theNoosphere.com

‘I just want to be inspired’ she said.

As far as cheesy, pull-at-your-heartstrings movie dialogue goes, that single line from ‘Jerry Maguire’ says it all.

As I’ve wound my way through the twisting careening career paths of adulthood, I’ve developed an intense and illogical aversion to mail from the Social Security Administration. The periodic letters that show up unannounced in my mailbox detailing just how many hours I’ve toiled away at any assortment of lifetime jobs are vaguely disturbing to me. While my Federal Government’s official interest and pride in my productivity is heart-warming, those mile markers leave me feeling hollow and a little forlorn, a living tribute to my own career indecision.

I remember the school scrapbooks of my childhood. You know the ones your Mom kept for you – a historical record, in case you actually grew up to be the President, the next Merv Griffin, or...

Boone

Sitting in the pitch black Saudi Arabian night in a reinforced fighting hole, I pulled a set of night vision goggles from their hard plastic case and strapped them on. Shivering in the surprisingly cold desert air, I looked starward and watched what seemed like an endless cloud of US and British bombers stream like angry hornets north towards occupied Kuwait and on to Baghdad. I couldn’t help but silently ask ‘Am I really here, living this?’ It was just one of many surreal moments to come. As we listened to Armed Forces Radio and the BBC give the play by play to the start of Desert Storm, we glimpsed a cacophony of dancing flashes on the horizon, felt the ground rumble ominously as if mighty dinosaurs once again walked the Earth, and wondered what the experience felt like from our enemies vantage point. War was no longer an if, or a when. It was real, and we were now in it, a few miles down the road from whatever was to come. Of the possible emotions one could feel...

Boone

It’s a miracle I lived through the 60’s and 70’s.

As if Richard Nixon, Vietnam, mutually assured destruction, and really really bad fashion weren’t risky enough, I faced the daily threat of mass-marketed toys that could maim, wound, and disfigure. Mattel? Kenner? Hasbro? Whamo? Endless fun with just a hint of mutilation thrown in for good measure. The children’s playthings of my youth would never make the cut nowadays – but how dear they were to my heart way back when.

Toy’s of my childhood – how do I love thee?

Let me count the ways.

The Poisonous:
In the 20 years spanning 1960-1979, nothing said FUN like toxic chemicals and vapors. The Bubble Jet, a fancy water gun you shoved bubble-producing cyanide tablets into, was great recreation. Whether squirting the solution into a friend's eyes or mouth, or your own, chemicals meant good clean fun. When you bored of the toxic bubble fun, you could relax with a couple of puffs...

Boone

My memories of Desert Shield and Desert Storm are a surreal patchwork of alternately intense, funny, and bizarre moments. If war is hell, pre-war must certainly be purgatory. Waiting for George Herbert Walker Bush, the UN, and Saddam Hussein to figure out if they were going to kiss and make up, or have a little Mid-East throw down, felt like it could last forever. After a few months of ‘the wait’, the consensus of my Marines was that anything was better than sitting out in the middle of the Saudi desert, training day after day, and waiting for the next sunrise to come. Excitement, even of the bloody, dangerous, violent kind began to look awfully attractive. Marines have become so accustomed to weathering the drudgery of agonizing delays over the past 200 years, they’ve developed an entire way of life around it, the ‘hurry up and wait’ philosophy.

Hold up a Marine unit for more than 15 minutes in one place, and you’ll bear witness to the prime imperative of ‘hurry up and...

Boone

The flight to Saudi Arabia via commercial airlines was surreal. ‘Please place your M-16’s under your seat, muzzle facing outwards’ isn’t a stewardess instruction you’ll hear every day. We were fed every 2 hours, watched continuous onboard movies, our every whim catered to. It had just a hint of that ‘lamb being led to slaughter’ feel to it. For me, that flight over was full of angst, and I’m sure I wasn’t alone. Too much time to think about where were going, what we might have to do there, and what we’d left behind.

After more than a day of flying, we descended to no man’s land. Stepping into the blindingly bright daylight of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, you didn’t just feel the heat, you could smell and taste it. A strange thing I’ve noticed in my travels to the far off corners of the planet, but every place on Earth has a unique smell. This place smelled dusty, barren, and strange, the heavy air a mix of petroleum fumes, exotic spices, and heat vapor. Of all the foreign lands...

