Carson’s Stream of Consciousness Memory Stick

Although a whirlwind of partially random words wound up into a super-shortened stream of consciousness void of proper punctuation may present a danger of jumbling your brain, it may also tickle your gyrating brain cells in a way that feels like you’ve been released into an ethereal world of wonder and exhilaration tempered by the question of why did this dude’s ill-advised adventures and stupid silliness not bury him?

So, Carson became a physician but that little occurrence was a far distant path than anyone back then could have ever imagined or entertained in the slight bit and it I guess the journey started when someone asked at the pool, “Where’s Carson?” and then God told my father to jump into the 8 foot deep end and grab three year-old  Carson and pull him from the bottom where the little dude was marveling at the squiggly water lines before the pain set in but later in first grade was forced to recite Linken Blinken and Nod to the whole class and parents and janitors who had no idea what he was saying but realized he was the only one in the class who could read at the time, and had clean underwear, so they made him do it and then he escaped for the summer rode bikes or walked to the Monon Creek or drainage ditch to catch the nasty mutant crawdads, especially the prized big daddy with big red and green claw, but his other claw was bitten off or had gangrene, then take ‘em all home in buckets but mom correctly refused to cook them, so we then went back into the woods and pulled out giant spear-like weeds and commenced to go to war with 6 foot long spears  followed by dirt clog fights at construction excavation sites followed by raft building on the creek, and then fourth of July and dad taught us how to light cherry bombs and M-80s to blow things up, especially the water geysers that shot 20 feet in the air as the M -80 blew up in front of the little boats on the kiddy rides at the amusement park Enchanted Forest, But Carson still had to learn to swim so they enrolled him in the YMCA to learn and he was a rock in the water, so they told him to swim in the deep end the width of the pool which any moron could do by going underwater and not swimming till the wall is touched, but he decided to sink in the middle and bob up and down and taste a lot of chlorine until the instructor finally figured out he was drowning.

Again.

 But who didn’t like riding bikes with baseball cards pinned to the spokes to make cool noises as we road our biked directly behind the trucks in the street spraying puffy pungent clouds of now illegal DDT pesticide to kill those mosquitos but not kill kids lungs, but after that we ran to the school and climbed up to the roof and played stick/rock baseball on top of the gravelly roof, expert by now at shimmying up poles like we climbed trees at grandpas house to jump onto his garage roof and talk to the restaurant workers in the alley taking out trash and tell ghost stories on the roof, but playing ditch in people’s yards and running was standard until that ass took Carson and Jack in his house at gunpoint and accused them of stealing their prized dogs.

Thankfully sixth grade teacher was brilliant and all knowing, Mr. Leroy who told Carson he had a permanent and dreaded bone bruise and that he would never be able to run again, so Carson kept that solid fact implanted in his young brain by a sixth grade genius teacher  for too long a time and actually believed the shit but told no one, but that was all made up for the better during sixth grade chorus performance on stage with 5 rows of kids singing, all with long black pants and a white shirt, but Carson told his mother they were supposed to wear black shorts, so he somehow  found some black shorts and wore those and of course he was in the front row and crimson faces do tend to announce loudly with white shirts and black shorts but thankfully, Carson learned to play the trumpet using his Dad’s old smelly one and it came in handy playing “Da da da da dot da dah!  Charge”  in the middle of the bleachers at the Cubs Game and Wrigley field in Chi-town and the fans loved it and pointed at him and they all did “Charge” and then of course as the troop bugler he played To the colors before breakfast for the hundreds of campers at Camp To Pe Ne Pee  then Taps prior to dinner and the dreaded Reveille that the campers all hated to get out of their cozy mosquito infested tents because Carson was playing Reveille  so all could hear, because he was a big star of course in his own mind with that job, but he was the only one who thought so, but finally swimming didn’t defeat him as much, so he got that damn Lifesaving Merit badge before the big brute he had to save dunked him underwater three or four times to teach him how violent drowning people were, but Carson already knew this fact, and finally Carson had enough and kicked him in the ass or somewhere down there, as he surfaced, then put his hand on his chin and pulled him ashore and got the damn merit badge, but later in the summer his little league baseball friend took him to his house inside the Indiana State Prison and they played baseball then ate lunch with meat cut to perfection with what they called a clever,  by an inmate trustee that was obviously too big to even walk in the warden’s house, but thankfully there was football

Yeah, tackle football with no pads not organized, just street ball, played in a grass field and Jeff was damn fast, called the rock, but he got tackled too hard and he heard his femur snap as he lay under the heap and the ambulance took him away and the game was over but Wayne stole Carson’s favorite baseball mitt so Carson had to have a fist fight to get it back

And he did.  It was a magic mitt that committed very few errors at second base.

