Dan Ryan... I'll be 35 on February 21st... Parents divorced when I was 2, and all that crap... Dysfunctional American family... I was a unique kid, and probably one of the first guys to know what good music was in my generation... OK, there were more... I spent a lot of time looking at inanimate objects, when I should have been fielding ground balls from my Dad.... It's all cool, though.. Dad and I are tight now. We're moving south, closer to him, in about a month. I have a 1st cousin who played for the St. Louis Cardinals. I never played ball in High School. Went to a practice once, with minimal athletic skills, and threw a 90 mph pitch at 17 years-old... I had no idea that it was fast... I've since honed my athletic skills.
Not much I can talk about regarding my military service, aside from dates and locations... The Army gets dirty the Navy gets deep. I'll say some words... Iraq. North Korea. Russia. Forward deployed from 1991-1996, and never resting. A lot of noise, a lot of being alone, and a lot of "Hey, Ma! I'm not actually
IN Tokyo, you know!!!??"... It never sunk in. I married a wonderful lady I met the day I returned from the Gulf... In Tokyo. I was happy just to moor against the pier... I drank with a friend of mine for a few hours to celebrate, we went north to Tokyo, and it just do happened that it was her birthday, and she was out with her friends... The ship left again in a few days (I was on it), I lost her number for a few months, and found it while I was looking for my boarding pass while headed home for the only leave I would have for 3 years... It goes without saying that I have a hard time listening to people complaining about being "over-deployed"... Maybe my family isn't that close, and no one whined about missing me... (We aren't close, but I love America, and I missed
it with all of my heart)...
I'm still married to the same woman I met that night. She's in transit to Japan as I type this, and I feel like my guts are only half there. I worry when I'm not with her these days... She loves the USA. We went to see "Miracle" yesterday - the film about the US Olympic Hockey team... I watched her cry, not because of the script, but because she knows what we're going though AFTER that wonderful victory, now. She thinks Americans are good people, and I generally agree... (I've met more of them than she has, though..
)...
Anyway, I'm a self-employed writer/enterpreneur/actor/security consultant/martial arts instructor/international antiques dealer (like "Highlander", but I'm mortal...
.. ) Don't ask me where the knife and fork guy came from... Equal smilie opportunity.