The September 11 Generation (as it appeared in The Herald-News)

   A lot of people speculated that because we were kids, we didn’t understand the full gravity of what September 11 meant. They were wrong.

   The fat-bodied Boeings that Al-Qaeda terrorists used on that September Tuesday burst gaping holes through the rightful naiveté that we lived in; they took something from us, some intangible right to a happy childhood that every kid should possess.

   September 11 was the first time that I ever saw my parents truly scared. I had never seen it, and I didn’t how to deal with that, how to accept that, what to do with that. It was deep down, in an incomprehensible way, alarming, and it affected me.

   The fear came second for me. My first reaction when the details of the situation were clear was anger; unbelievable, yet-to-be-felt, hot anger rose up in my heart as my country – the United States of America, my home, the red, white, and blue, the untouchably powerful– looked like a far-off country across the globe where in-fighting and wars were common. My country, for the first time in my life, was bleeding.

   I knew before I went home from school that day that my world was gone. The happy place where I had no worries disappeared when steel met steel in downtown Manhattan. I knew that. It wasn’t a heralded thing, and it wasn’t something that even registered right away. But in a simple way, in a distinctly child-like way, I understood and accepted the fact that my world was taken from me and that I and everyone my age had been thrust into something that was not temporary or susceptible to a quick, clean revenge that would set things right.

   Osama bin Laden took our childhood away from us, and we hated him for that. Perhaps because his was the face that we saw on our television sets every night, mocking us from afar in our hurt, we absolutely, unequivocally placed that bearded devil in our hearts as the one to blame. It was common for us to sit at lunch and discuss what we would each do if we hypothetically found Osama bin Laden; the answers are not fit for print.

   He became the equivalent of Lex Luthor, the Joker, or Magneto to us, and we even criminalized him so much in our minds that he almost felt fictional, just a name “Osama bin Laden”: a dark-skinned, bearded man in a turban.  His death vindicated the 11-year-old, frightened little boy inside of me. It was personal.

   It’s hard – and it feels selfish – to express the hurt that a child felt on that day. Everyone hurt. But I, and I can’t speak for all, felt especially bruised by the events of 9/11. I still do. I’m angry still, ten years later. I can still see out of 11-year-old eyes the chronological chain unfolding before me. Maybe more acutely even than some adults, my classmates and I knew that this attack – a hard word to swallow, then and now – would shape the entirety of our adult lives. We grew up on that day. We had to. We’re the 9/11 generation.

  

  

  

It's 3 A.M.

I've been reading all about the post-classical empires in World Civ. I online (as an elective...hardcore!) and it's amazing what we can learn from the people who lived before us.

In the pre-modern times, it was pretty commonplace for government to experience a complete overhaul every 200-1000 years. Every 200-1000 years. Common.

I'm not that guy who will make the "America is doomed, just look at the INSERT CRISIS" argument. But here's the thing: our government is a hot-bed of drama, corruption, and cheaters. For the first time in a long time, American citizens can't be sure if everything is really going to be ok. It's a scary, unsure time.

My point here, though, is that we aren't at a place that civilizations have never been. The Roman empire, the Byzantine empire, the Chinese empires are crumbled because of on-going skirmishes (not necessarily all-out wars) and internal pressure because of taxes, internal projects, and power grabbers. And we're talking 500 C.E.

In the manner of an old history teacher, I ask, "so what does that mean, people?" What that means, I think, is this: we aren't as screwed as it seems we are. At least not government wise. As long as vast empires have existed, turnover has existed. After a crash/revolution the great empires almost always came back. Even if they didn't, some new up-and-comer would come along and start the next best thing.

Am I inferring that America is going to crash? I don't know. I hope we don't find out on August 2. But if we do go ka-put, we'll come back. History says we will - barring an invasion by one of our many international enemies.

I have Narcolepsy

I'm telling you the end of the story before the beginning and middles of the story. But there you have it: cat is out of the bag. I'm still going to tell you the story, though.

I've always been healthy, but would you believe me if I told you that I might have a real disorder? Could you start to guess what it is? -----wait...that isn't really going to work anymore. Let me try a different approach.

Right about the tail end of my senior year of high school (2008), I began to notice that everything was not exactly normal. I suddenly began having trouble getting up in the morning, and I had trouble sustaining any kind of energy throughout the day. I fell asleep at Six Flags for crying out loud.

In the months and years following high school, it seemed that I had developed a new love for sleeping: a common happenstance in the college years, I was told. And partially to blame was my college-boy sleeping patterns which usually found me getting in bed in the morning and sleeping until noon.

