Rabble-rousing

It's Sunday, just before dusk, I don't have much in mind to write about but something tells me I must.  Magnificent hues does the sky hold, I'm high, with hopes of leaving some kind of legacy.  Yesterday a man told me that I saved his life, I humbly accepted his thanks, but I don't like being in the spotlight. "Sixteen years ago today," he told me, "you saved my life."  I didn't know what to say, I was kind of embarrassed because it was a party and he said it quite loudly. When I think about it, I didn't save his life, I just made him see that he didn't actually want to take it.  He was in a bad state from drugs, my best friends father, though we weren't really friends then, I just talked him away from a trigger.  But until he mentioned it I had never thought about it, and I'm forever connected to this man on a deeper level because of it, life does some funny things.

I call those defining moment's.

And it makes me think of the summer air, my teenage years, when I learned that books were the gateway to understanding.  I was careless back then, mad at the world for being alive, and a heavy a chip on my shoulder.  School had pretty much thrown my ass out, I was on my own. If only I was as wise as I thought I was, people talked to me, but I had all the answers. And I suppose that's more or less normal, learning things the way teenagers do. I was at a disadvantage, however, I had never had much guidance. I was a latchkey kid. 

And speaking of that, I recently had conversation over coffee with my oldest friend. We were latchkey kids together. But we were laughing at how neither one of us is likely to ever let our kids go unsupervised like we had for so many years. I think of all the stupid shit we did, and of all the opportunities we had to kill ourselves doing something stupid. I now know better. It doesn't take but a few seconds for a 10 year old boy to think of something that will most certainly land him in trouble or hurt. Or, like me, I was always the one to convince another to do whatever stupid thing we were doing so I could find out what happens without getting hurt.   Not a foolproof theory, but I made it out of childhood with all my fingers and toes. 

I'm just happily rambling right now.  Daylight is struggling to keep the moon at bay, I could get infinitely lost among the starscape.  The vastness of it all, at times I can feel how loud it is, I know that doesn't make sense.  

I probably say a lot of things that don't make sense. But it's cool.