GOOD TIMING FOR A BETTER LIFE FROM COMICS TO SPORTS AND BEYOND

Good timing is what you see in the rearview mirror.

It’s history, memory, and and it’s a rush.

We all have our own story, unaffected and pure at first.

Then things start happening. These things, those things, and we learn our story.

Most important, we learn how to tell our story with good timing.

As a young reader my parents decided I spent too much time reading and signed me up for Little League Baseball and confiscated all of my Silver Age comics.

Timing: I got them back fifty years later after my dad died and his second wife remembered him saying something about his bookworm kid so she thought they might belong to me.

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While I was growing into my body I did what all kids at the time did, try to break something by playing high school football.

I hurt my shoulder sophomore year but hid the injury until I got a chance to start a game with my older all-star brother. It was a moment for my maturation process.

After the game I couldn’t lift my arm and my season was over.

Timing: While I was rehabbing my shoulder I wandered into a pre-season wrestling practice and joined the team. My wrestling career highlights include a district championship, a state championship, all-American for placing 3rd at high school Greco-Roman Nationals, a year of college wrestling, and a tryout with the All-Army Wrestling Team.

Good Timing For Big Events

I moved to New York City when I had the chance, because how many times does that sort of thing present itself?

No wife, no kids, nothing to worry about but me, and I wasn’t too worried. I was a lifer for the city with a back office job on Wall Street where people worked their whole lives. I was all set.

Timing: I snapped out of it after realizing the people I knew there, New Yorkers, people who’d spent their whole lives on the same block, didn’t share the same America I knew coming from Oregon.

The only thing that mattered to them was their city, the greatest city in the world in the late 70’s, and it was a mess.

That’s when I moved to Portland and started a job as a history museum guard for six months, pledging to find work only done in Oregon.

Twenty years later I was a museum pro with a history degree and the job title of Museum Collections Manager who knew where everything was.

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I went on a double date to Sherwood’s Robin Hood Festival.

The other guy’s girl and I walked the railroad tracks together from the parking lot.

We matched steps from tie to tie. I don’t remember what we talked about.

Timing: That date has lasted thirty-six years. And counting.

From July 4, 1776 To July 4, 2022

Once I wore the uniform of the Boy Scouts of America.

Fox Squad built an expertly lashed together wooden structure at a big camp competition where each morning started with a bugle call. Pat Casey from Troop 9 was the bugler.

We would have won a ribbon but the judges thought our squad project was built by everyone in Troop 154.

Timing: A few years later I wore the uniform of the United States Army.

The first morning after getting shots we were assembled and marched to the biggest parade ground I’ve ever seen to join company after company or new recruits for our first flag raising ceremony as soldiers.

Everyone got the same warning: Don’t lock your knees while standing at attention.

Not everyone listened. You could tell who they were because they collapsed to the ground after the long wait for the bugler to blow Reveille.

Pat Casey did it better.

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The July 4th let’s celebrate the American Freedom from Oppression.

Why? Good timing.

Chronic oppression can have serious consequences on a person’s mental health. Statistics repeatedly indicate that racial minorities, impoverished people, and women are more likely to experience mental health challenges than members of powerful groups such as white men. Oppression lowers self-esteem, reduces life opportunities, and can even put people in danger of rape, abuse, and other forms of violence.

No one is supposed to enjoy oppression, and few do. But those who enjoy oppression least are the men and women who inflict it.

On this July 4th lets celebrate the rule of law as applied to people who broke it on Jan. 6.

After that let’s apply the rule of law to judges who say one thing during confirmation hearings, then go the opposite way when it counts most.

Strong women don’t need our help from the male side, but we’ve got to so something.

If that’s you, and you feel the need to aid and abet the women in your life, or women in general, tread carefully.

Don’t accidentally lay another roadblock in their path.

I don’t for a second believe that people celebrating the vote on Roe v Wade want to harm women.

They don’t want to harm their daughters, their wives, their mothers, their grandmothers and more than you want to harm yours.

But, here we are. Good timing?