The Importance of Reading

Your grandmother never read to me. Actually, she read to me when she could. Or when I asked. It wasn’t an everyday thing. People - education types – have stated that if you are read to as a child, you’re more likely to become a reader. Your father is a reader. That is, I’m big on books. Take a look around, just see how many books flood through it. How many dog-eared copies recline in the shelves bending with the weight of the latest and the classics.

There are many reasons to read. I started to escape into a world that I fit in, leaving behind this one. Reading also helps one become more creative. Several writers will state that reading is just as important to writing as writing is.

Reading also makes a person smarter. Now there are people who state that there is no relation to intelligence and reading, but these people never read the studies done. They probably thought they were too boring, or too long, or thought that it was trivial and hanging out with their “real” friends more important.

I started reading to you the day you were born, the very night. The first book I ever read to you was Where the Wild Things Are, a book I loved as a child. I also read you books by Dr. Seuss and the classic Peter Pan. But I read to you before you were born and so did your mother. I plan on reading to you every night, and when you ask me to. I want you to love books as much as I do, which will probably be your mother’s nightmare – can you imagine how many  books we could fill the house with?

The Other Redhead Girl

I approach this subject with caution for your mother’s sake. Probably for your sake, as well. Mine, too. It’s never easy talking about my past with someone I care a lot for. Even harder when the person is a part of me, like you are. I’m afraid it paints me in a negative light. Sometimes I like to think that if it wasn’t for the Other Redhead Girl, your mother and I wouldn’t be where we are now. And that says a lot, and gives way too much credit on an ex girlfriend.

Still, I was angrier then. Though I still lose my temper, I’m not as bad as I was in those days. I never struck your mother. Never called her an insulting word. I’ve raised my tone and even walked out on an argument, but I never made the same mistakes with her that I did with ORHG.

I won’t focus too much on this story – again, for you mother’s, yours, and my sake. We met through a mutual friend – a mutual friend I was crushing on. Let’s rewind a bit here. Because I’m jumping ahead of myself. My senior year started with me in a relationship with Mari – who I’ll talk about later in a post about all the girls/women who crossed my path. That relationship was on the rocks, mostly because I was a capital jerk. She met a girl online – which was a big deal back then – who happened to go to my school. Her name was Dominga, and the first person I crushed on in that group.

There wasn’t anything remotely special about Dominga – I met her through a mutual friend who later introduced me to Tiffany who later introduced me to ORHG. My crush with Dominga faded rather quickly. Infatuation, maybe. Me being a jerk toward Mari, a higher possibility. Tiffany and I got on well, at least that’s how I remember it. I don’t even remember when I began liking her. Or why. She wasn’t the type of girl I normally fell for, though over that facade of perky was a layer of something else. Something I can’t explain. One night, I was invited to spend the day at her house. Her friend, ORHG, was there. And like magic, we hit it off well. But nothing would come to fruition because she was still head over heels for some schmuck.

I failed to mention that ORHG was living in San Antonio at the time. That our relationship was long distance for the most part, though when she moved to Brownsville, it became less so. I’m not sure what either of us thought a relationship with the other was going to be. I just know that in the end, we brought out the worse in each other. Where she saw marriage and a family, I saw a prison. I wasn’t ready to commit, even after high school. No one should jump into that so quickly.

And as terrible as it makes me sound, not two years into our relationship I called a friend on the phone. And we got started talking about things. When I mentioned that I was probably going to move in with ORHG, this person began to cry. And it triggered something in me. Something I can’t fully explain to this day. For years, I’ve been living my life sans emotion. Turning my heart off to the world. And this tiny voice crying on the other end sparked a feeling of guilt in me that I can never match up to this day.

I never cheated on ORHG, not physically. Emotionally, I was never hers. Our relationship stopped the moment I realized that I felt something for someone else. And I didn’t have the heart to break it to her. I’m not sure why. Not sure if it was part guilt or because I felt I owed her something for all the things she was doing and getting for me. The relationship didn’t last much longer after that, though. When I finally got the gall to break up with her in the most cowardly way.

I apologized years later. She married her best friend, something I saw coming in our relationship. They have two wonderful daughters now. And I can’t imagine it any other way. Because now I have you and your mother. Because that’s how I met you mother, really. Sure, I met her years prior, but I never met her until that moment. A few weeks after I ended my relationship with ORHG, we started our trial relationship.

But love, much like life, doesn’t work out the way Hollywood portrays it. But that, I’m afraid, is a story for another night.

Related articles

• How I Met Your Mother Part III (dearshaun.wordpress.com)
• The Red Devil (dearshaun.wordpress.com)

How I Met Your Mother Part III

I don’t remember the first time I met Elijio, but that’s not really important. It’s the last time that I spoke with him that matters, not the first. What little I can tell you about him is that we always went to school together. We went to the same schools. The same church. Shopped at the same stores – of course, in a small city like Edinburg, that’s inevitable.

