When I was in college I wasn’t that experienced with women but finally in my 2nd year I had a few dates with a girl named Lynn. I had never had the experience of “parking” so one Saturday night Lynn agreed to go parking with me. I had asked one of the guys on my baseball team the best place to go. He said that he always got “lucky” by this big oak tree on a dirt road two miles out of town. I was very naïve so I thought if it would good if we started off with some conversation about philosophy and religion. All of a sudden there was a huge downpour of rain. It must have rained 2-3 inches in a matter of 10 minutes. Lynn said that she was a little worried about all the rain and that she would like to leave. I grudgingly agreed. I started my car and put it in “drive” to leave and soon realized we were stuck in the mud. After discussing for awhile the embarrassing moments that we had in life we decided to walk back into town once the rain let up. The walk was a mess and I didn’t feel that “lucky”. It took us quite awhile to get back to town but we became friends on the way. The moral of the story is that “adversity can become your friend...”

A story-When Violet’s time came she was scared as a chicken on Sunday after church. Violet had been performing in the church talent show every year since she was three years old and every year she got sick before going on. She performed a tap dance number accompanied by her sister Gina who played the accordion off key. Every year Violet hoped to beg off and not participate but her sister insisted that she go on. It had been the same for 25 years now. People were laughing behind their backs. Gina didn’t care. She knew Violet could make it big in Hollywood. She had real talent and besides Gina enjoyed playing the accordion and seeing if Violet could adapt to her playing off key…

A Story --Jim Dean was a fun, outgoing guy who was very lovable at times and then other times he would become a screaming lunatic when he got caught in traffic on the Los Angeles freeways. His neighbor Fred Burns was more of an introvert that spent his days reading books and writing in his journal. He had many journal entries about Jim. Fred was the neighborhood kook that no one could figure out but there seemed to be something a bit off in his “psychic connection to the earth plane” as Jim sarcastically told all the other neighbors that would listen to him. The two neighbors rarely spoke but on Christmas week each year they would give each other a half-harded wave. Fred was still upset from the year that Jim had passed him in the grocery store and said “hey Bud, how are you.” That is so condescending. Jim knew his name from the small AA meetings that had attended together for a few weeks in 2002 and Fred’s name was on his mail box in front of his house. “Bud Smud, someday I’ll show that creep",Fred often thought to himself…

When I was younger I had this ongoing daydream that I had a genie that would grant me three wishes and on the 3rd wish I always asked for three more wishes. In my imagination I had millions of dollars, all the candy that I wanted and lots of bicycles--one for each day of the month. I kept this daydreaming going for years and sometimes I would be a famous baseball player, or be dating the most popular girl in school, and once I had a driver that would take me and my friends anywhere we wanted to go in the country. I had a great fantasy going and then one day when I made a wish the genie said, “that’s your last wish” and I said that it was only my second wish and that on the my 3rd wish I always ask for three more wishes. He said, “No I’m a genie we always keep track of the wishes inside of our lamp”. We then got in this huge fight over who was right and he went back into his lamp. I kept rubbing the lamp but he refused to come out and that was the end of my fantasy….

In the beginning there was a sunset which is the way the movie started which I thought was strange, but what do I know, I’m not a film director but if I was I know I wouldn’t start a movie with a sunset even if it was a romantic sunset with a beautiful couple falling in love in Hawaii or San Diego or San Antonio. Do they have romantic sunsets in San Antonio?—don’t know never been there but I have at least been in Texas and I don’t remember the sunset…I was only nine years old and nothing then seemed very romantic but then I never wanted to be a movie director anyway…I wanted to play 2nd base for the Los Angeles Dodgers but I was to slow, made to many errors, couldn’t hit or run well but I loved the game….