Category Archives: w/r/t the past

May 2 2012

nostalgic

(1)

I miss vinyl. Not the sound of it, though The Beatles don’t sound quite right without the vinyl scratch. I miss spending a few hours with dad’s stereo listening to records backwards for hidden messages. It’s not the messages I miss; it’s the time it took to find them. These days I’d just look it up on the internet and go to just that spot.

I also miss vinyl for the artwork. Some of the album covers blew my mind(2) and I really miss getting lost in the artwork whilst listening to the album. Yes, my iPhone displays the artwork, but, well, size does matter sometimes.

I miss hooking my stereo up to the cable system in such a way that let me use about 15 – 20 miles of cable as my antenna. I would get FM stations from like Virginia. It was better than satellite radio because I figured it out for myself and because the DJs had cool accents and talked about places I’d never heard of.

I miss buying a new album at a store and going home to listen to it all in one sitting. I miss going through my friends’ dads’ record collection, discovering great bands and songs all afternoon. Now there are recommendation engines and Like buttons.

I miss how my brother and I would sometimes take one of Dad’s 45s and keep it in our room and listen to it over and over and over and over.(3) I miss how we would watch the same movie on VHS over and over every morning before school, stopping it when it was time to go out to the bus and picking up at that point the next day.(4) We ruined a couple of tapes doing this.

I miss family-owned radio stations that would play some weeeeeird stuff after about 2PM. The first time I ever honestly suspected someone was high was when I listened to some local station’s DJ as he went on and on about some band at 3AM. You’d never hear that today.

I miss the inclination to tinker. These days, security is always a top concern. And while I appreciate that, I also miss figuring out what else a device can do.(5)

I miss driving around to figure out who else’s garage door a given garage door opener would open. Which sounds really boring, I know. But drive by someone’s house about once every ten minutes and open or close their garage door each time and you’ll see in fairly short order how entertaining it really can be.

I miss picking up the phone to discover my little sister talking on the other phone in the house. I miss that if you picked up the receiver very slowly no one knew you were on the line. I miss dialing our own number and watching her or my brother pick up the phone. I miss the sound of rotary phones. I miss looking someone up in the phone book. I miss knowing all my friends’ numbers.

I miss how my friends would call me up just to see if I wanted to ride places with them. Burger King was one. Sometimes the lumber yard or to see a girl. Any event was an excuse for inclusion. Today everyone listens to headphones all the time, less, I suspect, for the music and more for the exclusion.

I miss the garage band my brother and I had going for a while. We were awful and didn’t even have a singer. But we had a lot of fun doing it. And I definitely miss jamming with my brother.(6)

I miss maps. I miss planning out a trip, which roads you’d take. I miss Mom asking when we’d get to this or that place and I was always able to figure that out fairly well. I would just pour over maps as a kid and have an almost preternatural understanding of the interstate system because of it.

And, lastly, I miss sitting in the back of a car with nothing to do. I couldn’t read in a car without getting sick, and we didn’t have GameBoys and certainly not small televisions in the car. At best we had a deck of cards. This is why our family are about the most hardcore Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game players out there.(7) I miss having nothing to do but doing so very much.

  1. If you’re reading this and you’re one of my parents, please let’s assume that the statute of limitations has run out on any and all offenses, real or perceived, contained herein.
  2. And in one case flat-out terrified me.
  3. We did this with both Billy Joel’s “My Life” and Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight.”
  4. We did this with Teen Wolf and at least one of the Star Wars movies.
  5. Without the arcana necessary to be a hacker.
  6. Who’s better at drums than I’ll ever be at guitar but who played so loudly no one could tell I couldn’t keep up.
  7. Dad one time connected Mr. Bacon with Charlie Chaplin in fewer than six steps. If we weren’t in a car at the time, we all would have bowed down to the Master.
Aug 3 2010

