Year of the Cat in General

The Year of the Cat

She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running
Like a watercolor in the rain
Don’t bother asking for explanations
She’ll just tell you that she came
In the year of the cat

The imagery in that song always punches me right in the throat. And reminds me of X1.

She came out of nowhere. I was twenty two years old and lonely. And she was the prettiest thing I had ever seen. I didn’t think I had a chance. And then she called.

Our barracks was twenty sets of two man rooms with a TV room and set of showers in the middle. There was also a telephone. Shared by forty guys.

I’m sure that makes millennials heads explode. Yes, you can actually exist without your stupidphone. Months and years and even a lifetime.

Forty guys sharing a single phone. It’s a wonder I didn’t catch anything. There were some magnificently un-hygienic guys in that barracks.

I was listening to the Eagles “On the Border” on my roommates stereo when someone knocked on the door and said I had a phone call.

Answering phone calls seems to be a recurring theme of the mistakes of my life.

You can’t take decisions back. For the most part I do a pretty good job at not second guessing myself. But there are moments where I find myself wondering how things would have been different.

Had I not answered the phone.

But you have no idea how gorgeous and charming she was. She was at the top of the ziggurat. She was as good as I was going to get at 22.

She is the mother of my children.

Is it hard to believe that even though I have no idea if she is even still alive, I hope she is okay.

The year of the cat doesn’t exist. There are passing references in Vietnamese astrology. But 1984 shouldn’t have happened to a dumb kid who had no idea what he was getting into.

Last updated April 27, 2017