Category: TCC Land

Reflections – TCC

It has been 8 months since I last published something to do with “My Story”.  There’s been a few in the “Windmill Tilting” section, but nothing here – the reason why, is as follows:

My wife is my editor-in-chief because I’m a notorious ‘comma splicer’ among other grammatical sacrilege.  What we discovered in her reviewing my writing, is that my writing had become a rather large ‘scab picker.’

The hurt that I caused my wife will never completely heal.  In fact, it seems that my first wife (El) hates me more now than she did before.  I’ve offered a variety of olive branches to work things out; at least to the level of some form of civility, however all I get is silence.  In November (2018), my (middle) son got married and it was a ‘family affair.’  El acted as if my wife & I had leprosy, and my 3rd son had only anger in his eyes.

Back to scab picking…

My wife was getting better, the reminders of what we “fondly” refer to as ‘the crap’ were occurring less frequently, but tended to spike when another blog chapter came up for review.  Eight months later, we’re going to give it another try.

Hopefully the scab has fallen off, but the scar will remain forever.

On to Gator Country.

Or back to the previous blog TCC – Land

TCC Land

Back to school…I certainly had some misgivings since it had been 4 years that I was in high school, but I did do well in the 3 classes (Program Afloat College Education) I took aboard ship over a couple of med cruises.  Taking a class – one at a time – was a big difference from taking 4 at a time while I was paying (in a way) for it.

Pursuing a degree was a bi-rationale thing.  One night on feed pump watch in the engine room I wondered what kind of strange mind could imagine all of that hardware and how it worked together.  I followed up by asking the various folk in khakis (senior enlisted & officers) and found out that a mechanical engineer was responsible.  Being entitled to the GI Bill meant decent money coming in provided I went full time (12 semester hours ~ 4 classes a term).  The job hunt wasn’t going too well, but the GI money would certainly help. Luckily the combination of PACE classes, CLEP’ing some classes, and my age meant I could bypass a lot of the really boring classes & PE.

For the most part I was serious about my studies, as opposed to how I was in high school.  Yet I found time to sniff after my female classmates – nothing seriously happened – but being married meant that I had no business being so flirtatious.  There was always time for drinking & smoking, and going to class in that condition; especially US History class.  Nothing finer than being read to straight out of the text book to drive you to getting toasted.

There was a weird instance in which I was attracted to a female student that I later learned was also married, but she was pretty insistent that I hook up with her husband – we used to get hammered a lot.  Later on I discovered that she was using me to entertain her husband while she had an affair with someone else.  You’d think that there was a lesson there, but obviously I didn’t learn it.

During my time at community college I enlisted in the navy reserve. Of course I waited too long to go in, so I lost a stripe; went from E5 to E4.  Playing weekend warrior brought in some extra cash and a 2 week vacation in South Carolina working on a ship.

I managed to get my Associate in Arts degree with honors and was planning with El for the next step; i.e., which 4 year college to transfer to.  The first choice was University of South Florida in Tampa, but after El & I took a trip down south – we decided that the gulf coast wasn’t it for us.  By graduating with honors, I was accepted to University of Florida in Gainesville; however they would not accept me into their engineering program until I had taken physics & calculus. That equated to two more semesters at TCC so El & I asked if we could move in with her mother (she had divorced by that time – I think) on the premise that we could save some money for the move to Gainesville.

Also somewhere in that time frame I got a job as a small engine mechanic which lasted maybe a year before he cut me loose due to business falling off.  Got lucky and landed a job at a Dodge dealer as a ‘new car prep’ mechanic which entailed prepping cars for delivery, installing cruise control, stereos, etc.

Moving in with El’s ma was a mistake. She immediately became reabsorbed into her family role with her brothers & mom.  Join that with me working at car dealership with a cute & flirty 19 year old blonde and it wasn’t long before I decided the grass was greener and El & I separated.  I lived with a male coworker and as soon as I had separated from El, little giggly blonde wanted nothing to do with me.  Free marriage counseling through the college brought me back to El after about a month and I thought I was cured. But you have to know what’s wrong before you can fix it, and I had no idea.

I don’t recall much self pleasure in those days, primarily because it has been so long ago and there probably wasn’t anything that stood out.  However, I can guess that it continued due to constant exposure to younger classmates and an occasional alluring professor.

I finished up the required classes then it was time to leave Tally town behind.

On to Gator Country or to intermediate Reflections – TCC.

Or back to the previous blog Out on Arrival.