|
�navigation: current archives cast rings surveys my fans design diaryland
�FRIENDS:
�QUOTE: |
the story of me
2000-12-22 - 15:25:36 I know this was quoted in the last entry but it seems rather appropos for this entry If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. -Holden Caulfield, from Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger Okay, the story of me, redux. ( I don't know what happened here, but all of the sudden the email, quite an entertaining little email too, was gone whne I looked up.) I was born in Munich Bavarai Germany. Remember my dad was in the military and he was stationed in lots of places. the coolest place was Germany, so it seemed right i was born there. need something exciting to tell people, right. Anyway I was born almost at the same time as my twin, him being the bully between the two of us, he wanted to be first. To get my revenge I took all the brains, while he was busy being born. So I don't remember Germany too much as I was still a wee child at the time and well besides eating and pooping, I don't think I got out much. At the time I already had an older brother who was a year and a half older than us. he too was born in Munich but that was the first time my dad was stationed in Germany. Apparently the place had lots of chemistry but they got more than they bargained for with twins. Maybe that explains the 7 years between our birth, and the birth of my little brother. hmmmm. Apparently out of the two of us, i was the big crybaby. Or so I've been told countless times now. Man those stories just slay me. Anyway, my little brother was born in Alaska. That's probably the earliest time that I remember most distinctly I remember hunting easter eggs in snow up to our waste, i remember starting kindegarten, I remember getting the measles and othr v arious childhood ailments that forced me to not continue going to kindegarten. I remember our babysitters and my brothers daring me to go and more or less accost her, I still can't believe I did that and even more I can't believe she never told. I remember hunting for cranberries. I remember mounds of snow higher than our two story apartments. I remember our neighbor had this giant dog, you know the ones that in the cartoons carry that little barrel under their neck, I swear their names escape me, (Saint Bernard)and I remember wanting one so bad, I still do, but they would be miserable in this texas heat. I remember the sun staying up for 20 plus hours a day and having to cover the windows with aluminum foil in the summer cuz it hardly ever got dark. i remember walking home in the dark after school in the winter because it hardly ever stayed light outside. I remember going to A&W Rootbeer floats and one year we went and our mom stayed home cuz she had a headache and we came back and Santa had come by our house early since we were so close to the northpole. I remember holding my little brother, afraid he would break if i held him too hard. Alaska holds so many memories. After two years we moved back to texas. Texas holds tons of memories too. But that's only cuz i spent the rest of my life here. I enjoyed school a great deal. Always one the spelling bees in the classroom. Iremember when I was in the seocnd grade i was taking part in the 5th grade spelling bee. And I remember missing my word and i was distraught. I was. For a second grader, I carried around a lot of angst. I remember I spent the whole day in the fifth grade class and cried when I had to go back to the 2nd grade after wards. As I might have mentioned I was the big baby of the family. I don't know why. In the 6th grade they have this test you take and the highest scores in the class got to go to this camp up in Oklahoma. probably the first time I ever was away from home "by myself" It was kind of scary. But it is probably one of my favorite memories. I remember their was this one kid in our cabin that nobody seemed to like, so i befriended him and we spent the whole camp more or less stalking this girl that I thought hung the moon and stars. I swear i was completely enamoured with her. I remember the last day we were there we had this big campfire and everybody did skits and our cabin did this stupid skit, really it was a song we sang and the chorus went like this" Mama don't beat on poor buford mama don't beat on his head mama don't beat on porr buford why don't you shoot him instead. Buford was a dog. I got to play the dog in question. I twas a big hit, I tell ya. It was a toss up between that one and another one which went something like this" Grandma's in the cellar Lordy can't you smell 'er As she's cookin' on that old dirty stove her eyes are full of matters that's drippin in the batter and she sings as the snot runs down her nose.
