The Disneyland Hotel Doesn’t Like Naked Men In The Hall

There are stories fathers tell their children at any age and then there are ones they are reluctant to ever tell.

I am not talking about moments when their father may have ended up naked in the hall of the Disneyland Hotel because they really don’t want to hear about that and they especially don’t want to hear how their college girlfriend made things…better.

Heck quite a few of the fraternity stories are things that are kept in the vault because though they are some very funny stories you don’t want your kids to do the stupid things you did, even if you managed to come out relatively unscathed.

You can’t really only focus on the tales of how effective you were at cramming for tests and scoring higher than most other students because that is not the kind of role model you want to be and it is dull.

Nor do you really want to focus on just the stories about how many part time jobs you worked so that you could pay for school and go on trips.

So you mix in both the silly and the sublime.

Is It Really All You Can Eat?

There might be an opportunity to tell the rug rats about how you unintentionally helped force an all you can eat buffet that offered take out to implement a policy on how much food you could take out.

That’s because the manager told you that he wouldn’t let you take more than you could eat at one sitting so you came back the next day and spent three hours eating and proved that if you wanted to take home a dozen muffins, a barrel of soup and 198 pounds of assorted foods it was because you could actually eat that much.

And damn doesn’t that story make you miss your 19 year-old metabolism because you could do that and not worry about being sick or gaining weight.

There are other tales that could be told but the ones about the Camaro you owned, well those have to be censored or edited because of that role model thing. The question is how much texture will you apply to the painting you draw for them. Will they see a one dimensional picture of who you used to be or will they get something that shows some more depth.

Perhaps they could read some of the articles and opinion pieces you wrote for the newspaper.

Who You Were Is Not Who You Are

The joy of looking back on your journey isn’t limited to being able to see who you were and how you became who you are. It is having had enough life experience to see and know that who you are now isn’t necessarily who you are going to be and to be excited about that.

This time last year you were cruising around the Metroplex, a Californian who moved to Texas because of opportunity. You moved back to California to take care of some unfinished business and were surprised by just how much you miss Texas.

So you keep your eyes on the housing market, mostly on the midcities and do your best to try to prepare to move everyone back because that opportunity you saw and experienced is calling you.

And because you know that who you want to be is tied up in it all. You can’t see the future but you have a strong gut feeling and you won’t let go of it this time.

There have been too many moments in the past where you didn’t fight hard enough for what you needed but that is not going to happen this time. Those meat paws you call hands are holding on and you are determined to see it through.

In the midst of it all you wonder what you will find when you tell Monty Hall you want to give back the box and take what lies behind door number one.

Maybe you’ll find the Price is Right and you’ll win the Showcase Showdown. Doesn’t matter to you if Drew Carey or Bob Barker is the one who congratulates you because all you care about is knowing this time you stepped through the door so that you could live on the other side and not just look through a window.

Everyone knows the sun is warm, but unless you live there you don’t really know much about it, now do you.

The time has arrived to grow into the man you are to become.