vignettes

Years ago I knew a guy who read comic books with the fidelity that some people reserve for going to church, kissing a spouse before leaving for work, or buying their favorite band’s newest album the day it comes out. Wednesday was his Friday: after work he’d walk to the comic-book store, buy the newest issues of his favorite books, and walk to the local diner. He’d order coffee and sometimes food and read the new issue right then and there, tracing a finger over scratches and long-ago orders in the Formica. Over time his buddies joined him and so then every Wednesday there’d be a diner full of guys in glasses who smoked their fingers yellow. At first they read in reverent silence. Then a slow eruption of fervent and adoring discussion. They’d stay there most of the shift, then saunter home to whatever they had waiting for them there, pop-eyed from too much caffeine and happy with the diaphanous joy of catching up on friends both quotidian and super-heroic.

I also once knew a guy who put his head on a woman’s lap. She sang a song about sleeping and leaving and in the weakened touch of a frail crescendo, a tear rolled from his eye. By the end her jeans were splotched and unsteady and when she rose his heavy heart fell upon the wapsed-up sheets, wrangled and twisted from long nights of this very anticipated moment. It was unknowable as a middle initial but fell with the lonely thud of a thousand human histories. Or perhaps just seven. Either way, when she returned she had seeds in her teeth and New Year’s Day kisses that he put in his pocket without affect.

Another guy had a wife who’d accused him of building them a home where she couldn’t live. Somewhere between lonesome and happy. For weeks she’d disappear and come back sweaty and tired with homes scratched out in quarter-inch blocks of scored wood and loose metal. She was never lonesome. On the sofa he’d pet her hair and she’d ask innocent and sullen why they couldn’t live together. At night when he entered her she’d cry and say she’d missed him so much. He was never happy. And asked why they could live together. She knocked the change-bowl on the floor and let it all lie where it fell, glinting and filthy in the AM light.

Apr 19 2010

d-y-n-a-m-i-t-e. that spells motivation!

I must have been in high school, but I can’t remember how old I was. Still, I was at least fourteen, so maybe twenty years ago thereabouts. Mom and Dad attended parent/teacher conferences, something I was never really nervous about because, overall, I was a decent student. Somewhat given to distraction and sometimes to disruptive behavior(1), I brought home high marks in just about everything, though never consistently the highest marks. The number-one thing, frequency-wise, that my teachers told my parents was that I didn’t work to my potential. But I didn’t do drugs or get in fights, so overall, parent/teacher conferences were nothing for me to concern myself with.

This particular conference they spent a fair amount of time talking to my band-instructor. Mr. Myers was easily the teacher who had the most influence upon me. I was in band and choir, signed up for any and all types of band offered, and spent most of my study halls in the band room helping him clean or prepare or otherwise teaching myself to play piano, tuba, flute, bass guitar or anything I could get my hands on.(2)

So when my parents came home and I asked how it went, Mom said, ‘No one said anything out of the ordinary except for Mr. Myers.’

‘What did he say?’ I asked.

‘He said that you’re a brilliant musician, that you understand music better than anyone he’s taught. He said you could do just about anything you wanted if you just applied yourself.’

I smiled. ‘Wow. That’s really nice of him to say.’

‘Yeah,’ Mom said.  ’Then he said that it’s too bad that you have to light a stick of dynamite under your ass to get you to do anything.’

I hate – more than I can say and more than you could know – I hate that this is still true…twenty-fucking-years later.

  1. I.e. stealing the school Christmas tree piece by piece, being caught in the women’s restroom with a couple of cheerleaders, covering my buddy’s locker with duct tape…typical stuff.
  2. Which in the end proved way more valuable to me than sitting in study hall and studying just a little bit more in order to bring home straight-As.
Apr 18 2010

sunday adverbs, vol. 12

Unexpectedly

Monday was somewhat atypical for a Monday in that – work-wise – wasn’t at all insufferable and I hadn’t developed my usual Monday Headache. But then, around four o’ clock, it took a nose-dive of spectacular bravado and hit the earth so hard I’m still feeling the tremors.

My work-phone rang and, after a brief debate, I went ahead and picked it up. The gentleman on the other end verified that I was who he was looking for and then listed my home address. After I suspiciously certified it, he asked if someone would be home that evening so the sheriff’s office could serve me papers.