It was in my second fall semester at college, however, that I thought something might really be up. I had a 9:00 class that I really just couldn't get up for. Noone likes getting up, no doubt. But at times, I COULDN'T do it. And if I did do it, I was overwhelmingly ready for sleep by the time I got there.

Like anybody, though, I attributed my sleepiness and tiredness to the stresses of life and school. And several people made the excuse for me that I was simply lazy. That was much of how things went on for the first three years out of school.

Then around Christmas 2010, after Christmas Eve dinner with my dad's family, my mom asked me if I felt ok. I said sleepy, but that was an all-the-time thing these days. She was concerned that feeling sleepy all the time was not normal for someone of my age and health, so she had me to schedule a doctor's appointment.

After ruling out diabetes, hypo/hyperthyroidism, and and other horrible health prospects, my medical doctor, Dr. Alan Crews said something to me that I would have never imagined hearing: "I think you might have a mild case of narcolepsy".

I laughed. My mind went immediately to Mr. Bean in Rat Race and his constant nodding off and causing disasters. After months of testing and visits, he says narcolepsy. He sent me to Dr. Chandra, a sleep specialist in Chattanooga. Dr. Chandra had me do a sleep study. I fell asleep in 5 minutes on the night of the study, and I entered REM sleep in 9.5 minutes. The following day, I slept during all 5 scheduled 40-minute naps, and once, I fell asleep in 1 minute. It was official: I had narcolepsy.

Those results came to me today. So now I'm a guy with a dog, a girlfriend, and narcolepsy. And I do not just fall asleep at random times. But I could if I wanted to, which up until now, has made me feel like a mutant in the X-Men world.

I've been prescribed medicine that will help me stay awake during the day. As I jokingly told my good friend earlier, I feel like I'm having my mutant-ness taken away, and in a weird way, I wonder if this disorder is partly what makes me me. I wonder if my behavior and outlook will change with the medicine. I don't know, but I'm going to give it a shot.

Summer Solstice

    It's summer solstice today, and to celebrate the greatest season of them all, I'd like to look on what makes summer so special.

   Right now, I'm listening to one of my favorite albums of all time (The Killers-Hot Fuss) and watching Spongebob Squarepants while my dog sleeps in the corner. It's 11:03 and I'm halfway through my first Dr. Pepper of the day and I've yet to eat food. Summer time is the best.

   Living this summer life, it brings back the fried-bologna days of my childhood when summer was the ultimate recess, and my days were spent trekking around my neighborhood, building dams and riding my bicycle. Really...I miss those days.

   But so does almost everyone, I imagine (and hope that everyone had a childhood as good as mine to miss). The simplicity of those sultry southern summers to a kid are profound, and in those short three months away from school, kids become something more than students and numbers in desks.

   There's something simply magical about summer. Last night, I was driving along a back road close to home, and I had all of the windows down on my late-90's model Cherokee at midnight, because it was still so warm that I could comfortably do so. The smells and sounds of a small-town summer are irreplaceable. The smell of a fresh-cut field and of nearby cows mingling with the chirps of frogs, cicadas, and crickets is something that maybe only those of us who have known could really miss.

   The twinkling of hundreds of stars in a velvet-black Tennessee sky makes you feel small. The sound of a static-y country station broadcasting Garth Brooks turned to barely audible is the perfect second course to the roar of tires on blacktop roads and wind rushing through rolled-down windows sliding through the air at 45 MPH.

   I took my bike out yesterday, too, and I rode through downtown Dayton at evening and on into dusk. As an orange sun slowly tucked itself behind a green mountain in the west, I was struck with the simple beauty of home. The sounds of cheers rose up from a ball field where kids were playing little league baseball, and the only people I passed were a couple of guys fishing off of a bank.

   Summer is the season of front porch talks that last well into the early hours of the morning. It's the season of late-night McDonald's runs for apple pies and sweet teas. It's the season of choosing cartoons over the news. It's the scratchy voice of a baseball announcer describing the scene in Southern California, where the Atlanta Braves are playing a series. It's orange street lights and the courthouse lawn. It's ok to have no money.

   Summer is putting on a hat instead of showering. It's wearing the same T-shirt for two days and the same shorts for a week. It's flip-flops instead of sneakers. Summer is sitting by the water pondering how great life is, regardless of wars, recession, or gas prices. It's the time when childhood comes roaring back, and Chris Matthews and Bill O'Reilly aren't as enticing as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Summer is moths flocking around light and deer grazing on the side of the road.

