25+ Years of Consistency.

Consistency. Well I guess you could call it that. I am someone who does not like a lot change in my life. I am the type of guy that has been wearing the same shoes for about two years and I have had the same style (basketball shorts and a t-shirt) for my entire life. I mean why change something that works? My shoes may be falling apart but they haven't fully died on me. I drove my 94 Toyota Corolla until it literally died on me. I still have the same friends I had since elementary school. There comes a time in our lives where things change and there is really nothing anyone can do about it. As much as I want to I can't live in my parents basement and have them put money on my account anytime I want to go do something. There are things call jobs or something we have to get. We go off to college to prepare our selves for the real world but honestly if the real world is full of (root) beer, late night with friends, intramural sports and minimal work well god damn I am excited. In all seriousness though there are changes I am looking forward too, I can't wait to live in another country for a semester, I can't wait to actually start a job and live on my own and really just get out and experience the world other than the tri-state area.

Mark Twain was onto something when he said "Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough" while I can't comment on the whiskey part because I am only 19 but he is right when he says too much of anything is bad. To me that applies to change too, you have to take everything in moderation. To change is to grow at times but you cannot just abandon the things that made you who you were, you shouldn't leave your friends, family or hometown behind just to achieve greater things. Success should not cloud your personality. I like to think I have been changing but at a rate where everyone would recognize my personality if I saw them today after not seeing them since leaving for college.

If there is one person I can look up to who stays true to his roots it has to be my Dad no doubt. That guy is just the man in every aspect of life. My Dad has been a truck driver for UPS since the dawn of time and rose up the ranks to the point where he drives a 24 wheeler and stepped on the plebeians on his way to the top. In his spare time he usually makes me feel like a loser in golf, or wiffle ball for when I was a kid. He might not think I hear his condescending laugh when I hit a ball into the woods or a bunker but I do. One day I will beat him. One day. Though if you look at my Dad the one thing that probably sticks out to you is a visible one. It is something he had since before he even met my Mom. His mustache. Now that thing is pretty much a legend among my friends. It is pretty much to the point where my friends respect his mustache more than respect me as a person but that is something I have accepted. Now as you can see here I am simply just a child but what stands out? The mustache. Even as a baby I couldn't function correctly because I was near such a legend which is evident by my empty stare into space wondering if I can ever match that facial hair. Normally people shave and give into time and change right? My Dad disagrees. To this day he is still more of a man than anyone I know. My Dad just shows that no matter how much life changes around you, you can always stay true to yourself if you work at it. I am sure my Mom complained more than once asking him to shave but my Dad was strong in being himself. In being a man.

I don't really have much of a legend but I am only 19 so I guess I can't really complain. I already have a t-shirt and a mug with my face on it though. I am a scholar and I will go off and do scholarly things with my life but I hope I can still stay true to everything that helped mold the person that I am. There is one thing I have been able to keep consistent and that is my level of swag. I mean look at how good I look as a kid in that Peter Pan outfit? That level of swag has yet to decrease.

 

Baby pictures, baby pictures everywhere!

The point of this blog post? To show everyone how awesome my Dad is and to remind people to stay true to their roots and be themselves no matter how much life changes.

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Forgotten Bouncy Ball

When I was young I was amused by the simplest things at times but it seems almost every kid was. I mean seriously who would enjoy finger painting or jumping in a puddle aside from a kid? I guess I would still do both but if you look at me as an example of a adult you should look somewhere else. I enjoy Adventure Time too much for me to even consider myself a responsible adult. Well anyways as a kid I always enjoyed bouncy balls, I feel like I broke things with them but I honestly don't remember. What I do remember is I use to have transparent ones that had little Pokemon stuck in the middle of them and boy did I love Pokemon. I thought I was the biggest thing in Kindergarten because I had the biggest binder full of Pokemon cards, no one could touch me. Oh and my mom worked in the office so everyone knew me and that was cool too. Well anyways I use to play with those bouncy balls all the time
As you can see they seem pretty tiny right? Yup. I had two of them, one with a Squirtle and one with Pikachu. Either these bouncy balls didn't obey the laws of physics or I just didn't understand them as a kid, as I never admit mistakes we will go with the former. One day I was playing with them in my basement but that place was half bomb-shelter half actual basement. The room was about split half and half, right at the bottom of the steps you would make a left for the bomb shelter-type part or right for the actual basement. Now as soon as you turn left you will notice the entire area is packed with food, a fridge (with food!), different tools my Dad used but then, then there was the back of the bomb-shelter.

As a kid the back of the bomb-shelter was no man's land it was where the heater was along with random boxes of old things. I just didn't understand what exactly was back there and it was where I would always find crickets. I hated bugs as a kid. I always avoided walking back there as a kid because I had no reason to go back there and it was just creepy anyways. Though of course as a kid I had curiosity and I still wandered back there from time to time. I don't exactly remember why I walked down there that day but I did and I had my Squirtle bouncy ball with me and god damn was I bouncing that bad boy. I think it is safe to say I balled too hard that day as it was the day I lost my bouncy ball. I just remember it bounced behind boxes underneath a desk and was never to be seen again, I have gone back and looked a bit but boy that thing is gone forever. I was devastated. I loved bouncy balls. I loved Squirtle. Then I realized I still had other toys so I actually moved on quite fast.

