It’s been a while since I have written anything about my trials of life. I used to call these things “Adventures of the Unfortunate” and they were tales of events that I have gone through with my good friends. I titled this one time, because it’s a funny thing. Hootie and the Blowfish have a song called time and I think the intent of the song is to say that I don’t want time to heal my wounds, I want the wound to never have happened, or I like the feeling it reminds me of what I have lost, it’s kind of poetic, but dumb I don’t really like the song all that much, but I get the attempt.

My supervisor told me once that God invented time so that everything didn’t happen all at
once. Hawking would suggest that time is the fourth dimension along with space makes up
the physical world we live in. Time to me is a story told by the universe. A story that has
a beginning, a middle, a challenge, an overcomming, and maybe a happy ending depending on the person.

In math time is usually the domain, a function is plotted with the x-axis being time, and f(x) being the function plotted over time. The sine function is harmonic, it goes from 1 to -1 through every rational number between. Plotted on the graph it is a S-shaped propagation. Its counterpart is cosine, cosine happens to be the rate at which the sine function changes. They are compliments of each other. They go up they go down like an ocean wave I suppose.

My daughter recently got a new MacBook, and asked me if I wanted her old one which was much faster than mine. I said sure. Now on a MacBook when you log into your Apple Id you get all your contacts and whatnot, now I have had a MacBook for years with the same account. The other day, just after my birthday I get this notification popup on my newly acquired MacBook, and it’s a notification reminding me that it is Joey Gutierrez’ ( sorry if I misspelled it, probably not the correct last name with her being married now and all ) birthday on the 27th. I was like hmmm that’s strange, I’ve never seen that before, certainly it would have popped up before. The next day I log on to Facebook, and mind you Joey has peaced out of Facebook for many years, but I get the announcement that it is her birthday today. I was like ok, I’ll send Joey a message, something silly like “Hey Joe E. I know you mic dropped Facebook and haven’t been on it in years, but happy birthday.” And then she answers, I was like holy shit.

I asked my friend Wayne to ask her out when I lived in Hawaii and was just out of High School. She declined for complicated reasons I won’t divulge that information, I am pretty candid, but this one is truly complicated and probably worked out the way it was supposed to anyway. She was on the swim team in high school, my wife was also a swimmer on the swim team. Joey has short brown hair, so does Danielle. Joey is a libra, Danielle is a leo. It’s almost as if the universe brought me my “Joey”, but one that was going to motivate my lazy ass. Two libras might not have the same drive, we probably would be content and keep the peace not wanting to unbalance the other. Possibly, I don’t know.

Danielle was told by her friends when we were dating that I wasn’t going anywhere in life, that I was lazy. They weren’t wrong, I was content to smoke pot with good buddy Charlie have a chuckle and do it again the next day. Not going anywhere, not having any sort of goals made Danielle seek out someone who was going somewhere, who was going to be someone, shortly into our marriage she left me, and we separated. What’s kind of funny is the only reason the divorce was never finalized is because I was too lazy to sign the papers. But we did get back together, and one of the first things she wanted to do was go back to Hawaii. I was reluctant but went.

It was a complete trainwreck. We were living in a homeless shelter and struggling to find work. My good friend Mike Daly lived about a block or so from the shelter. One night I went over there to hang out and his roommate was his sister-in-law Rasaree. Ras and I were supposed to go out on a date once, I went out to the football game where she played band, we were supposed to meet up. Her dad got wind of it and shut it down. I called her house seeing what happened I got her dad on the phone, and he told me to “stay away from my daughter” Ok big scary Filipino man I will. Also at the party was Abe Robison, and his roommate Chris. I knew both from college, we were all CS majors. Chris briefly dated Joey. We went over to Abe’s place to hang out because Mike’s wife at the time didn’t want to deal with all the mess. I noticed that Abe had this giant stick in his living room, I thought that was weird.

“Hey Abe is that the Josh beating stick when I become too annoying for you?” I asked.

“Exactly.” he said

Chris went into his room and came out with this big ass sword, something that William Wallace would weild.

“No, THIS is the Josh beating stick.” Chris said. I laughed, we settled in and started chatting.

“So what was it like dating Joey?” I asked Chris

“Joey? Ha should have never hooked up with her, she is all about Joey.” Chris said.

Not the same Joey I knew; he did not know her like I did.

As the night went on I just got madder and madder. How could this smug asshole get to date my girl and he didn’t even know what he had? We were drinking Bacardi and hard liquor and I don’t mix. Usually it ends up with me in my underwear somewhere I don’t remember how I got there.

My friend Mike told me after that I was so drunk that I said some pretty awful things to him. I did not remember that, never touched bacardi again after it. He forgave me and told me that I should go and stay with his dad, there’s no reason to be in the shelter. And so we did.

It’s funny how time works. Time is healing, time is revealing. I have a saying a quote that I use it goes like this:

“Our lives are made in these small hours, these little wonders, these twists and turns of fate, time falls away, but these small hours still remain.”