(no subject)
I wish that I could do the first twenty-three years of my life over again.
When I was in pre-school, one of the older kids -- a five-year-old with over-protective parents -- managed to convince me that a seagull flying high above Noe Valley Nursery School was, in fact, a witch. And not just any witch, mind you, but a witch with the sole witchy purpose of killing me. I spent the better part of a month afraid to depart the sanctuary of the converted duplex and venture into the playground. A month of torment from the older kids and, even worse, a month of torment from the younger kids eager to seize an opportunity to win the older kids' respect.
By the time I was in first grade, my irrational fear of witches had morphed into a depressingly rational fear of Ms. Waters. She was big and mean, an overtly Machiavellian educator with graying hair and the shadowy remnants of a beard. She preyed on my fear, rejoiced in my hatred, and flourished in my disdain. Near the beginning of the spring term, a lost mathematics book would prove the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. So paralyzed by nightmares of my professor that an honest admission of my mistake did not present itself as a viable option, I chose instead the path of least resistance. Until the next series of workbooks became available, I hid under my desk for an hour every day while she preached to the advanced students about long division. To this moment, Ms. Waters' marks represent the only imperfection that my transcript has seen under "mathematics."
The seventh-grade perhaps signaled the climax of an overly distraught childhood. Although finding solace in the world of lunchtime football and befriending one of the more popular students in my class, Dustin Winn could not save me from the wrath of the proverbial school shrink. Hailed out of Mr. Ptak's drama class on a Tuesday afternoon -- amidst the token "oohs" and "ahhs" of a room full of thespians -- I met a strange woman outside the principal's office. She introduced herself politely, and led me outside to the basketball courts, which were already occupied by nearly a dozen of my fellow misfits. While I forget the precise dialogue that transpired, I remember that the severely brief walk from the principal's office to the basketball courts served as my only orientation to the world of group therapy. By the time half the students, proceeding counter-clockwise in an orderly fashion, had detailed in all seriousness the particular traumas that bred their need for psychotherapy, I had determined for myself the source of my involvement in this group. The social-worker asked Dan Fitzgerald, sitting immediately to my left, why he was particularly in need of therapy. In stark contrast to every student that had appeared at least superficially aware of his own misgivings, Dan stated in his trademark deadpan manner: "I'm here because my sister's a junkie." Without missing a beat, the public educational system's excuse for a psychologist turned to me. "I'm fairly certain I'm here because my mom hates me."
By my sophomore year of high school, I had become thankfully aware of the fact that the traditional bullies never touched me. The exception was Mark Samuel, who once whispered over my shoulder in the middle of fourth-period chemistry: "If I ever see you walking in Marinwood again, I swear to God I'll slit your throat." Despite the fact that I believed every word emerging from between Mark's lips, most of my troubles came from the sorry class of social outcasts that were burdened by the fact that the traditional bullies did pick on them. In a six-month period spanning my sophomore and junior years of high school, I had my gym clothes stolen and deposited in the nearest trash repository; I had two-percent low fat milk spilled rudely on my head from a landing above the west wing of the school; and I had the cap to the gas tank of my 1988 Subaru Stationwagon removed and jettisoned from the window of a speeding car. What hurts now and what hurt at the time, however, was not the particular atrocities inflicted upon my adolescent self. Rather, it was the fact that these atrocities were orchestrated by one Jackson Bollinger-Hines. Jackson fucking Bollinger-Hines. I find only moderate solace in the fact that he was arrested shortly after high school for shooting car windows with a bee-bee gun.
My college years were decorated not by fear or victimization, but by the auspices of severe anti-socialism. On the trail-end of a week spent with little human interaction and even less self-reflection, the spring of my last year in Davis saw me traversing the forty-five minutes to Sacramento International Airport -- a designation that it maintained only with infrequent flights to Vancouver or Mexico City -- in order to recover my best friend from a recent jaunt across the country. During the ride back to our shared room on the north end of town, he regaled me with severely depressing tales of severely depressing people and I informed him that I had not endeavored to repair the "problem" he had kindly left in our bathroom. It was the silence after this discovery that saw two twenty-one-year-old men enter a K-Mart at 10:00 on a cold and lonely Sunday evening, and leave with a plunger in tow. Having received the item at the checkout stand, the cashier, an attractive blonde, barely attempted to supress a laugh -- one more at our expense than in the presence of our shared humor. I stared sheepishly at my own tennis shoes while my friend made the purchase, part of me wanting to smile at the cashier and tell her that it was for a school project but the balance simply wishing that I had waited in the car.
Self-reflection, frequently the cause of violent disappointment, is generally over-rated. Thus, it is without seeking a deeper purpose -- or even drawing significantly from the experiences that shaped me -- that I state the following:
I wish that I could do the first twenty-three years of my life over again. I think I could have had a lot of fun . . . .
