Happy Birthday Joe!

   Birthdays are no longer a big deal for me, but I do insist on giving myself a gift on my special day. This year I'm posting a eulogy to myself. A sort of a mini-autobiography. How shall I go about it?  An autobiography written in the first person must be revelatory. Written in the second person, it will be accusatory. And in the third, exculpatory. I shall write in the first person since it seems the least hokey. 

   I was born on this day in 1947 at 6:00 p.m. in Boston, Mass. It was a cool and sunny Wednesday with gusty west winds. I was the first born to my parents, Joseph and Mary, who were living with my mother's parents in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston. A year later we moved to our own house in Roslindale where my brothers Bill, Stephen, and Mark and sister Mary-Jo were born.

   I went through the Catholic school system and when I was done, Uncle Sam was waiting for me. I had no problem with the Vietnamese people and to avoid having to shoot at them, I joined the Navy. The Navy was my true education. I learned that my fellow Americans did not think like the Irish Catholics of Boston and that the people of Asia did not live like I was used to living.

   After four years of military discipline, I wanted to go roaming in South America. I moved home with my parents and got a job in a lumberyard. I planned to work a year then head south. Fortunately I met a beautiful farm girl from Minnesota named Teresa Karlsson and began my advanced education. 

   Soon I found myself living on a few acres near Teresa's parents in northwest Minnesota and commenced to have Matthew, Joe and Ned. I worked a variety of jobs, mechanic, farm laborer, bus driver, until finding my niche as a social worker. Now I'm retired and can do as I please, mostly.

   I read once if you're not able to teach something to a person they can't learn from a book by the time you reach the age of thirty, you've wasted your life. Well, I can teach a person how to sail a boat. You can't learn that from a book. If a person tried to teach themselves, they would soon be blown onto the lee shore and would probably quit in disgust.

   I can teach a person how to bake bread. That also cannot be learned from a book, though with a lot of experimentation, a person could teach themselves to bake edible bread, but only after making a lot of unintended biscuits and pancakes.

   And finally, if a person older than me bought a smartphone, I could show them the ropes. When I got my first smartphone I could not hear my calls. The phone came with a clear plastic film over the front screen which covered up the speaker. I was about to throw the thing in the lake when a fish I had caught and thrown back a few years earlier came to the surface and told me to remove the film.

  As I enter my 75th year, I can say with the psalmist, "The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places." I appreciate that I owe this happy state to the love of my family and friends. My graduate studies will be how to return this love and make amends for my misdeeds.

Teaching grandson Nash how to people climb.