I love to tell stories. It's the reason I spent 4 years and a dump truck full of money to get a degree in English. And ever since then I have told everyone I know that said degree is "as useful on a resume as a felony conviction". In spite of the fiscal awareness it required me to repress, I always wanted to teach, study literature, or write.
Instead I went blind. Most of you know the story. Five years of being a disabled, stay at home Dad created some pretty good stories, and those can be found at my old blog, Dad's Destroying Angels. The name of that blog came from my theory (which I still subscribe to) that when God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, he sent a hand full of 3 year old kids. There is no more destructive force in all of nature. Fight me on it. You won't win, because I still have a 4 year old and I will send her to your house to prove it.
At the time, I was spending my days listening to inane cartoons, brawling with toddlers and then typing the play by play on a laptop that had the screen magnified so large that there was only one word visible on the screen at a time. It was time consuming and a cast-iron "bleep" to edit and proof read; but spare time, I had. It WAS funny. Mostly, anyways. And I just went with it because we were such a train wreck that it was either laugh or start saving time by cooking my morning pop tarts in the shower (C'mon. That was funny. think about it and start laughing, dammit. I'll wait).
It was a trying time for our family, and neither Nena nor I have any idea to this day of how we survived it. There were lasting repercussions from those days that still bounce off the walls like echos and smack us in the face. Things got worse and worse. I had to find something to make some money or we were going to lose our house, our sanity, and what was left of our ragged nerves.
In what might only be seen as Divine Irony, I found a job with a small family owned company that specialized in (I'm not kidding) cleaning up disasters. Yeah, I know. Live with literary devices, die by literary devices.
Having had some conversations on the matter in the ensuing near-decade, I now know that when I walked into the office on my first day, no one thought my stay would be a long one. Cleaning up disasters is, to put it mildly, damn hard work. Most of the folks there figured I wasn't going to last the afternoon. All anyone could see was a blind fat guy wheezing and sweating and going red in the face while trying to use a roller to paint a wall he couldn't even see.
I don't blame 'em. I'm not sure even I thought I'd last. But the Swanson brothers stuck with me because another thing no one could see was my desperate determination and eventually I worked my self into shape. I had begged the Lord to help me pay my bills, and I had found a way to do it. Drying houses and cleaning up fires wasn't what I went to college for but it kept me from going off the deep end. Over time I got my sight back, I learned a thing or two about how to fix water damage, mold, and fire; and a career was born.
The only downfall was that I got as busy as a no-legged man in a butt kicking contest (Just laying on the ground getting my butt kicked). I had half a decade of lost income to recoup, debts to pay, and I had gone all in to help build a business. All that my life was missing was time to write. I was ok with that because I'd rather put food in my kid's mouths than tell funny stories. And since funny stories wasn't paying very well (or at all), my blog got taken off the back burner and set in the sink to soak.
It's kinda too bad because I promise you that VERY few of you would believe some of the crazy things I have seen. I often spend my days in other people's homes watching THEM deal with the stress of unexpected misfortune. I have been in houses that the "Hoarders" show wouldn't enter. I have dealt with people that make our current presidential candidates look rational, and oddly enough, that is where I finally found a use for my English degree. I have to do some pretty fast talking sometimes to get people to calm down, get out of my way, and let me help them. The right words can do that. And I always have empathy for people who are having a bad day. I've had a lot of them. Who knew that my useless degree would get a work out after all?
These days, I don't spend so much time kicking in sheet rock and splashing in soggy carpet. I have some younger, stronger muscle guys that take care of that while I spend the bulk of my time calming people down and facilitating communication between insurance adjusters and homeowners. I still like what I do and every day at work is a good day.
But I still love to tell stories. So when I finally got some spare time, I could no longer ignore the little voice(s) in my head telling my to start writing again. I had set the bar for clever blog names pretty high with "Dad's". I thought about it for a week or two, tested a few ideas on people, but in the end, I knew what I was going to call this blog the second I thought of it. There was waaaaaay too much irony in "Flirting with Disaster" for me NOT to use it.
I know. I have BECOME a giant, ironic allegory; the man who fixed the metaphorical disaster of his life by cleaning up actual disasters.
After three posts, I'm still not sure what direction we are going to be heading in with this blog, but I do know this.
I'm not likely to run out of stories anytime soon. Not with this career.
Have a good week guys. See you in a week.
PS- Congratulations to my good friend Chad Starks, who has now successfully swam both the English and Catalina channels. Just a quick lap around Manhattan Island to go.
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