The musings of a madman...

  As the two of you well know, my dumb ass thought I was told I had 24 hours to live one time last month. As you may or not have observed in these here pages over the past several years, I took this information and made a simple misunderstanding into an absofuckinglute PROBLEM for a bunch of people.  The vessel of the worst of those problems, naturally, being myself. It stands to reason that NOT having only a day to live is actually a pretty good thing, y’all.  I can thank my now-21-month commitment to my health and fitness.  My doctors are actually kind of wowed at my laser focus and refusal to chill out on my regimen.  Needless to say, I **should** have more than 24 hours left on this spinning rock. …  but there is some fallout from my actions and that is an absolute problem, because I have ABSOLUTELY burned some bridges here in a city that I cannot afford to leave. One thing I never do is sit around wondering where my exes are living or what they are up to.  What I do know is

     I am not “popular” but a lot of people seem to know who I am.  It is rare that I go out anywhere within an hour or so from my city that I don’t bump into SOMEONE I know.  Bear in mind for those of you who didn’t learn in elementary school that North and South Carolina are two different states, we do have paved roads and indoor plumbing here in NC and I live in the 68 th -largest city in the US.      Anyway… Back in November, Dollar General had Hot Wheels buy one get one free and I made a point of trying the stock in each of the 5 within five miles of my house.  On a random Friday morning I happened to have off burning up some time, I stopped into one of them and bumped into this girl I had some dealings with when I was 16 doing some before-school shopping with her apparently high school-age son.  I guess you could call it “puppy love,” but in 1995, she was a 'girlfriend' in my 16 year-old mind, at least for a little while.  More on that in a bit though.  I saw her