Category: Dad

50 Shades of Grey, Afro Latino, color blind, culture, Dad, grand father, Latinos, my life, racism, zombies

The Grey

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It seems like everyday I’m finding another grey hair on my face. Which I suppose I am ok with since I am deciding to grow more facial hair. If I get tired of it, I can just shave. Yet, I look at it as proof that I continue to survive from year to year.

I often joke that each grey hair on my head is assigned to various people in my life both past a present that have left their stressful mark on me. However, the obvious reality is that I am getting older. I would like to think that my graying hair means that I am growing in wisdom, but I am not sure how true that is. I feel that I make enough mistakes to keep me young. Of course making mistakes is what being human is all about but, making mistakes usually means that one is out there doing new things.

For some reason when I think about the eventual salt and pepper look I will get (which will be a LONG time from now), I think about my maternal grandfather. I kind of knew, by my hair type, that I would be dealing with a greyish look. My dad has a different hair structure (I still compare him to Danny Trejo) that is very flowing and South American. Mi abuelito had hair that was more traditional with afro Latino…

{Pause}

I want to take a pause here because I am trying to not laugh…really. I mean, look at me trying to be all politically correct when it comes to the quality of the hair certain family members have. I could be really honest and just categorize it the way most people do. My father has good Latino hair that flows like Jesus and mi abueltio has pelo malo (bad hair) that flows like brillo.

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I think that I will eventually go back to the clean shaven look since there seems to less grey on my head than on my face. I’m really not that old. I’m staring at 39 in about six months and I feel like I am about 25. Truth of the matter is that being grey is not so bad. I feel like most of my life has been different shades of grey (which by the way…I hate that the book has coined this phrase).

{Pause}

Now that I think about, those are not grey hairs. They are white. Maybe, they seem grey when compared to the black hair. I find that interesting. I mean, I have been called racist by white people so I wonder if there is this psychological thing that does allow me to call a white hair white. Maybe, I am color blind in the sense and don’t want to recognize the importance of a certain color so I just call it grey. Interesting thought.

{Un-Pause}

It’s all good. I think have the wisdom to get through such trivial things like grey hairs. I am just glad that I still have my health. I just hope that I never get to a point where I consider using products to color my hair back to black. Do not get me wrong, both Clyde Frasier and Keith Hernandez are both legends but I’m not doing that little “touch of grey” thing that they have been promoting for years.

I think that when people get older they need to own up to their age and just face facts. Getting crap like botox or any anti-aging things will only end up making you look plastic. I mean, just imagine how they will look during the zombie apocalypse. No one wont be able to tell if they are alive or dead AND that is a damn shame.

I am owning up to my impending age. I think I look good. I can’t help but laugh at the fact that when I was younger two things occurred. The first was that I always cried about being the shortest and the youngest. I would always look too young or small for anything and I hated it so much, I could not wait be old (when you’re a kid being old is 19). The second was the fact that I looks so damn young and nerdy, women never looked at me.

Well, I think now I have the last laugh on both cases. 🙂

Dad, family, fate, forgiveness, letting go, love, scars

We All Have Scars


I wanted to write about this yesterday, but with it being Thanksgiving, it would not have been a subject that is, in my mind, appropriate. I realize that one of the topics that I have dealt with on this blog has been fate. Another topic has been forgiveness and those who have the power to do it. Clearly, I have my views on the subject matter and I do not expect everyone to agree with me. One person who does not agree with me on subject of forgiveness has been my father.