Boone

It was an early August evening in 1990 on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. The island had once been home to lepers and outcasts, so we Marines felt right at home training on its rugged terrain. I sat in the pitch black, ear up against a PRC-77 radio talking to one of my squad leaders out on patrol. The unmistakable grumble of a humvee working its way up the dirt road beneath me drowned out a nighttime chorus of frogs and crickets. I watched a familiar shadow, tall, bulky, and clumsy stumble towards me. It was my C.O., Capt John Caretti, a behemoth from Philadelphia. And something was obviously wrong.

If you asked 1000 Marines why they joined up, you’d likely get 1000 answers. ‘I knew they were the toughest branch of the service’, ‘I wanted a challenge’, ‘I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life’, ‘They gave me the choice, jail or the Marine Corps’. But contrary to the Hollywood stereotypes, what you wouldn’t hear is ‘I want to get shot at and put my life in danger...

Boone

I loved them, before I even knew what they were.

Horror movies.

From the first time my father, a fellow night owl, whispered in my ear like a secret conspirator, I was hooked. 'I think there' s a great scary movie on tonight....' There was something excruciatingly exciting and irresistibly foreboding about the proposition . Monsters, bloodsuckers, aliens, the dead returned...in a world with four TV channels, a great scary movie was about as dangerous and cutting edge as it got.

TV then was safe, sanitized, a sweetly-packaged and steady stream of pure vanilla. To get an education, you really needed a 'great scary movie'. Only there could you learn life's real secrets, that sometimes the good guy didn't win, bad things happen even to good people, and that there was more to the world than brightly-lit daylight was willing to reveal. Violence, sex, betrayal, murder, sin, cruelty, death, those just weren't topics for the dinner table in polite...

Boone

It’s a cliché spoken a million times a day all over the world in a hundred different languages.

‘I am so lucky’.

But for me, it’s simply a fact. I have the same problems as you do. Stress. Financial challenges. Work-Life balance. Struggling to be the best husband, father, son, brother, friend, employee, and human being I can be. And frequently falling short. But I’ve got a secret weapon in my daily battles.

I don’t deserve it. I have no idea how I stumbled upon it, nor how I’ve managed to hold onto it. But it’s saved me from life’s destructive forces a thousand times. Her name is Valerie, and she’s my wife. This year we’ll celebrate 20 years husband and wife. In all that time, I’ve never had even once the fleeting thought ‘what would my life be like if I’d married someone else?’. Not once. Among innumerable daydreams, I’ve never entertained that fantasy. When it comes to Valerie, only one thought rises from the depths of my subconscious....

Boone

Let me get it right out there.

I don’t believe in ‘resolutions’. New year? Old year? Battlefield? Deathbed? Congressional? Doesn’t matter. Resolutions are for suckers.

Why the attitude? Simple really. I believe that personal change is not only possible, but is perhaps one of the most powerful, meaningful pursuits a human being can embark upon. But real personal change is about action, not laundry lists, good intentions, or talk.

Want to change your life? Great. Shut up. Stop writing. Avoid the urge to tape motivational quotes to your PC or desk. Don’t tell your friends about your grand plans. Don’t google ‘self help’. Don’t join a support group. For God’s sake, don’t buy anything glossy at the newsstand that purports to help you figure out how to change. And never, ever, ever ask strangers on internet messageboards for advice. Unless it’s a really special, mystical place

My alternative plan?

Think. Think...

Boone

It was early May, 1987 and the 747 I’d hitched a ride home on from Okinawa, Japan skidded to a stop on the scorching tarmac at Washington National Airport. No longer attached to a Marine unit, I’d had to beg, plead, and threaten my way home. But I’d finally made it back.

A month prior, my plans had been well-laid and seemingly perfect. Gracefully exit the USMC, apply for veterinary school, talk the girl of my dreams into marrying me, and commence happily-ever-after. But a near-death experience and 60 days of surgeries, recovery, and drug-induced haze had blurred the lines of that roadmap considerably. Somewhere in the fog of those months, I’d apparently agreed to continue my Marine Corps career as an officer. I’d get a brief 30 day hiatus at home before having to head to San Diego for the summer to attend a Marine preparatory program, designed to ensure as one of the USMC’s prime investments, I didn’t flunk out of school when I got there.

I was to return...

Boone