Zel-kun’s Words

Junior Year…  I guess I could say this was a year of transition for me.  During the summer, I had spent my time renting anime from the local Blockbuster, and watching it on the VCR.  It was grainy and there was the occasional line of static, but VHS was still predominent, and that’s what I had in my bedroom.  My stepdad had a DVD player, probably cost him a few hundred dollars, but he always liked having the latest technology.

There was nothing really special on the academic front, I basically floated through my classes without any real effort.  I could usually get away with listening while I read a book, and then pass the test.  Some classes I actually had to write notes, and some had teachers that weren’t boring, but for the most part, it was a haze.

I had biology, which was fun.  I had a teacher that knew everything you ever needed to know about biology.  The class started with cellular structure, and worked its way up from there.  Eventually, we were dissecting things big and small.  It wasn’t my favorite thing to do, but at least it made time fly when we were cutting up little creatures.  I ended up always making a little extra money selling extra pairs of latex gloves for a dollar a piece.  The teacher didn’t need gloves, he’d always reach right down into whatever dead animal was before him without any hesitation.  I’ve seen him rip the exoskeleton right off of a crawfish with his bare hands.

Finally, it was time to dissect a rat.  It was disgusting even before we cut it open.  Coarse yellow hair, giant teeth, and a long tail.  Then cutting it open released an unearthly stench that probably shaved a few years off my life.  One of the things we had to do was measure the small intestine.  I’m not sure if you ever seen a rat’s small intestine, but it’s not pretty.  Slowly I severed the tissue binding it together, handing the other end to my lab partner.  We finally have it inravelled, when her grip on the tweezers slip.

Interesting thing about a stretched out small intestine… it’s like a long disgusting rubber band.  And when one person lets go of their end, the other person has less than a second to see an intestinal whip zooming towards their face.  So, yes, I was smacked in the face with a rat’s small intestine, leaving a spray of the fetid digestive leavings within.  It was by some miracle that I didn’t throw up all over the place.

I signed up to be an Ambassador, which is a fancy word for ‘guy who sits near the front door and tells visitors where to go.’  It took place of my study hall last hour of the day, and usually meant I could sneak out a few minutes early.  On top of that,I was completely unsupervised so if I nodded off while reading, no one noticed.  Not many people visited during the last hour of school, so it wasn’t very busy.

Not long after I started, another student signed up to be an Ambassador.  I had a partner.

Enter Craig.

From the start, Craig was not shy in the least.  He sat down and began talking right off.  I found out quickly that we both played the same games and were both fans of anime, which, even though the Pokemon craze was beginning to kick into full gear, wasn’t all that common.

Craig was the first ‘cool’ friend I ever had.  He dressed in the coolest clothes, he had that ‘I don’t care’ attitude, and he was unfailingly friendly.  Needless to say, last hour became a lot of fun.  Craig was also the friend present during the bowling alley incident mentioned in the earlier chapter ‘Psycho.’ 

He never did let me live that down.

Sophomore year began on a low note.  My grandmother had passed away, and my grandfather wasn’t far behind.  I had spent the summer drowning myself in console RPG’s, and didn’t take too kindly to reality reasserting itself.

When school began, I picked up The Gunslinger, the first book of the Dark Tower, an epic by Stephen King.  I ended up spending every free moment reading it, even in class.  This didn’t seem to detract from my grades, so I continued to read.  Now and again a teacher would ask me a question while my nose was buried in a book, and I’d be able to answer it.  After a few times, they stopped bothering me.

My lunch hour did not coincide with that of any of my lunch companions from the previous year, so I took to spending the lunch hour in the library, where I enjoyed the quiet a lot more than I ever enjoyed the long lines and the unhealthy food.

I didn’t have any friends my Sophomore year, but I also didn’t have any enemies.  I kept to myself, and the world kept to itself.  It was like a ceasefire agreement that I was perfectly happy about.  In early Fall, I finally cut ties with Jason.  After trying to throw me in a freezing pool on a 40 degree day to impress some girls, I decided that maybe it would be best that I threw him to the ground and left.  I never spoke to him again.

At some point during the year, I began writing.  I can’t really say what inspired me to pick up the pen, just that it felt like the right thing to do.  The work produced during this time is too horrible to mention.  I had the misfortune of finding a bit of it in my files when I was getting ready to move to Chicago, and had to throw it out.

Some writing is meant to never be read.

Also, at some point during this year, I was flipping through the channels, and stopped on the Sci-Fi channel, seeing a cartoon.  It was strangely animated, and full of violence and despair.  I had never seen anything like it.  When it was over, I did not know what I had seen, but knew I wanted to watch more like it.  And so, I was exposed to anime.

For awhile it was limited to catching an old anime movie at 2:00 in the morning on the Sci-Fi Channel.  It wasn’t until I met Craig that I really started to get into it.

But that’s a story for another chapter.

The year was 1996.

The place was Merrillville High School.

It was the largest school I had ever been in, easily three times as large as the middle school, with high walls, loud buzzers, and a crowded lecture hall that looked more like an amphitheater.  On top of that, I broke three metacarpals (those bones that connect your fingers to your writst) on my right hand over the summer on a 4-wheeler, so I only had the use of one hand to carry my books.  It was a little intimidating.

The more observant reader my find a problem with this.  In eighth grade, I failed all my classes save for English, surely this was enough to warrant me being held back?

The more observant reader would be correct.  I came very close to being held back.  I know my parents fought to let me continue on to high school, though I’m not certain what was said.  I AM certain that my diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) influenced the case.  I also like to think that my sudden improvement in English also influenced the decision to let me move ahead.

So I entered high school on one condition: I would be placed in… Special Education.

