What an Odd Super Hero
What if I Were a Super Hero?
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What if I Were a Super Hero?
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Teddy’s Gotta New Back Brace!
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God Does NOT Pigeonhole His Saints



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Tedd Got a New Dew
When I was growing up, my Dad always dictated how my hair should be cut. I hated
having to keep my hair cut so freaking short.
Now, there was a short, few years in High School when my parents let me go through
my “angst phase.” I had my orange hair punk phase with the sides shaved and I let
the front grow down to my chin. We were all freaks back then. I had my “skater hair”
phase when I got into skate boarding heavily where me and my buddies pretty much
took shears and hacked up each other’s hair trying to get that modish shaggy bowl
cut, but of course, we kept it covered most of the time with knotted up dew rags.
But you know I was never quite satisfied with any of those dues either because I
was mostly going along with the crowd.
When I graduated High School, I went direction into the Army for Four Years. Well,
I wore everything from the “Standard Shaved Head,” to the 1/8th of an inch “Screaming
Eagle,” to the “Ranger Roll Horseshoe,” to the “Short-Timer’s Pushing-The-Reg’s-Limit
Bushy” haircut. During my post-brainwashing time after Basic Training, Advanced
Individual Training, Cryptography School, and Electronic Warfare Combat Signals
Intelligence Training, I did rather enjoy the Ranger Roll. It looked slick, cool,
hardcore, but as the brainwashing wore off and I returned to a more normal human
thinking person, I began to see it as a rather stupid looking super-short haircut.
After my Four Years of Service, I entered into the Workforce in the South. Well,
the business workforce in the South has no place for freedom of expression in men’s
hair. Nope, in the South, A Man wears his hair “cropped” short and kept neat. So,
again I was relegated to following someone else’s rules as to how to keep my hair
cut, how to style it.
Well, in 2002 Sheri and I moved to the land of Free Love, Sex, Drugs, and Rock-n-Roll.
Yep, we moved to Anaheim, about 4 blocks from Disneyland with a beautiful view of
the Disneyland nightly fireworks show! I got a respectable high-level IT job working
for a mid-size half a billion dollar a year company that was growing fast. I walked
in and I was well dressed and had nice short East Coast hair. And there were people
everywhere dressed sloppily and with long messy hair and I was shocked!!! My BOSS
even had a pony tail, but he kept it very tight, very clean and neatly kept, very
professional looking and he always dressed very, very professionally, so the pony
tail could obviously be forgiven and overlooked. However, other than him, all of
the people in power, the Managers, the Directors, the Vice Presidents, and the Presidents,
all kept their hair like mine and they all wore suits, East Coast Style. So yeah,
I “could” grow my hair out and wear it any way that I liked, IF I didn’t care about
making a good impression, IF I had no aspirations, IF I had no drive to move ahead,
because as far as the eye could see, none of “those free love dirty hippies” filled
any of those positions. SO, yet again, I was forced to keep my hair short and neatly
styled.
When Multiple Sclerosis, Unknown Neurological Disorder, Dementia, ADHD, and 4 Disc
Protrusions (10mm, 5mm, 3mm, 3mm) finally beat me, and I had fought hard, very hard,
fought successfully too I might add, for 6 YEARS, and I was forced to retire early
from the job that was the best job that I had ever had in my entire life, I decided
things were going to change. I figured that I was now 38 years old and I had NEVER,
in my ENTIRE LIFE been able to grow my hair the way that I wanted to grow it. Hell!
I don’t even know what my own hair looks like even! I said Fuck It! I’m going to
just grow my hair out like a wild man. I had a vision of John the Baptist and I’ve
clung to that image ever since and not let go.
It’s been growing now for a year and just last week I relented and let Sheri take
me to her fancy Newport Beach Salon Stylist to give me back my blond highlights.
I do have to admit that I have very much missed my blond highlights. And she trimmed
off all my split ends, but other than that, she didn’t cut 1 inch off of my hair.
