Maybe I’m Mr. Robot? (No Spoiler Alert)

“”We are not all the same, but we are one, united!””

Source: Maybe I’m Mr. Robot? (No Spoiler Alert)

When Water Turns To Blood (A Very True Story) Part II

Where The Hell Is Jeff?

“Jeff!  Where the hell are you?  This is like my tenth message and it’s like six o’clock!  Dude, Dory has been out looking for you everywhere and Tone is asking questions.  I don’t know what the hell else I can tell him!  Call me… I FUCKING MEAN IT”!  Man, this is bad… real bad and I know that little man knows it too.  I was about ready to start calling hospitals when Dory walked in.  It was about ten o’clock and I had put Tony to bed in our spare room.  “Did you find him”?  I asked hopefully.  Dory just looked at me and ever so gently shook her head from side to side.  “I’m gonna call the hospitals then”, I said. “Don’t even bother, I did it already” she said with concern and anger some how.  Well, now what? Tomorrow is Monday, we both have to work and I don’t even know where little man goes to school.  I just needed to think.  What was I gonna do?  I don’t know anything about this kid’s family on his Mother’s side and little to nothing about Jeff’s family except that, well they hate Jeff and haven’t had a thing to do with Tony; well not much anyway.  They were disowned.  I guess and nice lounge on the balcony with a beer would calm me and bring some ideas to mind.

The Morning After

The alarm went off at an ungodly hour or so it seemed.  Reality was it was just 8:00 a.m. and my head was pounding!  I guess I shoulda skipped that eighth beer last night.  As I rolled out of bed, I heard Tony and the faint sound of cartoons coming from the living room.  I poked my head out and and in all my wisdom said, “hey”.  He looked up at me, with a spoon in his hand and said, “I missed school.  Is it okay if I made me some cereal?  I can make you some too if you want”?  “Nah” I said… “Thanks though buddy”.  Wow, what a sweet kid.

Now the rapid fire questions I couldn’t answer began and of course Dory couldn’t help because she was getting ready for work.  So, I was left to field them because I had already used my “I was left with an abandoned child and drank to much last night” sick day.  Finally, I just told Tony the truth.  I know that I would want to know.  So, I just told him that his Dad was fine, but I couldn’t get hime on the phone.  I asked Tony if he knew any of his family’s phone numbers or addresses and this poor kid looked at me like I had three dragon heads.  Okay, okay it’s gonna be okay, right?  Then Tony, from across the room said, “Sonny”?  “Yeah Buddy”?  “He’s probably drunk somewhere.  He leaves for two or three days and then comes home so I just walk to the CABS [the city’s bus system] and go on to school and stuff.”  Oh Lord, I thought.  “What do you do for food and things?”, I asked.  Tony kinda chuckled, smiled and said “No one will ever starve on cereal, Ramen noodles and cheeses sanwiches.  That’s what Dad says and he always buys a lot of that stuff right before he goes away.  So, I knew he was going away, but ne never left me with nobody before.”  All I could say was “Oh”.

Well… At least now I know everything will be okay.  This is normal behavior for Jeff.  This time, at least, he was a tad more responsible and left Tony with responisble adults; if you could call Dory and I that.  I asked Tony about where he went to school and where he caught the bus so I could at least get him to and from school.  I called work and filled them in on the situation and adjusted my schedule and took some weekend hours to allow me to drive the thirty minutes each way to Tony’s bus stop twice a day.  I filled Dory in when she called me from work… That was a fun conversation, but she was relieved overall.  The very last thing I did and the one thing I dreaded most of all… I called Mom.

When Water Turns To Blood (A Very True Story) Part I

AS A CHILD… 

When I was growing up, in a suburb of, what I would call, a medium size city in the Midwest, life was pretty good.  It was the late 1970’s before I have any recollection of life.  I had two older siblings that were going out to Discos, yeah Discos for you young ones reading and following my blog, and the Bee Gees and KC and the Sunshine Band were ruling the FM bandwidth of the radio.  And yes 8-tracks really did exist along with vinyl 45 rpm and 33 rpm LP’s.  Bell Bottom jeans ruled fashion along with Butterfly Collars and Leisure Suits and no-one locked their front doors.  Hell, I don’t think we locked our front door until the early to mid 1980’s.  And Sundays was ALWAYS family dinner at our house!!! Mom was cooking EVERYTHING!!!  Fried Chicken with all the fixin’s, or we were grilling out… on a charcoal grill now, NO GAS GRILL.  There was Football or Baseball on or cards being played.  The kids, meaning me too, were running around while Gran chain smoked her cigarettes and I swear she could smoke an entire cigarette without ashing, wave her hands around and never drop her ashes… I mean isn’t that a world record or something???  I swear… life was good!  We were all in our comfort zones and we thought that everyone had it like that; we thought all families did the same thing and that every member of every family had a “real” mom and dad and brothers and sisters and cousins and… well, you get my point.

