Year 20

For the record, I went to an explicitly Christan school. Ergo; that beverage that I'm so proudly displaying in my hand is actually just your regular every day soda as I was only twenty at the time. You have to understand that for us easy going Christian folk drinking a soda on the beach is probably like snorting cocaine off a bathroom floor for a student from the UC system. And, now whenever I tell people that I went to college in Santa Barbara and they assume that I meant UCSB I just nod my head and then say something like gnarly, and talk about the awesome break you get just north of Ventura. Then I try and reach up to push back my golden locks of long hair only to discover that I don't have that hair anymore and then I weep for a solid ten minutes.

That year could be split up neatly into three segments.

Segment one. I lived in the dorm at the bottom of campus that was referred to as "the dungeon." Believe it or not it wasn't the most highly sought after dorm on our campus. It seemed like everyone in our class was off gallivanting around in various foreign countries for off campus programs while we wasted away in our dark small dorm room. The major highlight was this poster,
Unfortunately, the joke fell flat.....(pause for joke and laughter to subside) as I wasn't a beer drinker and didn't really dance at that point in time. The thing that I remember most clearly from that year was our nightly forays to Burger King. Every single night we'd eat in the Dining Commons, picking at swaths of spaghetti and dry bread, or just plain running from the smell of thresher shark and hopping in Steve's car to drive down to the local BK. The best part of that year (maybe this happened the prior year but let's not acknowledge that) was climbing into the car and smelling the rat that had died somewhere in the motor. Nothing like the fresh smell of decay to get you excited about eating a cheap burger. We also listened to classic songs like Jay Z "Big Pimpin," which will not be replayed below as it is tremendously inappropriate.

Realizing that our collegiate lives were fast slipping away we applied to off campus programs as well. Steve wound up going to Gordon, leaving Santa Barbara for Boston around January. I believe he froze to death. Meanwhile, I spent three months in San Francisco that are etched indelibly upon my memory. I worked as a hospital chaplain at San Francisco General Hospital, which I detailed in an essay elsewhere. The long and the short of this year was that I lived in a house with 17 girls and only 2 other guys. As a result you occasionally get talked into ideas like hair curling night, which you might not have acceded to otherwise though it winds up being good prep for your childcare experiences in the future.


On the bright side you also end up with photos like this, which go down in your personal pantheon of coolest photos of you ever taken. Even though you had to pay other people to be in them with you in order to make you look cool.


That year, you had to walk into patients room at the tender age of twenty and ask if I could help them. Strangely, some of these people opened up and shared big portions of their lives with me. Others did not open up and some even yelled at me railing against the Christian faith. I'd like to say they were good times, but they were not. However, it was an amazing time of learning about the world in general, spirituality, sexuality, race and class difference, the whole thing.
This is a fair picture of what your group four chaplains probably appeared like on a day to day basis to patients in the hospital.


When you're not looking entirely angelic you're kicking it with Catholic nuns in upscale SF neighborhoods.


That year you listened to this song and it seemed right.
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One of my favorite patients in that hospital, an older man named Gordon went from recovering quite well from hip surgery to almost certain death in the ICU. I cannot really explain what it was like to be in a place of so much hopelessness every day, but I can say that if given the choice I would return to that hospital and bear those burdens all over again.

Special credit goes this year to my friend Sarah, who even if she'd done nothing else introduced me to my wife, who managed to listen to all of the turmoil that year brought out in me with grace.

I remember long cold white hallways. I remember shadowing another chaplain on my very first day in the hospital, arriving at the door to discover the patient had died and seeing only his grieving family. I remember that someone was carrying a red helium balloon that said, "Get well soon."

Naturally, once I'd achieved the ripe old drinking age of 21 that summer I decided to spend the summer bar hopping. Basically I can think of no better way to clear your mind of homelessness and sadness than by the overwhelming taste of cheap shots. I will forever be remembered by a friend back home for drinking beer off the table in an attempt to save every last drop on a particularly long night. I don't even like beer.

Here's the thing. I'm almost thirty now, and I've come to the conclusion that I hate bars. I don't hate bars because they no longer card me and occasionally ask me if I'm someone in my party's dad. I hate bars because they are loud. I suppose that as I've aged I've found people's conversations to generally be more interesting when I can hear them. Granted as S and I age we'll probably be shouting to each other from a foot away, but I prefer to save that for my forties. The exception is if you're with exceptionally boring people in which case plant yourself by the bar and let the people around you shout away while you lament you regret your decision to have even left the house. The thing is, it's never a bad idea to just stay in.

Bars, and this is coming from my old age, are only acceptable in two ways.
1)If they are reasonably quiet/have an outdoor area where you can talk with your friends. It is okay to frequent these places and actually talk to the people who you came with.

2) Dancing. I went to a school that didn't allow dancing until 1997 or something. As we all know dancing was invented by the devil circa 1500 to tempt men into sin. However, dancing is fun and good aerobic activity. And it says in the Bible that Jesus turned water into wine, which, (bringing it full circle) certainly helped the wedding guests have a better time breaking it down later in the evening. Theology lesson complete.

You remember the woman who had no legs from your first visit alone. You remember trying to imagine what it would be like to struggle as she did to do the basic things. You remember how happy she seemed in that slightly over warm room talking about the things she was going to do when she left.

You remember Ernest asking you about the book of Job pronouncing it phonetically. You do not know but hope that he found some solace in those pages. You hope that he left the hospital and made it into a shelter. You hope so many things.

You remember standing at the foot of his bed and listening to the dull beep of the respirator. His head was propped up on pillows and his purple veined legs were puffed up from pooled blood. The two of you stood on either side of the bed and held his hands. You remembered the day that he told you both that you reminded him of his children, estranged and now absent. His hands were bigger than yours, and slightly moist. You remember how thin his grip was that final day as you looked down at his face beneath the respirator. You prayed. Then, the two of you left the room and you cried in that white sterile hallway because you knew he was going to die and that you could do nothing about it.

Elegy for a silk tree

You press your hands into the hard blond wood of the table to stand. You ask your father if he wants another beer. He sits, half-dazed, half-expectant, his eyelids almost closed as if the tenebrous afternoon light is pressing them down, the beer now held between his legs like an impressive genitalia. “Sure,” he says, and you walk across the rows of terra cotta tile to open the fridge, to stand in the light, and find two more beers. They are cold, rimmed with beads of water from the fresh ice that lines the bottom of your parent’s new fridge. You cross the room again and place them on the table between the two of you. Then you sit, and talk about the weather while the shadow of old trees lengthen, and the beers go from full to empty.

Year 19

Let's begin with some of the stuff that's outside of the frame. S and I were painting our dining room tonight, drawing closer the dream of being real urban chic homeowner's. Unfortunately, we'd need to move our house from Brightwood to Dupont to accomplish our final goal. Anyhow, as we were painting I put the iPod on random shuffle. It's always interesting to hear the songs that come on. Some of which neither one of us ever remember hearing before. Naturally, we heard a bevy of awesome songs that included this one:">
Listen, if you're a bad ass or remotely jaded by the world don't bother with the link. However, if you were born with a functioning heart go ahead and listen to it, though you should still avert your eyes because you can't embed her epic video here. My favorite line, "I still remember when thirty was old." Me too Deana. The real point of this is not that Strawberry Wine is amazing, the thing that I remembered was that my brother had this single. My brother, who is now a college professor at the University of Illinois and who later listened to Easy E and Dr. Dre. That's all the sort of stuff that you forget until it hits you at a random moment when you're painting. A lot of things happen outside the frame of these remembrances, and it's occasionally nice to be reminded of them. Also, seriously David? Deana Carter? So good.