That’s right.  Special Ed.  I remember that I sat next to a kid who would routinely stare gape-mouthed at me and randomly shout out, “Bumblebee Tuna!”  There were a couple kids who seemed to have honest learning disabilities, but by and large, they fit into two categories:

Slackers and Un-teachables

Slackers were just that, kids that didn’t try in the least.  They could probably learn, they just chose not to.

Un-teachable is my kind word for someone who is severely mentally handicapped, someone who barely grasps speech, let alone concepts such as mathematics or literature.  I have nothing but sympathy for people like this, but it seems like a waste to spend money and time trying to teach someone who can’t understand what you’re saying for years on end.

While I DID have Attention Deficit Disorder, I can say that I fit into the ‘Slacker’ category.  It took me having to sit between a guy who laughed randomly at the wall and a guy who stared blankly into space, even when you were speaking to him, to give me the kick in the ass I needed.

I bought a notepad, and told myself I would start taking notes.  These ‘notes’ usually ended up being idle doodles while I was listening, but keeping a portion of my brain occupied on doodling kept the rest of my brain focused on the lecture, oddly enough.  My tests quickly became A’s and B’s, and when the time came for the Special Ed students to be separated from the class for their remedial learning, I refused.  So, it wasn’t long before I removed myself entirely, with the exception of Special Study Hall, which after I aced their complicated tests (with such challenging questions as 4+3=?), they left me alone.

This was also the year I began reading books.  And, to spite all those conservatives out there that maintain that video games bring nothing but ignorance and violence, I have a video game to thank for getting me into literature.

It was Lord of the Rings, Volume One, a horrible RPG that had only one redeeming quality, the story.  I knew it was based on a book, so I went to the library to ask for Lord of the Rings.  The librarian handed me ‘The Hobbit,’ and there started my life of books, I haven’t been long without a book since.

So this year began my intellectual development, and it also began my social life.  As stated in previous chapters, I never fit in with any of the cliques, I was lucky if I had a single fair-weather friend, let alone a whole group to hang out with.  This year was somewhat different, and yet not all at the same time.  It was this year that I met Jason.

Jason is the very definition of a fair-weather friend.  Nice when we’re not with other kids, but will turn the moment the ‘cool people’ start wandering too close.  Of course, I didn’t notice it at the time.  And even though I was starting to take a more detached view towards the whole ‘friendship’ thing, a part of me was still desperate for it.  So when this kid I didn’t know sat next to me during orientation and said, “These things are always boring as hell,” I merely smiled and nodded.

Through Jason, I met some people who became something of acquaintances.  I couldn’t name any of them, nor have I exchanged more than two or three words at a time.  But they were other people at the lunch table, so not eating at an empty table was something entirely new.  All in all, I guess it was a little bit of social progress.

By the time the end of the school year came around, I made the Honor Roll for the first time since the second grade, and had finished the Lord of the Rings.  I didn’t get any spitwads launched at me, and didn’t even get into a fight.  All in all, it was a pretty good year.

If I were to average it out, I would say that the year I attended eighth grade (1995-96) at Clifford Pierce Middle School as the worst year I have ever experienced.

That’s right, it was the worst year of my life.

I had just moved in with my father, which was a trying experience in and of itself. Before I had lived with my mother, and the two were about as opposite as could be. At my mother’s house I was never expected to do anything. I had to clean my room occasionally, but that was about it. This was very much not the case at my father’s house.

I was expected to participate in the household chores, mowing the lawn, washing dishes, cleaning the bathroom, picking up after the dog (a GREAT DANE), and even vacuming. On top of that, I was expected to take initiatve to do these chores, something I was not very good at doing. So, it was a very hard transition.

In my adult mind, I am very grateful to my father for expecting so much from me. It was not easy, and there were times then when I regretted moving in with him, but it was for the best. Thanks to him, I now have a work ethic, I now take initiative with things, if it weren’t for him, I’m sure I would be much worse off than I am.

So if you ever read this, thanks dad.

So, on top of moving in, I also had to take the bus to school for the first time, which meant I got to experience the ‘joys’ of hanging with all the schoolkids about an hour and a half earlier than normal. I’m not sure what it was, but something about my back encouraged people to spit, shoot spitwads, and throw bits of paper at it.

For the record, that ‘ignore them and they’ll go away’ nonsense that my teachers always taught me doesn’t work in the least.

During the year, I also tripped and fell down a flight of stairs, which isn’t the best thing I could have done to increase my reputation or ‘cool’ factor.

I had my nose broken by a kid in math class. He made a not-so-nice comment about my weight (I weighed nearly the same then as I do now, but was more than a foot shorter, I was… hefty), and I allowed myself to get angry at it. He responded to my angry retort by busting my nose. Noses bleed a LOT.

In the schoolyard, I was jumped by a black kid and got beat up pretty good until a teacher pulled him off of me. Thus began the largest political battle of my life, and also the reason that to this day, I have absolutely no faith in school administrators.

As I sat in the principal’s office, rubbing my aching jaw, the assistant principal came in after talking to my attacker. The AP sat down and asked why I called the boy who beat me up the ‘N’ word.

That’s right, you heard me.

I, of course, had done nothing of the sort, and protested as such. But the AP would hear none of that, and slapped down a large pink slip that said that the next four saturday’s of my life, I would spend in detention. I’m not sure how it worked in other schools, but in my school, a detention was not valid unless signed by both the teacher and the student, who then both get a carbon copy. I refused to sign it. It was the first time I ever defied authority.

Of course, he yelled at me, demanding I sign it, and I continued to refuse. He then pulled out what he THOUGHT was his secret weapon, my parents’ phone numbers. He called my mother, and told her the story. She thought the allegations were incredulous, and told him that I would not serve a detention for something I did not do.

