Blue is how I feel this morning, dissapointed in myself. Dissapointed that I let myself down, that I sabatoged myself, knowing that I was sabtoging myself when i was doing it, Damn me! I earned 82 on a spanish test. seems petty, dosent it? it does! thirty-four years of this type of thinking, it is not easy to change. I am working on it, i have to remember that life is 90% of what happens to me and 10% how I react to it. Ok! time to react: study harder, get help, refocus, ask for help…Time to take control, and stop sabatoging my progress, the little neglected boy is acting up again.

Ok, know i am feeling Mucho bettero! (bettero not actually a word in spanish “use at your own risk”) Chin up, back straight, chest out, optimisim. My thoughts are all over the place lately, refocus Joe. Eye on the prize, this is not just for you, but your daughter. Focus, step by step, live for today. Just for today. Count the small victories: got up this morning,(always a blessing), earned an 114% on 1st business test, (wow), on my way to a degree, daughter is healthy, sun is shining, I am in shcool.

Ok, i am focused, know what i need to do, put the plan in action.

Re: Geeksquad service order#: 00472-890838806

11 days after dropping off my Laptop on 2/9/07 for repair at the Best Buys store, Rt. 22, in Union County , and told that the extended warranty that I bought covered the cost and parts of the repair. I received a phone call.

A phone call on 2/20/07 from Geek Squad city, stating that there was damage to the bottom of my laptops case, that the extended warranty that I purchased did not cover the repair, and it was going to cost me $179 to have them fix it, needless to say I felt like I was flamboozled. I was instructed in this message to contact the store where I dropped off my laptop, and inform them of my decision.

First of all, When I dropped off the laptop there was no damage to the bottom case. The technician thoroughly looked my laptop over and noted the condition of the laptop on my service order as only “scratched throughout the unit”.

On 2/24/07 I attempted to contact the Best Buy store on Rt.22, and after my sixth call after being hung-up on several times and spending over 30 min on hold, I spoke to a customer service rep named Shakira. Shakira had to actually go and physically drag ,[ I may be exaggerating a wee bit ] David, the Cadet agent for Geek Squad to the phone.

I complained about the phone wait and all of the attempts that I made and he replied “that it he was busy”. After 20 minutes on the phone he repeated to me about the case being damaged and that it was not covered under the warranty, I informed him that there was no case damage when I dropped off the laptop and instructed him to look at the Condition notes on the service invoice. David said that the laptop was on its way back to the store and that I could speak to a manager when it arrived and discuss the discrepancy.

I am a college student and I need my laptop, so far it has taken 2 weeks for them not to repair my laptop, and it goings to take another 2 weeks for them to get it back to the store, and what? another 4 to 6 weeks for them to repair it? Needless to say I am flabbergasted.

I can relate to several of the characters in Toni Morrison’s book, Jazz: Joe Trace , Violet Trace, and Golden Gray/Lestory. I have experienced the same feelings these characters suffered in Morrison’s book: Jazz. I understand the “nothingness” that haunts Joe and his search for unconditional love, and the acceptance and belonging that Golden desperately searches for, Violet’s decision to stop living a lie and develop her own identity. In this response I will write about how I relate to these characters and how, like them, I lived life through what Jazz embodies: desire, depression, and forgiveness.

Golden and I experienced the same emotions in regard to our fathers: anger, depression, and loneliness. Like Golden, for most of my childhood I grew up without a father or an identity. At six years old I hated school, mainly because I was the forgotten kid in the class, a ghost at a desk. I only received attention when I acted out. Most of the time no one cared if I was there or not; so I chose not to be there. My classroom was the streets and beaches of Ocean City, New Jersey where I always earned good grades. On the days I was feeling sad, I would go to the corner store and buy fresh Italian rolls to feed the seagulls. I would climb the 5^th Street jetty, toddle over the rocks, sit down close to the edge where the boulders kissed the sea and toss pieces of bread in the air. The seagulls always cheered me up; they made me laugh every time they snatched the bread from the sky. They comforted me, made me feel wanted and welcomed, they were my family, I could always depend on them to be there for me. After the bread was gone I would stare at the horizon, where the sky met the sea and think about my father, contemplate what he was like, wonder why he did not care. I would imagine that he was looking at the sea thinking about his son; I would dream that he was thinking about me.

