Talking Out Loud…Again

I just don’t know man, I don’t know what to talk about, but I feel like writing something is something to do to keep me busy.

Part of me doesn’t even feel like typing, because…I don’t know, nothing I got to say is too interesting.

I thought about a short story, but of what? If it actually happened to me then it might be more interesting from an outside perspective, but I don’t even know what that is. Part of me talks to myself because my best ideas happen on tangents of other ideas and/or thoughts.

My family…my extended family, the vast majority of them; and that’s a lot of people, my dad has two brothers and five sisters, some of those kids are older than me, those kids have kids, and some of those kids even have kids. And let’s not forget that I have a kid too, he is in another state, and…he will most likely go onto blend into a new family while at some point having his own kids.

Shannon grew up as a single child with a dad, a uncle, an aunt, a mom who is no longer with her dad, and one grandparent on each side. Her family is really small compared to mine.

Soon after I got back to Nebraska my parents invited a lot of the family down to Lincoln to…do family things and stuff. I remember looking at Shannon and saying, “Don’t be surprised if 50 people show up.” To which she responded, “there is no way your family is that big!”

“Even if fifty of them show up, that’s not even half of them.” A few hours passed and we were in my house with a good amount of family there, most of them being on my dads side.

A few years later the job my dad moved back to Nebraska for was not working out, and they did not hire me like promised, so my dad said, “Fuck it,” and took my mom with him back to Washington State were he took his old job. They liked him there, he is one damn smart engineer, so he got his job back easier than a liberal and a conservative arguing over same sex marriages.

So, my uncle, my dad’s second oldest brother, owns a farm in the middle of nowhere…like that’s hard to find in Nebraska. Every year, I think this is the 20th year of doing it, they have a huge get together for the fourth of July.

Which must mean they started when I was eleven years old, three years before I moved to Washington State. As a kid, it was fun, I was a kid, I didn’t know anything about politics and the differences between the areas of the country. I knew there were 49 other states, but I didn’t really know. Being in my little bubble of childhood I assumed Nebraska was the best place to live, now that I’m back in this state, at a much older age, I understand how much this state sucks. And we are not the only ones either.

I technically grew up in Washington, those years when kids develop who they are. by the time I was a senior in high school I had more friends than I’ve had in any of my previous years spent in Nebraska. I started to develop who I was as a person and shifted into a democrat. I’m also a minority, it kind of feels weird to say that, but we as disabled people are a minority, we might not be referred to as one, but we are.

I grew up as a religious kid, around my late teen years I became an Agnostic, years later I stopped lying to myself-thinking one thing, but going back on it later-and became an Atheist who believes that we are a random act of science that evolved over the past four and a half billion years.

I don’t fit well in Nebraska, I do not call this my home anymore. And my girlfriend has very similar beliefs as me. We do not fit well in “conservative country.” That’s why our ultimate goal is to move back to Oregon, where she was born.

When I got back to Nebraska from my sister’s wedding in Idaho I was told that I had a job, “Call us when you get back into the state.” I did, ended up talking to this guy who was not the guy I needed to be talking to, he asked, “What is your phone number, I will have Eric call you back as soon as possible, he is out of the office today.”

In Nebraska most people, the majority of them, only give seven numbers because the area code is so big and the towns are so small that more often that not, Joe Blow lives in the same area code as John Smith.

Being in Washington, with all the cities jam packed next to one other like that of a suitcase that is overfilled you get used to spitting out ten digits, people expect it, they will be really fucking confused if you only give them seven numbers.

“Area code 253…blah blah blah,” After a short pause he goes onto say, “Okay, I’ll make sure he calls you tomorrow,” he goes onto continue with, “What part of Washington are you from?”

I was not expecting him to know where the area code 253 was, but he did, so I happily said, “Tacoma.” In my mind I figured he just knew it because he Googled it or something, I wasn’t going to say that I was from Puyallup, so I went with the city that was most known near-by.

On a side note, everyone at work says I’m from Seattle, and no matter how many times I try to explain it, it’s always Seattle, I just accept it now.

“Really? Because I graduated from Puyallup High School in 96,” the only thing I could think to do was say, “No shit! I’m from Puyallup too, graduated from such and such high school in 2002.”  From that point on we had a short conversation about were he lived, where I lived, I missed Jack in the Box, he missed Taco Time, so on and so forth.

It was weird to work with someone in Nebraska who lived in downtown Puyallup while I lived one the other side of town. We would often have conversations while at work, where I would say, “Yea man, you know that Jack in the Box that is on 160th and Meridian?” While that sounds totally foreign to everyone else he’d just be like, “Yea man, I used to go there all the time.”

One day he popped into my office and I said, “You know what I hate most about this state?” Which was most likely not the best conversation to be having at work, in Nebraska nonetheless.

To which he took a wild, but correct guess, “Too many republicans.”

I don’t know if I want to go to the get together this year, some of my family is cool and while they are republicans, and don’t necessarily agree with you, they don’t shove it in your face either. But I do have those that believe every word of the Bible and are so hard nosed republicans, the type that believe with every ounce of their heart that politics and religion belong in the same ball park, the ones that will not shut up until until you believe what they do.

I’m uncomfortable going there knowing that over half of my family knows that I do not believe in God, and totally support any man that wants to marry another man, or any women that wants to marry another women.

Ed, he is the worst too. He’ll sit there and tell me that it is an abomination to have homosexual relations, and then when I rebuttal with, “God also told you not to wear clothes made out of more than one kind of fabric, or even plant two different kind of seeds in the same garden,” I get the classic, “We all sin, that’s why we ask for forgiveness”.

While I can sit there and argue with him until my head blows off, Shannon just wants to avoid any conversation about politics or religion. I think if we go we will end up dipping out early.

I would not be surprised if I hear something along the lines of, “This country ain’t free anymore, them gays can marry,” from one of my family members. I wound’t even be surprised if they didn’t play the Star Spangled Banner because of it.

I don’t know man, once again we are back to me not knowing, I don’t know if we should go. I feel like the black sheep of the family.

I can’t wait until I move.