My heart thumped heavily and my head spun a bit as I asked why I was being served. I honestly had no idea and I guessed that I would know if I were about to be sued. He gave me two numbers: a phone number and a case number.

Hauntingly

I called and discovered that a law firm out in California had obtained an old debt of mine. About four years ago I opened a credit card to help me when I moved to Cleveland. Then, after about three months, my employer there fired me after I inquired into filing a sexual harassment claim against a woman in my office.(1)(2) I was unable to find any work other than as a part-time barista until, through an impossible set of circumstances, I got my old job back and had to move all over again.

Unfortunately

I was never able to pay what I owed on that credit card, and because of the alimony I was paying at the time I couldn’t pay what they asked me to pay before they sold my account as junk-debt. And now, years later, this firm was threatening to sue me. The gentleman on the phone told me that they’d sent me a letter two months ago to which I never responded. I said, ‘Sir, I’m sure you hear this from every single person who calls you, but I never received that letter. And I’ll swear to that in court.’ After a bit of discussion, I found out that they sent the letter to my old address. I’d moved back in August and the US Post Office only keep address-forwards on record for six months, so they never forwarded that letter to my current address.

Pointlessly

While the gentleman on the phone agreed that I was being honest about the letter, it didn’t matter. The fact that I’d been given a case number meant that this issue was already in the court system. And I wasn’t disputing the debt so my choices were either pay up or be sued. The payment options were steep, though after a few calls I got to talk to the head honcho who offered me a decent deal. Either I pay $300 per month until the debt is paid off, which would take about 13 months, or I pay him a total of $2500 by the end of this month, which comes to slightly more than half of what I owe.

Inquiringly

I did my research and validated the firm, even calling the Clerk of Courts in the county in which the company does business. This is a legitimate firm making me a legitimate offer to settle a legitimate debt.

Frustratingly

I can almost do it. Sure, it’ll wipe out my savings and make life sort-of narrow for the next two months. But due to the fact that I get three paychecks this month instead of two(3) and due to the fact that I have money in savings in the first place, I can just about do it. I’d much rather deal with a tight financial situation for two months than for the next year or so. But I’m about $600 shy. Arg. My only option is to look into selling a few things, like my electric guitar and my amp.

Assertively

The point of all of this is that, however this works out, when it’s done I’m getting my credit history and I’m finding out what I still have out there(4) and I’m fucking taking care of it. I’ve spent this entire week in a miasma of despondency, feeling tired and cranky and eating too much and keeping myself from thinking about this, and all because I was caught with my pants down. That’s not going to happen again.(5)

  1. Insouciantly: And because I don’t believe in not burning bridges I’ll tell you that my employer was Ohio Technical College.
  2. Powerlessly: Sure I knew what they did was illegal and I even got a law firm to look into it on consignment. But while they were certain that I had been retaliated against, they didn’t think enough money was to be won to make it worth their while.
  3. Distinctively: I don’t get payed bi-monthly but bi-weekly, so two months out of the year I get three paychecks.
  4. Positively: I think there are only two things, and neither are that much money.
  5. Actually: In a figurative sense. In reality I wear pants as infrequently as possible.
Jan 7 2010

