Mitchell Field:
CLASS OF 1990
Randallstown High SchoolClass of 1990
Randallstown, MD
Anne Arundel Community CollegeClass of 2007
Arnold, MD
Belle Grove Elementary SchoolClass of 1984
Baltimore, MD
Mitchell's Story
Life
Let's see... I grew up in Brooklyn Park and Randallstown, with a stopover in Germany. I remember Germany with the sort of exaggerated fondness that comes of not having been in a place for many years, and eventually need to go back to see what it's really like. :-) Went through most of school as an intentional outsider, because I didn't want to bother figuring out how to relate to my peers... Sorry, guys, I'm finding out in retrospect how much I missed out on like that. Joined the Navy in 1990, because I saw how much college cost back then and panicked; never did get any real good out of my GI Bill benefits, either, because I couldn't get my head back together soon enough. The military was very traumatic for me, wrong place at the wrong time in my life. Back then, I was an artist and a dreamer more than anything else. Now, I'm starting to recover some of that, finally. After the military, I tried a variety of jobs, none of them good; I painted houses, I cleaned parking lots, I had a slew of jobs so brief and crappy that I can't even remember them offhand... Then I went into security. Not bad, really, it gave one time to think and study on night shift, so I was able to try to go back to school for a while. I worked at a variety of sites, each one slightly better than the last. College didn't work out, though; I found out that getting off of work at 8AM and trying to go to classes at 8:30AM was just cutting it too close. Eventually, in '97, I went down to New Orleans to go to school full time, and moved in with one of my best friends, and old navy buddy, James Stromberg. That was an entertaining year. I learned quite a bit, but not much of it was in class... :-) Heh. New Orleans is a fun place, but not somewhere to try to live and go to school is all I can say. While I was there, I met my future roommates, Matt and Dee, who by the way if you read this CONTACT ME FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! When I moved back up to Maryland in the summer of '98, I went back into security work; eventually Matt and Dee moved up here as well, and we tried sharing an apartment for a year, which is how I finally figured out that I am very hard to live with. I don't know how my wife puts up with me... :-) Anyway, eventually they moved on, and disappeared from the face of the Earth as far as I can tell. A shame really, I miss them. In the winter of 2000, I decided I had had enough of working as a security guard, and went to work at a movie theater. I was there for two years, and enjoyed it immensely; alas, the pay was, well, less than adequate. On the up side, that was where I met my wife, Ellen. We had been occasionally working together in the box office ...Expand for more
for almost two years when I finally asked her out. We dated briefly, and then got engaged; while we were dating, I changed jobs to my current one (I now work for the TSA at BWI Airport). Ellen and I were married in the early morning on December 31, 2002, and bought a new house together the following year. We have been together for almost four years now, and while we still aren't living the "good life", we're mostly making ends meet. Things are getting better, and should continue to do so. I am trying to find the money to do a patent search for an I dea I have, and my father and a friend of ours and I are in the process of writing a game, so hopefully soon one or the other or both of those will start to bring in some extra money.
Military
Not sure I want to write this one. The military was NOT a good time in my life. I was just out of high school, and had never been away from home before. What a way to do it...
I went off to boot camp the day after x-mas, in '90. Desert Storm was still going on, and I expected to go over to be part of that when I got to the fleet. When I finally did get out of boot (five weeks after I should have) I was sent to the USS Prairie, AD-15. As it turns out, this was a good thing for me; the rickety old girl and I were a good fit. She has since been scrapped (I was part of the decom crew, even), and I actually find myself missing her occasionally, despite everything. I made a few good friends there, most of whom I've managed to find again here, but I also went through some very rough times there. I had my first experience with clinical depression, and my first and only suicide attempt. I had a good friend kill himself because of the actions of the CO and XO. I screwed things up with my (at the time) fiancee, and never have managed to quite fix some of the problems that caused. I got a hernia, and very nearly hamstrung myself. I watched helplessly as someone I considered a big sister had her life fall apart when her fiancee died without warning from an illness nobody knew he had. In short, while it wasn't ALL bad, a lot of it sucked. Then, after two years there, we decommissioned her, and I went to USS Jarrett, FFG-33. All told, I much preferred the Prairie... I was still massively depressed, half of deck department (all male on this ship, and me not interested in guys) tried to climb into my rack at various points, and how the heck do you stay awake driving the ship when the steering wheel is this dinky little thing you can work with one finger?!, I nearly died (unintentionally!) choking while I was mess cranking, I did permanent damage to my arm... Blah. It was a mess. All in all, I'm glad I'm out.
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