JOURNAL ARCHIVE: Re: Journal June 8, 2006, Supplemental
So, it looks like it was May 9th when the curtain started going up on my past life. It was May 8th when I zero'd in on how Hurley's lottery numbers pointed to that first place I lived in Bellevue. Then it struck me that something was odd about all those other places I lived. That last one, Paces River, reminded me of Parachute Rigger. I think they don't use that designation anymore, but it used to be the rating for the guys that maintained aviators parachutes.
Prior to May 9th, I was commenting about "Locke's Burg," and some driving distances from Ashdown. Pretty much by May 9th, or maybe shortly after that, I was certain, although can't remember how certain, that I had never actually lived in those places, at least not how I remember them. There is probably people there that know about me, but I am certain they are actors. When does this end? Why can't they just pull the curtain all the way back and let me remember everything so I know what to do and can get out of this damned place?
I've been thinking about something the person I remember as my mother said to me a long time ago. She came to visit me in Bellevue one time, I think it was 2001, I'm pretty sure it was right after that earthquake. She told me her boss was letting her take a business trip out to Bellevue because she hadn't seen me in a while and was worried about me. I remember commenting to her about how this was the first time she had actually been to my home. She had never before visited any place I had lived. I remember when I first saw her at the airport, she drew attention to her new hairstyle, which was a lot shorter than she had always worn it. I took off my cap and showed her that mine was shorter too, as I had earlier started shaving it all off. Funny story, I got the idea watching a tv movie about Genghis Khan and his sidekick had a shaved head and I thought that was probably how I would look. I remember noting that "Mom" didn't seem surprised I had shaved my head, as though she knew about it already. So anyway, as I looked at this picture several times over the past few weeks, I find myself thinking about the resemblance to Theda. When was it I had that physical with the doctor in Bellevue and he commented that the objects on my back, which turned out to be some kind of fibrous objects, were suspicious? There was also that comment the manager of Limestone made about Theda, something about "that person." I told her it was my mom but she seemed skeptical. All the people around me have known this stuff for years and years. It has been a form of therapy and they all just wanted to meddle with it and hassle me about it. Now I've got all that to deal with and I still have the original issues that I needed therapy for in the first place. Once you lose your private life, you can never get it back.
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/08/08/maureen.reagan.obit/
In the movie An Officer And A Gentleman, the young Mayo goes to live with his father in the Philipines. I don't think it is a coincidence that Maureen's first husband was named John Filippone.
Her next husband was David Sills. I used to work for Donald Mills at his general store in Wilton, AR.
Her third husband was named Revell. I remember a kid in school with that name, or it was Revells, and I used to purchase model cars and airplanes with the brand name Revell.
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: Re: Journal June 9, 2006, Supplemental
There was a girl in school with me named Michelle Center that I have been thinking of the last few days. I was home on leave on time at our house on Hicks Road and I called her. I remember that for some dumb reason, I burned my finger on a hot iron as I was speaking to her on the phone. She went into the Navy some time after that and was a Postal Clerk, or PC. I remember talking to her at our high school reunion and she was telling me how great it had been to live in India, can't remember if she had lived there with her husband or she had been stationed there in the Navy. One time in school, I think it was toward the end of 9th grade, we had some kind of class trip to Six Flags in Dallas. At the end of the day, for some reason, she was pushing me around in a cart and I had my eyes closed as though I was asleep.
I'm really wondering if the stuff I am thinking that happen, stuff happening to me as an aviator, really happened or if they are just random thoughts, it's confusing, some of it is rather dramatic. In this weird way that is so weird I can't think of a better word to use to describe it, some of it feels right, but then....it is confusing because how can imagination feel wrong?
What I have been thinking more of today is an experience when I was training for Ironman. I was eager to get out and swim in the open water the same way as I can go out and ride my bicycle for 50 miles. There are several lakes to swim in around here but my concern was about getting hit by a boat. I started thinking about constructing a buoy with a large flag on it to tow behind me so that boats would avoid me. Over the past week or two, I have had these imagination-memories about doing something similar, but that I was towing away an anti-ship mine in the Persian Gulf. I have no idea if I really did something like that, but I do find myself thinking about it.
I also wonder, if I really am Ronald Reagan's grandson and I really was a commissioned Navy officer, how many bad guys were shooting at me and the units I was part of just for that very reason? Was I on the Sheffield and did they shoot it just because I was there and there was some twisted logic to it all? Was I on the Stark and the Iraqis hit it for that specific reason?