I was sent home, and that evening I talked to my parents. They asked in kind tones whether or not I actually said that racist remark, and I assured them that I did not. The next day, they went to the school and had whatever meeting they had. Whether they met with the principal or the black boy’s parents (sorry for referring to him as ‘the black boy’ but even then I had no idea who he was), I don’t know. This continued the next few days, my parents talking with the school, arguing with them that I am being wrongfully accused.

Finally, the monday after I was supposed to have my first saturday detention, I was called into the AP’s office, where he asked me one last time to sign the detention slip. I once again refused. Then, the most surreal moment of my life happens.

A crying girl is brought into the office and says, “Yes, that’s the one who beat me!”

Ewha!?

I was utterly dumbfounded. I had never met the girl before, let alone beat her. I was floored, but I still stood up and yelled that I never saw the girl before in my life. They basically said I seem to not stand up for my actions quite a bit, and tell me I either sign this NEW slip for four saturday detentions for beating a girl up, or I am going to be expelled.

I think that if the same thing happened to me today, I would have just walked out of the office and left. But I didn’t. I signed the slip dejectedly, and committed the next month’s worth of saturday’s to detention.

As an aside, saturday detention is the most boring thing I’ve ever experienced. They take your bookbag at the door, and walk you into a white room (white walls, floors, ceiling) with a number of desks all set up against and facing the wall. You then sit there for two hours until they give you a bathroom break, then sit there for another two hours, no book to read, no homework to do, nothing.

While that was going on, my grades continued to slip, I couldn’t concentrate on anything the teachers went on about. Every time I tried to listen to the teachers, I would drift off instantly. When the tests came, they may as well have been written in Swahili, I would have had just as good a chance at getting them right.

The only class I did not fail was English, and it was only because I had a single teacher who actually attempted to teach me, I remember his name, Mr. Niksich.

Mr. Niksich replaced the regular English teach during the last quarter, Miss…. I can’t remember her name. We’ll call her Ms. B, and you can guess what that stands for.

Ms. B was, succinctly, the embodiment of everything a teacher should not be. She was sarcastic, condescending, and apathetic. She seemed to have it out for me, but maybe it was my imagination. You can be the judge:

I gave a presentation for class, it had to be a five page report on something, I picked dalmations because I had one at the time. I spent a whole weekend at the library researching (remember going to do research?! No intarnets! OMG!!!!!111one). I got a D on the paper, and at the end of the presentation, the comment, “Well that wasn’t very interesting, who wants to go next?”

I was discussing another presentation with my partner, when she announced, “Its time for your presentation, so you can stop talking about broadway musicals.” (I wasn’t talking about musicals, which made me very confused as to that statement. It was only recently looking back that I slap my head and go, “ohhhhhhh.”)

I tried my hardest to read an excruciatingly boring book entitled “Across Five Aprils,” which took place during the Civil War is memory serves. I couldn’t concentrate on it, nor could I understand the points the author was trying to make. I tried talking to the teacher regarding the book, and she simply said, “If you’re reading the book, then you should understand.” I failed the test on the book, and in big red letters on the test she wrote, “Well, its a good thing you were reading.”

Anyhow, she left (with any luck, she caught leprosy) and Mr. Niksich took over. Many times, after the lesson, he would actually sit with me and go over the finer points, and in the end, I began to pass the tests. Suddenly my grades in that class were A’s and B’s. I even got to do some much-needed extra credit. With all of that, it was enough to pull my low F in the class up to a C.

I am grateful to Mr. Niksich, but it wasn’t enough to pull up the rest of my abyssmal grades. And I’ll get deeper into what happened with all that in the next chapter.

Another chapter that jumps around random points, but it somehow seems appropriate to write this chapter.  Those closest to me don’t really know what my beliefs are, Zai herself has remarked, “I have no idea what (religion) you are.”  So here is a chapter dedicated to the evolution of my beliefs throughout my life.

My earliest encounter with religion that I remember is when I was about eight or nine (1989, 1990).  Before that I was baptized Methodist, but I was an infant, so that barely counts.  I was playing in the backyard (crazy, I know, bear with me) and I saw my neighbor across the fence gardening.  She was an elderly lady with a lush garden of flowers I never seen before.  So I started commenting on the flowers.

We were talking (about what, I could only guess, probably how much work raising a garden like that takes) and she mentioned she was going to head to church.

“Church?” I ask, “What’s that?”  Its true.  At that point in my life, I had never been to church, it wasn’t really part of the Sunday ritual.  We didn’t say grace before meals, nor did we pray before bed.  Religion was an unknown concept to me at that point.

“Its where you go to worship God.”  She replied.  God, I had heard of.  ‘My God’ and ‘God dammit’ were phrases I had heard around the house, and I knew the basics of ‘Good = Heaven’.

Like the curious kid I was, I ask if I can go to church with her, to which she agreed, as long as my parents were okay with it.

As I look back on this event with an adult’s mind, I can only imagine how surreal it must have been.  There’s my mom, come home from a long day at work and cooking up whatever meal, when I, a small child, walk up and ask if I can go to church with our neighbor.

I really don’t remember asking, and I don’t remember what my mom’s reaction was.  But she must have agreed, because there I stood on Sunday morning in the finest clothes I owned, with the shirt tucked in, my hair combed and my fingernails clipped (all things I would never do of my own accord).

Stuart and Connie, my neighbors, were as traditional an elderly couple as you can imagine.  Their home was decorated with antiques, plastic on the furniture, quiet demeanors, and devout churchgoers.  The church they went to was on one of the main roads in Lansing, Illinois, inside a remodled house tucked back from the road a bit.  If it weren’t for the sign in front, you’d never know it was a church.  The service was held in the living room, and Sunday School upstairs.

