This time around, it’s plenty to be thankful for

Normally when I wake up and write my column, I usually have the words that I want to say in my column already prepared in my head.

But with this being Thanksgiving, a day in which we reflect on the many blessings that we have bestowed upon us from God, the words that I want to say for this morning’s column, is honestly, more elusive than the more than 500 columns that I have written over the course of the past two years.

When you have the year that I’ve had, one in which exceeded my expectations as a year in which I was blessed to have people (good and bad) in my life as well as new doors opening up for me, you have to sit back and count the blessings and ask yourself, “Why did God allow this to happen?”

Which is something that I have done periodically over the course of the year.

One of the columns that I wrote during the summer, which had a focus on a girl that I had my eye on down at Autozone Park, asked the question, “How did this happen?”

Five months later, I’m still asking that question on why all of a sudden I went from being run out of a community center for standing up for my beliefs to a semi-famous writer in one year.

I’m still trying to understand why did this blog, the one that you are reading now, went from having no visitors barely to over 4,000 (and counting) in the course of four months.

I’m still trying to understand why in the world did the chocolate cutie come up in the broadcast booth that night on the Fourth and a week prior to that, appear in the press area after I signed off.

Why did the church that I attend now didn’t give up on me like roughly 60 percent of the people that I have come in contact with in my life and writing me off.

Why after that Fourth, doors began to open up for me as far as my writing career would go.

And most importantly, why was 2006 the year in which I was blessed with so much, because to be honest, I felt unworthy of all of what was given to me this year.

It could have been given to somebody else, someone who I figured would have dealt with it a whole lot better than me, because I have an inabilty to trust people, because I know how it always plays out in the end.

Starts off good and when they find you out, they throw you in the trash heap, which is something that has happened to me a few times in my life.

But this Thanksgiving, I’ve managed to realize that this year, the year that it’s been, I have a laundry list of things to be thankful for, probably the same or higher amount as you, the reader.

A whole lot.

Less clothes doesn’t mean anything

Like most of the world, I have a page on Myspace and I’m also closing in on 500 friends as of this writing.

I had finished up a Bible study with a few people at the church that I attend and I figured I could check and see what messages I had on Myspace on Monday night at their house.

When I went to see what was on the Memphis Sport Magazine’s page, which I accessed by going through the pages and pages of friends that I had on Myspace, one of the church members made mentions about what some of the girls were wearing on their introductory pictures, which seemed to be of no concern to me.

Given the fact that I am a progressive thinker that doesn’t really conform to conservative minds (but I still listen), I felt that you could not judge people when they can’t defend themselves, which is exactly what happened.

Right after I got the notes from the study and walked back over to close out the screen, I felt bombarded as they brought up Scriptures on lust and lectures about denying myself from those types of things.

To be honest, some of the friends that I have on Myspace are straight-up freaks and have no respect for themselves, which is a very small minority of the 495 friends that I have on Myspace.

But for the most part, many of the people that I added to my friends list on Myspace are people that I know, whether it’s from the ballpark or from one of the many schools that I attended over the years, K-12 or college, so I know of their ways.

When I look back at what happened on Monday night, I felt that I should have never brought my Myspace friends list because I knew for a fact that some church people (like my friend Kasi says) can be very nosy.

Which is true.

But logic would tell you that the few females that I have as friends on Myspace that have those types of pictures (a few of whom are models and have degrees), wouldn’t wear those types of clothes to a job interview.

Logic would tell you that instead of judging the clothes that they wear, you would judge their hearts and see where do they stand in their lives.

Not judge them for the clothes that they wear on their Myspace intro pictures.

I’m sure if you sat down with them, you would most of the time get a very intriguing and high-intellect conversation with them.

And look past what they wear.

Cold water got poured, but there was no one to drink it

In counting down the top 100 events of 2006, this morning’s post will look back at number 83, about how my strained relationship with my mother almost poured cold water on one of the greatest moments in the history of Memphis professional baseball.

Let me tell you about my background for a minute, readers.

I grew up in the Orange Mound section of Memphis, not too far from the University of Memphis, where my mother worked (and still works at to this day).

I was raised by my grandparents, Camilla and Fred Grant, both of whom are deceased, and from what it seemed to everyone around me, I had a great family life.

Or so they thought.

In 1998, my grandmother died of cancer seventeen days before my 14th birthday, which was probably one of the most devasting blows of my life, losing someone that I was extremely close to and had a major part in raising me.

With her death, it left only myself and my mother, who I believe after almost a decade after losing my grandmother to cancer, was not prepared to deal with a soon-to-be 14 year-old young man or dealing with the only family member that hadn’t turned their back on them.

In the years since, I’ve had to deal with my mother’s heavy drinking, which started I believe after my grandmother died and my mother’s volatile temper, which I was a victim of many times through her fits of rage.

Normally in my family, it always has to be a go-between to mediate the communication between my mother and I.

Which was the case this year, when I tried to invite my mother to a Redbirds game on the Fourth of July.

