Maybe it’s stupid and maybe it makes complete sense. I stayed for as long as I could. I thought that after taking 10 days off I would be rejuvenated and ready to get back to work. I was wrong.

I was called into my bosses office this morning and I knew by his tone that it wasn’t good. I didn’t care. Usually I care to much about my job. If I get called in there will be butterflies and I’ll try to determine what it’s about before I get there and I just simply stress right out. This time I didn’t care. No stress, no fear. In fact I was hoping I would get fired. The thought of that was calming and it never went away.

The whole morning I could get over how great the prospect of not doing tires was. I felt such a peace, such a freedom. There are far more pros than there are cons. The only real con is financial. Not good enough.

I don’t know what I’m gonna do, I don’t even know where to start. But I am going to find out what God’s opinion is and go from there.

Well there we have it.

The scene has been set.

I was at a stag this weekend. The stag was for my best friend in high school. We did everything together and still to this day when I go back there we get together. So 10 of us went down to a campsite by a lake and just had a good time. The first night he didn’t get off work until 9 pm so he didn’t actually arrive until about 10 pm. There were a number of sites reserved in his brothers name and we were just supposed to arrive whenever. I looked at the list of those who were invited and outside of him, his brother and one other person I didn’t know any of them. The list was actually 15 names long.

I almost didn’t go but am glad that I did. There were about 7 people there already when I arrived at 8 pm, I didn’t know any of them. Introduced myself and found a place for my tent. Everyone had already started drinking. I’ve only been to one other stag and it was a “christian” stag. Completely dry. But I had come prepared so I grabbed a beer and my chair and headed over to the fire pit. I’m not going to go into much detail about that night, needless to say, in my eyes, there was a record number of empty beer cans/bottles, barely any hard liquor left and plenty of cigar butts.

At about 3 am the two of us got into conversation about how he thought it to be quite strange how my sister, and a few others that he had listed off, had never been in a relationship before. So I asked if he felt the same about me. Quickly he said no and searched for ways of validating his statement. We listed off a few girls that I had semi-quasi unofficial relationships with. Which is when I mentioned girl 3. Apparently this was one story he hadn’t heard. So I willingly dive in because I have a drunken old best friend’s undivided attention. I don’t get too far before he brings up girl 4.

And there it was. I’m not the most communicative person but most people who actually know me know about girl 3. Not many know about girl 4. We both went to high school with her and even hung out with her once in a while so he quite possibly could have information that I don’t.

What he said was, “And girl 4 liked you.”

Sure, a lot of my response could have been alcohol influenced but it truly hit me hard. I immediately fought to change the subject and he began apologizing.

Girl 4 and girl 3 were really close friends since kindergarten. About 10 months before girl 4’s accident, I had the conversation with girl 3. Girl 3 moved back home about a month later and ever since the accident she hasn’t been the same.

You might not see it from the information given but it is there.

This hit me like a whip across the face. As soon as he said it, tears welled up in my eyes. I immediately couldn’t bare to think any further down that train of thought.

She actually liked me and I didn’t have a clue. Not in the slightest. With girls that like me I always end up thinking at least once that they like me and find out later that it’s true. Not once did the thought cross my mind with her. I always thought she was too good for me. I knew her longer than I knew girl 3, I knew her better than I knew girl 3 and I liked her the entire time I knew her. I took her to prom for crying out loud and my buddy took girl 3. If I got over girl 3 it was like 2 months ago. It’s been a long painful process forcing myself to realize that even though I know exactly where girl 3 is, it is over.

I know her death isn’t my fault, I know that chances are even if I had this information when she was alive I would still have been spineless and I know it is all in the past.

I just can’t help but think about how different things would be if I had this information 8 or 9 years ago.

I was always more comfortable around girl 4 than girl 3. Maybe I would have talked to her sooner. And maybe she wouldn’t have spent all that time drinking and hanging out with the wrong crowd. Maybe she wouldn’t have gone to bible school to try and get herself back on track. Then maybe she wouldn’t have been on that road. Maybe if she was still alive girl 3 wouldn’t blame God for her death. This is what I was thinking immediately after he told me.