I also remember thinking of something, I'm not sure when I had this memory, but it seems to be an old memory. It had something to do with me getting married at the World Trade Center. And why do I have the memory of my father burning to death when he wrecked his freight truck? And there was this guy I worked with at Eagle Business Systems named Ray Cross whose father also drove a truck, not sure what that means but it seems important. I was looking through some of the names of the Class of 1982 and the name Thomas Allyn Ray stood out in my mind for some reason. I have been thinking of the phrase "Ray Gun" for a while, as I have seen that come up in certain places, such as Star Trek:TNG, and that first X-Men movie.
I am wondering if I was the Senior Class President at the Naval Academy. That may be why my memory has that occurence where I was the Junior Class President at Ashdown.
Tim Reed joked that he had written in Mickey Mouse as a candidate because no one would run against me that junior year at Ashdown. A teacher commented that the ballot, with my name as the only contestant, was representative of the voting in Russia.
The U.S. Naval Academy and my high school both use Purple and Gold as the school colors. I was thinking about Ashdown back in 2004 when the swimcaps at Ironman CDA looked similar. They were actually purple and yellow, but I thought of Purple And Gold. Or is it Purple and Gold? After I thought about it, maybe it isn't purple, but blue, not sure...
I wonder if, during my Senior Year at the academy, they let me attend with the rank of Master Chief Petty Officer. While an Ensign, the rank assigned to Navy graduates, was senior to a Master Chief, I assume that among Midshipman peers, the enlisted rank of Master Chief would be superior. I have this memory of a guy from when I went to boot camp in Orlando, and the rumor was that he had previously been an officer candidate but then dropped out or something. I think this was added to my memory to give me some kind of pointer to reality. I suspect that, if indeed I did go to Iran in 1980 on that failed rescue mission, they gave me the rank of Master Chief for that mission.
I thought I was going to get to transfer back to Shoreline today, and regain a fraction of privacy, but just like a million times before these past couple years, the day ends and nothing happened.
[I have a memory of doing this same thing long ago, turning my class ring around like this:]
http://www.usna.edu/PAO/faq.htm
Naval Academy Seal
Senior midshipmen traditionally wear their Naval Academy rings on the third finger of the left hand with the Naval Academy seal facing outward. Upon graduation, they reverse the ring so that the seal faces inward, closest to the graduates' hearts.
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: Re: Journal June 9, 2006, Supplemental 2
The guy in the photo on the right kinda looks like me, at least from what I can see. I don't remember my hair looking like that. But his hands look familar. My mom once told me she could always pick me out in a photo by my hands. She told me that when she was looking at a class photo from when I was at Dam Neck Fleet Combat Training Center. We were all in front of an SM-2 ER missile. This photo of the midshipmen made me think of a photo of me and two other guys working in the Boatswain's Locker on the Taylor. I was hammering a block of lead to use for a casting line during Special Sea and Anchor Detail.
http://www.usna.edu/Admissions/history/1980.htm
Midshipmen in their Room, 1980
But he's right-handed.....at least that is what the photo indicates.....
After I became work Center Supervisor on the Wainwright, I named our workplace The Missile Plot Country Club.
Before I left the Wainwright, we were deployed to the Med. During Christmas while over there, Mogge and I made a Christmas tree out of some kind of paper, some type of heavy wax paper. I formed it into a large cone-shaped "tree" and then we spray-painted it green. We used spare lamps from the computers and connected them to batteries to make lights for the tree.
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: Re: Journal June 10, 2006
http://www.usna.edu/Admissions/history/1980.htm
I was writing that the midshipman in that photo, on the right-hand side of the photo, kinda looks like me. But I was thinking something looked wrong about his hair. It looks kind of like I remember by hair, and who knows about the quality of the photo, but later I realized it remembers me of a guy on the Taylor. That guy we called Patch. He was in that photo of me in the Boatswain's Locker as we were making sea-and-anchor lines. I wonder what is the name on that ship ball cap in the top left. Something makes me want to say the ship is an LPH or something similar.
I was thinking yesterday about the goat that is the Navy's mascot. I remember a photo I got from Caitlin, who I guess really isn't my niece, that had her at some kind of competition, I assumed similar to the FFA competition I remember from high school. But one other element of that photo from Caitlin stands out in my mind: one of those women in the photo. I didn't know who they were, but that one woman reminded me of that mother from Nightmare On Elm Street. She was the one that I think was pulled back through the small window of the front door at the end of the movie.