Then in, oh, I guess it was the 4th grade, I made my first friend that wasn’t living with their Mommy and Daddy… she was living with her “Grammy”.  I didn’t get it at all.  Why? Where was her Mommy and Daddy?  I remember asking my Dad and in his sweetness he said, “STAY THE HELL OUT OF IT AND I MEAN IT”!  Okay, that helped a lot… thanks Dad.  Of course I didn’t stay out of it, how could I?  After all I was the child who always asked the who’s, what’s, where’s and how’s of everything, even if it took hours.  He shoulda known better.  So, the next morning at school I asked my little friend why she was living with her Grammy and the truth of the world hit me smack dab in my face… BOOM!!!!  She told me that her Daddy beat her and her Mommy up all the time and her Mommy stuck needles in her arm for pain and people came an took her to her Grammy’s house to live.  Well, okay, I didn’t understand all of it, but I was done prying.  I did however ask my Mom about it and she told me that it was really bad what happened to my friend and she was very lucky to have her Grammy. Mom went on to tell me that I would have my “own” kids one day and I would be a “great parent and would raise my own kids wonderfully”.  That made me feel so much better.

Love is a Many Splendid Thing… Bullshit!!

True Love, a many splendid thing.  We know it’s true… there is a Disney song about it after all.  Love, isn’t it what we all seek, what we wish for? Now I know most young men don’t dream of a white wedding, a tux and tails and having a wife and children.  I know that sounds stereotypical and it is.  Yet, there are some that dream exactly that. However, the majority of the wedding dreamers are our young women. Why? Let’s discuss that for a moment shall we?

Our young women, from a very young age, hear things, mostly from the elder women in their life, “Oh, just wait until you get married and have babies of your own”.  They may see their elder, female family members getting married and they might have been all gussied up as flower girls or, the one I love… a junior bride’s maid.  What the hell is a junior bride’s maid?  The whole concept escapes me!  I mean a bride’s made is there to me a “MAID” to the bride, right?  What is a 12-year-old going to do?  Anyway, off topic, but just a little.  The young girls have been dressed up as brides and princesses for Halloween and spent most of their young lives watching Disney movies in which the female lead needs “true love’s kiss” to awaken and be saved.  Boy if it were only that easy.

Now, their counterparts… they go through the same things as ring bearers and ushers… not MAIDS.  It takes on a role of responsibility and strength.  Besides, when the reception comes, they just run and play anyway.  The “young ladies” best be proper now.  The young boys and men there aren’t thinking of or being spoken to about their future wedding, but those young ladies are… even if it’s Grams says “Oh, honey… you’re gonna make a beautiful bride”!  Grams is right, but she’s 2-years-old Grams!

True love has been shoved down young women’s throats since the womb became their previous address.  Princes and Princesses are their measure.  I don’t think boys learn about true love until, well, um… I really don’t know, but much later. They are concentrating on sports, video games, girls (their asses and tits of course) and hanging out with the guys.  It is clearly a difference in the way the sexes are raised.  I would like to tell you this is an old concept, but is really isn’t.  It is better now, I mean we did see Disney release characters like Mulan and they have come a long way from the Damsel In Distress.

So, now we have examined where the idea of True Love came from and how it may be viewed differently at different times of development by the sexes.  And no my point wasn’t Disney did it.  My point was that women learn early all the stories of “True Love” and marriage and the perfect wedding; yet it is barely heard of in the rearing of our young men.

Young women often grow up thinking they will meet the man or woman of their dreams, fall in love, get married and live happily ever after.  Isn’t that what we think?  Isn’t that the way Mom (especially) said it would be?  Aren’t we told that true love never hurts, that it never lies, that it will always be there for you?  I call BULLSHIT!!!

THIS IS TRUE LOVE

Over a 50% Divorce rate in the U.S…… Maybe Gay Marriage will help with that statistic.

As Always Click below and give… At least show this lady some TRUE LOVE!!!!

Be good to one another…

Sonny C.

https://www.giveforward.com/fundraiser/fvf9/giovanni-lives-disability-fundraiser

Here is who you’re helping…

Miss Dannie After Shoulder reconstruction in 2013 with her new puppy.

True Love For Sure

I am To Be Honest All The Time… No Matter What, All The Time, No Matter What.

Photo compliments of HBO Game Of Thrones

THE TRUTH. What is the truth? Well, let’s examine that for just a moment. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary the truth is “the real facts about something: the things that are true”, “the quality or state of being true”, or “a statement or idea that is true or accepted as true”.  Well now that surely clears it up for us doesn’t it?? Still looks like you need to know what real is, was true is, and so on. I will just look at true, since that is what our topic focuses on today. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary True means “agreeing with the facts: not false”, “real or genuine”, and / or “having all the expected or necessary qualities of a specified type of person or thing”. Whew!!! The concept of truth and true seem to be, well, shall we say… convoluted.  So, let’s go to the one place I know and you know will give it to us straight… The GREAT AND POWERFUL, no not Oz sillies… The Urban Dictionary.  According to the Urban Dictionary the Truth is ” something which would probably upset a great many of people if it were known and made public.”  The Urban Dictionary, under this definition further states that “Truthfully speaking, most people have no idea of what the truth actually is.”  And This is a perfect place for me to do what I do, so here we go…

Out With The Old, In With The New… That Just Seems Wrong This Time.

