Holding On

Most of you who read my blogs know that I occasionally like to reflect on times gone by, and this is typically triggered by a song heard on the XM Radio channel 80s on 8. As with most people, there are only a few songs that really bring to mind more than just a specific happening or a general time frame, but when you hear these particular songs, feelings and emotions even come into play.

Upon entering my car this afternoon, Nena Blackwood was playing Hold On Loosely by 38 Special, from the Wild Eyed Southern Boys album released in 1981. When this album was released, my family had just moved to Tennessee from Michigan, Jerry and I were in both our first year of high school and our first year in a new school, and we all were getting used to life in a new home and new environment. It was a pretty crazy time for us.

In West Tennessee through the 1980s, songs by 38 Special and Lynard Skynard filled the radio airwaves, so much so that it didn’t take long for you to get sick of them, but this particular song never got old to me and it seemed to linger around, along with Tuesday’s Gone from Skynard, for all of my high school years. Part of their longevity was because they were just good songs, but I believe they meant more to me than other songs.

While listening in the car, many things from my high school years passed through my head, not so much fads or trends, but personal feelings and thoughts about myself in relation. A lot of kids view these times as painful and do not look at them with a great deal fondness, but I loved my high school years. I loved my childhood period, but high school was the best of it.

In Michigan, we went to junior high in a school that had between 500 and 600 students in three grades (7-9) and it was quite easy to get lost in the crowd and feel like a nobody. I played football and basketball and had friends, but still felt like a bit of an outsider and none of my friends were terribly close. Instant popularity, whether desired or not, was granted upon moving to a school where a big senior class was 40 plus students, especially when your cousin was a senior and you were a freshman – people knew who you were pretty quick, and visa versa.

Increased popularity brings with it a whole new set of issues to deal with, both good and bad, and some just issues. Being that our cousin was a popular senior and toted us around like his new best friends, we quickly made friends with his friends, mostly other seniors. With no more than 150 high school students in grades 9-12, you wouldn’t think of this as being a big deal, but to some it appeared that it was.

A handful of boys in our freshman class seemed to think that Jerry and I needed some pranks played on us. Not terrible ones, but annoying. We would leave our jackets hanging in our first period class and pick them up at the end of the day, sometimes with chalk dust or something equally as aggravating in the pockets. Never did anything to these guys that I know of, but they felt the need to try and make our arrival a bit more real. By the time our senior year came around, we were all friends and still are for the most part. Can’t remember the last time I saw any of these guys, but I know if I saw them tomorrow, we’d make sure that hellos and smiles were exchanged.

The most exciting, but embarrassing part about the new popularity was the interest from girls. In Michigan, not a single girl that I know of wanted anything to do with me, and who could blame them. I was a sloppy jock who didn’t fall into the clicks that even in junior high were ever present and vitally important to some people’s egos – not mine though. Not much changed about me after moving to Big Sandy, except for the girls, the location, and a comfort level in the school that made me feel a little better about myself. I was still a jock and still a bit sloppy, however improved, but it seemed to have little negative impact.

Problem was, I was deathly afraid of girls. I had never been in the position to have feelings for a girl, much less the ability to talk with one, other than like a sister. There was no handbook for me to rely on and my big brothers were all out of the house and gone, as if I would get their advise in the matter. I was a bumbling idiot who didn’t know what it meant to “go” with a girl. Didn’t have clue. It was quite traumatic.

The first opportunity was with a girl I thought was absolutely beautiful. She was a year behind me, a basketball player, and very popular. I mustered the ability to ask her to go with me, as if I knew what that meant, and she even said yes. It was amazing! That is except for the next 7 days we did not have contact, either physically or over the phone, or anything. I didn’t know what to do. Amazingly, she broke up with me the following week and, unfortunately, I kinda knew what that meant and it did not feel good, even with us not having anything to break up over. Rejection of any kind was quite painful. That night, Tuesday’s Gone played on the radio – it did not help.

Dealings with girls got better over time, but not by much. I didn’t get my driver’s license until April of my senior year, after turning 18, so I could not facilitate a date easily. There were a couple I thought would work out well, but did not last very long, at least not officially. As with most of us, there were some that I wanted to happen, but never did. Even with the heartaches, high school was still very cool.

Part of it was due to not having any social life outside of high school. With the whole license thing and being at least two miles from anything, there wasn’t much after school activities that didn’t involve mom and dad or a ball game. School was my chance to see and socialize with friends, of which, I had many compared to Michigan. Only a couple of friends were tight, but I got along with most everybody in the school, from ball players to gear heads, book worms to prom queens, and even to stoners. It was all that I had and it was very good.

School work came very easy to me, so most of the time spent in school was social. See, I wasn’t just a jock, I actually could read and was pretty good at math. Valedictorian was out of the question thanks to Vernon (you know who you are), but if I had applied myself during my freshman year, I could have placed second or third in the class and gotten good scholarships to college, but I didn’t. What I did do was afford myself the time and ability to talk with friends and socialize, which worked well for me.

Then, there was sports, namely basketball. In Big Sandy, we barely had enough boys to fill a baseball roster, so even though it was really my favorite sport to play, everything revolved around November to March, basketball season. I can’t begin to explain how much fun playing basketball was for me, and how much I missed it when it was gone. It’s not that I was that good, I was OK. It was the sprints, the scrimmages, the endless number of suicide drills, the bus rides, locker rooms, the cheerleaders, the fans, the noise, the wins and the losses. It was basically my life for 4 years. Even in the summer, we played at the house, at the school, at the church, or anywhere else we could.

