|
The Days of Our Lives C June 19th, 2008 |
|
Okay, I’m borrowing a page from Chris Zasada. So sue me. I’m not even going to pretend that I spontaneously decided to write a brief biography, and that his tribute to the last 25 years of his life had nothing to do with it. Unlike a certain friend of mine in middle school who insisted she was not so much stealing my ideas as “improving upon them,” I try to give credit where credit is due. But then again, if I was obsessed with every idea I had being utterly original then I’d have to rule out inspiration entirely. The best we mere mortals can hope to accomplish is to put just a little part of ourselves into something that has already been done. The content, I’m sure you know, is uniquely my own. You would be hard pressed to select two members of the same graduating class whose lives have diverged as much as mine and Chris’s, but variety is the spice of life, and I’ve always admired how perfectly we balance each other. I just want an opportunity to tell my side of the story. I’m going to try to resist the temptation to make my life into a story. Too often, when we’re reading someone’s random musings, it’s hard not to make your memory fit the prescribed format of having a beginning, middle and end. The truth is far more scary. Each man’s life is a series of random incidents that only twenty years later, if we’re lucky, we can look back and try to make sense out of. To tell the full story would be to tell the full story of this world, and to tell the story of one life takes a lifetime. There’s stuff I’m sure I’m forgetting, and stuff I left out on purpose because it didn’t seem important. Still, I tried to be as accurate as possible with the dates and pop culture references. So without further preamble that’s only making me feel more and more guilty for even attempting this, I’m going to get on with the story of my life. And it all begins in… 1983: The Most Important Year Ever President Regan declared this year the “year of the Bible,” though I’d like to think I had nothing to do with this. Also, Again, I swear I had nothing to do with it. I was born on June 19th of this year, nearly two months premature, which my mom always told me was due to an inept doctor grabbing and shaking her belly when she first went to report her pregnancy. Whatever was the cause, I believe it contributed to my later being diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, and the fact that to this day I have weak fingernails. Other than that, I was very healthy, and can’t complain. By December I had been alive less than six months, so I can’t rightfully recall my first New Years, though I was the first child of my parents, Matthew and Jennifer, and the first grandchild on my mom’s side. I have little doubt I was spoiled beyond belief. Things seemed to be lining up for an outstanding childhood. Then something happened in… 1984: The Dawn of the Devil
…that would change my world forever. My parents had sex again. The inevitable result being that my baby sister, Laura, was born on September 11th of that year. I’m not making the date up, though to be fair, she was born 17 years before the date was significant. Still, one has to wonder if it wasn’t an omen, especially alongside the fact that 1984 is a world famous euphemism for a hellish and war-torn Cacotopia. But again, I’m only guessing. My parents tell me I was actually excited about getting a new sister, probably because I had little concept of what “sister” meant, or that there’d be another kid sticking around for 20-plus years. Heck, a concept like 20 years seemed utterly alien to me. I was much closer with the family dog, Roxanne. My first word was “doggy,” followed shortly by “daddy”, before I got around to naming my mom. Modern research says children don’t retain any memories until they are at least four years old, which in my case didn’t happen until… 1987: Fish Happens …though I have videos of my grandpa and I discussing the year even earlier. In 1987 we were living in a two-story, white house in east Other than an early inclination to defy authority, I’m not sure what this proves, other than the fact that there were obviously not a lot of other kids around. The stairway was carpeted in blue, going down into a playroom with a circular blue rug, and I always thought this looked like a waterfall pouring into a whirlpool. Another game we often played was called “fish,” and mostly involved going down the stairwell on my stomach as though I were a fish. My parents seemed to have trouble with this concept. Meanwhile, a bunch of people were indicted because of the Iran-Contra scandal, though I was not aware of it at the time. This was also the year I started pre-school at a church I don’t remember, under a lady mysteriously titled “Miss Karen.” I have very few memories of pre-school, other than wetting myself during a cartoon. Photographs indicate I met many people this year who would later become important, including Erin Saezler and Jay Harrington. In December I could not resist the urge to dance as I listened to the Muppets sing Christmas carols. I pleaded with Laura to hold hands with me as I hopped around, to no avail. I believe this was when I learned the value of making other friends. In… 1988: I’m a Big Kid, Look What I Can Do, I Can Wear Big Kid Pants Too… …I was finally allowed to go to the big kid school, albeit an isolated room for only half the day. I remember this experience very vividly, my mom walking me up to the door, me taking a few tentative steps inside to get the lay of the land, then spinning around to tell her I loved her and finding her already gone. In retrospect, I imagine it was