You accomplished a lot of things in the year that you turned nineteen. Things that you're pretty sure will go down in the annals of time. Wherever time keeps its annals. Most of these things were accomplished because your roommate had a Nintendo.

1) You beat Mario Bros. for the first time.
And for those of you who are like, "What, you never beat Mario Bros. as a kid?" Well, I'm calling you a liar. That's right. It was damn near impossible. How can you get past the Hammer Bros. And, even if you do, you're inevitably not big or fire Mario on 8-4, which makes the prospect of facing Bowser pretty damn scary. So, yes, I beat Super Mario Bros.

2) I beat Rad Racer. This game is nearly impossible, and I may be the only person who has ever beaten it in the history of the world. That's a long time. And this was my jam while I did it. Note: It gets a bit repetitive but you can pretty much get the idea from the start how much you could drive a car at kick ass speeds to this music.
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3) I beat Mike Tyson's Punch Out. I defeated that villain, that dastardly fellow who had haunted me since childhood with his wining jabs, huge biceps, and lightning uppercuts. Little Mac put him on the canvas. In fact, I beat him ten times straight that year. Wow, I remember sweating like a damn pig that first time, ducking left and right, using a star punch when he was stunned. It was epic. Just thinking about it now makes me feel 19 again.
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That was pretty much my sophomore year in a nut shell. We had a Braveheart knight replete with fake body paintings. We played basketball almost every night. A fact that I regret as I pull myself up the stairs this evening.

They talk about having a sophomore slump in sports a lot. That same sort of thing happens in college. You've made the best friends that you'll probably make by that point in time, some people have bailed out after Freshman year. You know what to expect. The only real excitement is in meeting new people but you know that the next year they'll just be old people as well.

In this year the fact that you've finally started talking pays off. Or does it? You see, the fact is, when you don't actually have to deal with real people only ideals you've created in your head things are pretty simple. As you quickly learn the real world is a bit murkier than "Only You." And you discover that as much as you might try and be a good person sometimes you fall short, sometimes epically short. How could this have happened? If you had to look back at it now you'd say it was probably MTV. If it wasn't for MTV you'd have probably had smooth sailing for your entire life. However, rock music videos corrupted you at a young age like Adam with the apple and made you susceptible to sort of being a bumbling human being like most everyone else.

If you're honest most of what you remember about that year is conversations with women. Though, in actuality you spent the majority of that year playing video games listening to angsty music and playing basketball. Memory is selective like that though. Sometimes it chooses to blot out how great Deana Carter really is. Some of these conversations were intellectual, some petty, some religious, some almost Before Sunrisingly epic. Strangely, none of them amounted to anything lasting, but you know that all of these conversations made you into the person you are. That they were not wasted even if it seemed that way at the time. You're not prone to saying that God has a plan for every moment of everyone's life because of things like earthquakes and tsunami waves that don't really line up well with that thought pattern. However, you think that a lot of that onus is on you. You at nineteen, you at any age, to learn from all of those conversations, to grow up a little.

You remember spraining your ankle pretty badly for the first time that year. You remember how upset you were because it was the first time you'd been hurt playing a sport. Torn labrum, cartilage damaged knees, torn meniscus, elbow surgery, mid-back pain later, you yearn to be as pissed off as you were that day at having your ankle sprained. To still have the audacity to be pissed at the world for not turning out quite as you had planned. This later becomes a theme for the world in your life.

You remember walking in the dark alone at the bottom of campus after an important person in your life had passed away. The chapel in front of you was white, the wind was slow and warm. The sky was a thick veil of stars, and the stone wall where you sat was somehow cold. You do not think that you have ever felt as alone as you did that night, your world falling apart, while everything else kept moving briskly on. You wouldn't trade being thirty for being nineteen. You'll take the knee pain and eye wrinkles. Some years are better left in the dark.

Except in the picture where you are celebrating a wedding in the company of your sister and your mom. The three of you sipped wine, and talked and laughed, and watched people who were young and in love. That was a good day. You would not trade it.

Elegy (fiction)
Years later, you learn that your father does not believe in God, or in any sort of divine spirit. He finds beauty in the rote prayer, in the patterns of variegated light that the sun makes through stained glass on cold linoleum floors, buffed to a shine. He likes the ceremony and the community. He likes being seen at church. He shares this with you over a beer when you return from your first semester at college, young and inexperienced. “A college boy,” he says, intending it as a rebuke. Your father dropped out of a community college when your mother was pregnant. He is leaning back slightly, in a solid wooden chair, a posture he warned you all against innumerably as children. The chair legs squeak, his sloping shoulders rest against the white wall, the bulk of his belly rests over the hem of his pants. He smiles at you and at this revelation. It’s easier for him now that you’re an adult. He never wanted to be one. The rug beneath the kitchen table is maroon with a solid green border, something you don’t recognize. And it troubles you that this detail bothers you more than the revelation that your father has placed in your hands, let you hold, this detail of self, a glimmer, unquenched. He smiles at the rotting fruit on the window sill and sets his empty glass on the paunch of his stomach as if this unfurling of self has been enough to satisfy him for now.

Year 18

Sometimes I really hate blogging. (Feel free to tune out at this point as somebody engages in incredibly self-indulgent whining. I'd skip down to the second paragraph, or maybe the third just to be safe.) I hate it because it doesn't allow for revision. I basically write these things off the cuff, and it doesn't always give me time to develop things into a cohesive whole. It's an excuse. And it forces me to throw myself on the mercy of my readers. So please, above all else, forgive.

In this year I graduated from High School. If you're around my age you'll remember that everyone had that song by Green Day Time of your Life.
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Or maybe you were graduating from eighth grade or something. Anyhow, this was the song that everyone listened to as they were moving on. But hold on, I say. That song meant something to me. I am a unique and beautiful snowflake. Two of my best friends, one of whom I'd known since kindergarten, whose mom incidentally, straightened out my academic career in the first grade by loving the hell out of me, sang the song on stage at my high school graduation. And during the song they looked out into the audience, Marc in particular, with whom I'd sat on the wall in eighth grade and watched all the pretty girls, and made eye contact with each one of our tight knit group. It probably helps at this point to mention that they both played guitar pretty damn well and Marc has gone on to be in musical theater. This was not your complete bullshit type of thing. It was music. And anyhow, as I'm sitting there, thinking of all these things I'll be leaving behind, and my friend is making eye contact with me what do I do?

Blog point: Socialization. A good deal of this project of growing up has been about socialization. And as I sat in between Jennifer Brown and whoever the hell else, I was afraid to cry because I thought they might notice and be...well what? Not friends with me? We already had that worked out fine. I am now ashamed to say that I didn't cry. Not because I'm some nancy boy, but because it's okay to experience the world every now and again and not worry so damn much. Anyhow, it meant something seeing the two of them singing up there. Meaning making, you know?

Shortly thereafter I left for college and a brand new world. The great part about going to college is that it's like everyone is on some crazy uppers. Juxtapose your college freshman year when it was okay to walk up to a stranger and start talking about your interests with our posture on any form of public transportation. Conversation is considered an embarrassment, an intrusion on people's God-given right to privacy. Tell me, which was more fun?

Anyhow being eighteen is fun, and I miss it. "Best years of my life" a lot of people say. Damn right. You get damn near all the privileges of being an adult without any of the obligations. People of the opposite sex tend to be quite fit and are almost all single. What's not to like?



