What life's about

I once wrote a paper for college about living to be a legend. A legend in my mind is a person who is not your typical famous legend. The legends I speak of and have met are people who have inspired me to be a better person, to reach for the highest goals, and to treat others the way I would want to be treated. They have tought me to live life to it's fullest because our life journey can slip away in the blink of an eye and sometimes we are left with only the thoughts of what might have been.
I recently had finished my last exam for the semester and was breathing a sigh of relief on my way home from school when I received a phone call from a friend. The phone call was a despirate plea for assistance in cleaning out what was left of a burned apartment for an elderly man who had just barely made it out alive.
I have to stop here and explain that in the country, no matter how far away the next farm is, that person is considered your neighbor. Not only that person, but every person up and down the tiny, one lane, winding road. If you have car trouble or get run off into a ditch by a city slicker who doesn't respect the country or anyone else on the road, my neighbors were always there to pull me out or help us plow a garden.
In town, the peron next door may be only twenty feet to the left or right of your house, but for some strange reason, the demenor thickens as the road grows wider, and your neighbors are few and far between.
So needless to say, when my friend called, I was more than happy to lend a hand. I was more thrilled when I met this little guy, no bigger than a minute, with bright blue eyes, silvery grey hair, and the biggest pearly whites you've ever seen, dispite his misfortune. He was happy to see us. This is why I referred to him for the rest of the day as "Happy Jack".
He was a bit of a pack rat. I don't believe in more than seventy years that the little guy ever threw anything away, but he also had a story to go with everything we picked up and put into a box even though at first it seemed as if we were boxing up garbage.
His apartment was in the heart of Lexington. I had been to Lexington many times, yet never knew this part existed. It seemed as if it were a different world in a sense. Everyone drove Escalades and high dollar vehicles and the women dressed like movie stars. I actully felt at one point that we were on a movie set. This was definately a part of the world I had never seen or experienced, yet it was just a short distance away.
They seemed to rush in and out of businesses and bars never noticing the burned building we were evacuating or the little guy whom they found hanging out of his window, passed out with smoke inhilation. The landlord showed up for a brief moment, half loaded with glazed eyes in his tailored suit to make sure this little guy was getting all his belongings, that were left, out of the building. His only statement, "You've cost me a lot of money."
Happy Jack scurried nervously around the businessman. I stood motionless with soot all over my hands and probably some on my face (because I noticed Jack and my friend had it on their faces.) I glared into the glazed over eyes of this drunken buisness man in his Escalade getting ready to pull away. His building was out of code. He had no business renting the "boiler room" to Happy Jack in the first place, and Jack was paying him a good penny for that boiler room that flooded twice a year and caught on fire twice in the twenty years that he had lived there. But, it was no use even glaring, because I was sure that the expression on my face was just a blur to him.
I found out that Happy Jack is a very talented musician. He has an ear for music that was a gift straight from God. He also use to be a well known journalist and we saw many newspapers with his pictures on them and articles he had written. Jack also is a cave explorer. The way I understood it, if a new part of a cave is found he is called to do the exploring and he has traveled all over the world entering a dark cold wonder. He is simply amazing. In fact, the last word that the landland said to Jack was that he wanted some pictures that Jack had taken that were displayed in town. Jack had found a way to use two cameras at two different angles and somehow bring them together to make three deminsional pictures.
As we worked he asked about the classes I was taking and told me all the classes he had taken and was thinking about teaching at UK. The little guy was a wizard on top of all the other talents he had chosen to explore.
I was truly inspired by all of his stories and adventures and the ones he speaks of soon to come. When we unloaded all his belongings into three storage buildings and I dropped him off to pick up his jeep, he said, "Would you look at that... I was back up to load some things into my jeep with my trunk door open and I hit the garage door and tore the thing plumb off." Just as he said, there was his jeep with half of the back hatch door duck tapped together. I was amazed that man was still smiling.
Here was a man that had lost most of his belongings that had senimental value, if not much more. We stacked pictures in boxes that were water logged and stuck together, cave maps half burned, not to mention the things that his landlord took upon himself to either steel or throw away while Happy Jack was in the hospital. Yet, he still smiled.
It was truly an honor to meet this little guy and as we pulled away I realized just how much the town people were going to miss whether they ever realized it or not. Happy Jack is definately another legend.

Why Im Here.

I created this blog for a project assignment for college. I had to join the "bloggers" in order to "sign in" which was required. I am required to sign in and read blogs from TheAzorblog.blobspot.com and comment about them. This seems to be fairly easy since I love to read and write. Generally, I am a shy person and stay pretty quiet. I like to observe what others have to say. I have found already that, even though required, I often speak up in class when normally I would sit and listen. I have found that I am learning more because others feed off of my opinion or remarks and I learn from their feeds. I will probably be writing in the future so stay tuned, but for now, I can't even figure out why I can't hit the enter key and progress to another paragraph. I guess this explains why all these words are jammed up into on paragraph! Until another time, may peace be in your heart.

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Im pretty new to this blog. I usually use Myspace. You can see my blogs at http://blog.myspace.com/teesmiles