Being Charitable… Today, those words might as well be a terminal illness or the middle finger heading in your direction! Seems to me that my generation was taught to give and give kindly, without thought to self because it would “come back on you ten-fold”.  Is there anyone reading this that remembers being brought up that way?  Now look, I’m not just speaking of those raised going to church regularly, no matter what denomination.  I’m not speaking of folks raised in small, one-horse towns either.  I’m speaking of everyday joes, everyday families.  Does anyone remember walk-a-thons, aluminum can drives, canned food drives?  I swear, my generation did at least four or five events a year for school and that didn’t count scouts and sporting teams.  I am truly saddened by this especially as I watch news reports of starving children, underemployed and under-educated people around the world, the under-insured, the list goes on and on. Now I am a realist and I know all the problems in the world can’t be fixed through charitable givings of money, time, product, etc., but it sure goes a long way for civility and that is for another post.

So you’re asking yourself… what in the world does this have to to do with Mom and Dad’s advice that they never gave you?  Well, I guess I’m speaking mostly to Generation Y and younger, that 30 and below crowd with a cell phone attached to their hand and an IPod strapped around their arm.  You know the ones who don’t know how to interact face-to-face with someone because all they know is either AOL Messenger, Email, Text and Emoticons (What the FUCK are emoticons really???)?  So, Here is the advice Mom and Dad never told you…  Instead of spending all your bank, bills or big ones on the newest and brightest I-Phone, I-Pod with a $250 pair of beats and a $10,000 I-Phone watch, the latest tablet, why don’t you try dropping a BUCK in a charity jar on your way out of a store.  Oh, um maybe instead of hittin’ da club one weekend donate a couple hours to a good cause.  I tell you what, that BUCK and those couple hours will make you feel more whole as a human and more complete than the damn Beats will. Trust a Mutha Fucka!!! Peace.

As a side note… click on the URL below for a good cause that I found for a young lady and performer recently diagnosed with a disorder that has turned her and her family’s world upside down.

https://www.giveforward.com/fundraiser/fvf9/giovanni-lives-disability-fundraiser

 

My Thoughts On The Matter…

I grew up with some great advice, I really did.  Why mine was so great is that my mother was fierce, a stick of dynamite that would say things other mothers just wouldn’t say and in ways that would make even parents today cringe.  She is the inspiration for this blog and my life.  So, if blatant, unfiltered truth on any matter is what you seek… This is the place.  No, I am not a counselor, psychologist or psychiatrist, nor do I have any specialized training in any such field.  I want to make that crystal clear.  I am a person who has lived through many situations in life and am heavily read in many topics.

I now have a child of my own, Tony.  Tony is 16 years old now and I find myself saying the same things Mom said to me and more.  I’m just as raw and brutally honest.  Subsequently, he is an Advanced Placement student, honest, serious Cross Country Runner and yes has a girlfriend for over six months and is a virgin.  Him and I discuss sex often.  He says to me me all the time, “Pop, I could care less about sex”.  Our birds and the bees talk went a little something like this… “Tony, do you know where babies come from”?  He was red as could be, but said, “yea, Pop, I do. From Men and women having intercourse”.  Of course I asked him, “do you know what intercourse is”? Bright red now he said. “well. a man puts his penis in a girl’s vagina.”  I was relieved that he knew that much at least. So, I asked him if he knew the methods of safe sex.  He did, right up until he said “the pill.”  Oh no, no, no he didn’t, but he did.  Now my face was bright red and he knew it was coming… Pop’s real down and dirty!  I said, “Tony, are you outta your, damn mind?! The pill only, if your lucky will stop a girl from getting pregnant!  And I’m sorry, no matter what I believe, you believe or fucking Santa Clause believes; in today’s world, if a woman doesn’t want to be pregnant… She doesn’t have to be”!!  “I’m talking about things that will potentially kill you, her or make your Dick fall off… You get me”?  Man, his face was glowing by this point. I then told him “There are things you can catch that NEVER go away, that make you the un-doable”!!!  After a little unwinding, however, Tony and I made a pact, that if he ever felt he was ready for sex he would come and speak with me.  Guess what… He has.  His girlfriend and him have been together for a tad over 6 months and have spoken, intellectually, about having sex.  They have chosen to wait.  What great kids.  Why?  Tony told me, for him at least, he has a future he is working on and sex doesn’t fit in right now.  I reminded him of our pact and he said, “I know Pop, I promise”.

Tony and I are the best of friends, but he still knows I am his parent.  He knows I am there to fight for him and most of all he knows I am there to tell him the brutal truth.  Today, there is absolutely no reason to be any other way with our children, our friends, our partners and now… You!  Welcome to the one place where honesty rules and compassion still exists.