I bumped into him in the hallway our senior year in high school. More like Elijio wrapped a friendly arm around me and started talking to me like we never had a pause between our friendship.

Let me pause here, and I’m going to quote from a comic book here: “Sometimes in this life, you get a moment, a time when everything lines up. When anything is possible. When suddenly you can make things happen. God help us if we take that moment. And God forgive us if we don’t.”

What I want to convey by using that quote is that I was given a moment with Elijio where the road forked. One path had me play along and act as if nothing had happened; the other, a blank expression and a look of wonder, acting as if I had no clue who he was.

I went with the latter, and I could see the hurt in his eyes.

But my moment wasn’t with Elijio, not really. I made a decision after letting an old friend down. I would no longer limit myself to getting to know people, especially those who have taken an interest in me.

So it ties back – it’s what I’ve always said – to the letter I received in the sixth grade. So I wrote your mother a little note. Nothing special, yet very. I might have written something a little more reasonable, something more profound, had I known what was in store for me.

And that is the first time – sort of speak – I met your mother. When I really spoke to her rather than just sneer and portrayed some upperclassman elitist jerk. And while storytelling conventions will have it, I would end this post with how we never looked back.

But life doesn’t work that way. It never does. Because the moment I met your mother, I was already twelve days into a relationship with another redhead girl.

Related articles

• How I Met Your Mother Part I (dearshaun.wordpress.com)
• How I Met Your Mother Part II (dearshaun.wordpress.com)
• Linear (dearshaun.wordpress.com)

Stay Young

All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up…  —J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

I spent my childhood wanting to grow up, thinking adulthood was some form of freedom from the rules that reigned over me. When I got there, I realized it’s just the trading of shackles. Now I wish it there was some way to return to my childhood.

Many children take their youth for granted, wanting to grow up too fast. Maybe it’s for attention. Maybe it’s because they think adulthood would get them noticed. Or at least garner some attention from their parents. Your oldest cousins, Justin and Selena opted to grow up too fast. As much as I am disappointed with the both of them, I can’t help but to pity them. By growing up quickly, they have sacrificed the best years of their youth. Not just high school, because that time of you life is usually hit or miss – miss for the most part – but college.

Education is becoming increasingly important in this world. But even children who grow up too fast can continue their education. What they’ll miss is the true college experience. The clubs. The study groups and social interactions. I’ve never been one to partake in that part of college, but I’m happy that I managed to squeeze it in before I graduated.

While I can’t speak for either of them, I believe your cousins’ mistakes were a way to get back at their parents. However, the only lives they’ve inconvenienced are their own. Your Uncle Martin’s and his ex-wife’s lives will continue as planned. So will your Uncle Jay’s and Aunt Melissa’s. Your grandma’s life will continue down the same course. So will your other cousins’ and so will mine. And so will yours. Nothing changes for anyone outside the mistake. Justin and his girlfriend’s, and Selena and her boyfriend’s lives, however, have taken a detour. At fourteen, Justin will now have to figure out how to support his girlfriend, their baby, and still manage to go to school. Selena will have to figure things out, as well. And I’m sure each one of them is thinking of the one-day-at-a-time plan, which we’re so used to as children. But those days are over. The future has smacked them in the face, catching them unaware. Now it’s planning for tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and the next.

So what’s the point of this post? The same point this whole blog holds. I’ve made mistakes so you don’t make them yourself. Take my words as some guidance to not trample upon the same ground those before you walked on.

Stay young for as long as you can, and grow up when the time is right. All children grow up, but there is no reason they should speed through the best years – the easiest years – of their lives.

How I Met Your Mother Part II

I can’t think of another word to describe high school me other than the “a” word. I was an incredible jerk. A dirt bag. Misanthropic beyond belief. Some things never change, honestly. And because I didn’t think anything life changing would happen to me in that Spanish II course, I didn’t change my outlook on life. I only knew two people in that class. Elizabeth Something-or-other, a girl I’ve known since Junior High who believed I was her friend’s cousin because we lied so convincingly so – more on this later, perhaps – and Danielle Sekula, Dustin’s older sister.

Being a Spanish II course, the class was made up of mostly freshmen. It was something that bothered me greatly. There were, actually, many things that bothered me about that class. The class work. The teacher’s insistence of knowing what we did during the weekend, spoken all in Spanish – which I couldn’t do very well. The shoe box diagrams that were too elementary for me – seriously, I had a conversation with my guidance counselor about this. Most of all, I hated the group work. That is to say, I hated all group work in every class, not just Spanish II. I beat myself up about this last one because had I just paid a little more attention the second semester of the previous year, I wouldn’t have been in this mess.