Even though it was a game, it was still a social event for me. Jerry and I both played and people I didn’t know from Adam would come up to me years later and say “You’re one of the twins from Big Sandy.” Long term friendships began with both opposing players and coaches. Family ties were built with your team mates and their families. It wasn’t about the game so much and especially was not about winning and losing, even though we did our share of both.

As good as it was, there was bad too. Some of my fellow team mates had it out for me I think, even though I could not imagine why. We played one game where our defense was a box and one, me being the one guarding the opposing team’s best player. At the end of the first half, my team mate berated me to the coach, complaining of the guy I was covering giving him all kinds of problems for rebounds, when the guy I was covering didn’t take two steps inside the foul line all night. There were other things that I won’t go into, but I wasn’t sure where it was coming from or why. It was quite disappointing.

For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t trade my high school years for anything. I enjoyed them and think about them often, and often fondly.

“Hold on loosely, but don’t let go. If you cling too tightly, you’re gonna loose control.” Maybe it’s the words that mean so much. Holding on to your past helps you remember who you are and why you are, and letting go of it can create problems with your own identity. But clinging to the past too hard can limit your future and the ability to move forward in life. I’ll be honest, I’ve never thought much about these words, until today. I might be making too much of it, but the song has always spoke to me for some reason. Even now, close to 30 years later, hearing the song still brings on more emotion and feelings than other songs from that era.

I only hope that I can hold on to the memories and feelings the song stirs in me, but hold on to them loosely and not too tight.

Just Bad Politics

My understanding of politics is that it is basically the art of negotiating in order to achieve some outcome. In most cases these days, it’s to obtain votes or support for something. There are both good and bad forms of politics in general, with my interpretation of good being a negotiation where both, or all, parties involve come out better off with the agreement than the situation prior to it allowed – a win-win if you will. Unfortunately, this form of politics is seldom seen or heard from, with the majority of political negotiation being in an attempt to win at the cost or grief of someone else, or bad politics.

Just about any policy that has been signed into law over the last few years has involved someone winning out at the expense of someone else. That’s not to say that good intentions aren’t involved or that all policy is developed in spite of someone else, however, it’s pretty easy to find the winners and losers once completed. It’s either one business or industry taking the hit so that another may prosper, or one group of people taking the hit so that others may receive benefits. Someone is always sacrificing for someone else, and usually not with the consent of the sacrificing party.

With all of that said, the worst type of politics is anything that involves the potential or actual loss of life, in particularly related to the use or abuse of our armed forces. Our men and women in uniform deserve to be managed without the influence of political agenda. The sacrifice they have made, along with the sacrifices of their family, warrant their deployment and use to be absent of decisions related to a political agenda. in other words, their lives are worth more than the business of political back scratching. Whether it be for oil, votes, or the spread of democracy, the lives of service men and women should not be sacrificed unless there’s actually a need to protect US security, and not to make someone in some other part of the world feel a little bit more fuzzy about US diplomacy.

The current situation in Afghanistan is a great example of the worst kind of politics. A few years ago, the US pretty much turned over the protection of the country to the UN and have since focused our efforts to the events in Iraq (no better a situation overall), even though US troops were left behind to help. As with most situations related to UN peacekeeping, the peace is no longer kept and the Taliban has made a comeback.

With the latest increase in hostilities, the ranking military general, hand picked by the President himself, asked for 40,000 more troops to be sent to Afghanistan or risk the possibility of losing the war in that arena. After many days of consideration, four options were presented to the President with ranging troop increases from 10,000 to 40,000, only to have him reject all of them for further contemplation on how to proceed. This my friends, is bad politics.

When I say that it is bad politics, it’s not because I’m convinced there needs to be more troops or that we need to pull out altogether, it’s because we have military men and women putting their lives on the line everyday with absolutely no idea of what their ultimate fate will be due to a President who can’t seem to make up his mind on what to do. In other words, he’s dragging his feet at a cost of human life – the worst kind of politics.

This is the same President who in his first 10 months in office has communicated the urgent need to act quickly when it comes to his political agenda for the economy, health care, and alternative energy, none of which have immediate loss of life in the balance. Trillions of US dollars have been, or will be spent, in an effort to deliver his agenda, but his commitment to limiting the number of immediate lives lost in Afghanistan can wait a few days, weeks, or months before making a final decision.

Personally, I think there are only two options for us. We either send in 3 times the number of troops needed to complete the job and get it done ASAP, or we pull up everything and get out now. Either one would limit the loss of life our men and women in uniform would have to endure. To me, any other decisions will make for more loss of life, and for what cause? What is so important that these precious lives cannot be dealt with right now? I can’t imagine anything more important, but obviously the President can.

This is also a topic that the President campaigned heavily on last year leading up to his election. He vowed that the Afghan arena was the only one we needed to be involved in and was one we could not afford to lose, but his campaign talk is not being backed up with correlating executive actions.

I’m sure I don’t know the whole story and there’s likely a lot of politics involved in making this decision, but no matter what the politics are, the fact that military lives are involved should eliminate their lobby and steer him to make a commanding decision. Instead, the most devoted and selfless men and women in the world, the bravest men and women in the world, are left hanging out to dry. I hope whatever deal the President is trying to strike is a good one.

Just bad politics.