At her funeral they had an open casket. I sat there and bawled the entire time. Trying to go up and look. Trying to see her one last time. I couldn’t even stand up. When they closed the lid I became worse emotionally.

The world would be a better place with her in it.

I can confidently count on one hand the girls that I have actually liked in my life. Here it is, from least significant to most, the list of my painfully unsuccessful romances.

It was the winter of 1997. I was 15 years old and businesses don’t typically start hiring people until their 16. My mom was working for Zellers and still is to this day. During the Christmas season they would temporarily hire staff children to bag the purchases. While doing this for the second winter in a row I developed a huge crush on this girl that worked the register. She was only 1 year older than me and attended a different high school than I did. Throughout the next couple of years I saw her off and on and she always remembered who I was and the most I could muster was to make sure I went through her til. As much as I was a shy kid it was even worse when it came to girls. Obviously this never amounted to anything, which I’m pretty sure it had everything to do with me not being able to talk.

From there my second worst attempt was in the fall of 1999. I had been attending youth group for about 6 months and always enjoyed hanging out with one of the girls. She was in a grade below mine but was at the same high school. This one was easier, I could actually talk to her and we even got to the point of passing notes. This was around the time that a friend of mine decided to completely embarrass me with her there. He began to bug me about liking her. I hadn’t told him but I’m sure it was pretty obvious. That kinda squashed everything. There is nothing like denying you like someone directly in front of them.

Believe it or not, we are already half way through. Sad I know, but the next two are somewhat tied in my eyes. Up until two days ago I knew exactly how significant each one was. So simply because I’ve already blogged more than you know about one of the two girls she will be next.

The spring of 1999 I went to youth group for the first time. This was when I first met her, she was in a relationship and so nothing happened. Long story short after a couple of years she ended up moving to the same city as me. She was no longer in a relationship and I can recall sitting at home after work many nights with my stomach doing laps in my mouth about whether I should phone her or not. In the end I always phoned her because talking to her was always better than not hearing her voice. After almost two years we hung out a lot and she only became more attractive to me in every way. I finally tried to talk to her about my feelings and ultimately got shut down for being too spineless to not bring it up until then.

This story can go on and on and if you care to read the indepth version go to www.rememberloveproject.com, all the names and places have been changed. When completed it will be a rather comprehensive story of past relationships.

Finally, the fall of 1996. Where I come from there is no junior high, elementary school is K-8 and high school is 9-12. I met her when I first began attending high school and I was attracted to her from the start. It wasn’t until I joined youth group that I actually wasn’t completely useless around girls. She happened to go to youth group. We always seemed to have some kind of a barrier. We had done the note thing, the flirting thing, the staying up late thing and then everyone in youth group seemed to want to date her because hormones happened. Even when I first met her she was in a relationship. There always seemed to be something in the way. Then in the winter of 2005 she was driving down a minor highway and hit a patch of black ice and lost control. Her and another girl in the car never survived.

To recap:

Girl 1 – I was spineless.

Girl 2 – I was spineless.

Girl 3 – I was spineless, but once I found one it was too late.

Girl 4 – I was spineless.

I think we have a running theme here.

This trip has been great in so many ways. Two nights ago I was given some earth moving news. It felt like my legs were taken out from under me. I can still feel the weight of it all pressing down on me.

I’m not going to get into it now. Right this second I am pulled over on the side of the highway. This isn’t the time. But I did need to write something.

I feel like throwing up.

I’ve had a lot of topics proudly on display in the last week. I’ve experienced a wedding with a buddy, who is trying to get to know a girl he met not too long ago, while staying at a friends house who has a girlfriend that is always around and fully knowing that after I finish up with this part of my vacation I will be heading down to visit another friend and meet, for the first time, his girlfriend. That was a mouth full.

Aside from that topic there is also the one that has to do with the wedding taking place in a church/bible school, the friend who’s place we’re staying is not attending church anymore (in a bad way), having vehicle problems that get solved by prayer, seeing another friend that doesn’t go to church anymore (in a good way) and meeting up with a buddy that quit his job to do ministry.

