How many times have read, “This post started out as something else….”

You see….I start writing a post by coming up with the title first. That would imply that I am writing the post around the title, which is not the case.

I write of my life, my thoughts, my impressions. And I am already getting caught up in backstory. A bad habit of mine…as I have this compulsion to explain my myself.

Regardless…..

I have been catching up with friends as of late. I have have re-connected with a number of classmates from my life in Hartford, Michigan. This, of course, has resulted in being awash with feelings of being back in Michigan.

It is September as this is written. Here in Arizona, where I live now, it is still warm. Last night it didn’t get below 90 degrees. In Michigan they are getting ready for the early fall warm up. October is around the country with it’s crisp days, and its cold rain.

We were shitheads in school. We know we were. We had classmates who were struggling. Alcoholism, addiction, abuse, racism, intolerance of peoples orientation. You can say that we were just kids and didn’t know….but some of us did.

The need to fit in. To join in when the group turns on someone just because they are different. Gay, Lesbian, fat, quiet, you pick the reason. It happens and it happened. We talk about how difficult it is to grow up. We all remember having been bullied, picked on, shut out. To feel like no one understands.

I would rather talk about what if smells like to walk through wet leaves on an October day. How when you first walk out into a crisp Fall day…that first breath of the cold air into your lungs. The skin in your nostrils crinkling from it. The feeling of the air as the temps near zero….my breath turning into ice on my mustache…

I amazed at the strength of character of many of my classmates. How they got through those days and came out as kind, and decent adults………

Humans are a savage bunch…..