There is that message on the board on the wall that says something like: I want you all to clear [out? at?] the end of the [...?] I have a [client?] who's interested in the [room? looks like this word starts with a "pro" though, as though maybe "program"]
That stereo reminds me of one I had in the room Micheal and I shared at our house on Hicks Road. We had taken apart the bunk beds and separated them so that one was on each side of the room and that stereo was between them. I am also reminded of a photo I took of my barracks room at Great Lakes during Fire Controlman "A" school, which had Stroup in it, one of my three other roommates. I think his first name was Robert, I remember he was from Arkansas. He was sitting at a desk, studying.
I write with my left hand, but I use the right with the computer mouse. And I'm wondering now, how often do I really write with a pen? I write with a pen so infrequently, I could have probably been trained to use my left hand to write. I was writing a lot recently with my left though, so I'm not sure what that means. But somehow, it feels important. His right arm and hand do look a lot like mine.
goddamn it these people are driving me crazy.
The problem with his hair is that it looks too black. I don't believe my hair was ever that black. But that is symptomatic of the problem. If my mind had been conditioned to believe that my hair was never black, I would look at the photo and dismiss the possibility that it is me.
I must have been on an athletic team at the academy team too, but I'm not sure which one. Maybe I was on several. Basketball stands out in my symbolic memory, in a Tapestry-esque fashion. I remember a coach telling me I had very good hand-eye coordination. I remember another coach telling me he couldn't believe I made both free-throws. I remember not being able to make lay ups.
I started wondering a few days ago if, along with another degree, I have a law degree.
I remember telling that instructor at Microsoft in 1995 that I thought JAG was a stupid television series. That guys name was Lex. He drove a white Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo just like one I had.
One day in the cafeteria at the Microsoft building in Issaquah, Ken Fagan, now Ken Cavallon, made a point to talk to me about becoming a lawyer. I told him that it was something I wanted to do, but probably when I was in my 50's or something.
I've been thinking about the part on this wiki page on the Sheffield where they talk about that song they were singing while waiting to be rescued. I also remember a time in a bar somewhere some British Navy guys were expressing amazement that we U.S. Navy guys didn't know any drinking songs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hms_sheffield
While the ship was sinking, her crew, waiting to be rescued, sang "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" from Monty Python's Life of Brian.
I wonder who Peggy Spears represents? I remember her from school in De Queen. She may have had a sister too, maybe in the same grade but I can't remember. In my memory, Peggy sort of resembles a woman I worked with at Microsoft. One year, 5th or 6th grade, my mom bought me this jacket that I thought was incredibly cool. It was some kind of race-car driver style, silver looking, stripes on the sleeves, gran Prix, I think. I was very proud of it. But Peggy Spears had one just like it around that same time and I was embarassed because my buddies started kidding me about it.
Even more importantly is who is represented by my half-sister Jody, my father's youngest child. I think I know who that is based on appearances.
I find myself thinking about a woman I had a brief affair with in Barcelona two days after my birthday. I also remember the year before, when I was 22 I think, my girlfriend telling me she had gotten an abortion. She was despondent because she believed it would have been a daughter.
I remember that girl I had an affair with later, in that time after returning from the Gulf. I sense a similarity, from hair style, to that woman who played Zack's girlfriends mother in Officer And A Gentleman. That girlfriend of mine was named Jeannine Bowman, although I'm not sure if that was the correct spelling of her first name. I was seeing another woman around that time with the same name but different spelling. Jeannine Bowman went on to marry Billy Parker, my buddy from high school. According to classmate.com, he had a kid and I have wondered about that for a while. Anyway, I was telling my mom some time later that I had left my class ring with Jeannine. She said something about she would get it from her, but I don't remember hearing anything else about it. I have had this sense for a long time, from back when I thought Theda was really my mother, that they were collecting all my personal items for some reason. There was that museum, or whatever it was, in Ashdown that piqued my curiousity.
I remember smiling at a photo of Tracie's daughter, Amanda, when she was about 2, three at most, trying to bounce a regular-sized basketball. She was trying so hard, concentrating so hard. I think Amanda may actually represent a real person in my life. It hurts to remember her. I used to run her through her grandparents house holding her like she was an airplane. I remember thinking how attentive she was when I told her to extend her arms like wings on an airplane. Tracie's mom said she didn't know how I could hold her with my arms extended out like that for so long.
I have also been thinking about how the name Amanda has a similar sound to the beginning of the word Annapolis. amanda...uh-napa---lus
I also remember, in my early days in the Navy, the importance of On The Job Training, also referred to as OJT.