I was one of a few children there.  The other three being girls.  I can’t remember their names, but the oldest one, about the same age as me, had a mild english accent.  It was fun because we became something of friends.  Sunday School was only half an hour, so we got to play outside while we waited for the main service to be over.  All in all, I would say it was a worthwhile experience.

The Religion: Christian Science.

Those two words don’t normally go together, its almost a paradox to use them.  But in a nutshell, they believe in the power and protection of God above all else, including modern science and medicine.  If you were in danger, if you were sick, God was there.  Medicine was the work of man, and unnacceptable.

I’m sure there are finer nuances to the religion, but this is the knowledge carried over from my childhood.  Along with the typical biblical teachings, I was taught that medicine was bad, and that there was nothing that the power of God could not cure.  It was somewhat ironic, being as I was constantly on medication.  Even while at the church, I had some ritalin in me.

But, as the impressionable child I was, I started taking the teachings to heart.  I questioned my mother everytime she gave me the pill, asking her why I took medicine if God said it was bad.  I’m sure that was more than a mild annoyance.  On the plus side, I also no longer tried to sneak home, hiding from older children who might wish to beat me up.  I felt the power of God would protect me.  Of course, it didn’t, and I still had to defend myself.  But the absence of that fear is important, I feel.  Despite everything, you should live your life.

I think on some level, I still carry that courage with me.

It was only a matter of time before I was no longer allowed to go to that church.  I remember that my mother took my brother and I to a Methodist church a couple times, likely an attempt to give me a taste of our family religion, but I honestly don’t remember a thing.

By the time I was in 8th grade (1995), I was going to church every Sunday, a Methodist church only a few blocks from my mother’s house in Merrillville.  I sat in the congregation, I took communion, I sang the hymns, I prayed every night before bed, and I wore a silver cross around my neck.

Yes, folks, I was religious.

I hope you don’t think less of me.

Then a series of events changed my outlook on life (most between 1996-1997).  Some of these I’ll delve into in another chapter, and there’s one I’ll keep to myself.  People died, people changed, and lifelong family ties were shattered.  In the end, I cast the silver cross aside.

I can remember one of the last times I went to church, and one of the reasons why I stopped going.  I was a sophomore in high school (1997), sitting there on a warm spring morning, when the pastor began talking of recent events, of how another pastor committed the sin of marrying a gay couple.  She went on to say how wrong this was, of how the church should not let such an horrid event repeat.  And I thought to myself, “Why the hell not?  Why is it so wrong?  And why do they see themselves fit to judge others?”

By the time I was a senior (1999), I was a self-described agnostic.  I had stopped praying, stopped looking to the sky for answers, and have not been to church in two years, much to my mother’s disappointment.  It was during this time that I had a discussion with Jeff, still a good friend of mine, about life and the nature of divinity.  Jeff is an atheist, and his views on death in a godless world scared the hell out of me at the time.  More and more I thought of the implausability of religion, and while I couldn’t classify myself as an atheist, I was very close to that.

In my second year of college (2002), I learned about Shinto, which is a Japanese religion.  Being the japophile I was at the time, I ate it up.  There’s deities and mythologies I won’t get into, and many different branches (including Shinto-Christians).  But what piqued my interest was Shinto Animism, which is the belief that ALL life is sacred, that the spirit of divinity is everywhere.

So, for awhile, this is how I labelled myself.  I can’t really say for how long, but maybe a year or two.  I bought a little stone that I carried around engraved with the ‘tree’ symbol, which is commonly worshipped in Shinto. 

This was also the first time I distanced myself from Christianity.  At first, it was semantic, I just wasn’t Christian.  But it didn’t take long for me to hate Christians.  Everytime I saw one, they were preaching to me.  If they found out I wasn’t Christian, they preached harder, and hurled threats of hell at me.

During my work at Wal-Mart, I had been told I was going to hell many times.  Sometimes by co-workers, other times by customers.  And in case you’re wondering why my religion somehow got brought up to a customer, this is how it usually went down:

“I like gospel, but your gospel section isn’t very large,” a customer would say.
“Sorry,” I would reply, not really caring. I was wearing a blue vest and listening to some old lady yammer on about gospel music getting paid six dollars an hour, honestly wasn’t into the whole ‘caring’ scene.
“Do you like gospel?” She would ask.
“Ah… I don’t overly care for it,” I would say, being truthful why attempting to skip past the deadly trap being set up.
“What church do you go to?” She would persist.
“I don’t,” I reply again, knowing that the inevitable is coming.
“You don’t!? Don’t you want to show praise to Jesus?” She demands.
“I’m not Christian.”

And then the fireworks would come.

I guess I began to fall out of it when I began to ask myself if I didn’t believe simply because it was Japanese, or whether I only believed in it because it wasn’t Christianity.

On Christianity:

It took me a long time to stop hating Christians and their holier than thou attitude. I have my good friend Paul to thank for that. I’m pretty sure I mentioned it in a past post, but I’ll say it again so its in this little autobiography. Paul is a devout Christian, and has NEVER, not once, ever preached to me. He has never made me feel like I was somehow beneath him, or destined to go to hell. He is helpful and generous, everything an ideal Christian should be. And again, non-judgmental. Knowing him has let me know that not all Christians are out to preach how much better than me they are.

In the years following that, I picked up a little Bhuddism. I never labelled myself as a Bhuddist, but I loved some of the teachings and took them to heart. For example, the freeing of yourself from want, and the belief that all life deserves the same chance to live.

So where am I now?  Where do my beliefs lie?  Did I go back to being agnostic? Did I got back to Shintoism? Do I worship the Christian God and all His works?

I can say a little of each.

