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.