on snowy days like this…

I miss sitting in the early morning hours, 6 or 7 AM, crunching a bowl of cereal, my brother and I maybe still hopeful and defiant in our pajamas or else in school clothes but with our heavy coats still hung by the door, listening to the radio for the moments in between songs when the dj would list the names of the schools whose students wouldn’t have to wait for the bus that day. We would play a little game, untitled (though it could have been called ‘If we’re off today, then…’), and we would hesitantly plan out snow-angels and -forts and -fights and -tunnels and hot soup for lunch and maybe grilled cheese or else maybe pancakes and then our signature Peanut Butter Surprise for dessert(1), carbing up to don the snowsuits again and get back to it, cold but sweaty, exhausted but exhilarated. Or else maybe we’d plan a board-game day in which we’d play one round of as many board games as we could before our parents came home around four, or we’d think about setting up dominoes – the BIGGEST, BESTEST, MOST DARING domino race you’ve ever seen that would go all the way from the faded linoleum by the backdoor through the utility room and dining room, careening into the living room, down the hall, past the bathroom to terminate in our bedroom with the usual end-gag of the ball-bearing catapult. Maybe we’d sit and listen to dad’s records all day, or half the day and then watch Star Wars or cartoons all afternoon. All of that would hinge on the dj saying the right words, the right combination of schools, and we’d make our plans in a whisper so as to not break any kind of spell or mojo because when you’re a kid you understand that to say what you want too loudly is to let the air take it from you and no one’s going to take form you what you haven’t had yet.  That’s what I miss: believing that you have to whisper when it’s special.

  1. The surprise was that it was never the same thing twice.
Jan 5 2010

the aughties, dickens style

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.” – Charles Dickens.

Dude really covered his ass, didn’t he? I mean, that opening paragraph has more twists and counter-logical statements than an entire season of Lost, with enough leftover for another Terminator sequel. Either Dickens was a master of Zen, meditating quietly in the middle of London, or he tried to encapsulate his era by speaking as generally as possible.

So if he were alive today, he’d be an anchorman on Fox News.

Regardless, he was right on in how sometimes things are awesome to the exact degree that they also suck. After all, sitting beside every bottle of ketchup is a bottle of mustard.

It is in this vein that I present to you, Adored Readers,

Bo’s Best and Worst of the Aughties, music edition

Let’s try to keep in mind here that every best-of list will have its detractors. That’s fine. I’m sure they have their own blogs by now and can write about how awful my best-and-worst-of list is.(1) This is simply shit that I loved and hated about that not-so-naughty decade of aughties that just flew by.

So, without further ado…(2)

My favorite albums of the last decade are as follows:

  • Haunted, by Poe

Brilliant, from beginning to end. And if you’ve read House of Leaves, it’s even better.

  • Fevers and Mirrors, by Bright Eyes

Maybe Conor Oberst goes a little over the top sometimes, but I don’t care. Unlike the weird clan leader in Temple of Doom, Conor walks away having ripped my heart out of my chest.

  • Our Endless Numbered Days, by Iron & Wine

Even on songs like Sodom, South Georgia, Sam Beam’s voice is like peace made into sound.

  • Broken Social Scene, by Broken Social Scene

In my opinion, this album is the epitome of chamber pop. I love chamber pop like I loved your mom last night.

  • Picaresque, by The Decemberists

I think most people would list The Crane Wife above this album. But, for my money, I’ll take songs like ‘We Both Go Down Together’ and ‘The Engine Driver’ every time. Add in ‘The Mariner’s Revenge Song’ and this album is worth more than my weight in gold.

  • Begin to Hope, by Regina Spektor

Just as fun as her previous albums, but on this one she pays a little more attention to melody than to being the weirdest person in the studio.

  • First Impressions of the Earth, by The Strokes

This album sounds like fucking. I like fucking.

  • Sufjan Stevens: Songs for Christmas

Sujfan’s Christmas album isn’t an album; it’s an experience. And, again, chamber pop rules the yule!

  • Avenged Sevenfold, by Avenged Sevenfold

I’m not a metalhead by any stretch, but I can listen to this album over and over and over again. It’s fascinating.

  • One Cell in the Sea, by A Fine Frenzy

Ali Monro is about the cutest woman ever, and damn does she write good lyrics. Pulling from Shakespeare and Blake, it’s music for the literature-inclined.

  • Easy Tiger, by Ryan Adams

Mix the emotion of Fever and Mirrors with the lyricism of One Cell in the Sea, give it a slight country twang, and you’ve got one damn fine piece of art.

  • Acid Tongue, by Jenny Lewis

Want a new favorite album? Give this one a spin.

And an honorable mention to This Desert Life, by Counting Crows, which was released merely two months too early to be on this list but is easily their best album since August and Everything After in 1993.