Paper routes were only for cool kids, so Carson decided to make lots of money and be a paper boy and went to the paper station, loaded all the papers into some kind of an orange satchel with big letters: “The South Bend Tribune” on his bike and delivered too many houses, right inside their screened in doors, and then going collecting for money every 2 weeks, with those metal coin changers, $1.65 every 2 weeks, and he didn’t know the customer passed away, but he collected anyway and some hot chick opened the door, smiled, paid him anyway and showed him a life -sized naked girl  created by the old punch card computer  on paper and that was real good and thankfully, his sister would drive him on his route on Sundays if the snow was deep in the old 3 on the column Plymouth.  She was nice, but Carson now realizes he never paid her directly.

And then back again, as an Eagle Scout or almost, doing silent swim BSA around the docks in the mucky lake trying not to be heard while swimming like skinny young Navy Seals at the age of 11 or 12 at 10pm in the dark muck followed by the famous mile swim Boy Scouts of America, 50 times around the lake infested by hungry snapping turtles. Most of these activities are banned and are illegal now, but later naked swimming in clearer lakes, in the woods, alone, was a fun summer activity.

But Carson did prove his genius teacher wrong, and learned to run again, although he was never disabled, just psychologically it seemed and on the way to Cross Country practice in high school, he rode his bike to the practice field but hit a drainage grate, and the bike stopped, but Carson didn’t and flipped over the handle bars right onto the highway on his back and didn’t get killed, but did have some gashes but the coach put some band aids on his forehead and knee and said start running, then later won  a race at a national running camp, and met some Olympic runners and felt proud that he won a race for campers and later met Gold medal winner Frank Shorter at a marathon and talked about running and stuff and then got accepted to the Air Force Academy and made the mistake of walking to parade formation without a hat and that almost ended it but the mistake was never made again, but thankfully, the Track coach saw him run during intra- mural mile race during basic training and picked him out and recruited him to run on the intercollegiate teams and then he did barrel rolls in a jet aircraft and didn’t puke.

Sixth grade teacher Mr. Leroy, may you rest in peace.

And the flag raising after the prisoner rescue during Prisoner of War training at the AFA burned the patriotism inside him, more than traitor Jane Fonda and flying sleek Gliders taught him to slip the surly bonds of mountainous earth and then got lost flying his own private plane and had near misses that nearly cost him his life and then he quit that, but was accepted to medical school and nearly lost his life again, he was so happy he enjoyed the bottle with his friends too much at a party, and they lost him, passed out in the parking lot gravel for unknown hours while the band played inside at the kegger then, they frantically searched for the new medical student, and finally he walks in wobbly with a bloody gash on his forehead but no tire tracks and then some more advanced training but not before meeting Chuck Yeager, the first to break the sound barrier in a jet, who said  keep flying son but Carson didn’t tell him his days as a pilot were over, and then he entertained some Olympic champion ice skaters Torville and Dean at a hotel lounge somewhere in California, and flew home from a medical convention with a private jet filled with the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, yet he got married to a woman he didn’t know for the wrong reasons and he swam with dolphins with his ex-family and the dolphins flipped him up in the air with their snouts under his feet like he was just a feather.

Saving lives was his calling, but he nearly died again, while working in the hospital and it was a Code Blue, and God saved him, and this time, he was very close to slipping the surly bonds of earth forever, but God chose another path for him.

But the greatest experience may have been the secret Carson is now revealing that he personally delivered his own newborn offspring, himself, from their mother’s womb, first to touch them and bring them life into this world, an honor that few men have, and he thanks the Obstetrician for giving him that thrilling opportunity and looking over his shoulder, if needed, but life goes on, and things change and no matter what has happened or is going to happen, they say Carson considers himself blessed by God with no regrets.

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