Can pain be measured

      On December 1st, 2023 just a few days ago, I went to drop of some fruits and smoked turkey legs and tortillas off  to my older brother Abel. My brother likes to drink beer with his friends who hang out at his place with him and they can surely use some foul language and tell stories about loose women that they know. So I take him some fruits or pastry so he can enjoy besides beer. I am always respectful to them because they are my friends too. However, I don't hang out there for long but I get to enjoy their company and laugh with them for a while and then leave. They know that I am a Christian and respect me too. But every now and then there will be a younger guy there and he will seem out off place when I get there unannounced. Well, they seem out of place because they are real young and they are drinking with these older men. And I always wonder why aren't they at work or with a young woman somewhere else. And when these guys see me sit with these older people like me they wonder why I am not doing any drugs or drinking alcohol. And I do have to say that all these older guys here are expert mechanics or house builders, and or have other trades skills. But they ended up this way because they are suffering some real bad diseases and they chose this lifestyle, and they see life in a very negative way. Nevertheless, they appear happy and go lucky when you meet them. But if you ever sit to talk to them long enough to befriend them they will tell you that they had wished that things in life had turned out better for them because the life that they are living presently is not what they had hoped for. And on last Friday when I arrived at my brother's place, there was a young Mexican guy about forty years old, but who looked 26 years old, standing drinking a beer with the guys there. I think it was about three in the afternoon when I arrived and a middle-aged beautiful single woman was there with them because it was her house that I had to go to because my brother motioned for me to go there instead of his house. This woman lives just a couple of houses down street from Abel. And on Friday a friend of Abel's was working on this woman's car and that's why they were all there. She had invited Abel and his friends to drink over there as they waited on the car to be fixed. So it was there that I met this young guy. And as I talked to this younger guy I was making a comment about how expensive everything was getting for me too because I had to buy tires for my car and had just got an oil change too. And everybody joined in the chorus and said that they were feeling the pain because they were all living on fixed incomes. Well the young guy and woman were not, so the woman begins to tell me her financial woes and especially now that her car was exposing more serious problems than she originally had taught that she had at the start of fixing her car earlier. Abel's friend the mechanic just kept sending her to buy more car parts and she said to Abel, "Abel, it is looking bad for me right now because I am having to take money from my rent money for this month to pay for fixing my car and I feel I will not be able to pay the rent this month." She was now getting depressed and mad at her situation. Then I told her that I knew how she felt because although I am single too, I have to pay a lot of Bills by myself and I have to help my great grand kids with monies for their haircuts too. Then I said, and their haircuts are thirty dollars each one. It's here that the young guy speaks out loud and says to me, "That is exactly my problem right now man! My ex-wife just texted me earlier asking me for 90.00 dollars for my four boys haircut and I don't have any money on me right now." Then he asked me, "How do you think that I feel like right now?" By now tears are welling up in his eyes and he tells me. "Shit, Ruben, you are exactly right about the kids haircut being 30.00 dollars each and I feel worthless because I can't pay for those fancy haircuts that they want now." Then I asked him if he was working and he said nobody wants to hire him because he is an ex-convict. He said that he had started to go to a Christian Church and that he was liking that feeling there. It was then also that he began inserting in that conversation that although he was going to a Christian Church now, he would never abandon the Catholic Church, as he grab a cheap plastic white beaded rosary around his neck. And he said that his grandmother made him promise that he would never abandon that Church. I looked at him and smile at him politely and said to him, "Let "God" help you where ever you are, talk to "Him" and let "Him" help you that is what you want right? Don't worry about things that are not your problem right now. What you want is to be a better responsible Dad for your kids Right?" He said yeah because I don't want shit to do with my wife anymore because she has another man now and I just don't care for her anymore. Besides, he said, she even had that guys name tattooed on her right hand. Then I said to him, "Well, that problem is a more complicated one than providing for your babies. If you don't care for her anymore, let her go. And if she has married this other guy than you don't have a say in the matter anymore. Then he back tracks as the others listen in, and he says, "Well, she isn't married to him they are just shacking up together. And to be honest, I love my wife I really would like her back with me." It was here that I stood up and began to shake everybody's hands and said to them that I had to go. It was getting dark and time just slipped away past us fast and the Mechanic just kept finding more problems on the old car that the woman had. And then I went to the young guy and shook his hand last and said to him, "Man!, I don't know how it feels to see my woman with another man or leave me for another man. That has to be the worst feeling that a man can have I suppose? But, I don't know how that feels like. But all I can tell you is, that if she is not married to that other guy, I have seen guys whose women did the same thing; and they had babies with the other guy, yet the husband won her back. And if that is what you want, there is nothing impossible in this world that "God" cannot work out for you. But it is gonna cost you something." So in closing Bloggers, I have to say that life is what we make it. But we can redeem things if we choose to. The idea is to do it while we are still alive and capable, we just have to get up from the ground and dust ourselves of and go to the Source of Power who can really help us and then do right and chose the right path and change our evil ways. I know how it feels when nothing is going our way and more crap seems to be piled on top of us just when we begin to see light again. If it isn't the car breaking down, it's our bodies breaking down from working three part time jobs just to make 40 hours a week. And I have had that feeling for a very long long time and I still complain to "God" as I watch my friends and or older family members die and they didn't seem to get what they wanted either even though they worked hard all their lives. But a couple a weeks ago I was in Lockhart, Texas, only a few miles down the road east of here. And there at the town square was a young Mexican guy drinking beer while sitting at a resting bench in front of a barbershop. And it started to rain as I approached and landed there at circa 2 P. M. for my 17.00 dollar haircut, and a 6.00 dollar tip. But I got there early so I sat there at the bench with this guy. Then I noticed that he was mad so I asked him if he wasn't afraid that the police was gonna stop and arrest him for drinking in public? Then he told me where the police could go because he said that he owned Lockhart and he could do whatever damned pleased him. So I laugh and he begins to make phone calls for somebody to give him a ride somewhere and that he would pay them for their services and even take them out to eat. But everyone that he called said that they were busy at the time. So disgusted with his prospects he looks at me and then stands up and puts his phone in his shirt pocket and tells me out loud. "What the the f... do you do when nothing goes your way?" But he is talking to me in Spanish. And I look at him still laughing at this situation because just the night before I was asking "God" the same question and right here in front of me was my answer to my nagging questions, because this guy who was drunk was asking me what do we do when nothing goes right in your life. So I asked him, "What do you do?" And then he turns and walks away and with his right hand thrown high into the air he screams, "Shit!, all we can do is Ponle pa delante!, Ponle pa delante!, que mas podemos hacerle, ponle pa delante!" And then he disappeared into the rain. What he said was, Keep going forward, what else can we do? And he reminded me of The poor White Texicans and White guys from the Mountains of Tennessee from The Texas Revolution period that got General Sam Houston's Aristocratic ass off from sitting under the undecided Which Way Tree and go where the battle was and fight damn it! They told him that the battle was up ahead, not back where he was retreating to. You see those White Southerners had it right about fighting and facing the enemy, and that's all we can do also. It's okay to think and to plan and have Faith in "God," but eventually we have to take action until we just can't fight anymore. There, let's sleep on that because I agree with guy who was drunk, but right regarding his answer. Amen. Thanks again.                                                                                                            Respectfully,                                                                                                                                            Ruben N. Gutierrez