I don’t know whether or not God exists. I like to believe so, there’s a lot of little miracles that we take for granted. I like to believe that a good life follows a good person. I belive in karma, I’ve seen it in action a few times. I believe that there is a bit of spirituality in everything, for better or for worse. I also believe that if Jesus existed, he was a good guy. At worst, he was simply a man who wandered the land preaching peace, acceptance, and understanding to a land that truly needed it, taking his beliefs so far as to die for them. So even at worst, he’s a man worth taking a cue from.

So, I’m not sure what you’d call someone such as me. Can’t say I really belong to any religion, but I’ve always been something of a loner, so perhaps that’s okay. But at the very least, maybe those few who read this and were curious, can get a little bit of insight on the workings of my mind.

This chapter is a little different because it skips around different time periods.  I can’t see the story being told here being broken up, it just wouldn’t make sense.  So here it is, in its entirety, the story of Rose.

My first girlfriend.

The story begins in the spring of 1995, during my second year of middle school, seventh grade.  We had a class field trip to Indiana Beach, which didn’t really have any educational value whatsoever.  Its an amusement park.  Its a nice thing to know that the tax dollars that went towards my education were spent wisely.

Picture a short, fat kid with unruly hair, and you have me in seventh grade.  It was about noon and I had my fill of the crowds and the heat, and so I sat in the shade of the food stand.  There I met her, a sweet-looking girl, offering me a can of coke.

I hadn’t brought any money to the trip, so I was more than grateful for something to drink.  We struck up a conversation (can’t for the life of me remember what about), and became friends.

The friendship continued for a year or so.  I went to her house, played video games, we went bowling, went to movies, it was fun.  Then she asked me to a dance.  I figured why not, here’s a girl, and she’s asking me to a dance.

The dance itself went about as well as can be expected, with me awkwardly tripping over my own feet, and doing my best (and failing), to not make a complete ass out of myself.  We sat a couple dances out and I figured I’d do it, I’d ask my friend if she’d like to start dating.

She seemed to really enjoy the idea.

So things went on pretty much as they had, except now there was a hug thrown in every once in awhile.  Really didn’t think about it, I just rolled along.  That was until Valentine’s Day.

We got each other cards, of course, and spent the day together.  I can’t remember what we did, I think we watched a tape at my house or something.  That was back when people watched tapes.

At the end of the day, being Valentine’s Day, I kissed her, and it was like kissing a dead fish.  I realized then that I was no romantic interest in her at all.  I tried to convince myself this wasn’t true, but through the next couple weeks, I just felt more and more awkward and uncomfortable around her.

I decided it was time to break it off, to go back to being just friends.  I call her up (bad idea, I know in my wiser years), and tell her I think we should be friends.  I THEN discover I had chosen to do this on the same day her dog died.

Nice.

I’m pretty sure that at that moment, I was the punchline to some cosmic joke.

After some consoling, she agrees, and our friendship returns to normal…. almost normal.

We don’t see each other as much, we drift apart.  By the time high school starts, we probably only get together once a month.  And it was in the beginning of my Freshman year, the fall of 1996 that things took an odd turn.

Another friend (more on him in a future chapter) and I thought that Saturday would be a good day to go bowling.  I decide it would also be a good idea to invite Rose.  We arrange to meet at the bowling alley at 1:00.

I wash up and get ready, and then wait to be picked up by my friend and his father.  This was in the days before I drove, so I relied on other people to cart me around.  We end up getting to the alley at about 1:10.  After a walk-around, we don’t see Rose anywhere, so we kill time at the arcade that’s in the front entrance (We were playing Soul Edge).  When I look at the clock and see its 2:00, I decide I’d give Rose a call and see why she’s late.

I call and her mother answers the phone.  She then proceeds to yell at me about standing Rose up.

Ehwa?

I explain that I had arrived ten minutes late, and apologize.  I am questioned on why I am just now calling.  I reply that I thought Rose was late and that I was waiting for her, and apologize again.  This goes on for several minutes, me apologizing and trying to calm down an angry mother, and my friend barely containing his laughter.

I finally calm her down and convince Rose to come to the bowling alley.  We bowl and have fun, and that was the end of it.  Except for the being made fun of for being whipped by a girl I wasn’t even dating anymore.  It was not the end of that.

Awhile later I mention that there was some new movie or another coming out, and that maybe we should catch it sometime.  The following monday, I get a call from Rose.

We talk for a solid ten minutes before she finally screams into the phone, “Where were you on Saturday!?”

Ehwa?

I think this is one of the first times in my life I am so shocked my brain shuts down for a moment.  She lays into me about how we were supposed to see the movie saturday, and how I stood her up at the theatre.

I cannot stress enough at this point that I did not make any arrangements of any sort.  I had idly pointed out that I’d like to see a movie sometime.  And if she had expected to see the movie that particular day, maybe she should have clued me in.

After yelling at me for what seemed like an eternity, she slammed down the phone.  She had hung up.

My first instinct was to call her back, but I decided against it.  If she was still my girlfriend, maybe I’d consider it, but I did not appreciate being treated in such a way by my FRIEND.  I had decided that she was in the wrong, and she could call me back if she wanted to apologize.

The call never came.

Fast forward several years (circa 2003) to me working at Wal-Mart.  I stood there in electronics, and in she walked.  Like the fight had just happened yesterday, she morose and downcast, saying that we should ‘talk things over’ over some coffee after work.  She gave me her number and left.

I had a choice to make.  I could either call her, and perhaps open up the same issues as a few years ago.  Or I could toss the number and be rid of her forever.  I thought about it for a couple of days, asked some friends online what I should do.  Eventually, I decided to rip up the number.

End of story… no.

I see her time and again in my department.  Each time I send another associate to deal with her.  Each time they told me that she was just looking.

I see her being interviewed by HR at the front of the store.  I dreaded the thought of having to work with her.  I found out she had applied for a position in electronics.  HR asked me if I knew her and what I thought about her.  I decided to not sabotage her directly.  Even if she was seriosuly starting to creep me out, it wouldn’t be right.