Now for the worst. This is a little trickier in that I don’t tend to listen to shit that I don’t like. These are albums that I tried, because of previous experience with the band, popular opinion, or strength of singles, and was sorely disappointed.

  • Bounce, by Bon Jovi

I love Bon Jovi. I have since 1983. If I’d have known that 20 years later they’d slap me in the face with this lame fish, especially after Crush was such a strong album, I’d never have bothered.

  • Silver Side Up, by Nickelback

And this is how it began. Fuck Nickelback and fuck every goddamn singer who’s come out since thinking this jackass sounds like awesome.

  • Elephant, by The White Stripes

Many of my friends love The White Stripes. I think they’re just south of lame. In a bad way. This album bored the shit out of me.

  • Love. Angel. Music. Baby., by Gwen Stefani

For a while, I kinda dug No Doubt. It was the mid-nineties and things were okay. Afterward, they started sucking and I guess I picked up this album hoping that Gwen went solo to bring back the magic. I was as wrong as two cousins humping on a Vespa.

  • Back to Bedlam, by James Blunt

This douchecanoe sounds like a cross between Rod Stewart and Bryan Adams, aka Suckity Suck-Suck and Sir Sucking-Super-Suckage. I can’t remember why I tried listening to this piece of shit. And every time I hear that ‘Beautiful’ song I want to shit myself just to have something interesting happening.

  • Come Away with Me, by Nora Jones

Come where, Nora? For a nap? This album made me instantly geriatric.

I’ll post more aspects for Bo’s Best-Of/Worst-Of The Aughties as we roll along into 2010. Stay tuned for my obviously majorly important opinions on movies, tv, gadgets, blogs, and maybe more.

  1. Because lots of people read my blog every day. Like, double-digits. Sometimes.
  2. Other than saying, ‘Without further ado,’ which is, of course, totally unnecessary and therefore itself just further ado.
Jan 4 2010

the aughties, by the numbers

Romantic relationships begun: 5
Romantic relationships ended: 4

Marriages begun: 1
Marriages ended: 1

Degrees earned: 1
Degree used in a professional capacity: 0

Poems written: 91
Stories written: 24
Novels written: 1
Writings published: 4
Writing awards won: 2

Songs written: 9
Songs recorded: 49

Bands joined: 1
Awesome compliments given w/r/t my songs: 3
Instruments acquired: 5

Ninjas seen: none

Pets loved: 2
Pets I’ve wanted to strangle at 3AM: 1
Pets I couldn’t live without: 2

Cities lived in: 2
Homes lived in: 6

Organizations I’ve donated money or time to: 2

Computers owned: 5
Blogs created: 11
Blogs killed: 9
Facebook profiles created: 2
Facebook profiles killed: 1
Tweets tweeted: 2,006
Followers: 40
Following: 46

iPods owned: 2
iPods loved: 2
Songs collected: 5,584

Documentaries I’ve been in: 1

Vacations taken: 6
Vacations needed: 497

Zombies killed: all of them.

Nephews gained: 1
Nieces gained: 2

Grandparents lost: 3

Years I didn’t talk to my parents: 2.4

Number of gloves swallowed by my son: 1
Number of people I visited in the hospital:  3
Number of them who lived: 2

Pizzas eaten: All of them.

Consecutive days gone without eating: 3

Suicide attempts: 2
Suicides successes: 0

Women cheated on by yrs truly: 2
Women not cheated on by yrs truly: 3

Ships commandeered: 0

Footnotes used on this blog: 160

New favorite writers: 4

Cigarettes smoked: all of them, right up until 4PM on 24 July, 2009.
Cigarettes smoked after 24 July, 2009: 0

New Year’s Resolutions made: 30
New Year’s Resolutions kept: 14

Concerts attended: 3
Theater productions attended: 17
Weddings attended: 5

Number of times I’ve been told I have a really good memory: Not sure.

