A Man & His Stick Walking The 9 (Part One)

Teaching

I love my job.

I love my students.

They love me.

I still love the end of the school day.

I am human.

1-2-3 Children Go ______ _____  ____ 

If  teachers are not already staring at their watch, one universal song of happiness exists in Taiwan

The Children Go The Fuck Home Song brings teachers' days to an end.

The Children Go The Fuck Home sounds like Sally Struthers whining in Chinese.. But, it still makes us all dancing in our chairs at 3:59 p.m.

On this Friday afternoon, the famous Children Go The Fuck Home song already passed.

I approached my car .

The thoughts in my headed tumbled, turned, and twisted more than a usual Friday afternoon.

One thought continued to outmatch the millions of others  

In that intertwined mess above my face, the victorious thought was to remember shit.

This was to signify to myself  to remember as much as possible on the drive down from Xinying to Fangliao


90/10 Rule

I switched the mode in my brain to storyteller mode,

When I go to storyteller mode, I stay on high alert to look for anything I can write about later.

I am aware 90 percent of the people don't give a shit about your story, and the other 10 percent are glad it isn't them.


I still like stories. I also like telling them.

The 90/10 rule comes from a motivational speaker, Les Brown.

Post Children Go The Fuck Home Song Life

The Children Go The Fuck Home still lodged tightly into my head.

I anxiously tapped the hood of my car with my left hand.

I also worked my hand in between the space above my driver side window. I pulled some loose & already broken plastic out that was lodged in between those spaces.

No need for meddling with a broken A/C existed. I knew the vents would only blow out hotter than the already 95 degree interior temperature of my car.

I finally headed out the gate of my school for Fangliao, Taiwan.


Solo Epic Journey

I already triggered my mind to remember shit as previously mentioned.

My mind entered into its own game.

It started racing for terrible thoughts.

If I go on a solo epic journey, I enjoy the shit out of the journey.

However, I often remember the solo epic journeys the most where I ended up crying in the car at some point.

You can make fun of me all you want.  After you peal your head back of the steering wheel, and all that built-in pressure is gone, there is no better feeling.


Get Over It

You see, I am typically a pretty emotionally detached individual.

I am 38 years old.

I hate this.

But, I still can't shake my parent's divorce when I was 13 years old. I know feeling sorry about it just puts me in a victim's mode. And, I am old enough to get over it.

However, the sounds of some of their fights as I laid helplessly covered up in my bed until all hours of the night still haunt me when I find myself alone.

Reach for the Horrible

When I start having horrible thoughts, it normally starts with some of the conversations I over heard as a child like , "We need to get divorced," "You're running around on me. "

Sometimes, I can even see the rack of MLB hats I used to have above my bed and I can still feel hope I had for the hats not to crash on me when they were fighting.

It wasn't that the hats crashing would hurt. I just didn't want my parents to know I was awake.

On this Friday afternoon, it was no different. The horrible thoughts started with some of those same conversations about divorce, and cheating. I actually get tired of it. It's 25 years, I still can't let it go.

Now, I am in Taiwan. So, after this replay of horribleness washed through my mind about my parents' divorce, I just moved on from childhood to some weird culture shock stories within the past few days.

For some reason, I knew I wasn't going to muster up any tears on this Friday afternoon.


Still Reaching For The Horrible

In the car, I continued to scour my surroundings for something more interesting than my parent's divorce 25 years ago. I only remember seeing one airplane traveling east.

It felt weird because you seldom see commercial airplanes in the sky in Taiwan. I don't have any facts to back that up. It is probably all perception on my part.

A plane traveling east intrigued me however. I was also traveling east for the weekend. I planned to stay in Fangliao, drive to Fenggang at 4 a.m, and then walk 100 km in two days to Taitung. I planned on stopping halfway in a town called Dawu.  I also planned to do this while wearing sandals.

After I saw the plane, I finally reached for a horrible enough thought with crying potential.

Bye Bye Plane, Hello Ex

The plane passed over.

In the distant right hand corner of my mind there she sat (my ex).

I couldn't see her legs (my ex).  I couldn't see her bubble but.(my ex)

I couldn't see her scouring face. (my ex)

I couldn't see anything but her smoking a vaporizer. (my ex)

I remembered the day.

It was when we had one of our final blowout fights.

It was on a Wednesday night.


Post-Blowout

Post blowout fights created some of our most productive communication sessions. I was able to talk to her like a normal human being again.

I had to be a  bit bullying just to break that talking like a human being thresh-hold. I said shit like , " How do you ever expect to get a boyfriend? "

She passive-aggressively counter-punched my passive-aggressive moves with a lot of throwing the same questions back at me.

We both wanted the relationship to work so bad. We unknowingly were building walls around our own souls to not let the other person in.

It was nice to have that moment after some intense fights of Oh, I remember when we could still get along.


Shitty Childhood Stories & Bad Relationships Stories, Here I am Fangliao

After an afternoon of solo-driving, remembering shitty childhood stories even though my childhood was great, and the bad relationships that followed it, I finally reached my day one destination, Fangliao, Taiwan.

I looked around at the stoplights. I saw the murky ocean water looming to my west.

I knew within an instant I wasn't staying there on this Friday night.


Continued

Part two follows soon. Find out about the beach revisited.