My favorite time of the week is Saturday morning, when I host a history class/discussion group at the facility. It started out being about local history 'cause there are people living here who come from all over the country and I wanted them to be familiar with what a cool city this is. 

Then we started talking about WWII and I began to learn firsthand about what it was like to grow up during the war. We have residents who served overseas and residents who built planes. We have a resident who was interned and another who was in Hawaii and watched the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. We've got someone whose father was in the German army, and another who witnessed the Allies bomb a factory in Denmark with Nazi officers in it. The Nazis were using civilians as a human shield on the top floor and the Allies managed to take out the Nazi officers on the ground floor. It was a huge success until one of the planes lost control and crashed into a school killing about 100 children. He barely got the story out before he had to get up and leave. 

Another resident grew up in Liverpool. She was eight when the war started and thirteen when it was over. She said there are no pictures of her and her family in that whole time because there was no film available due to the threat of spies. She says there's a five year gap in most English family's history during that dark time. 

Her house got bombed twice. The first time when she was ten. It was before they were given a metal bomb shelter that they shared with their next door neighbor. She said the whole back of the brick house was knocked off and it was mayhem. Sirens blaring, planes overhead, bombs exploding.

The Constable, some old veteran form WWI, came over and started yelling at her father to get the light out on the second floor. It was a blackout and now there was a lightbulb visible that would give the Germans something to aim at. He started screaming at him to "Get that light out! Get that light out!!"

Her father couldn't get past the debris to get in and kill the power, so he picked up a brick and heaved it at the light. He missed, so he picked up another brick and tried again. Miss. He tried a third time and missed again. 

Her mother yelled, "GODDAMIT GEORGE!" and picked up a rock and hit it on the first try. He swore up a storm while everybody laughed and dodged for cover. 

Her father rebuilt the house, and was always a good sport while the family recalled their favorite wartime memory. 

I've been working at a senior living facility for the past year and as much as I love being there, I can't afford it. So I gave my notice and reached out to a tour company, where I spent a couple seasons as a Captain, and a friend who manages the city's bridge tenders. 

The tour company hired me right away and got me back into training. And then Greg got back to me with a possible temporary position on the bridges that may turn to full-time in a year or so. 

I was telling all this to a friend and I thought with all the downtime on the bridge I should probably start up a blog. Maybe call it 'Off My Meds' because how funny would it be to be a bipolar bridge tender who wasn't taking his medication? 

But offmymeds.com was taken so I snagged backonmymeds.com instead, which is not only more accurate, but certainly smarter career-wise. 

It'll be probably a month or so before I'm sitting up on the University or South Park bridge with enough downtime to start posting blogs about how interesting it is to raise and lower one of the city's five drawbridges. But I'm starting this blog anyway just to push myself because that's what people do, right?

I may write about the amazing people I work with at the senior living facility. People who lived through WWII and are considered part of the Greatest Generation, which is a huge understatement. And I may rant about the greatest threat to our democracy in my lifetime, donald trump. And I may just tell a couple stupid stories. I don't know yet. We'll see. 

Check back in a few weeks.