For me, being eighteen was great because I could recreate myself. After the glasses and the rocks and the general not talking, people in high school thought they knew me. Hell, they called me Andy. Of course, they didn't know shi- about me, but who could blame them. College was like landing on the island. A fresh start. I don't think of it that way though as if I were creating this new version of me. I think that I was just more honest in college with who I was. I was like a butterfly busting out of the chrysalis. And now I would no longer be afraid to compare myself to a butterfly.

Anyhow, the world seems to be at your fingertips at eighteen just waiting for you to spin. You're on the cusp of things and learning about who you are going to be as an adult. It's a hell of a start.

P.S. The squirrels in our attic will be caught and released in the wild green yonder. Needless to say I'm quite put out.

Elegy for a Silk Tree (fiction Cont.)

None of your friends are Jewish, and your parents do not believe in anything new agey. They are of solid, Protestant stock, fair-minded, though slightly insular and a bit racist. You attend church most Sunday’s though occasionally, the struggle of getting three children awake, showered, and dressed is too much for them to handle. Your brother is often the most problematic, refusing to wake up, and hiding underneath his bed. The three years that separate you seem like a chasm. Though, you like these days best, when your parents give up on the folly of righting the familial ship, and give in to the waves of children at their feet. On these days your mother makes a big breakfast, smoking cigarettes and looking out the window at the small cul-de-sac. Your father holds the paper in front of his face forming a wall that the three of you can’t help but break down. The four of you will wind up wrestling with him on the floor, trying to pin him for the three count, his broad shoulders never stay down for the full count. Your mother calls from the dining room saying that breakfast is getting cold. She is a liar, your mother.

Year 17

In the year you turn seventeen you join student government and go to the senior prom. You sneak out of class to watch the NCAA tournament. You do nothing in student govt. You're not even sure what you're supposed to be doing besides messing around with your friends. You're occasionally assigned to make posters. Anyone who has seen you do art from kindergarten on knows that it was probably best that you just cut out early for lunch.
You have an AP English class that was pretty interesting and challenging. Perhaps you were always destined for that path but some days you blame Miss Scully for taking down the dark road of the humanities. Why didn't anyone tell me to get an MBA? Follow your dreams kid...they'll lead you to poverty.
You did some other stuff that year, watched your friends win sections in basketball and briefly regretted quitting. You decided on which college to attend after seeing people playing football on the beach in Santa Barbara and girls in bikinis roller blading down the street. I can do this!
Interpolation:

S: I'll be surprised if the wind doesn't blow our roof off.
M: Somebody grew up watching too much Wizard of OZ and not enough of the science channel. That's right, the science channel.
S: (pause) I'm pretty sure that's not a real thing.

30 weekend plans:

Friday night plans: Friday night involves making sure to get a first coat of paint down in the dining room.

Saturday plans: Getting the oil changed and then going to BB&B for new sheets.

17/18 weekend plans

Friday plans-Hang out w/ my friends and play Madden.

Saturday-Watch a movie. I don't know? breathe in and out at regular intervals.

Let's do a comparison between the two ages. See if you can guess which one is from when I was 17/18, and which one was from now 29/30? For answers please see your brain.

Yoga-What the heck are those weirdo's doing? Is that dude wearing stretch pants?

Yoga-I think it really helped my torn labrum, hurt knees, mid-back pain et al. What a great session!

A car: I got 38.2 in the city despite having stop and go traffic all morning. 38.2!

A car: I wonder if this thing shakes if you take it over eighty?

Dating-I wish I had a girl to go out on dates with.

Dating-No, we can't afford it. We've got to put money in the bank to afford that privacy fence. Why don't we just eat leftovers.

Video games-I'm going to beat Final Fantasy!

Video games-I have an overwhelming desire to play video games but can't find the time to play them. Is it wrong to fantasize about Dark Wizard?

House-Andrew, is this your junk on the floor?

House-Andrew, is this your junk on the floor?

Job-What's a job?

Job-What is this Spring Break that you speak of?

Financial situation-It's all going to work out in the end.

Financial situation-Are we putting away enough money for our unborn children? Are we? Tell me dammit!

Pets-Pets are cute and fun to have around.

Pets-Pets cost too much money!

Squirrels-Oh, that guy is kind of cute.

Squirrels-How much do I have to pay you to kill the little ones?

Television-A faithful friend.

Television-A faithful friend.

403B-IS that some type of multiple choice question?

403B-Am I contributing enough? How much do they match?

The yard-What a nice thing to look at.

The yard-Let's pave it.

Snow-What the hell is snow?

Snow-F-ing snow.

Flying in a plane-I've never done it.

Flying in a plane-I f-ing hate plans. Does anyone else assume we're going to die on every take off? Is this why I don't like roller coasters?

Deer-Cute things only seen rarely in the wild.

Deer-A nuisance.

Flying a kite-Who fly's a frickin kite?

Flying a kite-Even if we have kids, who fly's a frickin' kite?

Eating habits-I could eat fast food ever night of the week!

Eating habits-I love Kashi-Go Lean!

The park in your hometown-It's all right.

The park in your hometown-Look at these hiking trails! These groves of trees and tall grass remind me of Jane Austen. This would be a great spot for a picnic!

Farmers Markets-What are all these hippy people doing here?

Farmers Markets-I love to buy seasonally. Do you want some tea. I could really go for some tea right now. Oh, look at those strawberries.

Knees-Those things you jump off?

Knees-Those things that creak when you walk up stairs.

Movies-Before Sunrise.


Movies-Before Sunset.



Sometimes, you stand at the long cold rectangle of your bedroom window and watch the leaves of the silk tree close slowly as night falls. You know that the opening and closing is not involuntary, that you and tree share the same sleep cycle. You can see it closing up its many hands and lying down in the dark, like an old dog. When the tree is stranded in the rain it does the same thing, its leaves closing slowly, curling up by its own internal fire until the storm has passed.

Year 16

Signs that I'm aging: I'm wandering around the house repeating, "Don't forget to take the Cippro. Don't forget to take the Cippro." Yep. Life only gets better.

Eleventh grade. These school years get a tad too complex for this simple blog idea as they always span a two-year period in terms of age. Ergo; despite the fact that it says sixteen, I was also seventeen this year. Though, I'll always remember my sweet sixteen more anyhow. The candles, the cake, the blush, the eye liner. Getting together will all of my best gf's and laughing all night long.
Brief memory of my fourteenth birthday. I'll pretend like that memory has been expunged to protect the dignity of the blog. Laughter duly noted. The best thing about being 16/17 is getting to take the SAT. And then going around asking people what they got on their SAT, and zealously guarding your score or mentioning it to people casually in order to impress them. I scored an 1160. Is that low? Yes. Yes it is. As it turns out when I was a youngster roughly 1/2 of the test was math. Who needs math? Eggheads that's who. So Einstein and Edison and whoever else loves math can all go have some weirdo math party while the rest of us cook kids smoke cigarettes and write essays about how we're going to make money. Don't worry. I've let it go.

Since I've graduated from high school standardized testing has changed. Its been determined that the SAT is not only a great indicator for college performance but can also be applied to other facets of your life like dating and fixing cars and renting beach houses and pretty much anything you can think of that might make you a competent human being. Though, of course, if I wasn't so terrifically awful at math, and I was rolling a 1350 or up I'd retract all of what I said above and praise the test minus the sarcasm. Such is life. We like the things we like and then we come up with reasons to justify why we like or dislike them and everyone else be damned. It's the American way!

Off the top of your head you remember nothing from your junior year of high school. Is that they year you had Chemistry? Oh wait, you remember taking your last true math class and the triangles and obtuse angles pretty much driving you up the wall. Is that year a good one? Is it good to be caught in between high school and college? Were you content? You really don't remember. Perhaps because you were so solidly in that place, not dreaming of somewhere else. Being that age is like paddling offshore towards a distant island, discovering that it was much further away then you thought at the half-way point but finding a way to enjoy it anyway.