I craved attention and sought it out, any kind of it, good or bad; at least I would have it. My mother worked all the time, I had no father I knew of, and school was that last place that I wanted to be. I was an adventurous little tyke in my seventh year of life. I shoveled snow in the winter, sold newspapers on the beach in the summer, raked leaves in the fall, and gave directions to lost tourist in the spring. Every Saturday night in the summer I would help park cars at the Wonderland Pier, a popular amusement park on the boardwalk. The parking attendant would give me a five dollar bill at the end of the night for helping him direct tourist to their parking spaces on the small graveled lot behind the Tilt-a-Whirl, and the bumper cars. On Fridays and Sundays I would walk to the supermarket on 16^th street and help the little old ladies carry their grocery bags to their cars. They would try to give me a buck or two, but I would refuse; they already had paid me, they given me something worth much more than money, something that I needed much more: attention and love. I would only accept after they fussed and insisted. I would put half of the money in the little wooden box at St. Augustine’s on East 13^th Street, and the rest I would spend on something to eat for my sister and me: a sandwich, a bag of chips, and a soda pop from the corner deli. This all came to an end in the winter of 1980.

I remember everything about the day my “nothingness” began. It was a cold and dank wintery day; I was eight then, living with my mother and sister in a small third floor, two bedroom apartment on 4^th and Atlantic Avenue in Ocean City. I remember the exact words my mother said to me the day I was taken away. I recall my futile pleas for clemency, my frantic promise that I would be good, and the hopelessness I felt when my mother told me there was nothing she could do. I remember the tears; the warm tears that streamed down my face as the three of us embraced for the last time. Above all I recall the unbearable sadness, rejection, and “nothingness” that engulfed me as I was carried out to the waiting car and the overwhelming loneliness that stunned me as I looked with watery eyes through the rain spattered car window and realized my sister was not coming with me. That was the last time I cried as a child, and the last time my sister and I were close; after that we fought tooth and nail for our mother’s affection. Joe Trace and I share the same emptiness and “nothingness” that devastated our lives. Joe, denied his mothers unconditional love, and me torn from mine; we were both emotionally scarred forever. It was the first time I would be apart from the only two people I have ever loved, and the last time we would be together. It was the beginning of my “nothingness” and the end of my childhood.

I was placed in the home of the Granger’s, a well respected African American family that lived in a dull gray two story house on 4^th and West, only two blocks from the elementary school that I hated to attend and five blocks from where my mother and sister lived; but emotionally I was million miles away from them. I shared a room with the Grangers two sons Jonathan and David. Mrs. Granger, Mary Jane as I came to know her, ran a day care and a small grocery store from the house. Mr. Granger worked for the city and drove around the island capturing strays; for a moment I thought that I was one of the strays he captured. The only time that I seen Mr. Granger is when, Jonathan, their oldest son persuaded him to bring us honey buns from the store; he would sneak them to us in a brown paper sack and gave each of us a silver dollar. I was resentful of their relationship, and in the beginning I refuse the treats but eventually gave in to the curiosity of what it tasted like, after that I was hooked.

