LESSONS FROM THE 90’s, MEMOIRS 1

Hello all! Especially you Twitter people who made my analytics triple! (I'm still in double-digits.)

I know, I know, took me a while to get back. It’s going to be a balancing act from now on. I got stories to writes and Twitter-X to manhandle and keeping up with the blog. The blog is likely to change into more shortform if I can help it—sure, yeah, go from a 5000 word multi-parts series to, I don’t know, 1500 word entries. Won’t stop me from there.

It’s funny how time makes you change. It is like each day is a clock, but how you treat it determines the day. Time is like water. Both are precious for life, and an abundance of both is taken for granted and a lack of either is death. …I don’t subscribe to time-travel theories, FYI. Most people are too logical when it comes to time-travel and so they get hung up on paradoxes (or try to cause them). Go the opposite end, and you end up with Owlman syndrome, where an alternate reality Batman seeks to destroy all creation because time-travel/dimension-hopping means there are an infinite numbers of Batmen and such. Thus, infinity makes all things worthless, so Owlman tried to make a bomb to destroy all realities.

This is a similar problem to Rick & Morty, where infinite possibilities means no one thing is more valuable than another, which makes people worthless and, by logical standards, personal attachment is moot.

Both extremes are fools, because—well let me make a more foolish proposal. I believe in a God who has made a creation that is resilient against time-travel hijinks. I don’t believe in a God who does determinism, which is one side of the time-travel debate. I believe in a God who respects free will, but who also says “Sorry Stupid, you blew your chance in history, and it will be given to another.”

I say this based on my experience in reading history. George Washington could have dropped dead and been replaced with two or three other generals/potential presidents, though it would have been their character—the arrogance of Charles Lee and the old-man-energy of Horatio Gates—who would have shaped America (if it got off the ground). Alexander the Great, Julius Ceaser, Napoleon Bonaparte; they are great men who are fawned over by weak men who worship power. Alex, Jules, and Nap here all could have died like total dumbasses, at several points each in their careers—then they all died lame deaths regardless! It really does take the hand of God to raise a conqueror. Often, in response to a great calamity brought about by sin.

…Not saying they are good people, but A-J-N all restored brutal order on the world. Alex because the Greeks fell to hubris; Jules because the greed of the Senators warped the loyalty of the Roman soldiery; Nap, because the French threw away God for a Reign of Logical, Rational Terror.

So, if, say, time-travelers were to go back in time and kill any of the following: Adolf, Vladamir or Joeseph, or Mao; the travelers could not kill just a single man—they would need to kill whole swathes of Germans, Russians/Georgians, and Chinese, because to really eradicate those men in order to prevent their evil, you would have to eradicate all the factors that gave rise to such men.

I do believe that, however strange it may seem, history is in the hand of God, and that God shapes innumerable factors (climate economy animals meteors diseases the like) unknown to man, as well as pooling together the collective deeds, good and bad, of mankind, and who also…does something to make great men appear on the world stage. Actually, great men on and off the world stage. See, history becomes impossible once you realize that to have ‘accurate history’ you would need omniscience, because too many events are happening at one time AND over across time, in the obscure and obvious places of the world.

Got all that?

So, we focus on big events, in order to make sense, but the wise historian understands that big events are multiple ‘threads’ from different places all winding together into one big event.

All this to say that I love history and memory. I’m concerned that I might become a nostalgia trap for some, because I grew up in the 90s. I was born at 2-something PM on December 4th, 1992. See, I always thought my birthday was special, because I was born at the end of the year. The Berlin Wall was three years gone, and Bill Clinton was elected the first Arkansan President of the USA, November 3rd, 1992.

See, because I was young, I thought having a strange birthday meant that I aged differently. That’s because people thought ‘1992’ and did the math wrong. Even my own father and mother keep forgetting to carry a month. I consistently feel younger than my peers, too, though that may be because some of them grew jaded and weighed down their spirit.

I had no memories; they started on a day when I was 5 years old, when I was in the first pillow fight with my dad. Uh, I’ll say that my dad didn’t understand his own strength, so when mom came home she thought he beat me with a pillow. I was having a blast, and he was too! I still remember his smile as he bounced from one corner to another as we whopped each other with pillows.

Then, when I was 6 years old, the beloved wife of one of my beloved cousins died in her sleep, leaving her husband (my blood cousin) and his daughter (another favorite) alone. They both came over to my Aunt Joan*’s house, where she was babysitting me and my sister. There, she lead us in prayer. That was the first time I encountered real faith, and the first time I met God.

[*She will be…no, she has been dead for 5 years now. Good thing too, because she would have died of Trump Derangement Syndrome, or legitimate Covid. It was complications from habitual pneumonia.]

The second time I met God, I was 12, and having a pornography-induced nightmare. (No, He wasn’t the cause of it!) He was there in the dream looking after me, and making sure I was okay.

…But that’s skipping ahead too much, we need to cover the 90s.

More to follow!