just as traumatic for my mother, a woman whose nurturing instinct has been studied by physicists as the only force more powerful than magnetism. At the time, I nearly broke down crying before Mrs. Nissan brought me inside and showed me where the books were. Believe it or not, I had an early aversion to reading. The only books my parents took out for me from the library were all about cars and trucks, something I had absolutely no interest in (my Hotwheels were all aliens in disguise). I did, however, begin my first novel on my dad’s Commodore 64, which in my mind was the next Indiana Jones movie, but in point of fact was really, really lame. My next attempt, a space drama about a Flash Gordon-like figure named Matt Daddies (who says boys aren’t influenced by their fathers), didn’t receive more than a few paragraphs on actual paper, and was mostly based on Star Wars. I still struggle to understand my Harrison Ford complex, and how successful I might be now without his stunning example (in Star Wars, he gets the girl by admitting that he likes being a scoundrel). I also want to mention that I had some vague notion my dad worked for the power company, but no real conception of what this entailed, so I used to sit and have whole conversations with him through the wall outlets while he was at work. I don’t recall what I might have been telling him, but my mom does. Despite almost being run over by a red truck at the Starr school crosswalk, I used the summer to get over my fear and was walking myself to school by… 1989: Being Uprooted …since I was only two blocks away from my house, home for lunch, back again, and another trip home, every single day. This year was traumatizing because we changed houses, which is almost the worst thing that can happen to a child (at least one living in a quiet suburban community like I did). I may have been only six, but I had spent one hundred percent of my life in that place. Suddenly the whole world seemed to be changing, and my parents recall me asking if we would even have the same grandparents when it was all finished. We moved into a slightly bigger, one-story, L-shaped brick house in First grade was interesting, because we were finally allowed to share the big playground with the big kids, whereas kindergarteners were considered too fragile. This took some growing pains, because even at the time I was aware that my reputation for the next 12 years would be built on this strip of blacktop. As it happens, I made the wrong choice, because I tried my hand at being a playground bully, thinking that if I intimidated all the other kids early I wouldn’t have to fend for myself later. That I thought I was in any way physically intimidating shows you two things: 1) that I had not spent much time around anyone my own age, aside from Laura, who was little, and 2) that I pictured myself in the body of Harrison Ford. That line of thinking ended only a couple months later with my face down in the dirt and Clayt Beltron on my back, screaming about something I’m not sure I understood at the time. Several kids I knew waltzed by, and as I looked at them pleadingly, they commented that Clayt was starting trouble again, and disappeared from view. Suddenly it seemed this lifestyle was not the healthiest choice, and I resolved to become a nerd for the rest of my life, where at least someone will take pity on you when you’re down. Aerosmith released “Pump” this year, with songs like “Love in an Elevator” and “What It Takes” hitting the airwaves, so maybe it’s not a coincidence I only began noticing music. At skating rink parties, a tremendous fad you wouldn’t understand if you weren’t there, we listened to Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer” and the B-52’s “Love Shack,” which would become my sisters favorite song, and the first time I heard The Bangles sing “Eternal Flame,” I remember thinking whoever that was had the most beautiful voice in the world, and must have a face to match. But none of that would compare with the most important musical event of my life, which happened in… 1990: Pump Up the Jam …when I inadvertently discovered The Phantom of the Opera at an unusually boring family gathering. It happened like this. As I had mentioned, I was the only kid on my mom’s side, and at this particular tour of my aunt’s new house, I found myself for the first time taking a backseat, oddly enough to a heating system, or something else I had little care in. I settled down on the couch to stare out the window, and discovered a cassette recording of “The Phantom of the Opera”. I inserted the tape, vaguely interested by a radio advertisement I recall hearing when it came out in 1986, though maybe I was just bored. That hour would become one of the most important in my life, during which I sat utterly transfixed by the sounds booming all around me. The overture alone stirred the hair on the back of my neck and made me feel I was falling from a great height into a vast arena filled with violin players. At the time, I had not words to describe it. When the tape was over, I turned it around and played the B-side. And when that was over, I flipped it back and listened to it all again, my mom marveling that I had been quiet for over an hour. Eventually the sky started to get dark and it was time to go home. I don’t know what happened on that couch in my aunt’s house, but it was the first time music came to mean anything at all to me. Before that, I remember receiving Michael Jackson’s “BAD” album and Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry Be Happy,” which came out in ’87 and ’88 respectively, and seemed cool because they were the first albums I