Jodag.NET

I was watching the end of the movie, “Snatch” with Brad Pitt today and remembered something. In Morgan Hill we had a little informal boxing club, my friends and I. We would meet up in Scott’s backyard, get on the gloves and go to town. There was Big John, Heavy hitting Rhett, Mackey the non dairy creamer, not sure if Scott had a nickname and I know I didn’t. We fought each other and I remembered why I liked boxing, besides the basics - good workout, fun, challenging, competition.

I liked boxing because when I got hit hard, in the head I’d hear voices. They seemed like they were just out of reach, just beyond behing able to hear what they were saying. I could just hear murmering in the background as I was coming to. I would see little pinpoints of light as well, sometimes referred to as seeing stars but hearing the voices was neat. It was like waking up in the middle of a dream and trying to remember what the conversation you were having with the man in the moon was about. You have a feeling that the talk was important, but you just can’t recall what it was about.

That’s what I liked about getting hit in the head. I’ll be honest, Rhett was a fucking freight train when it came to hitting. I can see why Scott just ran around the ring instead of going toe to toe with that beast.

Yesterday, as I was farting around in the garage I saw a car go cruising by on the street just outside at a pretty good speed, much faster than cars usually travel right there. Driving was some young kid, probably a brand new license and mommy’s BMW, OC (Orange County) kids make me sick.
That brought me to thinking about what a sterile, non-community area all of OC that I have seen is. I remember growing up in a small town was the Barret’s across the street, the Rockaforte’s down the way, the weird family that always gave out acorns for Halloween, they didn’t get too much traffic after we realized that’s what they gave out every year. There was the old couple with the dog that had two differently colored eyes, there was the dirty area of the neighborhood down at the end of the court, and across the street on the other side was an italian family that must have had a huge house, because there were a ton of people living there from what I remember. Then there was the Park’s place, and around the way the Zapien’s, Muscato’s, that one guy who stole my 1st pair of Oakley’s (though I could never prove it) and everyone else I’m forgetting, like Claude way over there by where Sita’s house was.
There was a sense of community there though, everyone knew everyone else, all the dirty laundry was aired right out in front and everyone else saw it. The local kids couldn’t scream down the street without their parents hearing about it by the end of the day, you couldn’t sneak in and out of the house after dark without someone seeing you and the parents finding out and you were pretty much forced to behave. The downtown area was no exception to this rule either, neither was Tennant station or anything else in town.
That’s not how it is down here though. There are punks everywhere. If/when I ever have kids (besides Doug Finch) I’m going to do my damndest to raise them in a small town, I think cities and metropolitan areas are just too damn big to raise a kid.
Not that I’m saying everyone who grows up in a city is an idiot and everyone who’s raised in the country is Jesus come back to Earth, but it seems like the %’s are better for kids when they’re raised in smaller communities, that have a sense of community. A sense of duty to the people who are raising you, the people in the town and the town itself. The scale of people is easier to grasp, you can see that stealing from the 7-11 hurts the couple that run it that live over on DeWitt, and that old guy who collects cans all day every day shouldn’t be hassled because you’ve known him your whole life and you’ll see him every day after this too. Bleh, enough babbling for me. I’m proof enough that shitheads do come out of small towns too so I don’t really know what I’m trying to say here.