I simply reply, “I know her, she’s a decent person, though I really wouldn’t be comfortable working with her.”  That probably cost her the job, but I was telling the truth.

Later, when I started my final semester of college, I pick out a seat in my literature class and wait for the professor to show up.  She takes attendance and I hear Rose’s name.  I also hear her voice from directly behind me.

If I was a little creeped out before, I was severely creeped out now.  I see her in my class, around campus, she seemed to be everywhere.  This continued until I abruptly left school (more on that later), and then left Indiana entirely.

It should be pointed out that my mother LOVED Rose.  In fact, until I began dating Zai, I could still find pictures of her hanging around the house.  That is my house in Illinois, in 2005, roughly a decade since my mother had seen her last.

My mother would sometimes occasionally ask, “Have you talked to Rose?”

This is why, I’m sure if I ever broke up with Zai (not bloody likely), my mother would ask, “So how’s Rose doing?”

So concludes the story of my first girlfriend.  The friend, the psycho, the stalker.  She was a good friend once, and I hope that despite everything, she is happy now.

Throughout my earlier childhood, I can remember people who I called friends.  I welcomed them into my home, I trusted them, and I had some fun.  Unfortunately, these friendships never ended well.

Earliest one I can remember is Ryan, talked about back in chapter II.  As I mentioned, that’s when my suspicion of other people began.  Despite that I made the attempt to trust people, and each time I have been betrayed in the end.

Doug - Friend in elementary school, used to go on about being half-indian.  One day during recess he ran towards me and clotheslined me, much to the delight of the surrounding children.

Gevin - First off, who names their son Gevin?  He was a new kid in school.  And in elementary school, being the new kid is equivelent to walking around with a giant ‘kick me’ sign on your back.  I decided that I would approach him where he sat at an empty lunch table, and befriend him.

Things were good until a couple weeks had passed, when while walking through the schoolyard, he turned to me, popped me in the mouth, then tripped my legs out from under me.  I don’t remember anything after that concerning him, what sticks out the most is the blood from my lip on the gravel.

Justin - What a weird kid.  Not weird in a good way, the kid was seriously messed up in the head.  The kid lived with his father, but usually stayed at his grandmother’s house, which was a couple blocks away.  His grandmother had a large bell in the backyard, that she would ring every time she wanted to summon Justin home.  Throughout the whole neighborhood, you could hear the bell tolling.  Even from my house, six blocks away.

He approached me on my way home, spouting off some nonsense about actually being fifteen years old.  He then challenged me to a fight.  Admittedly I was a bit flattered, I’ve never been challenged before.  I’ve been jumped dozens of times, but challenged?  This was the first.

He came at me, so kicked him in the manberries.  Dishonorable, I know now.  But I had a ‘friend’ who now wanted to beat me up, and it seemed like a simple solution.

This pattern repeated a few times, until he finally got a little entourage to help him.

Nikki - That’s right, I had a friend that was a girl.  I can’t even remember much about her other than the name.  I only remember the bitter end.  I was riding my bike during the wintertime, it was about thirty or fourty degrees, when she decided it would be a good idea to douse me with a coffee can of ice water.  The shock of it made me lose control of the bike and crash into a parked car.

Well, that’s about all I can remember of them.  I’m not sure WHY these events happened, maybe it was some sort of initiation rite into popularity at school.  Maybe my memory is sugar-coating it and I was a real a-hole.  I would not rule out that possibility.

I think that wraps up my earlier childhood.  I would soon leave Calumet City and move to Merrillville, Indiana, a town I still go to occasionally.  A place where I can muster up some fond memories and good people.

One night, when I was seven years old, a man came to my house.  My mother let him in, and he opened his briefcase.  He read through whatever paperwork he had, and I didn’t pay attention.  It was grown-up stuff, I didn’t care.  Their attention eventually turned to me, they asked me if I wanted to watch a movie.  I said yes.

The movie played, and for the life of me, I can’t remember what was in it.  Likely a bunch of fun and exciting things I could do at summer camp.  It must have been fun and exciting, because when they asked if I wanted to go, I leaped up and down with joy and said yes.  So begins one of the most… unusual summers of my life.

It started with a long car ride to some parking lot somewhere.  As I remember it, it was very likely the airport of Midway or O’Hare, likely to be something of a hub for all the parents ready to unload their noisy children for a couple months.  I saw the vehicle I would spend the next seven hours or so in, a large bus.  I remember it had its own bathroom, and that my bag was stowed underneath in a compartment.  I don’t remember much of the ride up there, but I didn’t talk to anyone.  At this point, I was already pretty wary of people, I was far from the most popular kid at school (as indicated in chapter IV), and figured that other people existed to hurt me.  I do remember one kid had boxing puppets, two nuns I think… I remember that they looked like a lot of fun.

The bus arrived in the early evening, with the returning campers singing the camp song as we drove beneath the sign made of sticks.  I wonder why every camp sign must be made of sticks?

We’re right behind you, Red Arrow
With a rah rah R-A-C
R-A-C!

And that chorus went on and on.  I’m sure there were other lyrics, but those are what stand out the most.  I can still hear it in the back of my mind.  Not altogether unpleasant, just something that chose to write itself on the walls of my memory.  Camp was very musical, I soon realized, as I can remember about a dozen songs, a couple in their entirety.  There were sing-a-longs, often.

The first night was uneventful, a dinner of hot-dogs and an evening of wandering aimlessly about the camp, finding my cabin and seeing where I’ll be staying.  The cabin was made of logs, with a floor of concrete, the windows had screens, so sleep was relatively bug-free.

