Who I am!

Part two

So last post, I started telling you a little about myself, and the blog turned to my experience with racism growing up in Northwest Florida. Yes, I am white, but witnessing acts of racism didn’t sit well with me, and that is why I joined the Navy to get away from it. I can tell you that joining the military didn’t get me away from racism, but that will be addressed in another blog, which will also give you some idea about my service-connected disability.

Today, we will be looking at something else entirely that also contributes to who I am. My love of science, history, cultures, reading, and learning. The last one is surprising because when I was in school, I hated doing homework. I loved taking tests and acing them, but homework was boring, and it sucked. Today, I regret having that attitude back then. Oh well.

I have always been curious about how things worked and why things happened, and I guess that is why I love science and history. Some of my earliest memories are of Watergate and Richard Nixon's resignation. Yeah, I was a weird kid who loved to watch the news. How many 3—and 4-year-olds do you know who like to watch the evening news? I am pretty sure the news reports from Vietnam scarred me somehow. Thank you, David Brinkley, Walter Cronkite, Tom Brokaw and all the rest.

The news also influenced my imagination and love for science. I got a kick out of seeing reports on NASA and the Apollo Project. I was a little over a year old when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, so I don’t have memories of that event, but I do remember later ones. I remember Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz the most. I thought Skylab was the greatest thing ever and imagined myself on the space station floating around. I could not understand at the time why NASA stopped sending astronauts to Skylab. Later, when it was allowed to burn up in the atmosphere, I think I cried a bit.

I loved space so much that the first book I checked out from the library was a book about space for kids. That book was filled with pictures of satellites and manned spacecraft and is also the main reason I worked hard to learn to read. I have a funny story about reading I will share later. It has to deal with going from a school in Missouri to one in Florida. Apparently, Florida did not believe Missouri taught reading back then. Lol

Well, learning how to read opened a lot of doors for me; one was my imagination. I went from picture books to books without so I had to make mental pictures, and I can tell my mind created way better images than anything an illustrator could do. I found I could fly without leaving the ground and travel to foreign lands without leaving my room. The great thing about imagination is it loved to be fed, and books were my method of doing that. Where I lived, there wasn’t a movie theater within an hour's drive, plus it would be quite expensive for a family of seven to see a picture. I had to make do with books. My first experience with Star Wars was reading the Novelization that I picked up at a book fair while my friends watched at the theater. I did not see A New Hope until 1980. I read the book and collected trading cards, and with those, I created my own movie with my imagination.

I didn’t go without seeing movies or science fiction shows, we did have TV. We didn’t have cable but the stations we picked up would show reruns of Star Trek and old SciFi movies. I loved Star Trek the best. I remember playing with my brothers, cousins, and friends. I think I always ended up playing a “red shirt” since I was the youngest. It was great because across from my aunt and uncle’s place, where we lived at the time, was this wooded block with a pond. It made the perfect planet beam down the site. I can’t remember how many times I was killed by a Klingon or creature there, quite a few, I think. Eventually, the Star Trek play gave way to baseball as the bigger kids got older. That sucked, but it wasn’t the end of my imagination creating wonderful worlds and adventures.

I remember watching a movie about a submarine with Barbara Eden in it and I became obsessed with undersea adventure. I also decided then and there I wanted to be on a submarine when I got older. Anyway, in the 3rd grade, our teacher had a freshwater aquarium, and that instantly became the view screen for my imaginary submarine when it was too rainy to go outside for recess. The little fish were either other submarines or big deadly sea monsters. I had a blast. I was always the captain, so I was in control. There was the unfortunate mutiny, but I soon put that down. My imagination, my rules.

I think what contributed to both my education and imagination the most was the set of World Book Encyclopedias my parents bought in 1977. I was always reading those things. I would thumb through them and find something new that interested me. A to Z, I read them cover to cover. I still have those Encyclopedias. Right now, they are in a plastic storage tub in my garage until I can restore the bookcase they came with. The great thing about Encyclopedias is they cover all kinds of subjects, so you learn a bit about everything. It came in handy for school because I was one step ahead of everyone else, having already read about what we were studying.

I know those Encyclopedias helped me get on Florida’s list of Gifted and Talented students. In reality, with my school, it wasn’t hard. It was a small school district in a poor county, so standing out from other students was easy. My dad and I would joke that the requirement for graduating my high school was being able to count to 10 without using your fingers. I am not slamming my teachers because they were pretty good. It’s just the curriculum wasn’t what you would find in larger and well-to-do schools. We didn’t have advanced placement or anything like that. Our highest math class was Algebra II. As for science classes, they were basic, and so were history classes. If I had done the homework, I would have pulled straight A’s, but I thought it was boring and knew I could get 100% on tests. I wish now that I would’ve done the homework. I sold myself and my education short. Oh well, you can’t go back despite what Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity says.

Why didn’t I go to college after high school? Did you read what I said about not doing homework? Do you know what not turning in assignments does to your GPA? Well, anyway, I am the son of a 20-year Air Force veteran and military service encouraged. I didn’t have to enter the service, but I wanted to become an electronics technician, and the military has some of the best training in that field, especially the Navy. Why did I choose electronics? My dad was an electronics technician in the Air Force and acted as a Bombardier / Navigator on B-52s. I chose the Navy because I wanted to serve on submarines, and I ended up becoming a Navigation Electronics Technician. I found out submarines were nothing like my imaginary one in the 3rd grade. For one, they don’t have view screens that show everything underwater. Oh well. I will get into my sub-service later.

My imagination is about the same as when I was a kid, but I have a little more knowledge than I did back then. I also have read a hell of a lot more books. One other thing remains the same: I love to learn.

Well, got to cut this short. I have to watch reruns of “Leave It to Beaver” with my wife. It’s one of our nightly rituals.