After awhile after I had started attending school again and my mother came to visit me on Saturdays. I looked forward to the opportunity to prove myself to her, demonstrating that I was worthy to be her son, that I was worthy of her love. She would pick me up on Saturday mornings on her blue bicycle, a Schwinn cruiser with one of those metal baskets that covered the rear wheel, the one with large left and right side baskets. I was a small boy, so my mother would put a quilt on top of the metal mesh that was fixed to the top of the rear tire guard and I would sit on top of it, one foot in each basket knees up to my chest. I would hold on to my mother waist as she peddled and the salty ocean wind blew my hair. We rode along on the boardwalk to our destinations: Jilly’s Arcade on 12^th Street, Putt- Putt golf on 10^th, and then to Shriver’s on 9^th where we watch them make saltwater taffy; my childhood was restored for that moment and for that moment I was happy.

My mother gave me her portable 8-track player a white box with a shoulder strap and the only 8-track she had: Hotel California by the Eagles. It was the only thing that I had of hers and it provided me comfort when I felt lonely. I knew every song and every word by heart. Somehow I felt closer to my mother when I sang those songs and listening to the music. I felt important knowing that this was hers and that she entrusted me with it. This book has exposed to me the feelings and emotions that has haunted me my entire life, it has given me the opportunity to confront them face to face and to forgive my mother, my father, and myself. I am a changed man; I am now whole, no longer filled with nothing.

Frustration races through my viens like fire, it corrupts my thoughts, overpowers all rational thinking, I regress, act out, behave like a child who doesnt get his way, Frustration turns into Anger that can not and will not be directed outward, so inward it seeks me , it belittles me, demeans my soul, until it festers into self-destruction and tricks me into the hole of despair, self loathing, self…….hate, I am gasping for breath, for a few gulps of air, mentally, emotionally I suffocating myself, I am damned, I try squeeze a moment to interject a positive thought or two, to pull myself out of this abyss, the dark place, that swallowed my innocence, my childhood, my identity, my existence. I am Fighting it, but afraid, punching with all of my might, but shivering in fear, i am yanking the hair from its scowling head, I am stunned that its laughing at me, and shocked to see that it is I whom I fight, it is I who sabatoges my progress, I keep myself Hostage, to the anger directed inward. I start to understand, to relize, that I have a choice, a choice NOT to let Frustration turn to anger pointed inward

I just do not understand the reason why I am always singled out: I go to school, I earn great grades, I do what is ask of me, and still get constantly picked on by the Director of the Program [ I am currently in a residential program and in recovery] . Not one positive word, it is always clean this, do that, have Eulo GI this, paint the wall, rip up the carpet, take out the trash, always spoken to me in a disrespectful tone. I do not know if it is racial or personal, I just do not understand why I am being harassed. I get the feeling they want me to fail, this Director, never a kind word for me, Never. Not that I need any kind words from them. I just would like to be treated with respect and dignity, is that too much to ask for? It is their own rules, to treat residents with respect. They change and make up their own rules every day.

I cannot complain or make waves, they’ll take it out on me even more: shit details, GI the stove when I get back at 10:PM at night knowing I have to get up to go to school the following morning. Now they want me to get an attendance sheet filled out every day, ridiculous, never have I had to do this before. I am trying to learn a new way to live, to make choices. I do not want my professors to have to sign a stupid attendance sheet, I am mad, calm down, take a breath, and write. One more year, of this hell, one more year, if I can survive this I can survive anything. You would think that they would be happy that I was doing so well in school; you CAN NOT earn the grades I earned last semester and not be attending class.

They are nit picking, it will be forgotten about in a day or two, until the next time they find a reason to pick on me. Attempt to trap me, and send me back to the abyss. An educated man is a man who thinks with reason, not emotion. I am working on it, truly I am. Life is 90% of what happens to me and 10% of how I react to it. I think they want me to react, to get upset, to revert back to the Joe I was before I came to college: The Joe that wore his emotions on his sleeve, The Joe who exposed his buttons so they could be pushed, No that Joe is gone, I found new avenues to vent my frustrations and Anger, Just Blog it! Instead of turning the frustration into self directed Anger and depression, Just Blog it! Ha! Sorry Mrs. Director you can t push my buttons anymore, you’re the 90% and I am the 10%It is amazing.