I had lucked on buying tickets for a very low price from the ticket office on July 1st and again on July 3rd and knowing that my mother had never seen the inside of Autozone Park (the last time that my mother went to a baseball game, was the very last game in Tim McCarver Stadium in 1999 when the Nashville Sounds faced the Memphis Redbirds), I figured that I could get some tickets so that she could go the game.

And knowing that once again I had to get someone to relay the message of my plan (a longtime family friend that I have known for almost twenty years) the week before the game, I knew for a fact that the rare occasion of when my mother and I do anything on the Fourth together (which hasn’t happened since 1998) was going to be doomed.

When I got the response from the family friend the day before I did the game against the Isotopes on June 25th, the family friend told me that my mother didn’t want to go to the game.

“She told me she didn’t want to be in the hot sun,” the family friend told me when I asked him about it.

So knowing that, I ended up calling people that wanted tickets for the Fourth of July and leaving the bitter taste of what my mother told our friend.

On the Fourth of July, I had thought that the stars were aligned for everything to go according to plan, until I found out that I would definitely be doing two innings in the Fan Radio booth earlier in the day and possibly be a part of the most romantic moment in the history of Memphis professional baseball.

Two hours before I was supposed to leave, the friend that I called on to get the tickets for the Redbirds game cancelled on me, leaving me with possible unused tickets and a long drawn-out Fourth at home.

And on a hunch, I explained to my mother that I had tickets for the game that evening, which only happened because my friend’s grandmother was admitted to the hospital earlier in the day.

Little did I know how angry my mother was going to be at me during the ten-minute ride to the ballpark.

And some of the stuff she said, which was a load of profanties that I don’t want to repeat in this column, was pretty much attacking me and the way that I got her the tickets, which I can admit, was not right.

But when your mother is constantly building up a neverending wall of excuses to block spending some time with you, which strains the communication that most parents have with their children, what other choice do you have?

While I was at the ballpark, I spent most of the time talking to people around the ballpark and soaking in the atomsphere of the Fourth while my mother just stayed her distance away.

Before I left for the booth, I got into a minor arguement with my mother about where to meet her after the game was over and in a respectful way, told her I was headed up to the broadcast booth and I would see her right after I finished up in the broadcast booth and meet her in the Entry Plaza afterwards.

Which was when the sour note of the evening got even more sourer as my mother complained about everything from the rudeness of the people that she was sitting around to the way that I handled the situation, which now I greatly admit was a complete mistake to do as I look at it.

I was too tense and panicky to say anything about what happened, mainly because of my mother’s fits of rage, especially when I bore the a large share of the anger that she had balled up in her to come out at times.

When I look back on that night, I felt as though the mistake of what I did to my family overshadowed what happened in the broadcast booth.

But more importantly, it showed me the fact that my mother, deep down, is a miserable person that hasn’t fully come to terms with my grandmother’s death.

And it’s sad to say it like that, but it’s the truth.

The cold hard truth.

3,000 hits

I just found out after looking at my blog stats on here that my blog, which was once left for dead, has reached 3,000 hits a few minutes ago. I’m not going into a long and drawn-out thing to thank people for coming to this blog and reading my thoughts, but I will say this, it has been a ride and pleasure to reach this milestone and for those that are avid readers of this blog, keep coming back to the blog and feel free to voice your opinion, because this is a free a country the last time that I checked.

Black Monday

Next on this blog’s list of 100 great moments from this year, is number 94, when everything went to hell at the corner of North Manassas and Chelsea Avenue.

I very seldom write about what goes on at the corner of North Manassas and Chelsea, mainly because it’s no telling who in the department that I work in reads this blog.

But after realizing how big of a joke that the department I work in has been since the middle of June, I’ve come to realize that the so-called professionals that are there in those cubicles are still there at the corner of North Manassas and Chelsea.

For a brief period of time, I had a space in the back of the office where I work at, which I didn’t mind people using just as long as they didn’t any evidence of their residency in the cubicle.

On June 15th, I was in that same cubicle when my then-boss (of the Ray Nagin-like tirade) explained to me that our program manager was holding checks (this goes to show you how pathetic my department is) and I should stay at the office to get my paperwork done so she (my program manager) could give approval for me to get my check.

Four days later, I was in the back with my former boss and the case manager talking about the NBA Finals.

Twenty minutes before I left for lunch, he left for Schuncks’ and I never saw him again.

The next day, our program manager calls a meeting and told us that the guy wasn’t working there anymore, which pretty much set off an implosion of sorts for the branch of the department that I work in.

And the one who secretly was happy to see the guy go, so happy to the point where the case manager cleared out all of the things that were in the guy’s cubicle.

And in process, ended my time in the empty cubicle as our program manager said to me that nobody that isn’t a coordinator or case manager should be back there.

The sad thing about this is that the guy was not only my boss, but a good friend.

And he helped out our branch in the department, unlike the company woman (who is the only person in the department that hasn’t been fired or transferred since I arrived in 2004) who has  been more harm than good for our department.

