GBBR(Good Buds Bragging Rights ) League

[Jeepdriver]

Robert - Glad all appears to be well now.

[KEVINEHLE]

Wow. Poor C2. He is the Rodney Dangerfield of the Strato Message Boards. It's one thing to be trash-talked by some on-line dudes, but to have your girlfriend diss you like that........it's just wrong!!

Life advice: The only people in the world you can trust is your on-line Strato buddies. Give up chicks and buy more Strato teams to keep you busy on your Friday and Saturday nights. We're not as good looking, but we're not nearly as mean!! :wink:

Kev

[ROBERTVOZZA]

For the kind words and support, fellas'...I am not one who likes to alarm a lot of people until I know for sure there is a REAL TRAGEDY...I had always felt that he was ok when he was missing...But when his car turned up around the midpoint of his - (What I would like to refer to as his own personal little "Vision Quest") scare the crap out of your parents JOURNEY - I have to admit, I had a very tough time getting a deep breath for the next 24 hrs.

It is a very long 48 hrs missing story - Especially considering the circumstances that caused it - Which was probably a lifetime of internalizing stresses that we as parents(Especially when 1 is so far away)don't always pick up until a REAL CRISIS occurs and it crosses your mind that when faced with the possible loss of a loved one - especially your child, that maybe you should have listened to them a little more closely and asked more questions instead of assuming you have answers to questions you assume.

Rather than go into great detail, I think I will just inform everyone here(And I consider everyone of you my very best friends, not just here at TSN/SOM - But on the entire Net.) that what occurred, altho not totally premeditated in detail, evolved out of what I would consider a Soul's need to express it's desire to change one's life and circumstances through a bold statement that both gets your message across to people, while the Universe itself, assists you in setting your own stage in order to become a MAN with your own freewill to make better choices for yourself without having to answer to anyone else - While simultaneously bringing other people in your life together in ways that hadn't been possible for over a decade.

Altho very frightening and dangerous(He spent 48 hrs homeless in NYC) and with no money, means of transportation, identification, communication(He tossed his cellphone out the window - ie why we couldn't get a hold of him), food, shelter etc. - Just the clothes on his back and his guitar - took the train into the city, the Ferry to Staten Island and back, several subway trips and another train - Before walking through and from Harlem to Elmsford(Or maybe it was Elmsworth or something like that), approximately some 35-40 miles north of the City in Westchester County.

He slept in an empty Fountain, played his guitar and sang for meals and water, while allalong the way, meeting many people who helped him and some who threatened him and told him he'd never make it out of NY alive, learning to discern using his intuition only, who could be trusted and who couldn't.

Anyway...All that mattered to the rest of us who love him(Myself, wife, ex-wife, his 2 sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends) is that God would guide him through everything safely and help him find his way home...

And that is exactly what happenned...And we are all a little closer and wiser than we were before all this occurred.

Thanks again, my good friends. Sometimes this stupid little kids game we all addictively play is as comforting and rewarding an escape from the REAL CHALLENGES we all face in our daily lives as can be. But it is the connection I feel to all of you that makes me keep coming back.

Thank God for our love of this little game and the friendships it has forged the past 4-5 yrs. :wink: Robert

[ANDREWLAITURI]

HOLY CRAP ROB! :shock: :shock: :shock:

I thank God that everything turned out alright. That whole incident reminds me of something similar I did many, many moons ago...Well minus the guitar cause I ain't that talented, fact is I think people would have turned me into the cops FOR trying to sing. :roll:

Seriously though, life does have a way at times to wrench us out of the hum-drum of everyday life and bring us to a razor sharp focus as to what really matters. My thoughts and prayers to you and your family but especially to your son that this soul searching journey of his will have helped to provide him with the beginnings of answers to his questions.

On a not so serious note: Man this would have been a cool league to have been in! I'm bummed that I missed it. :cry: You guys are all nuts! :shock:
Course that just means I would have fit right in. :roll:

[HUDAMAN]

Rob, glad to hear everything is okay. I know all too well what it's like to face the possible loss of a son, I don't care how young or old they are, there is no worse feeling in the world.