Love affairs with the O.E.D. begun: 1

Pool games lost to Lindy Loo: Almost all of them
Pool games I’ve let Lindy Loo win: Almost all of them

Crazy drunken nights with brother: 4
Number of times arrested: 0
Fights averted: 2
Windows broken: 1

Female celebrity crushes developed: 2
Male celebrity crushes developed: 1

Hours slept: not enough
Hours awake: not enough

Time spent being gentle: not enough
Time spent being kind: not enough
Time spent being compassionate: not enough

Time spent masturbating: Let’s just say I’m legally blind and let it at that.

Dec 15 2009

lunchbox, mr. sulu

Lunchbox. It’s a funny word – funny sounding, anyway. Those hard consonants and short vowels feel like everything but imagination went into the word, or perhaps something metal and maybe German. It sounds like two fair-sized pieces of hail hitting the roof of a rusty convertible, like chocolate cake with shotgun pellets in it. The word puts the blah in blasé.

Like pretty much everything about my being, comportment, habiliment, and equipage, my lunchbox caused me much scorn and derision during my formative years. I didn’t learn what a pillory was until much later, but I knew what it felt like from about second grade on. Such ill-will was bent my way, in part, because my lunchbox wasn’t boring.

It was maybe the most noticeable lunchbox on the school bus.
The big kids certainly noticed it, anyway.

My brother was somehow lucky enough to have gotten a Dukes of Hazzard lunchbox. It had Bo and Luke on the front, and of course sweet, sweet Daisy. The back had a nice action shot of Luke hopping over the hood while Bo climbed into the car. On the sides were other – equally awesome – action shots: the General Lee racing on two wheels as Cooter(1) and Boss Hogg ran out of the way, and on the other side, the General Lee ramping over another exploding car.

In short, it was a metal box brightly colored with everything young boys are supposed to love: hot women, cars, explosions, and lawmen running in fear.

Somehow, even though the movie came out two or three years before I got it, my lunchbox was enameled with confounding creatures and indiscernible scenes from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. There was no Daisy Duke on the front. Not even Uhura. Just Kirk and Spock and the Enterprise floating in starry expanse. It didn’t even have little lines indicating warp speed. It was motionless, actionless.

On one side was a group of aliens, each one a different race and different color and different shape, with the emblem of the Federation above them. I had no idea what the Federation was. On the other side was a picture of a dude in a spacesuit. No explosions. No running lawman. And, again, I had no idea who the dude was. And it was a weird purplish-pink color, what one might call lavender if one weren’t a boy in the second grade.

A boy in the second grade would call it pink.
As would the older boys in the third grade.

I’d never seen Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I’d never seen Star Trek. Period. I didn’t know it was Kirk and Spock on the front. I didn’t know what anything on the lunchbox was.  So when Dave said, “This yellow one is so ugly it must be your mom!” all I could say was, “Is not!” Even my eight-year-old brain knew that was the lamest answer possible, but no other retort was available to me.(2) I was tragically under-informed with regard to the significance of the images on my lunchbox, and of a disposition to appreciate that it was tragic.

But I had to defend it. “That thing is so stupid!” some kid in the bus line would yell. “Is not!” I’d scream. “Is so!” he’d yell, and on and on until either the teacher shut us up or I made a slight against his mother.(3) Kids are mean, and will make fun of anything. Hell, kids invented ‘Ring around the Rosy,’ a song about death and the Black Plague. Maybe making fun of my lame-ass Star Trek isn’t quite the same, but making me defend the stupid thing was. To my little mind, anyway.

“I’m glad I have a Transformers lunchbox and not stupid Star Trek!”

“Yeah!?! Well, I’m glad I brain and not a stupid space full of air!”(4)

I still don’t even know why my parents go it for me. Maybe it was on sale. Maybe it was a hand-me-down from one of my cousins. Maybe it fell off the Star Trek merch wagon. Maybe some retailer had thrown out a supply of slow-moving lunchboxes and mom and dad saw a way to save a few bucks.

Maybe they made a tragic yet classic mistake in thinking that since I liked Star Wars I’d like Star Trek. There is a bit of truth to this, but I find Star Trek fairly lacking to this day, and besides, the point is that I didn’t know anything about the thing my lunchbox was advertizing. I didn’t even know if I liked it!