Maybe I lied, there aren’t a lot of topics, however, these are two big ones. There was a subtle work theme but seems so forced in comparison to the other two.

I sit here in a national park with a roaring fire and the sun setting on a tiresome day. I’ve traveled well over 3000 kms already in my jeep and all I can think about is relationships and church. In a completely unrelated way.

As for the former I will say, ‘I am a coward. This is something I am working on.’
Now about the latter I have this to say, ‘I am a coward. This is something I need to work on.’

I have a friend that I don’t see a lot. He’s the one person that I can relate to in pretty much every aspect of my life.

I live in a city that seems to lack sophistication. It lacks financial intelligence and honest labour.

When he’s around, my struggles seem to become a team effort. I don’t hold back from him.

He is a good friend.

It happens, not often, but it does happen.

When it comes to commercial work I know what I’m doing. I have a pretty good handle on the industrial side as well. My experience in agricultural and otr (off the road) is quite limited. My dispatch knows this. However, from time to time customers will call in saying they need one thing done and then once you get their either they want to add something else to it or they were completely wrong on the tire size.

Yesterday I was sent on a call to do a couple 10.00-20 change overs. I have a poor track record with this particular tire, it is my nemesis. Nonetheless, I have been improving. The problem is that when I arrived on site they had given the wrong tire size. A 10.00-20 is typically a commercial tire. It is a split rim but still considered commercial. With split rims there is a higher level of danger. The lock ring while airing up the tire, if not set in place properly, could be thrown with such force that it would cut you in half. I still have a large amount of animosity when dealing with them. They scare me. This all comes with the job. The tires that needed to be changed were not 10.00-20’s, they were 12.00-20’s. A different, more complicated, beast.

A sea-can is a shipping container used for overseas shipping. Straight forward, I know. Once off the ship they typically end up on a train car and get transported further into the country. Rail yards have these large machines that pick up the sea-cans and put them on a chassis for the tractor-trailer to transport it the last bit of the way. The chassis are where you will find most of the 10.00-20’s nowadays. The machine used to take the sea-cans off the train and onto the chassis is what has 12.00-20’s.

This is what I had to work on. I’ve never done anything like this before. We were slammed with calls this particular day and no one was free to come help me out. So I dug in. The tire you can see closest to my truck is a set of duals. I was supposed to change the duals on the left front of this unit. After I had done that they decided they wanted me to change the steers as well. This picture was taken when I was on the last tire.

It took me 4 1/2 hours to complete this job.

If I knew what I was doing it would’ve taken much less time. The last tire actually scared me a fair bit. While I was airing it up the lock ring wouldn’t set in properly.

But, I got it in the end.

This one is two sided. My sister is coming to visit in a week and I really need to finish cleaning my place. Also, my choice of words at work has digressed and I would like to clean up my speech. This will be the harder of the two.

Word of the week: Clean

When you are young, you are naive. Everything resides within a magical quality. People are humble, they are spiritual and they are commanding. Experiences are genuine, intimate and breathtaking. Life is hopeful.

Everything around you is exciting and wonderful. Colours are bold, people are charismatic and places are full of new possibilities.

There comes a time when the curtain is pulled. You are no longer ignorant, no longer impressionable. Forgivable imperfections have become gapping flaws. Everyone has that unattractive quality. Magic becomes myth and spirituality is just routine.

Nothing excites you. Colours have become bland, people are dull and places are just another location to do the exact same thing.

Life is less interesting, less colourful. Nothing is the way it should be or at least the way it was supposed to be. Maybe this is why there are so many children stories of this nature. The authors are trying to warn the kids that nothing is as it seems.

Disappointment is inevitable.

“People must have something wrong with them if after a while no one is dating them.” – Tanya Davis

This is an opinion that I’ve had to stave off all too often.

Why is it seen this way?

Maybe there is truth to it.

I know that with me there are reasons, personal ones.

How to be alone