It's strange because I remember people kept asking me about college, and I'd come up with something resembling an answer that sounded moderately coherent. Little did I know that that is much of what adult life is comprised of. Sort of related quote from Mad Men that struck me as perfect: (At the conclusion of the work meeting)

Boss: Well. I'm glad everyone could make it sound like they are so busy. (The quote is gist rather than verbatim obviously as it would be a bit pithier). Anyhow, that's kind of what being that old amounts to. People start to ask you real adult questions and you have to start and formulate real adult answers. And for a while you're just making stuff up, pulling from previous things you've heard older people say until you've developed a spiel. You could practically sell someone on the idea of how much you've considered the various positives and negatives of each of the colleges you're considering. When really, what you've considered primarily, is the quality of local fast food restaurants and the relative "merits" of the good-looking girls in school. On these things you are an authority, but no one but your friends ever think to ask you about them. Thus, you begin to value peer friendships over familial ones.

The above is patently untrue as what I remember very clearly about that year was taking walks with my mom around the neighborhood at night and talking to her about all the things I was thinking. I mean, really talking. Not in the bs way you sometimes do with friends, not all that code switching, but like the real questions that start to trouble you. What of my place in the universe? If she does x does that mean she likes me? What does like mean anyway? How can you feel two very strong feelings simultaneously? If I feel like I want do something very strongly but don't, can I then say that I really wanted to do it? Wouldn't I have in fact done it? And so on...

You remember sitting on a bench and talking to a girl, wanting to ask her to a dance. But for some reason you could never get the words to come out. You kept saying other things, dancing around the idea. Tomorrow will be the day, you'd say. And tomorrow never was.

Negatives-Not being able to speak up.

Positives-690 verbal. And this is pre-essay portion of the SAT, which I would have destroyed. I'm retroactively giving myself like a 2000 or whatever a good score is on the new system.

Negatives-Having to learn to answer adult questions.

Positives-(see above).

Conversation
S to her sister on the phone: If you decide to read the blog it's best to do it in order. The part that's the most fun is looking at the pictures that he's posted.
M: (internally) I'm glad to know my blog entries are that entertaining. Maybe I should just turn it into a series of pictures w/o context.

It's occurred to me that this whole project is a bit vexed. The closer I get to my actual age the less I seem to remember. It's hard to look back and believe that I was the baby on the bed in the first picture. However, it's also hard to look back at the 16 year old without thinking to myself, "Oh, he knows nothing." I don't really mean it pejoratively though. I mean that that version of me really knows nothing of what is to come. I can't imagine knowing that I'd be in Washington D.C. after pursuing an MFA in creative writing when I was 29. It's damn near impossible to imagine. I want to say, "Oh the places you will go!" And oh, the places you will never go.

Elegy for a silk tree (Cont.)
. Childhood, in a way, has been about belief, not just Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, but fairy tales, frogs and princesses and animals that can talk. You are almost certain that if you snuck out in the dead of the night, bare foot to stay quiet, and crept across the wet grass and molding leaves to the rabbit hutch, if you put your face up to the hutch and peered in, at the brown and white rabbit huddled on a mound of his own green pebbled feces, that if you can wait long enough, say, “I understand that you are alone,” that he will say some small thing back to you that will confirm that all of these things are true. That life, in a way, is about belief. For a long time, as far back as you can remember, you’ve known that a spirit lives in the silk tree that is in your side yard. You are aware that not all trees have spirits. You’ve seen the blank branches of live oaks in the park, the stoic limbs arcing in the air. But this is your tree. You do not know where you came upon this idea. Rather, the fact that the tree is an unbounded entity has always been a part of your thoughts. Though, when your head is pressed to the pillow, and the long etiolated fingers are tapping against the window, it occurs to you that it something that perhaps your brother might have told you, in the dark, a whispered thing, perhaps a thing that he once believed himself. In the existence of things

Year 15

Let's begin with an addendum because I remembered something else about ninth grade. I remember being in Mrs. Pierce's class and listening to her explain to us how to properly pronounce words in Spanish. I remember her standing at the blackboard elucidating some finer point of Spanish grammar and someone throwing a paper airplane at the front of the class and it somehow landing in her hair and sticking there. It didn't move. It just stuck right in the back of her hair. And I hope that when I'm her age I'll be able to turn with half as much dignity as she did, almost a smile on her lips. She didn't say anything. She reached up and pulled the airplane from her hair and smiled.

Also, I wanted to apologize to Ramundo. I don't know your actual name but that was your Spanish name. Anyhow, one day we, (I mostly mean Marc Fellner and Josh Barthalomew) stole your wallet and tossed it around between each other, playing a game of keep away. The next year you bit the head off a live rat. Ergo; now seems like a good time to point out that Josh and Marc were really responsible for that incident and when you start sending out letter bombs or whatever, I'd start with them.

Picture. Let's begin with the obvious positives. I appear to be playing basketball without two bulky knee braces. I can only imagine what that must have been like. I also managed to grow out my hair and I didn't yet have a wife telling me how much better I look when I'm clean cut. Ie I want to change you, and I think this is a good way to start.

Tenth grade. Tenth grade is pretty great because you get to go on a trip to Ashland, Oregon with Mrs. Willis and stay up all night after watching some crappy Shakespearean play. When you're in tenth grade Shakespeare pretty much sucks. It's not until you are well into your twenties that you're willing to concede that he wrote a good line every now and again.

Tenth grade is the first year that it is really important to get your yearbook signed. It's great to wait all day to get that special someone to sign your yearbook only to have them right something like, "Have a great summer. X." X in this case denotes that special someone's name. And that's when you realize that this person who's signature you've been waiting for thinks as you about as often as it rains during the summer. Which is to say, almost never.

You remember being asked to a dance for the first time in your life. You remember sitting at the table trying not slurp spaghetti. And because you couldn't eat the damn spaghetti without slurping you were still starving after they took away your almost full plate. You remember refusing to dance, which is strange, because now that you're old, you love to dance. But soon you'll be thirty and not allowed to do it anymore without being some weird old guy.

Positives-You can now drive a car.

Negatives-You can now drive a car. It's the beginning of many expectations that will be put on you and when you actually think of the astounding number of people killed in car accidents it shocks you that you were allowed to drive at sixteen.

You remember your sister trying to give you a driving lesson. The car didn't have power steering and you didn't want to yank the wheel, so you drove the car up on the lawn. "We'll try again tomorrow." She said. But you knew that she was lying.

Positives-Basketball. It was actually fun to play for the first time since you left grade school.

Negatives-You can't come home and drink a cup of coffee followed by two glasses of wine. This is the nice part about being almost thirty.

Positives-You don't get stressed out because you didn't get enough work done.

Negatives-People can still tell you what to do even though you're starting to be an age when you're pretty certain what you want to do. This conflict causes problems.

Positives-You can finally grow the wispy sort of mustache featured on men from America's Most Wanted.

Negatives-Mustaches.

Positives-Not spending the evening on Ikea's web site trying to determine which chaise is going to complete the decor in your room.

You remember sitting in the dark, waiting for sleep to take you in the weeks before that first dance, rolling around in bed, trying to convince yourself that it was no big deal. Maybe that's what you miss about sixteen. The anticipation of all the things to come. Eighteen, college, turning twenty one, finding someone, buying a house. Even though you are still young by the current standards you realize how many of these things that you look forward to are now in your rear view mirror.

You remember dancing close, the feel of the car underneath you. You remember looking forward rather than back.

