Which ATS members actually have interesting lives?

I grew up in a town (12 people, family was 6 of em) that was 45 miles from any decent sized town (1,000+). Nothing but public land to run around on.

Joined the Navy and was 2 weeks from completing nuclear propulsion school as a Machinist Mate when they dropped me due to my lack of intelligence in electrical theory, re-trained as a fire control technician (all electrical theory) and spent a couple years on a fast attack submarine where I got to drive a multi-billion dollar vehicle every 12 hours for 6 hours. Did torpedo evasion training, emergency blows while at the helm (and what a rush!).

Got out, got into wildland firefighting with the federal government. Started as a lowly firefighter type 2 (knowledgeable enough to dig a trench with a tool) and moved up to Engine Module leader (ran a type-6 engine with a crew of 4) as an Incident Commander 4 and Single-Resource Boss where I was directing 20-man crews, helicopter, airtankers and making wildfires fear the thought of my presence. Fought fires throughout the Rocky Mountain region and parts of Oregon and Washington. Picked up pieces of the Columbia when it crashed in 2002 I believe, even found a couple of pieces that helped determine the cause of the accident.

reply to post by Partygirl

How about famous people? Have any well-known people ever been outed here? Or rich people, those with unusual jobs or life missions?

Yes, Yes, Yes, and Yes.

I can't answer the particulars, but we've had internationally known singers and actors as members, of course many well-known UFOlogists, and of course non-celebrity members such as former SEALs, NASA, and other interesting jobs.

I've got a pretty normal life now, being middle management at a software company...but in the past, I've lived in both Alaska and Saudi Arabia...and even once (very, very briefly) was in a CIA trainee program. My wife and I's wedding was on TLC's "A Wedding Story" some years back, so kind of my 15 seconds of fame....

Nice thread PG. It's a nice distraction from all the doom and gloom that occupies most of this territory.

On the surface one could say that I lead a normal life. I work 3rd shift now as a merchandise stocker for a major company because the online writing pays too sporadically to support my wife and 12 year old daughter. I have another daughter, 22 years old, hwo lives in the valley and is a product of an inrerracial marriage. I still write online from time to time because I've always enjoyed writing. I started writhing poetry and lyrics when I was 15, and currently have almost 400 of those sitting in a bottom drawer of my roll top desk. Collecting dust for the most part. I also hold the keys to and mange roughly 1 million dollars worth of distressed commercial and residential real estate in northern Arizona. When I say distressed I mean both physically and because of the geographical location of where it all is. The main reason I do it is because I love my step mother, who's a sweetheart and who owns it all, and it gives me a very nice home to live in rent free.

In my 46 years I've had my fingers in a lot of pies, but to make a long story short, I was born with a great amount of intelligence handed down to me by my father whom I never knew. He was an Air Force pilot and did computer maintenance for the military in the '50's. The social circumstances in which I grew up did not afford me with the opportunties to take that intelligence and make something profitable out of it. Looking back on it all, it would be easy to see why people would have considered me a loser in life. But only on the surface.

To my mothers credit, she provided a lot of love for me and my 4 brothers, also fatherless, but that's about all she could provide. It was a hard life, but that love she provided when we were young proved to be the foundation that I fell back on many times when I slipped and fell in life. That, and my love for music kept hope alive within me that I would eventually do OK. My brothers always seemed to have it a bit easier then I did though in regards to adapting to the real world. All things considered pragmatically though, I'm lucky not to be dead or in jail right now.

I was always a watcher. I watched people, paid attention, kept an open mind and learned about life that way. I've always been the quiet type who read a lot and didn't get involved with people more than I had to. I still am today, but not to the same extent as when I was younger and for different reasons.

Did I, or do I now, have an interesting life? Define interesting.

If there is one song that that has sumed up my life thus far, it would be this:

www.youtube.com...

(Just in case this link doesn't work. It's acting weird)

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