Branding

Don’t ask me how I do it.

Confidence.

Anyway, I move out here after spending the better part of three years in a hospital bed or rehab bed or my own bed and LazyBoy recliner. They were not easy. Least of all on my wife.

But I felt great after two shows in two days with only a little swelling of the leg to show for it.

When I was laying out in all those beds, I had plenty of time.

First, to absorb the shock more than anything, and that included the loss of a once meaty, muscled soccer-playing, ass-kicking left leg. I guess you never realize how beautifully symmetrical appendages balance out your body UNTIL YOU CUT ONE OFF).

So the very last thing I saw myself was maddogg was after I stopped “mourning.”

I was whipped.

More like Saddogg.

But all it took was to see the strength and loyalty of my wife and how she handled my loss of limb; that is when I became maddogg.

I got mad. Not at myself. I had already beaten myself up, but I got mad at the pain I felt when I would try and walk around the block. I got mad at the bland and boring diet (which was keeping me alive and fighting back), I really got mad and frustrated at not being able to take care of even the simplest things without help. For someone who would rather cut off his arm first before he asked (even a family member!) for help, well, there’s pain and then there’s that.

If you know me, you also never see me mad.

I have always smiled at life, even the not so good parts.

It’s all we have.

Seriously, if you know of someplace better, let’s go.

Like in Cocoon, the Ron Howard movie. Karen would be the first to volunteer to go to (back to?) an alien planet.

Living life without regrets has been called unrealistic, but that’s me.

Unrealistic.

Read Mitch Albom’s Five People You Meet in Heaven.

It is a life-affirming masterpiece and everyone should read it.

Back to branding.

I arise from the LazyBoy and we decided to make the move to Ohio after Karen finally decided to retire.

maddogg rolled into southern Ohio and I just started joking by first, referring to myself in the third person, which was fire because it drove Karen absolutely bonkers. So wherever we went, when my name was required, I would make sure I was called maddogg.

Repetition.

I got about six t-shirts left (I gave away two and actually sold two).

Open mics I played out as maddogg.

We went to breakfast and damned if the young lad didn’t greet me with a hearty “maddogg!”

Small-town America.

Love it.

The look on Karen’s face was priceless, but not as good as the effete, now-you-see-why-maddogg-is-the-all-thinking-and-all-knowing-while-you-are-the-unknowing-and-mere-dust-that-has-blown-off-of-one-of-maddogg’s-statues, condescending glance I gave.

maddogg.

Stay well.