Elegy for a silk tree
Lately you’ve begun to doubt the existence of things. Childhood has been, up until this point, full of credulity. You’ve listened to grasshoppers play tiny violins in the uncut grass, and believed that your older brother keeps lightning bugs beneath his bed, and then releases them into the sky where they became stars. You’ve developed a rich interior life for your shadow, a family, where he is the littlest boy, but the most intelligent. At night he returns to his home, the sun retreating with him behind a line of low non-descript houses.

year 14

At the beginning of the ninth grade I got braces and shaved my head. The latter of which I blame on my friend Josh who is tall enough to sport a shaved head with style. In deference to these two appalling decisions I don't have any pictures on hand from my ninth grade year. I'm certain a basketball picture is lying around somewhere, but the coaches that year were jerks, and I'm glad I don't have to see them even in a picture.

You don't remember much about ninth grade, but you do remember the summer in between eighth and ninth. You would wake up every day at about ten A.M. and playing Dark Wizard for roughly ten to twelve hours before hitting the sack. It was a great existence. However, at some point two of your good friends started stopping by your house every day and inviting you to hang out with these girls they knew. The two of them would excitedly tell you stories about going into the girl's houses. And every day, without fail, you would look at them in despair, because they hadn't yet found something to truly love. And there you were, playing Dark Wizard on Sega CD like a yogi about to attain nirvana. "No my friends," you'd say. "I have put away such childish things." And they'd walk dejectedly out the door to hang out with girls knowing that you had gotten the best of them again.

You also remember being vaguely in love with about ten girls and listening to this song, which is pretty much the greatest expression of love created during the whole course of human history exceeding Shakespeare's sonnets and Love in the Time of Cholera by a pretty wide margin.


You also started to like other kinds of music that don't make you seem like such an assclown. And you still think that August and Everything After is the best album ever made and Raining In Baltimore and Sullivan Street are pretty amazing songs. But this was the first one that you liked. The first song that you said, "Yeah, these werido's might be all right."
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The first quarter of your ninth grade year you record a 2.5 G.P.A. You can't really remember what happened, but it was probably a combination of math and something your parents did to you in your childhood, or the teacher's not being effective, or the sun being in your eyes during tests. It certainly had nothing to do with you being a bit lazy. Mainly, I blame my English teacher Mrs. Smith who often wore berets to class. You can't expect me to take any teacher seriously when they are dressed like a Frenchy.
Here's a list of other people who were at fault:

Girls who didn't like me.

Tests that weren't rote memorization of vocab terms.

Bears. I hate them.

The term home room being used in conjunction with my first class. Guess what, I was a dude. I didn't give a crap about taking care of no home! (Insert more sexist remarks here).

Whatever other teachers I had, who I can't remember today but who were clearly out to screw me.

City traffic.

The migratory patterns of sea birds.

Pythagoras, Zeno, pretty much anyone who thought of or used the term math.

Mr. whoever that gave me a C- in algebra who had a weird mustache.

The moon.

The list could go on forever really. Yeah, so apparently I was lazy at first. Or having a hard time adjusting. This is pretty much a catch all for anyone not doing well, be sure to use this in jobs, schools, marriages, any kind of relationship or encounter. Use the term, "I'm having a hard time adjusting" and everyone will nod sympathetically.

Positives-Video games.

Negatives-Not being old enough to drive, but close enough to know that it is something you'll eventually have.

Positives-Nobody asks you how you did on your PSAT or where you are going to college or what you are going to do.

Negatives-You've no earthly clue what you are going to do. You are too old for those childish dreams of NBA stardom but too young to know what comes next. I kind of just keep going don't I?

Positives-You can leave campus for lunch.

Negatives-Everyone who works at the local Safeway assumes that you and the other four hundred freshman constantly steal from them. You consider stealing from them to at least make the angst justified.

You remember the day that everyone went to Phantom of the Opera in San Francisco and you chose to stay in class. You remember the previous year that you'd chosen not to raise the money to go to D.C. over the summer, but had chosen to stay at home. You remember how much you loved Dark Wizard and how you started playing it again a couple of years ago obsessively, until you broke it in half because you understood that a love like that would consume you.

Here is a link

Year 13

Unfortunately, my mother didn't ship me off to finishing school as a thirteen year old. I've often found myself not knowing which fork to use or how exactly one greets a person who has been knighted by the queen and regretted her oversight. Why just last night we had some friends over and I didn't know whether the proper etiquette required me to offer them a drink, or whether I could politely thank them for the wine and then refuse to open it. I'm certain that Mrs. Haberdashery would have remedied these numerous oversights in my education. Oh well.

As such, I was thirteen years old in good old CA. Referring to the pic. suddenly I went from a small boy to a young woman in the full bloom of youth. Be sure to notice the healthy flush in my cheeks that drew many suitors and fetched me a high price at the market. However, in my defense, at this time in the early nineties cool dudes had long hair. Anybody who grew up watching 90210 and Melrose Place knew that it was a good idea to grow your hair out if you wanted Courtney Thorne-Smith to like you.

I've got a theory about this year, which I expounded upon on an essay called, "How Before Sunrise Shaped My Love Life." Aside: How many people's ideas of what love was supposed be like were ruined by the spate of romantic comedy movies in the early nineties? Chances are that people who grew up watching Only You, Sleepless in Seattle, Matchmaker et al are going to have a tough time with the realities of romance.

The theory. Eighth grade was great because though I never actually spoke with them I was fairly popular with the ladies. Please always, always, refer to women as the ladies. It makes you sound awesome! Anyhow, the reason that I was popular was related to my inability to speak. The theory being that (and especially true at this age, what's the adage? "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt." So true, lord knows if I'd opened my mouth I'd have been in real trouble. However, the silent type gives girls a chance to create their ideal man. My advice to men between the ages of 14-22 is to talk as little as possible to the fairer sex. It will work wonders. Also, read a lot of books and such, so that when you finally do open your mouth at 23 you have something intelligent to say.

Really though, eighth grade was about developing friendships with guys who I am still friends with to this day. The people who you know from way back. Who remember you when. Unfortunately, none of us have gotten famous enough to have to say something like, "Remember where you're from," but we'll get there. I've got this great idea to serve beer slushies at sporting events. Wait, I've said too much.

All I remember is sitting on the wall at Bidwell and saying, "You're pretty cool Marc." And his response, "Talk to any girls lately." I like that when I see him, fifteen odd years later we can still say the same shi-.

Positives-Gloriously long hair.

Negatives-Inability to speak.

Positives-Long golden hair.

Negatives-Developing a moodiness that sort of stuck with me.


Ex:
M: I just love you a lot today.
S: Why?
M: Because I'm moody and today is a good day.

Positives-Just flowing. And sure, sure I couldn't see what I was doing when I was playing basketball because of all that hair, but, oh that hair. Cue Lucille Bluth.

Other positive-The ninth graders getting the heave ho, so that you are once again on top of the heap.

Negatives-Classes. Did I learn anything particularly interesting before the age of 19? Negative-Do I remember much of anything from before the age of 28?