During one of the group activities we were forced into, we went into the usual member introductions. One wide, bright-eyed girl with – what I considered to be – dirty blonde hair – but learned never to state this – asked me outright, “What grade are you in?”

Now, I’d like to say that I did something profound and opened up to her right off the bat. That I saw something in her that I could live with forever, be happy with forever. But like a lot of things in life, it never works out that way.

“Senior,” I sneered. I was suffering from a superiority complex. I was an upperclassmen, I shouldn’t have to work with freshmen. It was degrading, wasn’t it?

After that assignment, I felt eyes on me constantly. Whenever I took a look behind me, the bright-eyed girl would look away. She was cute, I noticed. But because the only conversation I had with her was ended by my rudeness, I didn’t pay much attention to her. Besides, it was nice to have a fan, right? At first, I thought she was interested in me. She later told me it was what I was writing that piqued her interest. Not that I wasn’t the object of her interest, it just wasn’t my charming good looks, or charismatic personality that won her over.

Back in those days, the school was enforcing a “clear” backpack rule. As a senior, I took the rule as a suggestion. As a freshmen, bright-eyed girl took it literally. Now I can’t recall what got me interested in her, but something called my attention toward her clear, plastic backpack. Her name, spelled J-E-A-N-N-A. Most people would think to pronounce it GEE-anna, or Jenna. But I mouthed JEAN-na. Having known many a girl called Gina, it was the first time I saw it spelled this uniquely. Besides, I always thought Gina should be pronounced j-EYE-na, because you don’t pronounced China CHEAN-na. I liked her eyes. I liked her hair. I liked her name. But would I like her hands? And for that matter, why haven’t I spoken to this girl?

How I Met Your Mother Part I

You know the story already. You know it involved a note I passed to her in class. You know that because I’m a redundant person. I’ve stated it from the start. But if this project is ever going to progress, I think it’s time I tackled the subject head on.

My freshmen year of high school, I thought I’d try something different. Where most of the students chose Spanish to be their second language course, I chose French. Like most freshmen, I suffered from the culture shock of high school.

I made several bad decisions my freshmen year – from my choice of friends to my priorities in school – but French was never one of them. If not for taking French, I would have never met your mother my senior year.

There are several stories I can tell you that spawned from my taking that French class – from my not-so-secret crush on Brenda, a total bad ass girl who was either a senior or a junior at the time, to the close bond I made with Teddy, an eighth grade bully who became such a pretty cool guy later on. Of course, none of these stories build up to the climax, so moving on.

I flunked out my freshmen year – most of the classes I took were failing grades, even French. Not wanting to repeat history, my pseudo-sophomore year, I took Spanish. I breezed through Spanish, even though it was a bilingual course, and I was not such a student. The follow year, I took the second part of the course – it was a requirement for my “degree plan.”

In that class, I met even more interesting characters – some I’ll reveal later on. I also met Dustin Michael Sekula, a name I ask you to remember because he’ll play a minor role later in life.

I flunked the second semester of that course, which begged me to retake it my senior year. Maybe it was something higher than me that caused my decisions, or maybe I was just playing into old habits and patterns. I don’t know and I can’t discredit either. The thing is, when I entered that Spanish II course in the last semester of my high school career, I didn’t know that there was going to be someone who would change my life for the better.

Of course, that’s a story for another time.

Something More Than It Is

Water.

Scientists state that no life can be without it. That’s why when a planet lacks water, the image of a barren wasteland comes to mind. Nearly every living thing on this planet is made up of water. It’s where life started from.

There are several simple pleasures I appreciate in life. The sound of waves crashing against each other, against the shore at the beach is on the top of list.

Whenever life has become too much to handle, I long for escaping to South Padre Island and feel the salt water against my skin; the sun drying me from above. When a day has left me ravaged or when my emotions can’t be controlled, a shower suffices.

Water gives life and it can take it. And sometimes, it can give you a new life. A new start in this world.

Off Topic

Your mother pointed out something to me this past weekend: You recognize our touch. Your grandma has caught you off guard and your aunt will feel you moving if she waits long enough, but with  us it’s a response – almost.

Sometimes I fear this is a dream and I’m going to wake up too soon. Other times, I still can believe you exist. Still, I’m happy that you do. I begin to ponder what’s going on inside. What you’re like. Will you inherit my talents and inabilities? Will you resemble your mother? Or will you surprise the both of us and be completely different?

Will you pass the time reading books, writing stories, building outlandish setting with your toys? Will your imagination never run out like mine? Will you sing as beautifully as your mother, or be incapable of carrying a tune like your father? Are you an introvert or will you be the center attention?

