Oklahoma, joining the Navy, moving away...marrying my mother at the age of sixteen, taking the orphan out of her grandparents home, moving to Pensacola, Borger Texas, Boise Idaho,  Bartlesville.

When you think of things you find, that they had very little discourse with friends of old times, that they made new friends, but when they moved again, they started from the beginning, making new friends and loved ones. If someone were to say, who were those friends?  There would be one or two families that they would name, because communication fairly and completely sucked.  Phone calls were all a person could make and those were expensive long distance calls, so they just weren't made.  Letters were written, but they too dried up, and went away.

Our lives, whether one wants to look at it this way or figure its all corny and means so little, are enhanced, are fuller, and can and should be better because of the technology that is going on today.

I'm fine with it,  don't ask me to shave.