Year 12

I think that the seventh grade would have been more fun if Kevin Arnold had done some voice over work for me. Fred Savage was pretty much the shi- except for that winging bit he did during the Princess Bride when we all just wanted to see more fencing and Buttercup. (Insert pop culture reference here). Anyhow, without the voice overs and Winnie and the lack of a kid being struck by a train who we could head out to find and maybe do some cool voice overs about, seventh grade kind of sucked. Seventh grade sucks for a lot of reasons.
Firstly, hypothetically of course, you might fall in love with some blond haired girl who is in your P.E. class occasionally, and maybe your friends switch groups with you so the two of you can hold hands. And you square dance, and your heart goes pitter patter. Then you find out that she's dating some dude who is sixteen years old and apparently spent the weekend in jail after helping him steal a car. That's when you suddenly realize that life is probably not going to turn out the way it does in fairy tales.
Seven grade also sucks, hypothetically of course, because Ivan Cockburn likes to beat you up during P.E class. And you kind of let him because you are good kid and moderately confused that he's irate at you for some unknown reason. And yes, if you had life to do over again one of the first things you'd do is ram the heel of your palm into his nose, but you didn't do that then. And it made that year kind of suck. On the bright side, your last name is Bertaina, which is light years better than Cockburn.
Seventh grade also sucks because you have to take algebra and algebra is confusing. Let me tell you how many times I've used algebra in my seven or so years in my nine years working at various jobs. I've used it zero times. That's right, never. However, apparently it was vital that I learn it and my inability to figure out x and y caused me to worry that I wasn't as smart as all those teachers had thought I was growing up.
And you had to take Quest class and were mildly in love also with Gail Strickland wherever the hell she is. And you got like a C- in that class, hypothetically, because the teacher had as much control over the class as you did in algebra. But some days you miss him crying out "Ubangarang" that crazy old bastard.
You are sitting at the bottom rung of what appears to be a very complex and intense social structure, and all the girls are dating guys two years older than you who can steal them cars and get them drugs and you're sort of pining for the basketball courts of your youth but trying to fit in. Bleh. Fitting in. This is the beginning of a rather precipitous downfall and gross misunderstanding of your personality, which goes on until you are able to go to college and break free of the shackles of your small town. And yes, you are picturing a lifetime movie made about your life. Only, you're not a woman, so it might be a tough sell.
What do I remember about seventh grade? Seagulls shittin- on all the benches, eating crappy school lunches on the wall, having to wear those ridiculous P.E. shirts, more UMT time. The P.E. coaches all walking out and spending at least half the period grabbing their own crotch. Needless to say, I really miss being 12.

Positive-I don't know. You're not quite the absolute jerk that you become as an eighth grader. I don't know if this is the case anymore, but for people around thirty, the eighth grade was the start of extreme alienation and generally bitchiness that continued for a solid two or two and half years.

Negative-Ivan, Nebraska football, strange older guys who hang out at the middle school even though they are in high school, Kenny wtf?, picking up all the cute girls. Social hierarchies of any kind. Math that includes variables. F the x and y axis both!!

Positives-I don't know, still having to walk to school. Being called a sevvie. Eating crappy school lunches. My advice to people who have kids is to never let them go to seventh grade. I'd suggest giving the kid up for adoption for a few years and then grabbing them back. Someone might tell you that it will screw them up, but rest assured this age is enough to screw up anyone it's best to let them do it on someone else's time.

Positive-Those gloriously short basketball shorts. More time to sport the UMT. Being taken out of class for the reading competency test and reading faster than anyone in the seventh grade. Screw you Mr. Barnum for having me in the lower reading group anyway. I could read circles around you. Who gives a damn where the Red Fern grows? I want to know that the heck is going on with Benjy in the Sound and the Fury. That's Faulkner via Shakespeare bit-c.
Other positives-Learning to let go of things like being in the second highest reading group in the third grade.


Negatives-Just about everything else.

S: Do you want to know what I listen to when you're out of the house?
M: What?
S: David Archuleta.
M: I'd hide that also.
S: I was listening to it upstairs the other day and it was awesome.
M: Shameful.

Addendum: You now realize that the kid's last name was Coburn not Cockburn. And maybe he had like a really tough home life that made him act out or something. But screw him anyway because no one ever wants to hear from the shy well-adjusted kid about how his home life ain't perfect either, but you don't see him going around harassing other kids.
Also, look at the signs of socialization. Apparently I found a comb and some hair gel in between my six and seventh grade years. Whatever happened to that smiling kid w/ crooked teeth?

Year 11

Eleven years old. In this year you play basketball every day. You keep stats like you're all headed for the NBA. This was your original dream, you only came up short by about ten inches in height and 3x in skill. It's akin to reaching for the clouds from like the second story of a row house. You're not all that close.

If you look uncomfortable in the pictures it's for two reasons. One, your shorts are a little north of the knee and pushing towards thigh. The upper male thigh is (particularly on white guys) is not regarded as the aesthetic height of beauty, and you were perhaps aware of that. The other is the presence of your brother's massive forearm on your knee. No doubt he was crushing your scrawny and already balky knees. I blame you for the knees David. If you can't blame your parents blame an older sibling.

You don't remember sixth grade very well. Your teacher, was a very strict middle-aged man who liked you and your best friend. Some days, when he was really feeling comfortable with you guys, he would have you sit on his knee. The whole thing changes if I say lap. You remember in the middle of the year, a student complaining to the principal, and your teacher saying, "I never had you guys sit on my lap," and you all nodded even though it wasn't true. You know that it wasn't like that, but we don't live in times like that anymore. Everyone is guilty before proven innocent. You now sound like you're ready to be thirty.

You remember the room always being quiet and whispering to your best friend. The teacher's always let you get away with stuff when they like you. You remember going to your teacher's house at the end of the school year, looking at all the exotic items he had collected with his wife over years of travel. He was probably a really interesting guy, probably pissed to be teaching sixth graders. Who knows? You don't know anything about your teachers at that age. They aren't really people. You imagine teaching some day yourself, being just one more thing in a classroom full of things to a student. No better than a piece of chalk or the dry erase board. No wonder so many teachers take to drinking.

You remember forgetting your homework for the first time in your life and standing on the wall during recess as punishment. You remember watching all the other kids, throw bouncy balls against the wall, or shooting hoops and feeling really and truly alone.

Here's the thing. You remember playing basketball and one more thing. You remember not ever talking to girls. You remember that you started desiring them starting in sixth grade in a way that could be described as something less pleasant than a stroll in the park hand in hand. But you don't every talk to them. They might as well be on another planet.

And maybe that's why you remember this one other thing from that year. You won student of the month, and the prize was to go to Chuck E. Cheese. You remember walking around for a bit and then ending up starting to play all the games with the other sixth grader there, a girl. Someone who you thought was cute, in the way that a sixth grader can. The two of you didn't say much, just wandered from game to game, with the voice of Chuck E. coming from the main room. You don't remember if you let her win at the games or what. You probably weren't that smart yet. Years later you will take at least two other girls to Chuck E. Cheese on dates. You've said, "it always works" without ever really remembering this day, your first date in a way.

The day ended and you went back to school and back to your separate classrooms. That night you were lying awake in bed, thinking of the way that her hair curled just a little. The word started to make sense in a new way. The two of you never really talked again that year, nor did you start striking up a bunch of convos. with other girls. You just remember that day at Chuck E. Cheese so clearly that you can almost still hear the air hockey puck slamming off the walls.

Positives-I don't know. You're not quite a teen, but the angst is beginning. I suppose on the bright side you're not quite thrust whole heartedly into the underbelly of middle school.

Negatives-You're headed for a very dark place and you just don't know it yet. You can't drive yet. Nobody's quite sure what's going on with you, least of all yourself.

Positives-Back in my day (good start) the real math hadn't stared yet. One of the positives of eleven was not sitting and starting blankly at an equation, thinking, "What the hell is that?" So, plus, school is still easy. Other positives: You are at the top of the school food chain. It only happens every three years, and it's nice to be at the top, a thing to treasure.

Negatives-You are about to head back down to the bottom of the food chain and be called a Sevvie. Sevvie (sp) a derogatory term from the early nineteen nineties used to deride a person who was entering middle school. A seventh grader.