The next couple days were spent testing me at various things.  Basically, it was a committee of grown-ups that existed to point out my various flaws.  I had found out from these experts that:

I couldn’t run for long, so I was out of shape

I couldn’t swim

I couldn’t steer a canoe

Apparently, these were three things integral to the camp experience, so the classes of ‘Fitness’, ‘Swimming’, and ‘Canoe-ing’ were added to my schedule, leaving two activities left for me to pick.  So I picked wood-shop and marksmanship.  I happened to like both of these, I was actually not to bad with woodworking, and made a nice model paddle-boat.  Marksmanship I was abysmal at, failing to score even enough points to earn a score card.  I just couldn’t hold the rifle steady.

Swimming I was pretty good at once I learned how to float on the water instead of walking in the water.  Nothing really to note there.

Canoe-ing was boring.  I just learned how to use the paddle to steer.  It was uneventful.

Fitness… was pure hell.  What I did in this course was run, run, then run some more.  After all the running, we did sit-ups and push-ups, and occasionally a sport where I got to see just how awful at sports I was.  More than once did I catch a basketball with my face.  After I earned my swimming badge, this was occasionally broken by swimming laps in the lake.  On the plus side, this DID get me in shape.  I could run a mile and do a number of sit-ups, and felt pretty good.

Socially, I was as inept as ever, quickly descending to the bottom of the popularity ladder.  I don’t remember why, but I’m sure the basketballs to the face didn’t help.  I fought regularly with a cabin-mate named Ricky.  During fights he would pull my hair, but he had a buzz-cut, so I couldn’t return the favor.  The counselors seemed to encourage this behavior.  I can’t remember what I did, but I remember being told that the counselor would personally tie my hands behind my back and let each camper take a swing at me if I did it again.

Without strong authority figures, the whole place had a ‘Lord of the Flies’ feel to it.  Older campers bossed around younger campers, and punishment was meted out by whoever saw fit to do so.  Combine that with public baths in the lake (there were no shower facilities), and the whole thing felt decidedly tribal.  It was like gym class became LIFE.

I can remember being forced to swim on a forty-degree day, (the camp was in northern Wisconsin, on the border of Canada), while the counselor looked on from the dock in his sweatsuit and jacket.  I remember having pebbles thrown at me while I washed up one day, while the counselors laughed.  If my faith in grown-ups had been shaky beforehand, it was completely obliterated by this experience.

I remember receiving a rare phone call from home (every camper is allowed two for the summer), and I told my mother of all this.  The counselor took the phone afterwards, then chastised me for making her cry.  I was then punished, though I can’t remember how.  I imagine he must have done some smooth talking to my mother.

I remember that I had a day off, my mother, Phil (the man who would become my stepfather), and my grandmother picked me up and took me to the fair.  We watched some cars being crushed by a monster truck, it was the most fun I had that summer.

July 4th stands out in particular.  It was a free day, so I spent it sitting on the beach, observing the pyrotechnicians setting up for the fireworks show.  They had announced that the nearby girls’ camp was going to be coming over for a dance that night.  Of course, I didn’t care.

The sun had set when a girl had walked over to me, sitting alone there on the beach.  She asked what I was doing, to which I replied, “Nothing.”  I was feeling a mix of anxiety and apathy, as was the norm when speaking to that mysterious animal known as a girl.  She said something along the lines that that was no fun and hauled me off to the dance.

I don’t remember much from the evening after that, I know we danced, and talked.  I know that I had a pleasant time.  I lost track of her sometime during the fireworks show.  But I was seven and pretty lights and colors were in the sky, so I didn’t really care.  I remember this because for a short time on that day in my childhood, I felt normal.

There were a couple camping trips during camp, where we loaded up the canoes and headed into the lake.  Paddling through Trout Lake, down Trout River, into Leech Lake (pleasant place, a shallow little body of water that was more of a swamp, full of, you guessed it, leeches, which I took great care not to fall into), across many more bodies of water I forgot the name of.  I remember we arrived in Rice Lake, which had been lined with blossoming trees, so all the leaves, seeds, and blossoms fell into the lake, giving it the illusion of being filled with rice.  We camped on a tiny island, and I got the opportunity to crap in a hole that I dug myself.

Eventually, it came to an end with a speech by the head counselor (who I never saw during the summer).  Some of the campers wept with sorrow over having to leave.  As you might imagine, I was more than happy to leave the place behind.  My parents had bought me a plane ticket home, so I took my first plane ride ever.  It was actually pretty fun.  I suppose I was too young to be afraid of flying.

They called before the next summer and asked if I’d like to return to Red Arrow Camp.  I respectfully declined.

Just before first grade, my family moved to Calumet City.  Which, as I understand it, was a nicer neighborhood then than it is now.  My mother and father had seperated, and my future stepfather had moved in with us.  I suppose moving to Calumet City was the start of a new life for them.

My mother’s house had always been a boarding house of sorts.  I can remember several people living there from time to time.  A couple of my stepbrothers… my uncle.. my cousin… There always seemed to be someone else living in our house, and I can say that the trend continued to this very day.

I have no complaints about my family during this time.  I had as loving a mother as anyone, there was always good food, clean clothes, and a clean home.  I had everything I needed.  We weren’t exactly wealthy, I remember that the back lawn was nearly dead, the paint on the house was cracked and peeling, and my fellow classmates considered my family to be poor.

This may have been the case.  I honestly can’t say I remember, I have no idea what jobs my parents held at the time.  I know that I didn’t have a whole lot of toys, but I had enough.  I had what I needed, and I am grateful for that now.  Had I had all the toys I ever wanted I may have grown spoiled, expecting everything in life ot fall in my lap.  I’d likely be a very different person.