I knew nothing about it.
I was, and always shall be, more of a Star Wars man.

  1. How the hell did a prime-time television series geared at young men get away with having a character named Cooter?(1)
    1. And then how the hell did Cooter make it into the House of Representatives?!?!?
  2. It would be many years later when I would finally watch that first Star Trek movie. It didn’t really clear things up. Let’s face it: If it weren’t for The Wrath of Kahn, that whole franchise would have died a long time ago.(1)
    1. In a galaxy far, far away…
  3. Which is pretty much how I still win arguments today.
  4. Seriously. This is the kind of shit I came up with.
Nov 20 2009

happy holidays

It had been a particularly trying year, for many reasons. It had been trying, especially, for my family. It had culminated, I suppose, with me taking my son and his mother(1) to Louisiana after having told my parents that we were just moving across town. After a week or so they stopped by the place we were allegedly moving to and were told by the current occupants that they we sorely misinformed. The Moms(2) was incredibly embarrassed and maybe even appalled that I had the guts to lie to her to such a degree.

Time, as it does, brought out the truth and conversations were started and finished and the process that we call healing spread itself over the next few months so that, in November, when I found myself with the money for a plane ticket, I arranged to go home and spend Christmas with my family.

We sat down in living room on Christmas Eve after returning from Mass, as was our tradition. The standard Christmas record was put on Dad’s stereo and everyone, including my grandparents, godparents and the few aunts and uncles who’d come over, had small plates of the chocolate-laden confections The Moms had spent the last two weeks fabricating on every available horizontal surface in the kitchen, dining room and immediate surrounds.

The Moms handed my sister – the youngest of us – a present that she tore into with a vigor that would evaporate over the next few years as she was driven further into adolescence. Next, my brother – one year my junior – casually opened a gift. According to protocol, the next gift should have gone to me. I felt the usual tingling in my stomach and a smile dawned on my face. The Moms got up and grabbed a package. She walked around the room, bypassing me and giving it to my sister. She didn’t look at me at all as she returned to her seat, but my sister did. I gestured for her to go ahead and open it. She did, and then the next present went again to my brother.

And so it went. I sat in silence, smiling in spite of the cinderblock of anger, embarrassment and shame weighing down every fiber of me. The gifts were passed out and around and everyone in the room got something and even including the dog and everyone smiled big while the music played and they sipped their coffee and munched their munchies and I just pretended that everything was okay and so did The Moms and Dad and everyone else.

Then it was over. And I somehow still didn’t believe it.

I had scrounged up a few hundred dollars and got on a plane – at her urging – just so she could make me sit there and not get anything.

It wasn’t, and it still isn’t, that I didn’t get anything. It’s that she made a spectacle of it. She invited family over. She made sure everyone knew I was being punished for being bad. She took the bit of guilt I’d felt about what I’d done(3) and turned it to shame.

Until about a month ago, I hadn’t talked to my parents in over two years. It wasn’t because of the story I just told you, but because of many, many similar stories and other stories of a more directly violent and intentional nature. I decided a few years ago that I had no healthy stake in that relationship, so there was no reason to continue it.

Then my son ended up in the hospital. And from the moment I entered the emergency room, concerned about him and the horrible coughing sound I was hearing and the alarm noises and the machinery, from the moment I saw The Moms standing there beside his bed, I knew I was going to get the text message I got last night.

My family has invited me to Thanksgiving. And it’s the last thing in the world that I want to do.

I can’t stop thinking that it’ll somehow turn out like the Christmas I Didn’t Get Anything, because I certainly haven’t followed The Moms’s rules over the last two years.(4) I can’t stop thinking that I stopped talking to them for reason, and that reason hasn’t changed. I can’t stop thinking that the adage about time healing all wounds isn’t so much about healing as it is about forgetting.

I can’t stop forgetting to forget.