actually owned, but neither had the impact of The Phantom of the Opera. Phantom may also have been the cause of me paying more attention to the tapes my dad played over and over again in the car, Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” and The Beatle’s “Abby Road.” I also remember him singing along to Billy Joel’s “You May Be Right,” though this came out before I was born, and I don’t know when to place it. Speaking of things I can’t place, the rational for the first 1991: The Year of the Truce …not that I was, or knew anyone involved. If I can credit it with anything, I can say it was the first news story that grabbed my attention to any extent whatsoever. Every day I sat with my dad watching Tom Brokaw on the nightly news, watching the “Dad,” I asked, “why do they keep bombing the city, when the only one who’s really causing trouble is Saddam, and he could care less what happens to his own people? Why not just go in and kill him?” “Because if we sent someone in to assassinate him, that would be a violation of the rules of war.” he answered, though I think he was impressed by the question. “Oh,” I said, “Well that seems like a pretty dumb rule.” The fact that the headline grabbed me isn’t to say I knew anyone in, or had anything to do with the Iraq War. I can’t even truthfully say why it concerned me so much, being far more concerned with the war going on right under my nose. It was in second grade that an irritating girl named Erin began approaching me at every opportunity insisting we had been friends in preschool, a fact that, at the time, I had absolutely no memory of. I wanted nothing to do with her, but she persisted in cutting in line to be next to me in the cafeteria. Cutting was normally a cardinal sin among students, but the other kids allowed this mainly, I think, because they got to see me squirm. I would be remiss, however, if I failed to mention another annoying kid named Chris Zasada who started making my life significantly harder. I have no idea where he came from, but at the close of second grade, my recollection is of two firmly established alliances, much like We picked on each other a lot, never with less than two boys for backup, but neither of us were very popular, so I think they just enjoyed seeing us kill one another. One incident in particular found Chris approaching me with two of his cronies pinning my arms between them on the merry-go-round. His smug smile at having me helpless turned to irritation when I kicked up my legs and nearly caught his face. Then, rather than risk approaching me, he spat, and at least some of his genetic material got into my mouth where I, being a disgusting little kid, swallowed. I don’t know if something happened that day that irrevocably bound us together, but it’s poetic to say the least. The rest of our second grade seems pretty hazy, and then I turned nine and started third grade. By that time I had remembered my commitment to being a nerd, but it seemed to me a matter of efficient use of time. I could spend yet another year worrying if three guys were going to jump out of nowhere and beat me, or I could make a truce with the source of my problem and agree not to attack him if he didn’t attack me. Again, this is a pretty advanced thought for a nine-year-old who hadn’t yet heard the concept of an armistice. On the first day we were released to the playground, I sought him out and finally found him hanging out by the jungle gym. It was risky, but to my mind I had to at least make the attempt. I held my hands up and called to him that I didn’t want to fight him any more. I just wanted to talk, and I was being honest. Chris was naturally untrustworthy, but after talking for only a few minutes we shook hands and agreed to ignore each other. At least I thought that’s what the agreement was. Instead, I found him asking me to play four-square with him, and I was always afraid to say no because it might mean a resumption of hostilities. At some point I became so used to him and considered him a friend, and we’ve been close ever since. I made a similar truce with 1992: Meow… …and was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. I’m moody about this one, because I don’t like admitting I had, or have, a problem. I continue to believe ADD is the greatest scam perpetuated on this generation, and that Ritalin is a placebo for parents to give to their kids rather than take themselves. I cannot count the number of arguments my parents won only after insisting I take a pill. At one point my parents said, this is a quote, “We just saw something in your sister that we didn’t see in you.” which I take as proof that a kid who shows any creativity beyond what his parents understand can be branded unstable. I felt dejected, although to be fair, they always showed concern for my self-image. It was around this time that If we ever ran out of conversation material, she would start having me do mad-libs over the phone, which seemed slightly insane, though I was always too polite to tell her I had other things to be doing. Which I did, as all that wasted time might have been better spent on the computer or playing with Roxanne. On a side note, it was while I was playing a computer game I was first informed my dad’s dad, Grandpa Tom, had passed away. I tried to keep from crying by acting disinterested and going back to my game, until my mom slapped me, and that brought it all out. Other than that, my loss of a grandparent left less of an impression than I might have hoped. But as far as Ariel, however, cannot be the first woman to make me think of women as something that could be fun, for the sole fact that she was a cartoon. That