2008-09-16 - 7:27 p.m.
It's been a long time, too long. I probably wouldn't be back on here if it wasn't for a friend of mine. Well I'm a veteran now. For years all I wanted was to get out of the Marine Corps., and get out of California. I've done both now and miss them both. It's the same old thing though, when you're somewhere, you just want to be anywhere else. When you get anywhere, you forget all the little things that pissed you off and only remember the good times. The one thing I can't shake is always being part of a group that isn't wanted around. Most people around military bases don't care too much for the servicemen, and now that I'm at Wyotech, the students of this school aren't liked at all by the surrounding community. I'm living in Indiana, Pennsylvania, and there's a pretty big liberal arts college called Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and the first thing the guys at Wyotech tell you is don't tell anyone you go to Wyotech. They call us techers (pronounce it- teckers). It's funny when I thought about getting out and going to school I pictured myself doing a lot of partying, and being promiscuious. Nope, I'm surrounded by a bunch of underage kids, and when I head to the bars, even the of age kids seem way too young, it's loud, it's trendy, it's a copy of the meat market I left in Southern California. When I do find a little extra cash, I drive around the back roads of Pennsylvania and enjoy all the greenery, between the all towns that were left in time when their industry packed up and left the country. Huge steel mills and rail yards decaying, leaving only to my imagination what these places must have been like in their hay day.
The last couple years I was in the military, I wasn't out working on the planes like when I first went in, and didn't realize I had jacked up my body as bad as I have, I didn't notice it, but when I got out, the Veterans Administration labled me a disabled veteran. Not just a little disabled either, enough to merit health care the rest of my life through them, at first I was blown away. Then I got a couple jobs, menial dead end jobs at auto parts stores. It was a rude awakening. I realized that I wouldn't be able to make a living working on cars, I can still work on them, but not fast enough to make money at it. The real awakening was when the VA told me they weren't going to give me any money for the school I joined for college money for.
I remember a conversation with a good friend, in which she asked me what the greatest thing I've done was. I never thought about it before that. My answer was that I've done all the things I said I would. I haven't talked to her in over a year, but she is with me every day when I wake helping me keep my word. Even if it means spending thirty grand on a school that I'm going to just because for eight years I've been telling people I was going to.