School wasn’t the easiest thing I ever did.  I was either lost in my own thoughts, or lost in the ritalin-induced thoughtlessness.  The first couple of grades I got by on creativity (and reading, I could always read with the best of them) alone, but third grade actually expected me to learn something.  So my grades began to fall from the A average I had, and that trend continued through the years.

In fourth grade, I was pulled aside from some of my classes to go and do some special tests.  I’m not exactly sure who requested these tests, whether it be my parents, the school, or my doctor, and I suppose it doesn’t matter.

I was asked various questions, asked to recite strings of words, given colored blocks and asked to make specific patterns, and given various logic and comprehension exercises.  Later in life I learned this was an aptitude and IQ test, and that I scored well above the IQ of the average adult.  I’m sure this confused people even more, what with my falling grades and all.  It was also around this time that I began trying out different types of medication that was supposed to treat ADD.

Aside from this, my social life was very active.  Every day after school, I would meet someone from school, and he would then proceed to beat the crap out of me.  I’m not entirely sure WHY I got into a fight on a daily basis.  All I know is I would be walking, and then I get a punch in the mouth.  I remember for a time when a whole group of older kids would jump me on the way home (and they had ample opportunity, I lived eight or nine blocks away), and take turns.  I guess I reminded them of their drunken father or something…

I won some fights, I lost others.  I have never thrown a punch to the face though.  Don’t really know why, I just could never bring myself to do it.  Now punches to the stomach, throwing to the ground, or throwing against the wall, that I could do.  I spent quite a bit of time in detention for defending myself.

That is the odd thing about the school administration: you are guilty for defending yourself.  To be right in the school’s eyes, I would have to sit and take my beating, tell the teacher later, and hopefully a tiny sentence that would not prevent the event from recurring would be passed.  So if you’re a victim, you’re doubly the victim, no matter what choice you make.

I’ve started one fight in my entire life, and that was in second grade.  A kid by the name of Richard, despite my warnings and protests, continued to make fun of my mother.  So I punched him in the gut as hard as I could, and he crumpled onto the ground in the fetal position.  I have never been a violent man, but I remembered feeling pretty satisfied after that.  For a little while after this, my walk home was clear.

As though it wasn’t obvious at this point, I wasn’t the most popular kid in school, quite the contrary.  My little brother, Josh, on the other hand, had a bit more popularity.  People liked him.  My brother and I were pretty good friends back in the day, we would routinely take trips to ‘Winkler’s,’ which was a store that sold candy by the piece.  You could give them fifty cents and get fifty pieces of candy.  Give us a couple dollars each, and we were the happiest kids alive.

After we bought our food, we would go to the schoolyard, which was the closest playground, eat our candy and drink our Kay-O chocolate drinks.  Sometimes we’d meet other kids who wanted to make fun of me, but hang out with my brother.  Josh’s response was always to tell them to screw themselves…. maybe in not so many words.

He was always like that, possessed of a type of nobility that I was years away from recognizing, let alone possessing myself.  He brought me to friends’ houses, we’d hang out, he on more than one occasion beat someone up because they were speaking ill of me, whether or not I was present at the time.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but Josh was the best brother a guy could ask for.

We lived next to a forest preserve, where I spent most of my time.  I tended to be a loner, and deep in the forest was the best place to escape.  The forest also bordered the far end of Lincoln Field, which was a large expanse of grass, one the other side of which was the part of town I didn’t like, the part where the school was.  But in my little corner of the field, about five minutes away from home, was a lone tree, and that was my thinking spot for a number of years.  One day, I’d like to visit that tree again.

In the middle of all this, was a summer I went to camp.  Which is a story in and of itself…

I spent a good deal of my early childhood in one of two places: In my bedroom and in the hospital.  My parents marriage was on its last legs, and the arguments still echo somewhere in my memory.  As a child, I spent a lot of time hiding from the screaming voices.  I didn’t know what they meant, only that they were loud and angry.

Most kids jump on the bed, I was no exception, up until I was four years old.  I was jumping on my grandma’s bed and for some reason, I jumped off.  I crashed headfirst into the dresser, which had these sharp metal handles, and split my scalp wide open.  Fortunately, I was too young to remember the pain, but I imagine it was quite painful.

I was born with a lazy eye.  While my left eye would function normally, my right with focused on whatever was going on somewhere in the sky.  Because of this, my parents wheeled me into the hospital up in Chicago to get some eye surgery done.  This was done a total of three times over the course of a year or so, the periods in-between I had an eyepatch on.

Sadly, as much as I wanted, my parents woul not get me the parrot to sit on my shoulder.

Aside from that, I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).  I find the criteria for this questionable as I wonder how many five-year-olds have no trouble paying attention.  They put me on ritalin, which I suppose attacked the root of the problem nicely.

The root of ADD is that the mind tries to do too many things at once, and can’t focus on any of them.  There are simply too many thoughts clamoring for attention.  Its like listening to a crowd of people, and trying to focus on what only one of them are saying.

Ritalin (and its analogs), silence the crowd.  The one problem is that its not selective in the thoughts it silences.  It silences all of them, giving an outside observer the illusion that the subject taking the ritalin is paying attention, when in reality its just a stare, looking for the sake of looking.

I remember staring out a window for hours on end.  I looked back on the event that evening and shuddered, for I couldn’t remember thinking anything during the entire time.

Is a human without thoughts even alive?  I’m certain that my childlike mind did not think in so deep a voice, but maybe that base fear was the same.

I spent a lot of time in the long white corridors, being walked or wheeled around.  I remember rooms where a man or woman in a white coat would sit down with me and ask me questions.  In the end, there would often be a needle to draw blood, and several people needed to hold me down to do it.

To this day, I can’t think of getting blood taken without cringing.  Oddly enough, I have absolutely no problem with getting a shot.

This continued through my elementary school years, but that’s a story for another chapter…