When I was in pre-school, one of the older kids -- a five-year-old with over-protective parents -- managed to convince me that a seagull flying high above Noe Valley Nursery School was, in fact, a witch. And not just any witch, mind you, but a witch with the sole witchy purpose of killing me. I spent the better part of a month afraid to depart the sanctuary of the converted duplex and venture into the playground. A month of torment from the older kids and, even worse, a month of torment from the younger kids eager to seize an opportunity to win the older kids' respect.
By the time I was in first grade, my irrational fear of witches had morphed into a depressingly rational fear of Ms. Waters. She was big and mean, an overtly Machiavellian educator with graying hair and the shadowy remnants of a beard. She preyed on my fear, rejoiced in my hatred, and flourished in my disdain. Near the beginning of the spring term, a lost mathematics book would prove the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. So paralyzed by nightmares of my professor that an honest admission of my mistake did not present itself as a viable option, I chose instead the path of least resistance. Until the next series of workbooks became available, I hid under my desk for an hour every day while she preached to the advanced students about long division. To this moment, Ms. Waters' marks represent the only imperfection that my transcript has seen under "mathematics."
The seventh-grade perhaps signaled the climax of an overly distraught childhood. Although finding solace in the world of lunchtime football and befriending one of the more popular students in my class, Dustin Winn could not save me from the wrath of the proverbial school shrink. Hailed out of Mr. Ptak's drama class on a Tuesday afternoon -- amidst the token "oohs" and "ahhs" of a room full of thespians -- I met a strange woman outside the principal's office. She introduced herself politely, and led me outside to the basketball courts, which were already occupied by nearly a dozen of my fellow misfits. While I forget the precise dialogue that transpired, I remember that the severely brief walk from the principal's office to the basketball courts served as my only orientation to the world of group therapy. By the time half the students, proceeding counter-clockwise in an orderly fashion, had detailed in all seriousness the particular traumas that bred their need for psychotherapy, I had determined for myself the source of my involvement in this group. The social-worker asked Dan Fitzgerald, sitting immediately to my left, why he was particularly in need of therapy. In stark contrast to every student that had appeared at least superficially aware of his own misgivings, Dan stated in his trademark deadpan manner: "I'm here because my sister's a junkie." Without missing a beat, the public educational system's excuse for a psychologist turned to me. "I'm fairly certain I'm here because my mom hates me."
By my sophomore year of high school, I had become thankfully aware of the fact that the traditional bullies never touched me. The exception was Mark Samuel, who once whispered over my shoulder in the middle of fourth-period chemistry: "If I ever see you walking in Marinwood again, I swear to God I'll slit your throat." Despite the fact that I believed every word emerging from between Mark's lips, most of my troubles came from the sorry class of social outcasts that were burdened by the fact that the traditional bullies did pick on them. In a six-month period spanning my sophomore and junior years of high school, I had my gym clothes stolen and deposited in the nearest trash repository; I had two-percent low fat milk spilled rudely on my head from a landing above the west wing of the school; and I had the cap to the gas tank of my 1988 Subaru Stationwagon removed and jettisoned from the window of a speeding car. What hurts now and what hurt at the time, however, was not the particular atrocities inflicted upon my adolescent self. Rather, it was the fact that these atrocities were orchestrated by one Jackson Bollinger-Hines. Jackson fucking Bollinger-Hines. I find only moderate solace in the fact that he was arrested shortly after high school for shooting car windows with a bee-bee gun.
My college years were decorated not by fear or victimization, but by the auspices of severe anti-socialism. On the trail-end of a week spent with little human interaction and even less self-reflection, the spring of my last year in Davis saw me traversing the forty-five minutes to Sacramento International Airport -- a designation that it maintained only with infrequent flights to Vancouver or Mexico City -- in order to recover my best friend from a recent jaunt across the country. During the ride back to our shared room on the north end of town, he regaled me with severely depressing tales of severely depressing people and I informed him that I had not endeavored to repair the "problem" he had kindly left in our bathroom. It was the silence after this discovery that saw two twenty-one-year-old men enter a K-Mart at 10:00 on a cold and lonely Sunday evening, and leave with a plunger in tow. Having received the item at the checkout stand, the cashier, an attractive blonde, barely attempted to supress a laugh -- one more at our expense than in the presence of our shared humor. I stared sheepishly at my own tennis shoes while my friend made the purchase, part of me wanting to smile at the cashier and tell her that it was for a school project but the balance simply wishing that I had waited in the car.
Self-reflection, frequently the cause of violent disappointment, is generally over-rated. Thus, it is without seeking a deeper purpose -- or even drawing significantly from the experiences that shaped me -- that I state the following:
I wish that I could do the first twenty-three years of my life over again. I think I could have had a lot of fun . . . .