The Home of the Brave...

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Let's talk about wanting to grow up and have an adventurous life. Much of my youth was spent wandering the streets of lower Manhattan. I would have breakfast in a Greek diner, lunch in an Italian corner store and dinner at the home of many of my Asian friends. There was always a first generation Greek, Italian, or Chinese person doing the cooking.
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I would talk to them about their coming to America. About what an adventure it was for them to leave what they knew and come to a place they had seen in movies and on TV. I had a lot of trouble seeing what they saw in America, or to be more accurate, Manhattan.
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This was my hometown. Like any other kid, I found my hometown to be boring, nothing to do I hadn't done before.
I wanted to go someplace really interesting, like the Tahiti in Mutiny on the Bounty, (Clark Gable version.) I wanted to roam the dunes of North Africa, cut my way though the jungles of Tarzan, (2nd movie, if you've seen it, you know what I mean.)
I wanted to fight Nazis, gangsters, Gentleman Anybody. If I walked away with a black eye, or better yet, my arm in a sling, so much the better.
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(I must write an entire piece on the Hollywood cure-all for all hero injuries, the arm in a sling, one of these days.)
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In real life, I have fought gangsters, sailed on both the Atlantic and the Pacific. I have been in more than one jungle and just a few years ago, walked on the dunes of the Sahara.
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In my one good boxing match I was knocked cold and am told flew through the air rather gracefully. The man that knocked me out wasn't much of a gentleman.
I have had bullets crack past my ears, (they don't whistle.) I have been stabbed, hit by cars and trucks. I suffered heat stroke in the swamps off the South Carolina Coast and while force marching in the Mohave Desert. I've walked away with a little more than a black eye and don't ever remember wearing a sling.
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The point here is do I feel like I've had an adventurous life. So far, so good.
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My latest adventure is working for Corporate America. If you think that bland; I have to tell you on Friday, I was required to attend a class on what to do when confronted with a suicide bomber. It was a gruesome and frank lesson; given by a former member of the Isreali security forces.
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Perhaps today's Corporate America is a little more than an adventure than I thought it would be. Wish me luck. =30=