   If there ever was a special day of the year, it would have to be today, summer solstice. The most summer-y day of summer. The most daylight for wiffle ball, tag, bicycling, fried bologna & Kool-Aid lunches, and swimming. And then the night when the small town sleeps and peace can be found on a two-lane in the country. Give me cicadas. Give me stars. Give me hay fields. Give me home.

   I often try to convince myself that there are other decent places to live in the world, but after nights like last night, I'll never believe it.

TuesdayPalooza

   Following yesterday's Netflix questions was the news that *gasp* Anthony Weiner DID send a photo of his junk over Twitter. That revelation sends me in a racing mine cart Indiana Jones style down a tattery track of "What's wrong with these people?!".

   I almost wrote a piece for ViewsHound this past weekend titled "This ain't your granddaddy's America", but I bailed on it at the last second because I got more involved in swimming and playing video games. Basically, living an 8-year-old's summer dream life. But today my thoughts go back to that statement, "This ain't your granddaddy's America".

   I guess if your granddad is in his 20's right now, it could be your granddad's America, but that would be a really unnatural situation, and I don't think it's prevalent to anyone who might read this. My granddad was 87 years old when he did back in September, and in the last year or so of his life, I made it my goal to spend as much time with him as I could, knowing that it's rare for people to make to 90 these days.

   One of the many things I learned from him is that our nation and our world are different than they were in the 40's when he was my age. That's obviously not news to anyone, and it shouldn't be unless you've been living in a shell off of the coast of Iceland. But still, the fact is that we are really, seemingly, in the worst financial, moral, and prestige state that our country has been in since possibly the 70's, and even now, our situation is much much worse than even it was then.

   I remember in 11th grade history, we learned that the Spanish-American war was the single event that spring-boarded America into the super-power that we still are today. It was the bombing (later, we found out it was an accident on board) of the U.S.S. Maine in Spanish-owned Cuba that started the war, and a few hours and one heart attack later, we whipped the Spanish and sent them home cowing before us.

   The days that followed were prosperous, and we hear about the 20's being great, and though there was complete economic disaster in the 30's-40's, the decades that followed are widely considered to be some of the best in America's history.

   But what I really wanted to think about today was the difference in leadership between now and then. I admit and even proclaim that the media then is not what it is now, and things went on that we don't know about. And no, the technology was not the same as it is now. But could it be that there were more honest, upright men in the past?

   Will the Afghanistan/Iraq wars be the things that are remembered as the events that began the slow, sinking process in America? Or will the current generation of politicians be gone soon, and will a new generation, younger and tired of the corruption, step up and take charge in the next 10-20 years? These are the questions that I think we need to evaluate. Or I could be completely wrong about everything and I should go back to staking out my mailbox for the Netflix thief.

All New 4 You

   I could begin my blog with the traditional "Well, I've decided to start a blog..." get-up, but the fact that you are reading this means that you already know that. And when I say you, I probably mean noone. Hold on- God Bless the U.S.A. is playing on my iTunes and I have to change it.

   So I was at the weird starting place for something like this where I'm unsure whether I just hit the ground running or I do some kind of "beginner" post. Maybe there's a middle-ground, and maybe I've already found it by getting off to this start. Warning: I'm a rambler.

   Honestly, I'm unsure what I need to put in this space, because I'm unsure what you people care about, if you care at all. But that's cynical.

   I could tell you about me, but that would defeat the purpose of having a profile where you can go read about me. I could tell you what I like, but I was supposed to divulge that info in the profile again, so I'm at a loss, folks. Thanks for sticking it out even this long.

    I put a Netflix movie in the mail today to be sent back to the Netflix warehouse place so the gremlins who sit and sort out movies 24 hours per day could send me a JFK documentary or whatever is up next in my queue. Of course I put the flag up on the mailbox, and when I put my DVD in, there was mail in the box. I took the mail, and I was puzzled, because it seemed a little early for the mail to have already run, but I suppose maybe she was early today.

    I thought that at least the movie would go back tomorrow, and it was not a big deal. I went back in and look out a few hours later to see that the flag was down, so I went and looked in the mailbox and saw that it was empty. At this point I'm wondering if it's possible that someone on my street knows that I get Netflix and was waiting for me to put my DVD in the mail so they could steal it. That's pretty unlikely, but it would be a bad situation, because I would have to buy the movie that I didn't really even lose.

    And I wonder if it's altogether normal to wonder if there are people who steal Netflix DVDs out of peoples' mailboxes when they aren't looking. It's unlikely, but it isn't such a bad idea. A man could wrack up a pretty good collection of movies if he was sneaky. Of course, by saying it, I could give the idea to people, but I guess this is one time that I'm glad noone reads what I write. That's all I got. Later.