Project 01

I am the eldest of five boys and I have one older sister.  Growing up my brothers always looked up to me as a role model.  I didn’t like being in the spot light and I especially didn’t like the attention my brothers gave me.  All I wanted was to be left alone; I was used to being alone.  It was probably the age gap that caused the most problems.  I was five years older than my next youngest brother, which makes it really easy to tell people how old all my brothers are.  Even if I didn’t want to be their role model, I never really had much of a say to it.  We lived on a farm out in the country and I really didn’t have many friends growing up.  Everything I did always had a pair of eyes watching me, learning from me, and attempting to mimic all I did.  Whether I liked it or not, I helped shape how my younger brothers are today.  I know I wasn’t the best role model they could have had, but it brings me some joy to know that I had such an influence in their lives.  I’m glad they finally found out that they are their own persons and didn’t need to be like big brother.  I guess puberty will do that to you.

Throughout my entire life I’ve always had a problem with authority.  Especially when it came to school teachers.  I never liked being forced to do anything.  If a person can’t make me want to do something, why should I do it?  There is only a couple times I can remember when I actually connected with any of my teachers was when I was in high school.  It was a very small school in a town with about two-thousand people.  The simple fact that it was a smaller community might have allowed me to get to know my teachers better.  Either that or because I was growing older and experiencing more things making me have more in common with my teachers then I did before.  I guess I’ll never really know why I felt more connected with my teachers during high school.  The other time is when I was going to school that had over two-thousand students.  I ran track and my art teach just happened to be my track coach.  Obviously we had a lot in common and had more to talk about.  I took as many art classes as I could because I liked art and my teachers were in a sense, cool.

Easily the biggest influence that shaped my life was some time in the military.  Four years and eight months is a long time to devote to anything, but I’m sure glad I did it.  Boot camp was kind of fun, in a weird family kind of way.  I say that because from the start of boot camp, the Company Commanders were considered the bad guys.  It never mattered what we did, we were always in trouble.  Later on in boot camp we got to see the other side of our Company Commanders, the softer, more human side.  In the end I figured out why they did what they did.  They had to, in order to break us down and build us up into what the Coast Guard needed.  Team players that did what was needed of them by their superiors.  I don’t know anyone else with the day to day dedication that they had for us, kind like mom and dad.  They never gave up on us, even if we had to do the same thing all day to get it right. You know, if my family didn’t come to see me graduate from boot camp, I might have actually missed my Company Commanders.

After making E-3 in the military I was moved up on the A-school list.  E-3 means enlisted grade three, it starts at E-1 and goes up to E-10.  A-school is where I wanted to go to learn how to work on everything related to computers and phones.  I got my orders to A-school the next month, hellz yea!  I’m moved to California with my wife and completed A-school.  While I was there I had the feeling like I was a child and not an adult.  It wasn’t the instructors I had, but it was all the other instructors.  They have a saying in the Coast Guard, “choose your rate, choose your fate”.  I found out that all the instructors were complete assholes because we weren’t in their rate.  We had colored name tags that distinguished what rate we were going.  I came to loath other instructors and to love ours.  Our instructors knew how to play the system and would help us out when they could.  In the end it was all the simple things that made me like some instructors and loath others.  The little things matter more to people then most would like to admit.

When I look back at my life up until now, there have been a lot of things that have affected my life.  Some were drastic and some were simply miniscule.  I realize that everything any one has ever done in my life has made me who I am today.  I embrace the people who made a positive effect on my life and scowl at those who just couldn’t be good human beings.  I know there is so much more to life that can be learned and I keep an open mind to everything.  If by chance that someday I am a teacher, I hope to be able to positively affect all my students.  As for right now in life, I’m absorbing as much as my brain can handle.  I still hate authority; it’s just been cut down to only the police, even if my sister is one of them.