Positives-It's your last year to enjoy elementary school. You kind of think you're ready to leave because you don't realize how good you've got it. They give you recess! Recess Mfer's!! When you're 30 the closest you can get to having recess would be to take up smoking so you get the breaks.

Positives-People still like you. Hell, you still kind of like you. You're starting to feel a bit of that teenage pull, but you still kind of trust yourself. Sure you can't do any pull-ups on the Presidential Fitness test, but you'll make up for that by spending hours in the gym later in life. Enjoy your youth!

Special Note: As I was logging out the ad on my blog was, "How to treat meniscus pain." Awesome.
Second Editorial Note: The housewarming party is set for March 13. I expect to see all of you there. If you attend, I'll give you an autographed copy of my blog and a picture of a monkey.

Year 10

Year 10. S says she that I make that exact same face as an adult as I do in this picture. I think that I want to wipe that smug smile right off that punk's face. But that's just how I roll. Strangely, I remember a lot about this picture. They tell you that sports are good for kids, that you learn camaraderie et al. Everybody tells you it's about playing the game not the winning and the losing. We were 14 and 2 that year, five games better than anyone else in our league. But we had to win a playoff game against one of those lowly teams. Me and this other kid had combined to throw a shutout in the previous playoff game, and now our best kid was throwing. Somehow, he didn't have it and we lost. And I remember standing around with the schedule of the games we were supposed to play bawling my eyes out. We we all crying. We knew that we'd lost something that we'd never be able to get back. I was ten, but I still remember it like it was yesterday. Be careful about whether you let your kids play t-ball.

This year I discovered basketball. On the first day me and this tall fourth grade kid won a game of 2 on 12 and became fast friends. In this year you got skipped up to a special math group and copied off your friend, who is now an accountant, because fractions and x and y are a language that you don't speak. You might as well have been being asked to translate Chinese. Most days though are about playing basketball. You hit the courts early, when the temp is still below forty degrees and play until the bell rings. You throw your lunch down after five minutes, so you can get a in a full forty minute game. You still remember the day that it snowed in Chico, and your team scored 100 points. We kept insane stats for no good reason. You remember running down court, the snow, falling softly, the whole scene surreal, and your team scoring 100.

Girls didn't even matter at ten. You remember this girl walking around saying, "Your socks don't match." And then, when they reached you, she gasped when she realized that your socks didn't actually match and pointed it out to the whole class. Screw you Georgie Dalton, I didn't start matching my socks until I was in my late twenties. You've got a memory like an elephant. But really, it's strange what things stick.

You remember your teacher reading the line "chinks in the roof" during the book Dragon Wings, and how you laughed at the racial slur that no one else seemed to get. It struck you as preposterous.

You remember performing a play on that same book, having to do a big part of it by yourself. You remember hamming it up a little, the kids laughing. Maybe the first time you enjoyed being in front of a group.

You remember your friend Tommy getting stabbed in the butt by a pencil and the teacher asking you two to go the bathroom and you to take a look at it. You walked to the bathroom and mutually decided that it was probably all right and a closer look wasn't needed.

You remember that teacher telling all the girls in the class that they should marry people like you and Tommy because you were smart and nice. You got an MFA in creative writing. How wrong was she?

Positives-Well, today I spent the evening with two ice packs on my knees and at work, I went to a meeting about how to get more out of other meetings. Then I went to another meeting. I don't think much more needs to be said. Hell, being ten, you just worry about whether your stroke is pure or not, nothing about whether you are taking proper notes on the agenda.

Scenario: We were given the advice in the meeting to "parking lot" some ideas. Ie table them until a later date to move on with the meeting. However, let me tell you, by the time I get to the parking lot if someone wants to talk to me about something to do with work, I want to shoot them in the f-ing head. No parking lots for me.

Negatives-Losing that baseball game. You probably won't forget it until vascular dementia kicks in.

Positive-Not even knowing the term vascular dementia.

Positive-Getting to play basketball every day without worrying about knee pain, or shoulder pain or whatever old man ailment plagues you on a particular week.

Year 9

This picture is subtitled, "In praise of American Dentistry." Or "Thank goodness for dental insurance."
Strangely, I remember thinking in the ninth grade when I got braces that I probably didn't need them. Hindsight is 2010. Wise choice. The thing is, if I was British I would have just been left to cope with my sideways teeth. I probably would have developed a dry sense of humor and floppy hair. I would have been the sort of fellow that everyone wanted to be around at a party because he could offer scathing remarks about people around him in a charming way. Quite frankly, I really should have kept the teeth as they were and moved to England. I blame my mother (mainly because it's fair to blame your parents for everything, like traffic jams and snow storms) for not letting me be cast in the movie "Sideways, a tooth story."

Great moment of the work day. ILL Request for the book "The art of seduction." Status of the book: Lost. No comment.

Other voices in the same room. Rebecca Prosky's joke: Toyota, moving forward....because we can't stop.

A cartoon from my Aunt Janet that pretty much mirrors the idea that this blog was founded upon: buying a house. A wife suggests a remodel of the home to her husband. His answer: (And dammit don't I wish it was mine) We put restroom signs on every bathroom so when a guest asks to use them we say,"Sorry, those are for customers only." Then we demand they buy something or get out.

From S: I love animals followed by an insane amount of blubbering. Apparently the squirrel guy thinks we've almost certainly got a nest up there. He then went on to describe to S that the babies were little and pink and couldn't move. And we're going to kill them. At which point she started crying and claiming she couldn't be there during the termination. This, after insisting that we get it done when I volunteered to do it myself.
M: In response. "Stop being crazy."
S: Blubbers. "I don't kill animals. I like squirrels."
M: "You're acting like one of the kids at my day care. You need to go find a place to sit and think about what you're doing.
S: Crying on the floor.

That's compassion in action my friends.

Later:
M: You know what this lasagna could use? Baby squirrel meat.
S: Face crumbles. Tears ensue.

I love squirrels as much as the next fellow, but you've got to be realistic about this sort of thing. We can't have them chewing through the wiring in our attic and setting the house on fire. So, either they go or we do, and we paid considerably more for the house. However, we rescheduled the appointment, so they have one week to vacate the premises. I'll post an eviction notice soon.

Nine. In this year you change schools. You remember that other kids who changed schools seemed to become instantly popular. They could shed off whoever they'd been and just be new. This does not happen for you. In this year you discover that you are amazing at memorizing the times tables. The other students stand in awe of you. Your teachers confuse this ability to memorize with an affinity for numbers, which causes you tragic (grade wise) consequences down the road.

Your teacher is one of those older women who always smells like smoke and who still colors her hair. You remember mostly, the kid in class who could dance like Michael Jackson, and the day that he threw up. You remember looking out the small rectangular cubical window, to the other boring classrooms beyond. For some reason this is the year that you begin to grow up. You find yourself, for the first time, occasionally bored in school. Not eager to please the teacher but eager for the subject matter to please you. You do well, but what you mostly remember is beating Contra every day after school with Blake. Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, B, A, start.
You should probably investigate this year more. What made it so boring and yet significant. In this year, you start to lose touch with your old friends, your teacher doesn't love you, and school is sometimes boring. You do not yet have a passion to pursue. You are between things. All you can remember is that large rectangular window, the slate sidewalk you trudged up in blinding heat, and feeling alone, alienated from the people around you for the first time that you can remember. You weren't unhappy, you were just kind of simulating the life of an adult.

Positives-You can get away with crooked teeth.

Negative-You're old enough that people start to give you chores like taking out the trash or washing the dishes.