Of course, it would’ve been if the guy was there to help out the sinking ship that it would later become at the corner of North Manassas and Chelsea.

The return of the Playboy Bunny

Sometimes I wonder as a hip-hop fan, whatever happened to the funnybone in hip-hop.

You had the Fresh Prince, the Leaders of the New School’s song “Case of the P.T.A.” (which I heard while leaving the trolley stop at Union and South Main on my MP3 player), and Biz Markie.

Towards the end of the regular season in baseball, I began talking to a friend who had added me to her friends list on Myspace that was a rapper out of Carbondale, Illinois.

The home of Southern Illinois University.

When I found out she was from there, I quickly thought that out of all the hometowns of your favorite rappers, Carbondale would certainly not be one of those marquee hometowns among rappers.

During our conversations, I found out that she was a Cubs fan (red flag) and had these weird songs that she made on any topic.

One of which I listened to while I was on my way to work on a sunny Friday afternoon.

The night before, she had asked me about writing some lyrics for her new song, “The Playboy Bunny”, which I thought at first was really hilarious because no one (from my own knowledge) had ever written a song about that particular topic.

The next day, I went to her Myspace profile and heard the song before I left for work.

And I found myself laughing my ass off at the song.

Especially the part where her and her friend asked, “Where’s my bunny?”

When the Cardinals were playing for the pennant, she expressed her disdain for the God Hitter and all things Cardinals.

Of course, on the night that I thought that the Cardinals would win the pennant, I said in this blog that she was still waiting for them to choke.

Which they didn’t.

She’s probably still waiting.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse………….

I had a sit-down meeting with a couple of members of Da Crew at my house on yesterday afternoon as a light drizzle came down over Memphis about yet another fiasco that is threatening to rip Da Crew apart at the seams.

This time, instead of someone spreading rumors on campus, it turns out that the rumors that I have heard in my visits to the corner of South Manassas and Union Avenue are coming from someone that I once called crazy as a bat during the fall of 2005.

When I met with someone last week in the Doc Hancock Center for Crew Affairs, I was hearing some things about some of the members of Da Crew that at first seemed to be true, given the fact that since the collapse of what happened with me and that girl from the bookstore, the last seven or so months has been nothing but a horrible soap opera being played in real life.

When the mess with Vanilla happened in March and died down, everybody thought that the aftermath would be temporary.

Not so.

There’s been division among the members of Da Crew, a question of who is actually in charge and even the group’s history, which I personally could elaborate on because I was one of the founding members of it in the summer of 2004 and agreed to the merger of Da Group into one entity, Da Crew in October of 2005.

The thing is now, what else is about to happen at the corner of South Manassas and Union Avenue before the fall semester is out?

You can’t go at it alone

Most of the time, I don’t normally write that much about my life or anything that pertains to religion, because this is supposed to be a blog based soley on sports, not a narrative of my life.

But after last night, I figured I should say something about this in this blog.

I attended the weekly Wednesday night Bible Talk out in Countrywood at another church member’s house and in the talk, we talked about building relations with our fellow brothers in the church and most importantly, having good counsel.

The example that Kevin showed us in the talk was about a compulsive gambler that had his life threatened by a loan shark because he owed a lot of debts.

Bad thing is, that the loan shark came to the hospital where his [the compulsive gambler's] wife was giving birth and gave the gun-to-the-head signal about his money.

So in a last ditch effort, the guy goes to a casino and according to Kevin, the tape that the casino showed him (the guy) alone at the Blackjack table for 20 hours.

At one point, the guy won 9 million dollars, which is pretty much enough money to pay off any debts, big or small.

But with just himself at the table, it seemed that he had no other choice but to keep going.

In other words, he was in the zone.

But from what Kevin said in our talk last night, the guy slowly began to lose chips at the table until he had nothing left.

The point that he was making, was that in life, we can’t go at everything alone.

If I won 9 million dollars at a Blackjack table, I would want someone to tap me on my shoulder and convince me to cash in those chips and walk out of the door.

Or slap me upside my head.

After we finished the Bible Talk, we used the rest of the time for fellowship, which I used wisely to talk with a few guys.

Most importantly, I explained to my friend Tom that I had to realize that you can’t go at everything alone in life, especially when you’re trying to walk in the same path as Jesus did when He was on earth.

I look at my mother and how standoffish she is towards people, which in some cases is a good thing, but sometimes you have to think things through and get good counsel on things.

One other example of good counsel was when I said to both Sharika and Michelle the week before the cutest moment in the history of Memphis professional baseball that there’s no way I’m going to pull off what I would later do on the Fourth of July.

And Michelle had this to say to me.

“How can you let what happened in high school dictate what happens now?”

And look how the summer ended.

Everyone in this life cannot tackle on the world by themselves.

It doesn’t matter how strong you are physically or even mentally, how many degrees you possess, or the color of your skin, you’e going to need somebody in your life before you leave this good world to give you advice.

Or help you become close to God.

Or whatever.

Readers, if you have a friend or a group of friends that you go to for advice or good counsel, call that person after you read this.