My original intention was to have it layered and cut a little shorter or something,
but after she got her hands on my hair, she didn’t want to cut it – she just wanted
to trim the split ends, show me a little how to style it, give me some Moroccan
Oil to put in it, for some unknown and as yet understood reason by me, and gave
me some tips and sent me out the door and told me to practice and come back and
see her in a couple months.
Nice.
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Earlier this year, I was driving to work every day, working 12 hour days, and driving home. I would drive and do the Grocery Shopping. I like doing the grocery shopping. I always do a better job than Sheri. I always do most of the cooking too. I LOVE to cook! I also am TOTALLY ADDICTED to cooking shows on TV too! I can sit and watch Iron Chef all…day…long!!! And don’t even get me started on Cake Boss! Sheri is a Cake Boss Junkie! I think we have seen EVERY Cake Boss episode ever made.
A few months ago, I started noticing that I was having problems paying attention while driving and that I wasn’t quite able to process all the input coming at you while you’re driving. I’ve known that I have dementia for a long time. My Neurologist has known and Sheri has known, but no one ever wants to officially say it or tell it to your face until it’s pretty damn obvious to everyone that shit just ain’t right in your head anymore!
Anyway, I stopped driving for the most part and Sheri did most of the driving. Basically the only driving I did was short driving down to CVS and Albertsons (our grocery store), which are less than 1 mile away, and to the Bank and Home Depot, all within 5 miles. So all the driving I did was to places I always drove to; I always took the same routes and always went in the “slow traffic” part during the day.
Well, I started getting scared driving because I couldn’t pay attention to all the traffic around me, traffic lights, slowing down, taking off, dozing off while driving, daydreaming while driving, not being able to keep my car in my lane, and most of all, I kept having these episodes where all of a sudden I would have this realization, HOLY SHIT! I’M IN A CAR AND I’M DRIVING!!! WHERE AM I AND WHERE AM I GOING??? It was like I had woken up from a dream and when I woke up, instead of waking up in my bed, I woke up behind the wheel of a car speeding down the freeway at 80mph drifting over into another lane!!!
After the last scary episode, I swallowed a huge gulp of pride and decided that the risk of running over and killing a family full of little kids because I was too damn stubborn to stop driving just wasn’t worth it. So, I don’t have a car anymore and I’m a “shut-in” now.
I’ve been trying to keep myself busy, but I’m in a great deal of pain most of the time and am disabled so my options for going out and walking are limited. I can get out and walk a little in our complex, but there’s something rather depressing about walking around in a parking lot by yourself, afraid to walk too far from your house in case you start to have a seizure and need to get back home quickly, or in case you have a sudden wave of fatigue and almost collapse to the ground and can barely walk and need to be very close to your home otherwise you’ll just be stranded where you are until you gather your strength or until hours later when your wife gets home and can help carry/drag you back home.
Sheri and I looked into some inexpensive Respite care, but they’ve been unreliable, flakey and/or plain unavailable when we’ve needed them. I’ve joined half a dozen different “support groups” but I don’t quite “fit the profile” for most other people there so they can’t really relate to what I’m going through, or the sites are so flakey and slow to make them practically unusable.
Being a shut-in sucks. All of my friends are my co-workers. All of my co-workers live so far away from where I live to make driving to here impractical and I can’t go see them for lunch anymore now that I can’t drive and given the huge distance, they sure as hell can’t come pick me up for our “reunion lunches” anymore. Being a shut-in sucks bad! Sheri works long hours and doesn’t get home until around 6:30 PM almost every day! And she certainly doesn’t need to be burdened with having to take me out running to CVS and/or Albertsons to let me do my little errands and get my ‘out’ time.
Today, I tested out the “Tedd Freedom Run” to see if it was cost-effective and to see if it was feasible. I called a cab and had them take me down to my local CVS. I had them sit in the parking lot and wait on me while I went inside and browsed the few isles that I needed to in order to find the few items that I’d kept forgetting to order online because I didn’t quite know exactly what I wanted because I had to actually browse and see what was there.
Taxi Round-Trip From Home to CVS and Back: $30
Tedd’s Freedom from being a Shut-In: Priceless!
Today has been a very, VERY GOOD DAY!
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