These things that they did? They made me who I am. Every time I get pissed off because someone tells me what to do(5), it’s because of The Moms’s overbearing and under-informed method of child-rearing. Every time I get suspicious, sometimes rightly, of an authority figure, it’s because of how The Moms answered so frequently with, ‘Because I’m your mother!’(6)

The minute I let these things go, the minute I let myself forget the shitty things they’ve done, is the minute I lose a significant portion of myself.(7)

I just don’t think I’m ready for that yet.

  1. This was in the mid-90s and the term baby-mommy wasn’t really en vogue yet. In an attempt at verisimilitude, I will refrain from using it in this post.(1)
    1. Except, obviously, for using it in that footnote.
  2. I call her The Moms because all through my youth I was never sure which Mom I was going to get at any turn. This hasn’t changed. I’m not saying she has multiple personalities; her mood was almost exclusively dependent upon whether or not I was playing by her rules.(1)
    1. Wanna know why I don’t play by the rules? You just found out.
  3. Necessary as it had been to move, and necessary as it had been to do things the way I’d done them, I still felt bad about it.
  4. And I feel better for it.
  5. Even in little ways, like gesturing for me to cross the street first. I think, ‘Fuck you! You go asshole!’ It’s a total knee-jerk-reaction-type reaction that I have seemingly no control over.(1)
    1. I have problems.
  6. Note: Being a parent does not, by default, give the right to be an asshole. Go ahead and be an asshole parent if you want, but drop that sense of entitlement.
  7. Some people will argue that it’s healthier to let go the fight; I will argue that that statement depends on which version of ‘healthier’ you mean.
Nov 19 2009

treehugger

One of the most interesting things about people, in my opinion, is that almost every person I’ve ever asked has been able to tell me about his or her favorite tree. That most of us identify and admit to an arboreal infatuation gives me a little faith that we will never completely pull away from our nature-based roots, that the skyscrapers and machinery and devices(1) we gather around us every day will never wipe the Druidic memory of our collective ancestors.

I’ve noticed over the years that most people’s favorite tree is a solitary tree, usually alone in a field or clearing, surrounded by devastation, perhaps, or high-tension wires. Of the people I’ve asked, only young boys identify a tree in the woods or forest.(2)

My favorite tree was right here on campus.

Yesterday they cut it down.

It was a ginkgo, a female ginkgo, with beautiful fan-shaped leaves that I would sometimes collect and keep with me in my pocket through the workday. Aside from its leaves, I loved that tree because I’m one of the few people who can. You see, the female gingko produces large, fleshy seeds. The seeds are yellowish brown and look like fruit. They are very pretty, but when the seeds are open, they release butanoic acid and apparently stink like hell.(3)

Being anosmic(4), I’ve never known how they smell.

They tree was located in a high-traffic area, so when the seeds fell to the ground they would be trampled underfoot. The area apparently reeked for weeks. Most people complained, but carried on with their lives.

I guess someone decided not to just carry on.

So it goes.

But I’m very sad about the loss of my tree. I know what it’s like not to be accepted by the people around you, to be the outcast and be shunned. I know how it feels to have people rush out of your presence. And I know how much I love the people who hang around.

I loved that tree because I could.

And now it’s gone.(5)

  1. To say nothing of television and Walmart.(1)
    1. Walmart is the brand of Wal-Mart, Stores, Inc., a publicly traded company based in Bentonville, Arkansas, and founded in 1962 by Samuel Walton. At the time of this writing, it is the world’s largest public corporation by revenue, according to Fortune 500.
  2. Fully 100% of them like their tree because of what I can only term as its ‘climbability.’
  3. Less colloquially, they smell – so I’m told – like rancid butter(1), probably because rancid butter also contains butanoic acid.
    1. Though I’ve also heard people say that they smell like shit, and they mean that in a non-colloquial sense.
  4. Anosmia is a loss of the sense of smell. In my case, though, the condition is congenital and I’ve never smelled anything in my life.
  5. This little post doesn’t get at the part where the ginkgo is endangered. I’ll be looking into that and if the university seriously cut down an endangered species, someone’s going to hear about it.