honor goes to Michelle Pfieffer playing Catwoman in Batman Returns, which came out this year. I was far too young to understand how I could be attracted to a glasses-wearing librarian-by-day who turned into a leather-clad, mewling kitty by night. I may not know art, but I knew what I liked. Anyway, she messed me up for life. Another important movie that came out this year, though I wouldn’t get around to seeing it until… 1993: Party Time! Excellent! …was Wayne’s World, which I loved not because I knew what Saturday Night Live was, or because I necessarily got the jokes, but because I got to listen to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” for the first time at the beginning of the movie. I was still buying up all the Andrew Lloyd Weber compilations I could find, but that song gave me food for thought that there might be something else I was missing. Interestingly, this is also the year I saw Aerosmith perform “Cryin’” on SNL, and decided it sounded really cool. I’ve never been a big movie fan, and probably wouldn’t have seen it ever if not for the prodding of a dandelion-headed idiot named Tommy Flick. Tommy was in boy scouts with me, and our dads worked together, so the friendship was almost a political arrangement. He had a swing-set, but beyond that I didn’t care much for him. Tommy did one other significant thing for me, which was to give me a dog when he had puppies (well, not specifically him, but his dog). In the summer before I started 5th grade, I was in the fortunate position to get first pick of the litter, and we chose Katy, a cute little black lab puppy with a pink collar. At least she started little, but grew really quickly. She would be my faithful companion until after I left Tommy was invited to my tenth birthday party, but ended up not being able to come for some reason I didn’t know, and really didn’t care. Instead, I got at least four other boys I knew only in passing: Drew Wood, Zach Brock, Jeff Bartley and Kyle Timofeev (who years later would come out of the closet, I hope I had nothing to do with this). I don’t know why I invited them, except we all shared a hair and eye color, they lived relatively close, and they looked like they would buy me presents. The most significant event of this party was that my sister, god bless her, threw a water balloon into Zach’s crotch during the hose fight and he had to go home early. Also, Jeff gave me a hundred dollar bill that my parents used to pay tolls on the way to You’ll notice one name not on the list: Chris Zasada, but not for my lack of pleading. I wish I could be clearer about this, but for some reason my mom didn’t like him. Maybe he did have a bad reputation, as she claimed, but it’s hard to imagine what an elementary schooler could do to earn one. We were equally unpopular, but she seemed to believe I was only unpopular because of him, which dashed any hopes I had of becoming President of the I also wish I could say this was a one time thing, but my mom has always been mistrustful of him. My mom had, at that point, already been working in the school system for a year, and conveniently always managed to be at the school I was currently attending, though she denies I was her reason for doing it. One day, while she was lining up kids in the gym to get on the bus, Chris came up to her and asked why he hadn’t been invited to my party. Cute little bugger. Laura and I invented a good many games this summer. I had a veritable legion of alter-ego’s, among others I may have forgotten: Super-Chris, Liquid-Man, Brothermeister (a ninja), Grandpa Papa (a mad scientist), Big Boss (a crime lord), Master Chris (a billionaire playboy), Master Chris (an evil wizard) and Master (a super hero). Each one of these had an equivalent for my sister to play, and although I didn’t realize it at the time, was my first foray into true leadership, since Laura was more or less willing to play by any rules I thought up, but would have and probably still would be loath to admit it. One of Master’s (a short lived super hero concept) chief rivals was a mad scientist named Main Brain, who rode around the city in an armored tank that looked suspiciously like the swing set my dad had just installed in our yard. Main Brain didn’t have much of a history, except he was green, had a cone head and seemed to be able to electrocute people with his hands. One would naturally expect him to die quickly when summer ended, but later events served to ensure that Main Brain would live forever. Chris and I had been drawing Laura comics for a couple years already, which were mainly depictions of my sister bumbling through adulthood, usually killing herself or others due to her ineptness. A few were actually funny, and a few of those gave us quotes and inside jokes we are repeating to this day. What we didn’t have, however, was a superhero. Somehow we got wind of each others’ fantasies, Chris spent his summer running around pretending to be Ryu, the greatest ninja of them all. Ryu and Main Brain teamed up, Main Brain now an alien who had lost his memory upon crashing into the earth, and fought through a couple hundred issues of poorly drawn comics with no sensible plot. Some say they are still fighting. I also joined his bowling league and have many fond memories of romping through the bowling alley after school, aside from the inconvenience of having to actually bowl. One day we found ourselves talking about our mutual fear of getting a flu shot, when I grabbed his arm and cackled manically, “This won’t hurt a bit…” Doctor Fiendish was born. It became somewhat more difficult to run around playing “Warriors” when we started middle school in… |