We can have long discussions on this topic and will end up agreeing to disagree. As everyone knows I believe you need to forgive people (and yourself) in order to move on with anything in your life. To me, it is about the ability to let go of the past. A good friend of mine quoted me a poem, so will still this quote from her: Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. I am one to truly believe that there are things that you need to just let go of.
While having this debate with my dad, he brought up something interesting that I had not really thought about (he tends to do that). When bad things happen to people weather it is physically or emotionally, these “things” tend to leave it’s mark. We all have scars on our bodies and on our hearts. The thing about physical scars is that those heal after time, but yet you can still see them and will always be reminded of how you got them. Emotional scars tend to work the same way. While you may not see them, they will always be there and will never be forgetton…but they do heal.
My dad is not one to believe that time heals old wounds and I wonder if he thinks people can change (I will have to ask him). He told me that he has been burned more times than he cares to remember and will never put himself in a situation where we will be burned again. I will say that my father is a good guy who has constantly given people the benefit of the doubt. However, too many people have taken advantage of that and he has become less trusting of people in general. Of course, it is only worse when family is a part of that equation. So, forgiveness is pointless in many cases to him. If you had the nerve to burn him once (and is some cases twice), he will never allow you to do that again. He has been scarred and will never forget that.
I look at things a little differently. I have a few scars on my body. I know how I got all of them, most of which I got because I was being careless. While I remember them, they do not effect me; I just know that I was young and stupid. My physical scars do not prevent me for taking risks however, I am not trying to get anymore scars so I know to be careful with any activity. One thing that I can say about all my scars was that I allowed them to heal. I rarely picked at them because it would only make things worse when it comes to the healing process.
With that being said, my emotional scars are a lot to bear. I have scars from childhood through high school. Those scares have effected me and yet, has given me the strength to be what I am now. I also have scars for the careless things I have done to myself and other people. What I have found is the forgiveness has helped me heal those wounds. Forgiving someone does not mean you are giving them a pass to scar you again, it just stops us from picking at old wounds.
Let me inject a little fate here. Everything and everyone has a purpose in our lives. Getting scarred by others is a part of life. We learn from them. Sometimes the people who scar us are the most are the ones we love the most. Those scars make us the people we are and since we never know what the future holds, we never know if a scar we received in the past was meant to happen in order for us to be strong in the future. I think we all need to be hurt so that we know how to love. I am referring to the story of the perfect heart.
Ever time I read that story I think about how we all have to fail before we can succeed. None of us are prefect and we really should not expect perfection from anyone else. The number one answer has always been to cut off those people who hurt us but, does that really solve the problem or does the put a bad aid on the wound? There are people and situations that we need to face and things that need to resolved because in reality, emotional scars are very hard to heal without a resolution of some kind.
We all have those people that we will never speak to again. I have a couple of people who are on that list. It is hard to forgive people. I know that. But, holding on to things from the past makes it difficult to move on. We are not in control of the future. So once again, let go of the wheel...
Dad, Deltona, Friendship, my life, the bronx

Friends. How many of us have them?

I think I have spent most of my life trying to figure out the definition of Friendship. As a kid, I always seem to call everyone (who didn’t pick on me), my friends. My father would tell me that true friends are there when you need them. I looked up to my dad so much as a kid because I thought he was one of those cool fathers who could slick back is hair and adjust his mustache and he would always look good. He had this aura about him that seem to attract so many people. At, times I thought her had literally a hundred friends. But, in his wisdom, he would tell me that all those people were not his friends. They were associates that only liked him because he had a good job and he was always willing to help someone.

This was always proven to me when my dad used to get into a jam, only few people would help him get out of it. He would look at me at tell me, “Now those are true friends”. Over there years we seems to have the same friends be there for him over and over to the point that when he retired, they all moved to same place in Deltona,Florida.

Now, if you have ever been to Deltona, you will know that it is a very fast growing community. Located about an hour from both Orlando and Tampa Bay. I call in “the little Bronx” because all the old school Puerto Ricans from the Bronx now seem to reside there. I am amazed about all the people he knows there. Every time I go down for a visit, I get introduced to another old “associate: that he used to run with. The conversations would go something like this…

Papi: Anthony, you remember Felix right? He used to live on Story Avenue by the firehouse
Me: uh….no…
Felix: Hey! Papa, remember me? I remember you when you this small!
Me: uh…no..
Papi: He used to take care you when you were little…Remember Carmen, his wife?
Me: uh…no…
Felix: Yeah man, I ran with your father back in the day on Eagle ave….

Repeat that about a hundred times and you will get my drift. Substitute Felix with Willie, or Oscar,or any Spanish name you can think of. Then substitute Carmen, with Lisa, Olga, or Jackie. When he moved, I thought I would be rid of these people. But I digress…

I am stuck in this notion of friendship because I am not sure I have a definition that suits me. Sure, I have friends. Some that disappoint me, some that I disappoint, some I actually love, and others that I hate to love. There also those that I have spoken to in a long time and when you finally have a conversation it is almost like a single day has not passed. But how does one judge a friend? There is no measure sometimes.

I cannot go by how I treat my friends, because I would drive myself nuts. Bad enough I am a Gemini who gets bored easily, which means that I may seclude myself until something excites me. But, I when I am your friend, then I am your friend for life. I may forget your birthday, but if you need something I am there. There will always be a point when I think about via a memory or a glance at your Facebook status (which, by the way, facebook is like crack sometimes).

So what do I ask in return? I am not that picky actually because I don’t expect much. I just expect my friends to be real. I have come to realize that this one thing is hard for some people to do! If you can’t hang out then that is cool, just say so. But the one thing that yanks my chain, is when people say they will do something and they don’t do it. I am not talking about offering to pay dinner or anything like that. I am just saying that I don’t like flakes in my cereal…lol