I don't know why I remember losing that bouncy ball so clearly because it was something I did at a young age and got over almost instantly. As a kid I lost things like it was my job, I could not count all the times I went to my parents and said "I can't find ___" or "Where did you put ___" when in reality it was either in an obvious location or I was the one that lost it. It seems as me losing somethings is just something I have come to accept but never really understood why I lose the things I do. To this day I am still wondering where I dropped my pen or where I left my Temple ID at. Though I wish those were the biggest things I lost, as you grow up you start to lose bigger things and they start to have more of an affect of you. Yet out of all the things that I remember losing why do I remember this one? I just find it weird sometimes our brain latches onto something so insignificant in life and tells you it is a big deal when it really isn't.

 I have pretty much comes to terms that people lose things everyday whether it is a big thing or a small thing. I have lost items and people in my life and I will many more times before I am done here. Sometimes it is your fault, other times it isn't. Sometimes you lose a hand from a seal, sometimes someone just walks out on you. When you lose something I feel as though you aren't always meant to find it again, some things are meant to be lost. I mean could you imagine if I stayed in my basement all these years trying to find that ball? Buster could of been depressed about losing his hand but what does he do? He gets a bad-ass hook to replace it. Everything you lose can't directly be replaced but you will always find something better. It might take sometime for you to get over losing something but eventually you question why you ever cared why you lost that thing and hopefully not freak out on family when they joke about it. While losing something can be very frustrating, just remember all the things you still have. "Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured." - Mark Twain 

The past can be a comfortable place but don't get stuck in it.
"The flow of time is always cruel... Its speed seems different for each person, but no one can change it... A thing that does not change with time is a memory of younger days."-Sheik

Hidden Beauty

Recently several of my friends and I have started venturing around the city of Philadelphia and going to different abandoned sites, some old and abandoned factories and schools. What we have been doing is called urban exploring and for those of you too lazy to Google the definition if you are unsure, I will do that for you. It is something I find myself enjoying as you come across interesting items that have been left behind and breath-taking views of the city. So far the place I enjoyed visiting the most was an abandoned grade school that was just off my college's campus which we were able to walk to. It was only a few blocks away in which was a surprisingly nice neighborhood as compared to the general row homes that are located in North Philadelphia. As we walked through the school it had a bit of an eerie feel to it if you think that 20-30 years ago these halls were filled with young children who had copious amounts of energy and now it is just a building full of trash(Popeye's?), old books and most likely home to some resident. I found old test scores of students with their full names on it, while I obviously will never put a face to those names it is still weird to look at. Many of my friends were able to find different things around the school, some found records from a music class or a children's book from the library but no matter what it still amazes me all this was left here.

After walking around the school for a bit we made our way up to the roof of the school which was easily my favorite part of the adventure. It wasn't like any roof of a school I have seen before as it had what seemed to be a blacktop playground on the roof of the school. This was probably due to being in a city and having the lack of space to build around the school, so they had to build up.

Above is what the roof looked like, a giant caged area but with basketball nets and plenty of space to run around in. Obviously you can tell it is abandoned the second you look at it by the blacktop being broken at parts, graffiti, broken basketball nets and flooding. While it may not be a beauty now I am sure coming up here during the day was the highlight of many students when they were young and now it is virtually nothing. On the sides there are exits to the cage that lets you walk to the edge of the building and at the end of each side of the building there is a ladder that can bring you to even higher height and giving  you a beautiful view of the city.

While the view is beautiful I do wish we were a bit closer or higher but by no means is this disappointing. I just find it weird that a building as big as this could be just left to crumble. It is an area of the city that seems  to be building itself up and it has a view that many people wish they could have. Even if they remade it into something other than a school I don't understand why something with so much potential is left to waste away and rot and have a negative impact on its surrounding community.

Though honestly as I think about why we left this to waste, it became pretty apparent that our society just wastes something every chance they get. People sometimes don't realize the usefulness or beauty of something that is standing right in front of them and probably wouldn't realize even if slapped them in the face. Whether it is because they never cared or they have just become to comfortable with what they have. We can all be guilty of this, I work at the National Constitution Center in Center City but how many times do I brush off all the history in there? Or even the beauty of the area surrounding it? After working there for so long sometimes I take it for granted, I am blessed to be in such a position to be able to educate myself not only on the Constitution but down the street is Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. I love everything about this city, it feels like home to me but even I can fall into the trap of complacency.

Assuming you watch Netflix and have a half decent humor you probably recognize the name of my blog. If you don't well then you are a poor poor soul who has been deprived of the best comedy TV show out there. My friends and I found this gem while we were walking through the school "There is always money in the banana stand." I love this episode and those scenes in Arrested Development and I feel that it applies to what I am talking about. (Don't you love it when things work out like that?) Michael's father George had made a banana stand to help raise money and promote the family business. Just before George was sent to jail he stored $250,000 cash (spoilers!)  in the walls of the banana stand but when his father uttered those words "There is always money in the banana stand" Michael never took them seriously and never looked at what his father was saying. Eventually he burns down the banana stand without realizing that there was money lining the walls of it. Not only that but Michael soon realized that the banana stand was one of the few things in the family business actually creating a profit for the company.

People should take a look at everything around them, find the things that have hidden beauty, find the people that care about you whether it is a family member or a friend. Find those things and cherish them because they deserved to be cherish. Trust me, it is easy to skip over the things that care about you or true beauty in life if you aren't looking close enough.

More importantly NEVER burn down the banana stand.

*These photos were taken by my friend Evan! If people want I could find a way to upload them here possibly or talk to him see if he can upload them somewhere and I will link them!*