Trav's Thoughts

Don't know if I can come up with 13 things every week, but I like the idea for today.

1. I'm an Aries, and a pretty typical one.

2. I wanted to be a cowboy when I was little. But at the age of 5, I decided that the only thing in the world that would make me happy was to be a Marine.

3. Most of y'all know I played football in high school. But I've never really said how good I was. I was recruited by a few west coast schools. And I struggled with the decision to play football in college or go into the Corps, until there were about 5 minutes to play in my very last high school football game. I got chopped by a wide receiver I never saw coming, and that was the end of football and the Corps.

4. I have an intense fear of drowning.

5. I'm a cancer survivor, but what you may not know is that the radiation treatments left me unable to have children.

6. I learned how to ballroom dance several years ago for my sister's wedding. I enjoy dancing.

7. In all my years of taking spelling tests in school, I never mis-spelled a word. Not once. And I can prove it because my mom kept records of everything.

8. I've been writing for most of my life, but I rarely shared anything I wrote.

9. My personal hero is Audie Murphy. He was the most decorated veteran of World War II. I admire him because of his determination. He came from a dirt poor Texas family. He joined the Army because no other service wanted an undersized, underfed, scrawny little kid who never finished high school. He never gave up, earned an assignment to a front line combat unit and spent the war taking care of "his" soldiers. He won every possible medal for valor. A combat wound kept him from his dream of attending West Point and making a career of the Army. After he left the Army he went to Hollywood and carved out a credible career as an actor.

10. When I was about 3 years old, my mom would take me to the sitter. They were a very nice older couple, both in wheelchairs. Now I had a kitty that I was very fond of, but I always hated to leave her alone during the day. As the story goes, one day I was particularly annoyed about leaving my kitty. Mom took me to the sitters, I waited for her to leave, and then I just decided to go home to be with my kitty. Walked right out the front door. The only problem was that there was a very busy street I had to cross to get home. Since I wasn't allowed to cross streets without holding someone's hand, I sat down on the curb. That's where the sitters found me about an hour later.

11. I actually sat down and cried when I heard that Stevie Ray Vaughan had died.

12. History is my hobby, most specifically military history and World War II.

13. I believe in ghosts because I've been in the car with one. Just after my grandmother died in the late 1980's, I was struggling with a lot of tough issues in my life. So one night I drove to the bay area and pulled up next to the cemetary where Gram had been buried. I got out of the car and stood next to the fence for a long time. Finally I asked if she was OK wherever she was. The street lamp over my right shoulder blinked three times. Now Gram always flicked a light switch three times before she entered or left a room. And she would always stand on my right and put her hand on my shoulder. When that street lamp flickered, I felt amazingly peaceful - like all my troubles were gone. And during the drive home, my Gram was sitting in the seat next to me the whole way.

Well, that's my 13. That was tougher than I though it would be.