Can't believe that after so many years I've somehow made contact again with my old hometown buddies from days long past.

Thanks to the wonders of the Internet and Facebook, I managed to connect again to the world of the seventies.

Washington Junior High School and Salinas High School.

Mamerto Jorvina, William Wong, Dale Yamashita (born on the exact same day as I was), Don Conant, David Steinbruner and Steve Larson.

How long has it been?

33+ years.

One of the most important phases of growing up occurs during early puberty when one makes the painful discovery that ones parents are not as perfect and invincible as once imagined.

The natural reaction to this is to revolt by becoming even more independent in an exaggerated way, resulting in increased irascibility, fits of anger, and being against everything for the sake of proving some imagined point.

For parents this is a most difficult period, but realizing that this is a natural path to becoming oneself and surviving better in the big bad world, makes it just a little bit easier to deal with.

Ironically, once they grow up and become adults going off to live on their own, that is when they become closer again and feel an urge to come back more often than not.

In the backyard of our Stockton house we had several large cherry trees which had the most delicious cherries you have ever tasted.

As I kid I happily climbed up high in the trees which were very familiar to me. I'd memorized every branch and how they bent, and I'd scamper up and down and all around like a true monkey.

When it was cherry season we'd pluck the cherries, eating half of them from right off the trees and putting the other half in brown paper bags.

We put out a fold up table in the front of the house where the driveway met the street, and we'd sell bags of juicy cherries at ten cents apiece. We had this big paper sign hanging from the front of the tables, and all our big bags would be displayed passionately along with our happy go lucky faces..

Sitting in the hot sun wearing shorts and being barefoot, we waiting patiently for the occasional neighbor to walk past, compliment us on our fine catch, and toss a couple dimes on the table as they saved the brown paper bags from spoiling in the intense sunlight.

I thought back then about how easy it was to make tons of money feeling that I'd easily grow up to become a rich young man because of my cunning business acumen.

When I was in second grade or thereabouts and had just learned to write, one of my favorite pastimes was to compose short stories consisting mostly of long and complicated-looking nonsense words.

At such a young age, my imagination was unbounded as I put my mind to scribbling endless series of words that sounded great even if on paper they looked bizarre and didn't make much sense at all.

These amazing constructions of thought flowed freely from my mind and assumed quick and dynamic form on the page in front of me. Before I realized it, I had two or three or even more pages filled with these strange utterances.

Of course I could not wait to share my youthful masterpiece with family and friends.

There I stood proudly in front of the interested gathering ever so eager to read out loud my famous creation. There he is standing in front of us all, please be quiet and listen to what this young genius has to say. In silence everyone listened as the words were uttered and articulated with extreme care so as to maximize affect and inspire awe.

And it went something like this:

"The zatoication we prefolicated is irratagonally a part of the diatronal subrespotical as I can cantapolize under suprepriasicatical things for umbellicallistic contraptotational bibagonanians where...."

And on and on it went. Pure driveling nonsense but loads of fun nonetheless.

When it was all over I accepted the loud applause with a smile and a quick nod of my head, bowing a couple times as I stepped backwards, disappearing into the shadow of youth. I ran back to my room to start yet another nonsensical masterpiece.

There is nothing better in life than impressing family and friends, don't you think?

Kids nowadays have it much better than when I was that age. Take for example my youngest son Maarten, who is having a fantastic summer vacation.

Last week we took him and his friend to the Efteling, next week he goes with the same friend to Croatia for ten days, the week he gets back we all fly to Rhodes for a couple weeks, and then a week after that we take him and the same friend to Eurodisney.

Perhaps kids deserve it and that is why we the proud parents offer them this wonderful variation.

Here is a partial list of friendly addresses for individuals perhaps needing support in escaping from religion:

• American Atheists
• American Humanist Association
• Atheist Alliance International
• The Brights

These are just a few sites which you might be interested in, although the challenging ideas that they present may make you stop and think about things.

Whatever makes sense that is, which when you think about it makes sense as long as you are honest about the way you think.

This is tremendously good, I believe.

Being afraid of cars is one thing but having to run away and hide behind the nearest tree or bush or stone wall whenever such a vehicle happens to pass by is a major handicap. Cannot play around freely without wondering and worrying all the time. Looking around, wondering when the distant intersection will reveal yet another monster on wheels is not easy to deal with. To say the least. Bad enough seeing the glint of metal in the distance, let alone the approaching drone on wheels, that mighty machine and the person pulling and pushing various extensions and pedals and whatever to get it to work and continue on its merry way. Making matters even worse, there is this unknown person supposedly directing the motion of this car while in fact things are much less under control than one might expect. Swerving to the right and to the left, anything can and will happen. So it's best to be prepared just in case. And that is exactly why I choose to duck behind the tree in the hopes that this never-ending stream of vehicles will ignore my presence and continue on the path on which it was originally meant to be. Six years old and going on fifty, that is the way it has to be. Watch out and be careful.

A little known fact of life is that each and every one of us has the ability to create the world around him or her.

As a child this was a very apparent talent to me, and I used this creative power wisely while molding the unassuming chaos around me to fit my immediate needs.

When I was growing up, this ability seemed to elude me more and more often, and I wasted much energy trying to regain a comfortable hold on reality without really knowing what I was doing.

Now that I am grown up, or so I hope, I am convinced that it is possible to influence the world around me although it is increasingly more difficult to replay those scenarios of the past and make sense of what was never meant to understand.

There we were, running through the night not quite sure which way to go next but that was not the true essence of the problem of course. The most important matter deserving immediate attention was the fact that just over the edge of where we were running there would appear this unusual apparition of which we were not quite ready to accept. With only about fifty yards or so to go it was perhaps time to think matters over but this was to be to no avail. What was about to happen would happen anyway no matter how much one might perhaps wish otherwise.

All of it is very interesting when you think about how things were back then, how they were meant to be, how things ended up in the long run, those days of innocent childhood experiences and more. It is not so much what you expect to happen but rather what will happen in the long run let's be prepared no matter what happens.