My Ramblings

This story is about my little sister, Tina Gay Faddis who was third in line and the only girl in our family. She was a tad more than three years younger than me, the oldest and wasbetween Jeff and Kevin. Tina had the same birthday as my daughter, Heather (August 3) who was born exactly 25 years later. I remember Tina being a happy young girl. She was very smart, pretty and she liked to play with the other kids in our neighborhood. We lived on a cul-de-sac that that had six houses and a duplex, and each one had several kids living in them. The busiest house was across the street from us where the six Hair kids lived. Many days were spent having fun outside with all those kids. We played softball, hide and seek and wrestled on the lawn. Being the only girl in our family, Tina was teased a lot by the three of us boys. We made her laugh with our joking and she would get all worked up to the point she had to pee. Several times she was not able to make it to the bathroom in time which m...

As I get older, I become frailer, like everyone I guess, but my rate of failure is accelerated. The primary reason for this is that I don’t take care of myself like an aging person should. For those who know me, you know how overweight I am and have been since I was about 12 years old. Battling my weight has been a losing struggle for me for the past 40 years. To be honest, I was able to carry all this fatness well until my late forties. Back in the day, when I was around 320 lbs., I could do most everything. I could walk a long way without my knees, feet and hips hurting, or getting out of breath. I played golf, basketball, softball, flag football and racquetball. My friends would comment that I was a good athlete and very agile for my size. I went to college with a guy named Steve Jackson who played basketball for the school. In pick-up games Steve like me to be on his team because, he said I “set a mean two-man pick.” Steve was a good ballplayer but his claim to fame is that he’s th...