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.