Mine have not yet reached the age where they're ready to run off and 'find themselves' (in fact there are still moments when they think Dad is cool, especially when I don the Kung Fu garb), but I hope that they do reach that age, and I hope I can find the strength to help them get through it without pounding them over the head. Maybe I can just teach them to play SOM, and they won't have any time to get into trouble... :shock:

[Jeepdriver]

I have the leader in the East on my schedule for the second straight nite :wink:

Anywho, can't let up now, Alphonso has a good steady team that does well on the road. Hopefully after a big nite last nite we can get fired up one more time. :wink:

[Jeepdriver]

Incredibly out of 9 active teams, I was involved in 6 sweeps last night. 3 to the good, 3 to the bad. That's a lot of dang sweeps in one night. :shock:

[ROBERTVOZZA]

For all the support. The past year has been filled with a lot of change. Last summer, my son lost both - his Grandmother(My Mom) and then his best friend to a car accident. In addition to that, his stepdad's Mom died a month or 2 later.

He wasn't certain he wanted to start College in the Fall. He had an obviously need to put some things in order before making the committment to move away from home in a new and less familiar environment. He is a very deep thinking and feeling, sensitive kid. And he takes life pretty seriously and has become quite a songwriter(Somewhere between 20-30 songs already.)

But his Mom kinda' pushed him into going to school. I recommended that he just work a semester and take a few classes locally at the Community College to get his feet wet and be able to apply credit to a degree when he was ready and feeling more secure - Instead of wasting 25K if he didn't want to go.

But she pushed him and insisted and he went a semester, did ok, but not well(Hard when your mind is elsewhere) and then transferred to New Haven to study Sound Engineering. The good part is that he chose it himself and hooked up with the members of the band he has been in the past 9 months. They actually toured the Northeast from Maine to Virginia this summer and had a decent response.

The bad thing is he hooked up with a new girlfriend and started hanging around with his other best friend, who was kicked out of college for dealing and using drugs. Then he dropped out at the beginning of this Fall semester and found himself experimenting with drugs for the 1st time. He broke up with his girlfriend of 4 yrs, was having some internal problems with his band and was considering leaving and going solo or changing bands so he could sing more.

He was working 2 PT jobs and quit one of them and had his hrs down to only 2-4 per day and obviously had a little too much time on his hands - And like his father before him - An idle mind becomes the devil's workshop and voila - More drug use, not realising time is passing by and you're not getting anywhere, parents becoming more demanding to do something with your life, and a grilfriend that had played around with the occult, going on a witch hunt in Redding CT around Halloween and somehow picking up a form of possession for a week(Her). I think her strange behaviour really spooked him and the stage was set for an event that would alter his life and bring him back to where he wanted to be.

That would be last Friday...Now you know the rest. It was just too much going on inside his head and the stresses of trying to please others while not making good sound decisions for oneself just caught up with him and he decided to leave to figure it out. I really think his intention was to drive to the airport and come spend time with me. But in his state, forgot to bring money and after his car ran out of gas, he changed his plans and went with the flow - Instead of just calling and asking me to get him a flight. Maybe it was bcause I already had him booked to fly out for a month in January and he didn't feel he could wait. I don't know. But it's all in the record books now and he seems to be back on his feet and resolved to make good decisions minus a couple of dead end friends.

Back to baseball for me now. :wink: R

[KEVINEHLE]

Thanks for sharing Rob. I'm kind of glad I'm not 18 again trying to figure out what I'm going to do and the other million decisions to be made! He sounds very creative and a free thinker. He will do well when he settles in. :D

Somehow with all of the distractions, you still have a first place team! I bust my a-- and scrape to get a 3rd place team!! :(

Kev

[ANDREWLAITURI]

Yeah that fills in the picture for me too Rob thanks for sharing that. I had guessed it was something like that, very similar to my own reasons back in the day for doing pretty much the same thing.

He does sound extremely creative and artistic so I definately see the music business in his future in some way shape or form. When you have that kind of creativity in you it just screams to be utilized. I agree with Kev entirely, he's gonna be fine with the right guidance.

As for Strat, at the moment, I am teamless. It's strange to wake up and not have any teams to check on and lose my marbles over. :roll: