TKAM

            As the original namesake for my blog, I figured I should put a lot of effort into this blog on To Kill A Mockingbird. Just kidding, I put a lot of effort into all of my blogs. Actually, despite using this novel’s name as part of my blog title, I had a lot of trouble really getting into its story.

            It’s Spring Break and I’m just hanging out on Siesta Key Beach with friends. While everybody else is catching up on reading Mockingjay or one of the other books in The Hunger Games series, I decided to pull out To Kill A Mockingbird (let’s call it TKAM for short). Living a solid 5 minutes from Siesta Key my entire life, I have had some experience with reading on the beach; I’ve found it’s a quality idea. So, I figured this endeavor would be no different than my previous beach readings.

            But here’s the problem: it’s Spring Break and I’m trying to do school work! That’s like a turtle trying to outrun a cheetah…it’s just not going to happen! So, I put the book down and decided I would further procrastinate.

            Fast forward three or four days to Friday. I am back on campus (one of the few) and there wasn’t much to do, except homework. So, it only made sense to delve back in to TKAM.

            I remember reading this book in 8^th grade in Dr. Dean’s class. I don’t remember much about it, and I figure I probably just Sparknote’d most of it. But not this time. I opened the book and immediately was able to delve into the wonderful prose displayed by Harper Lee.

            Although the story was very good, there were a lot of things I was confused about. After a while, I figured out that Scout is the one narrating. But, it took me a while to realize that the Finch’s were white, along with most of the people written about in Maycomb. Also, Scout is a girl. Got that, too.

            As I blogged about with Huck Finn, I had a lot of adventures with my cousins John and Josh. I spent almost every day of every summer of the first 14 years of my life at their house. And they lived on a golf course that was built into a small forest area. Sounds like adventure to me.

            Reading through the first part of this book, I could do nothing but relate to the adventures of Scout, Jem, and Dill. My cousins and I may not have ever acted out shows like Tarzan, but we definitely had a neighbor we liked to fool with. His name was Boo Radley. Not really. But he was a mystery that we tried to learn about. I’ll spare y’all the stories and just talk about TKAM.

            Atticus is a really interesting character to me, because everything he does is absolutely intentional. Everything he says, everybody who hears it, and every action he takes is to get a message across or teach a lesson, especially to his kids. I really like that about his character. It makes me feel like everything he says should be paid close attention, and that captures my focus.

            Overall, I am excited to talk about the story that appears out what seems to be another adventure: a story of pursuing one’s interest and ignoring that of society, a story of growth (especially in Scout), and a story of a family standing strong in a poor situation.

My Little League Life

Here comes my great memory again. When I was four, I started to pursue my childhood dream: baseball. I arrived at the local Little League where Coach Page (I was friends with his son, probably why I remember him) told me after the first practice that I wasn’t on the team. So, my parents got me switched onto a team coached by Mr. Lenny Skoglund. And this is where my pursuit of playing professional baseball was even more legitimized.

That last statement probably sounds odd to most of you. Through the progress of this blog, it will become clearer.

I don’t remember a whole lot of details from each season, just that my team was unbeatable. Eric Skoglund, Chad Sobotka, Austin Fernandez, Quint, and myself were probably five of the best players in the league…and we were all on the same team. Myself, Eric, and Chad hit 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th in the lineup respectively. For about 5 years (10-12 seasons), we won the Little League championship every year. I remember winning a game 21-1 after one inning. Yeah; we were that good.

Parents around the Little League started to get upset that this dynasty was allowed to continue. So, when I was about 10, our dream team was split up. Quint’s dad had a brain aneurism and his family moved away. Austin’s family moved away. Chad, Eric, and most of the rest of our team were split among the league.

So, Coach Lenny decided that he was going to move Eric and the rest of our old team to the AAU league in Sarasota. However, AAU was much different than Little League; we would have to travel a lot. Because of this, and the fact that I would have to miss church on Sundays, my parents refused to let me play on the AAU team. That AAU team would go on to be one of the best in Florida. They still invited me to practice most of the time, because they wanted me there.

I went back to playing Little League, but my heart could no longer be in the game. I wasn’t playing for my coach or with my team. So, I quit. I had to give up the game that I loved and was extremely talented at. I will touch on my favorite memory of it in a moment.

Back to my statement about my legitimate professional baseball career pursuit. Sarasota High School, my districted school, was named the top high school baseball program in the country a few years ago. When I was a freshman in high school, the team won the state championship. The team would reach the final 8 in the state every year of my high school career.

I wasn’t playing. But, my long time teammate Eric Skoglund would be the one leading that team. This past year, Eric was drafted in the eighth round of the MLB draft, directly out of high school. He turned down the money and is now one of the top starters at the University of Central Florida. As a freshman. I look at Eric and almost try to live vicariously through him; I know that I could be right there with him. Eric has a bright future in Major League Baseball, and I pray for nothing but the best for him. If he’s there, I guess that I get to feel like I am too.

I think this is a good time to touch on my favorite baseball memory. When I was 11, I participated in a baseball camp at Sarasota High. On the last day of the two-week camp, everybody participated in a skills competition divided up by age group. I was included in the 14-15 year old age category. Yes, I won. As my prize, I got to personally meet Hall of Fame baseball player Wade Boggs. That is still one of the major highlights of my life.

I look at my life now and realize that if I had taken the baseball path, I probably would not be where I am now. TCU does not recruit much in Florida, so I mostly likely would have gone to UF, FSU, UCF, or Miami; all baseball powerhouses. I honestly can’t even imagine how different my life would be. So, while I still feel bitter about not being able to pursue my childhood dream because of my parents, I have an amazing life now, and I know that I would not be here if I had pursued baseball.

Mansour Meeting 3

            On Thursday, Mansour and I met for the third time to talk about life, and such. The first thing both of us noticed was the weather; it’s amazing how nice it is outside right now. We figured it would be an injustice if we were meeting inside anywhere.

            Eventually, we got to catching up with each other on what had been going on since our last talk. A couple of weeks ago, Mansour started having car problems, which still seemed to be continuing. On Thursday, he had actually gone from having no car to three operating cars: his original one, a new one he bought because the engine in the old one was fried, and a rental. He had a couple stories of Craig’s List deals going wrong, but eventually he found a new car. I guess he is going to save his old one for his brother to buy.

            I’m not a big car person, but Mansour and I both knew well that him buying a Japanese car was a much better purchase than an American car; American cars are just meant to die after “x” amount of years, so that you have to buy another from them. I guess that American cars aren’t really prevalent in Saudi Arabia, anyways. He said the lack of longevity was why.

            Eventually, we got to talking about our upcoming weekends. I went to Houston for the weekend and went to a Rockets basketball game, U of Houston baseball game, the rodeo, and Luke Bryan concert. He said that my weekend sounded really eventful, but he had nothing planned.

            So, since he didn’t have anything going on, he said he wanted to go out and do something crazy. Like skydiving. I’m not sure if he ended up going, but he seemed pretty serious about it. This got us talking about doing crazy things and being spontaneous. He said that skydiving was something that he had always wanted to doing. I have the exact same desire.

That thought made me think about how crazy it is that our completely polar opposite cultures still desire the same sort of outlandish adventure. It seems that the human desire to do things that are out of the box and potentially dangerous is simply that: a human desire. Not affected by culture at all.

Next time that we meet, I want to sort of explore this idea even further. It makes me wonder what other desires are of the flesh and unaffected by culture.

Coming of Age-Humpty Dumpty

            I have a supremely good memory. So, I’ll try to use it to the best of my ability right now. This coming-of-age story dates back to when I was 4 years old, but the results of this night have stayed with me forever. One day in May during the fourth year of my existence, a day which happened to be my parents’ anniversary, I fell over and cracked my head open.

            I’m guessing that I had some sort of obsession with robots at the time, because my dad had gotten a cardboard box, painted it up, cut head and are holes in it, and given it to me to run around in. Yes. I was pretending to be a robot.

            So, if you have little siblings, I’m sure you know that when they are young, every corner in the house is baby-proofed to prevent them from getting too injured if they fall on a corner. And this was true of my house as well. The only problem was that the rubber adhesive around the edge of the fireplace didn’t stick to the fireplace well. And, on this instance, when I was running around in a robot costume, the rubber wasn’t on the edge.

            I don’t know if any of y’all know what I’m talking about, but when running around in a cardboard box, your balance and mobility are greatly limited. This story has a lot to do with that comment on limited balance. I seemed to be backing away from my couch, lost my balance, and fell backwards.

I don’t remember hitting my head on the fireplace, or even if it hurt. But, I do remember my grandma scrambling to call my parents home from their anniversary date. And I do remember sitting in the backseat of my car with a towel and ice pack stuck to my head to try and stop the bleeding as we sped towards the hospital.

After this, the only thing I remember about the injury was getting staples at the hospital, then not being able to go swimming or do anything active for a while. I know that I had to skip out on the fun of my cousin John’s 5th birthday party because of my injury.

As I’m sure you could tell, I have short hair. Very short. Whenever I seem to sit or stand in front of a new friend or acquaintance, the question comes up: “Jimmy, what is that huge scar on the back of your head?” And every time, I have to tell the sob story of me cracking my head open again. It is just something that has grown with me, and I’m sure that plenty of future employers, employees, friends, girlfriends, random homeless men, and chipmunks will ask me where it came from. Maybe not the chipmunks, but a talking chipmunk would be pretty cool. Anyways, I guess it is just part of me; a part of me that’s just as good as the rest of me.