Marching to your own Drum

Which means "Doing things your own way."

I came always on my father's side from a group of what I would have to say have always been "rugged individualists. Let me give you an example of what I mean. When my father decided to become religious in a cult after being raised in nature but not in any church, his father used to say to him, "Hey. Jesus Christ. How are you today?" But what is funny to me is that though my father was one of 5 children, he was the most like his Dad. To say his father meant what he said in a derogatory way would be an understatement. To say that my father was angry at his father talking to him this way would also be an understatement. But, both my father and his father were very strong men and neither would ever give an inch. They both marched to their own drum come hell or high water and because of this they both in the end unconditionally accepted each other as very strong men in a difficult world. My father used to tell me the story of his father fighting off 13 men on a job that put him down and attacked him. My grandfather was an electrical contractor and so eventually was my Dad too. Oh, by the way my grandad won the fight with the 13 men by the way. Knowing Grandad they either were going to have to let Grandad win or kill him. That was my Grandad. My cousin and I both grew up in the 1950s (my cousin was 5 years ahead of me and I was born just after  World War II) were the first people in the family capable of being diplomatic. My father and grandfather though very intelligent were more the kind of people you found in the country that easily in the 1950s and before would say you were full of "Bullshit" to your face if they thought you were full of it. This was the way things were a lot in the way they functioned in the world. It was always sort of "Lead, follow or get out of my Way!" all the time. So, if you weren't strong and didn't know what you were doing you had better get out of their way. This was just the way a lot more people were before about 1960. So, I guess I'm saying this was pretty normal for the world then.


So, for me, at least what my father and grandfather and my older cousin taught me first was to always march to your own drum and to always be inventive and innovative, and to always be tall and strong and have a strong personality so people just naturally got out of your way because you were going places. So, I found I emulated my father and grandfather in a lot of ways, except I was much more diplomatic about it because I grew up in a lot less scary world than they did. I still had people try to kill me and had to deal with 2 different older boys putting a knife to my throat and telling me they wanted to cut my head off but even then I knew they were crazy. One of them killed themselves as a young adult and I never knew what happened to the other one. Probably the same thing as the first. There were a lot of unwanted crazy boys before legalized abortion. I guess that's something you should know right off. So, after the 1970s there were a lot less people who were unwanted and unloved and liked to kill people and torture people after abortion became legal in the U.S. It is not that I believe people should get an abortion. I'm just telling you that both the boys that tried to kill me were unwanted boys and lived tortured lives as a result.

I have noticed that people often are like lemmings and seem to go jump off the same cliffs together. My father taught me to always watch people and what they do and to think about whether I wanted to do that or not. So, if there was something interesting going on after I was about 8 or 10 usually I thought of it and got people into doing interesting things. But often, people did really crazy stuff and then I thought about just how crazy what they wanted to do was and so I sort of walked the other way a lot and so I'm still alive to write and talk about it. And sometimes it was appropriate to tell them "This is crazy!" and sometimes they would listen and so live through whatever crazy idea they had.

There are some people who walk out their front door and fall down the stairs and break their leg. I have always been extremely co-ordinated and have sort of been the opposite of that. However, after watching the high school quarterback have to walk with a cane after one football game for life I decided not to play football. However, my step son loved playing football which led him all the way to becoming a Fire Captain. So, in some ways playing football and all that teamwork led him right into his career as a fire captain.

So, if you want to survive in life I always recommend not necessarily listening to what people say, watch instead what they do all the time. Words are cheap and often mean nothing. But if you want to stay alive to an old age watch what people do all the time. It's one way to stay alive to have grandkids.