Positives-You can still play all recess long, sweat, and have no repercussions. You don't know any words like Trans Fats or High Fructose Corn syrup. You just know that you love spreading that cheese with the little plastic red stick onto your crackers. You love Gummi bears and the fact that you can come home and watch the Disney Afternoon. The original line-up, none of this Darkwing Duck crap, though you disliked the Rescue Rangers, even then, a sure sign that the squirrels in your attic were in trouble.

Negative-You are on the long slow journey towards becoming a teenager. Alienation, here we come!

Year 8

Today after work I drove over to CVS and bought 2 knee supports and some Ibuprofen. It's great to be heading downhill towards 30. It's going to be the time of my life. A time in my life where my body breaks down, and I become less sharp mentally, but I compensate for it by claiming that I am much "wiser" than I was in my twenties, not so given to fancy flights of the mind. Read: Becoming rigid in all thoughts, opinions etc.

Eight years old-One of the great things about being eight years old is that you can have a flat top. If you have a flat top as an adult people pretty much know you're military. However, you can sport the flat top without repercussions.

In this year you take a vacation to Oklahoma. You stand in the four corners, witness a violent storm at the rim of the Grand Canyon. You explore caves, and hike in Colorado with the sound of coyotes accompanying you on the ridge top. You meet parts of your family that you never see again. You spend hours at your fake aunt's house playing Mike Tyson's Punch Out. You pass the controller to cousins and siblings for hours and hours without any of you ever getting close to beating him. None of you even now what about the winking jabs that begin in the second round. You realize, looking back now, that you can say something like "They don't make them like they used to." That game was hard.


When you are eight you perfect the long bomb pass with Nate. No matter how many times you complete a deep pass over the other kids heads they always cover you tight at the line and get beet deep. It seems like every day you are running and waiting for the football to drop, watching it spiral against the lapis lazuli dome of the sky, the occasional tree branch in your peripheral vision. And then you remember catching it, and racing for the large iron gate that marked off the end zone. It was a good year.

In this year you get in the one and only fist fight of your life. You still have to use it as a reference point. The troubled kid in class punches you in the face in the middle of recess for a reason that you were never able to discern and you took the palm of your hand and rammed it into the bridge of his nose. He bled and cried. You got off without any punishment and he was sent home. It pays to be the good kid.

In this year you move from the second highest reading group to the highest reading group mid-year. The teacher expects you to read the in-between reader over the course of a few weeks to catch up, and you read it over the weekend. You still wonder what the hell you were doing in the second highest reading group. In seventh grade you read faster than anyone. Years later, your teacher's will know that you read so quickly because you didn't even bother to notice the punctuation. But you are young, and read quickly.

In this year you come in second place in the spelling bee. Every round your heart is beating rapidly. You hate being in front of groups, but you also hate displeasing people. You lose on the word encyclopedia. You will remember how to spell this word forever.

In this year a girl tells you that she loves you for the first time. She hands you a sheet of white drawing paper with a sun in the center, green grass, and two stick figures walking hand in hand. At the top, mid-center of the picture it says, "I Love You." You shove the picture into your desk hurriedly and turn bright red. The kid next to you notices the note and makes fun of the girl. You aren't old enough yet to know that it's a good thing when girls like you. This will take years.

This is also the year that you develop your first crush on a girl. It's hard to remember that this little person, a third-grader, could have a crush on someone. Your best friend tells you to feign a stomach ache because the little girl will notice and feel empathetic pain for you. You fake a stomach ache, and it works. This is a great and strange day. You realize how appropriate this start was, how we lie to one another in the courting phase, even when we're eight.

Well, off to my bed and headed towards thirty. My knees are aching, the clock in the guest bedroom is ticking loudly. At least I can beat Mike Tyson now in Punch Out.

Seven

Seven. Not only a great movie, but also a pretty solid age. Did I get the movie reference right this time? Anyhow, the coolest part about this picture is the background. That's right, it's Jane Austen time. I'm wearing my mountain man shirt and just chilling on the fence, very naturally, with some sunlit trees in the background. Made up nature is so much more refreshing than real nature. I think for our next vacation we'll just head in to Olan Mills and have them take some candid shots of us in front of a bunch of cool stuff. Think of all the money we'll save, and how jealous everyone will be that we had such an awesome time on vacation in so many places. Then we can take the money that we saved and take a real vacation without taking any pictures at all, just enjoying the scenery and culture without having to take a picture of every damn thing!
Interpolation:
M: Don't make shi- up.
S: I didn't. I read it somewhere.
M: Sounds like a reliable source.

You are seven years old. In this year you will write your name on the board for the one and only time in your life. It starts with a pinch from the kid who used to make fun of you in kindergarten. You are seven, and you know that this is wrong, so you take your fingers and pinch him back. The two of you are pinching one another in a progressively harder manner. One of you, you don't think it was you, begins to cry. Your teacher, Mrs. Wallace is in her first year and slightly overwhelmed. Thinking back, you can't imagine she lasted for more than a few years after that. She didn't really like kids. Or maybe she loved them, but they drove her up the wall. You remember that she was uncertain. Or maybe you don't. Maybe it is a think your mother told you on that day when you made the long walk to the white board and scrawled your name on the board. And for the rest of the day your face was tinged with red, and as you tried to focus on addition and subtraction, your eyes kept wandering to that little corner of the board where you had written your name. Your shame, etched in dry erase marker.

You don't remember much else about this year. Just this tense young woman trying to go about the business of teaching and flubbing it. You are sure that you got some more friends and scored some goals for the soccer team. You played tether ball against the boys and a girl who wound up becoming a professional tennis player. She was good, but you don't ever remember losing to her. You probably did. But you are too young to remember the failures like you will do later in life. At that age, you remember the success. The things you did well. Your penmanship is still atrocious. The playground is slightly smaller, and you look forward to being a third grader. The big guys at recess.

Negatives-Mrs. Wallace.

Negatives-Writing your name on the board. Even you kind of thought you were a perfect kid after first grade. It probably happened to other kids weekly, perhaps it is the indelible mark that it left on you that makes you such a teacher's favorite.

Positives-The expectations are still pretty low. You can wear a mountain man t-shirt without anyone noticing. Hygiene is still an optional thing. You can shave your side burns off and people think it's kind of cool.

Negatives-When you are seven you are standing on the cusp of childhood. For the first time you really know that the world is composed of hierarchies. The mere fact that you envy the the kids in third grade is probably a bad sign. An introduction into the worst parts of human nature. When you see yourself as falling short of the other.

Positives-You can still wear themed underwear without it being even remotely problematic. The Thunder Cats are still on television. G.I. Joe and Transformers are probably on only on Saturday's, but they live in your mind in the time in between. What the hell happened to cartoons anyway? In your teens shows like Power Rangers are on. The Transformers would have shot the hell out of those weirdos. Everybody knew that Captain Planet was strange, you only watched it to see how these weird kids would summon the short shorted dude. Cartoons, definitively.

Other Positives-Your knees don't hurt and slide around as if something is torn. If you fall, you are allowed to cry. You are allowed still to wail a bit. You don't cry often.

Other facts-The squirrels will be going the way of the gravestone starting Thursday. Apparently the human folks aren't humane enough to e-mail me back. The three feet of snow is off our roof, but it's snowing again. Oh, and house across the street is for sale if anyone in DC is looking to buy. I promise we'd be good neighbors. Note: We wouldn't dig you out of the snow or anything, but we'd commiserate with you about how much it sucks because that's what good neighbors do.
http://www.redfin.com/DC/Washington/713-Oneida-Pl-NW-20011/home/10052538