Your birthday cannot come soon enough.

Hellraiser

Not a lot of things scared your father when he was growing up. I was the sort of kid who dreamed of meeting Freddy Krueger, camp with Jason Voorhees, and dine with Hannibal Lector. Okay, maybe not that last one. Still nothing scared your father. Okay, I still have this childish fear of electrical storms and all sorts of bad weather. And I have the innate fear of being a terrible father. Up until a few months ago, I freeze up every time I sat behind the wheel of a car. But nothing irrational scared me. That is, with the great exception of Hellraiser.

Let’s rewind a little bit here. Remember the time I talked about religion? Well, my fear of Pinhead and his cenobites can be backtracked to my upbringing. See, I was raised Catholic. And like any good Catholic, I was taught that guilt is key. I should feel guilty about everything. Breathing. Going to the bathroom. Natural curiosities. Living. The reason behind this is because some two thousand years ago, a man was born and later nailed to a bunch of boards. And the reason this happened was to absolve humanity from something a woman did six thousand years ago. (Don’t figure out the math, it’ll only give you a headache.)

Now in Catholic religion everything is boiled to one conclusion: YOU’RE GOING TO HELL. Had an impure thought? You’re going to hell. Had to scratch your butt in class? Hell. Failed to keep up with Lent? I hear there’s a nice place in Hell for you. As a child, this sort of upbringing can scar a person. I know I was.

So unlike Freddy or Jason, Hell was a very real place. It’s why Hellraiser scared me. It’s also why – oddly enough – I strayed from ever doing a puzzle cube for a long long time.

But the Hellraiser franchise has a deeper space in my heart. If it wasn’t for Hellraiser: Inferno, your mother and I probably wouldn’t have happened (okay, that’s a bit much, but hey, it works).

See, nine years ago, on this day (as I write this, it’s February 1st), I was watching Hellraiser: Inferno when something happened. I had a thought. And it scared me.

I recently had broken up with the person I’d been seeing for nearly two years because the feelings I had for your mother was just too strong to ignore. And the relationship I was in didn’t seem to be going anywhere – on my part, anyway. I was stuck in a rut, repeating the same mistakes I  had since high school and hadn’t really gotten anywhere. I’d just started college that semester after a year-and-a-half break from school. I was on the fast track to nowhere and I was single. Only, I didn’t want to be single. The logical thought would be, why did you break up with that other girl? I know. It crossed my mind, too. Only, even though some part of me loved that other girl, I wasn’t in love with her. It’s cliche, I know. But that’s how the world worked. She wanted the family. The picket fence. The husband. I didn’t want any of those things. Well, not at the time anyway. I also didn’t want to be in something meaningless. I wanted a relationship that would lead me to this point. Okay, maybe not this point, because it would be impossible for me to know that at the time, but a point similar to this one.

I paused the film and called your mother, who wasn’t even my girlfriend at the time, and told her I was scared. Of course, I said it was because of Hellraiser, but the truth was, it was that innate fear that I failed to mention earlier.

People are social animals, so they say. Even the most introverted of us fear of being left alone. Maybe I didn’t want the house with the picket fence and the children playing in the front yard in the next year, but I wanted it somewhere in the future. I wanted a relationship to build up to it, not rush me to that spot. And maybe your mother wasn’t going to be that, I didn’t know that at the time. At least I gave it a try. And, hey, look at how far your father has come.

So in the memory of that night, I watched the six part to the only horror movie to scare me as a child every year afterward. Except this year. Because this year I have other things to think about it.

Because this is the year when I usher in the next chapter in your father’s life. This is the year when my life finally begins. Because this is the year I get to meet you.

Football

Football is one of those American pastimes that I suspect was invented by the alcohol industry to sell more beer. They’re probably in cahoots with the meat industry, come to think of it as tailgate parties are the backbone of the football fan.

There was a time when it was stated that I loved the Dallas Cowboys. This was your father attempting to fit in with world and there was a lot of that, but more on that later.

I picked the Dallas Cowboys because it was the Texas team. Every boy wanted to play for them and every girl wanted to be a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader. But that’s besides the point. This isn’t about football, this is about life. If you ask your Uncle Ruben, however, he’ll state that football is life.

At work, I was weeding the books making sure they were in their proper places. I came across the sports section, and, of all the team sport books we have in our stacks, football is the one that is the most shuffled.

And I know it’s too far into the future to even consider, but it came to me. Are you going to be athletic? Will you be the type of boy who watches football on TV every Sunday like religion? It’s interesting and anticipating to learn more about you, to meet you finally.

This post is pretty pointless. There is no deeper meaning than this wonderment. Sometimes I just want to let you know that I’m constantly thinking about you.