Anyway since we had to eat once more before we came home it looked like poor buford would be dead. :) I remember coming home from there and we had to make up some sort of test for the class to take and I made C- on my own test. For some reason after that I had it in my head I wanted to be a teacher. Either that or a lawyer. But I remember all these sleazy lawyer commercials on tv so I was leaning heavily towards teacher
My parents divorced when I was in the 4th grade. (I know chronologically out of order in the telling, but it just occurred to me that by this point they were already divorced) It was an ugly divorce and I personally carried a sense of guilt for their breakup, but I think most kids do. I remember wishing they would get back together for the longest time. But my mom moved about 300 miles away from us and took my little brother and my oldest brother with her. That was not the best time in my life. I still hate remembering it. I think at that point any efforts i made for friendships and so forth I made with the understanding that they weren't permanent, cuz if your own mother doesn't stay friends with your own father, well .... I was 10 at the time. Anyway my dad had just gotten out of the military about this same time and we moved up to fort worth. I remember in the 5th grade one of my teachers had died of cancer and i remember crying all day. they didn't make us go to class after they told us and I remember thinking that Iwasn't going to like the new teacher but I did. It wasn't until the 9th grade that I actually stayed in one school for the rest of my pre college years. In 8th grade we moved out to this podunk little town and moved into a mobile home and I remember we had to dig the line to the electricity pole and the water connections to the house. I remember the first couple of weeks to school everyone referred to me and my brother as the new kids and the germans. I remember I was in a UIL one act play competition and I was so scared. I have a terrible fear of talking in front of people. I won all star cast medal though. Iremember after the competition we had to put on the play in front of the whole school and i was terrified again and a comedy of errors followed. I have to eat this sandwich swiss cheese on rye. I hate most cheese and I hate rye bread so I changed it for a Peanute butter and jelly and the plastic bag got stuck to the peanut butter and I got some great laughs, it was funny. then after Isaid my last line. (I was a business man in the park eating lunch when this guy comes up with this intricate looking piece of driftwood that he was showing everyone) anyway i say my last line, get up and grab my briefcase which flies open and sends papers across the stage. Why I had papers in their I don't know. But all in all, another of my favorite memories. I remember my first real girlfriend. Her name was Kim and she liked me and I liked her and so we started going out together but there was this other girl that was a friend of my stepmother's daughter and well she liked me too and she lived in Fort Worth so I was I guess two timing Kim with her. Needless to say they found out and we broke up and in my year book that year she wrote this big long letter about love and so forth and how "love is like a rock and ours crumbled." I still read that and have to smile. We were in 8th grade. through te rest of school, I never went out of my way to "fall in love with anyone" The next person I fell in love with was this girl I worked with at the movie theatre. I had crushes all through high school, but I wasn't any where near confident enough to do anything about it. I actually saw the girl that I was completely enamoured with at camp from 6th grade. She was till just as beautiful but she was in the in crowd now and i wasn't in a crowd. too much self imposed isolation growing up. I loved school though. Always did. my spanish class went to mexico all 4 year, Monterrey. It was the coolest thing. I remember the second time we went we were on this mexican highway and on one side of the bus it was raining and on the otherside of the bus the sky was blue and virtually cloud free. It was cool. Anyway I was a teachers aid for spanish for two years and I was in ROTC for 3 years, being a military brat it seemdd a great course of action. My twin was in also, but he had developed a rebellious streak that prevented him from gaining any rank worth talking about and this rebellious streak continues to this day. He's been in and out of the military for the last 15 years. He is still trying to go active again, but I think his record prevents anyone from taking him. But he still has some courses of action he thinks he can take. Actually I think he is waiting for the next war to break out. He missed the Persian Gulf war and it pisses him off to no end. okay where was I. Oh, I loved high school and by the end i was a fairly popular person coming out of the proverbial shell, seeing as I wasn't moving from place to place any more. But by then it was over. In between my junior and senior year of highschool I started college. I was ready to go, get my education going. the first thing I learned about college, summer is not the time to go. I failed my english course made a C in the math course and a B in the other course. i forget what it was. So needless to say it took me forever to get my grade point average up above 3.0 At the time I worked at the movie theatre where I fell in love and I can't describe it any other way, but fell hard, in love with this girl. She was (and is) the only person who took my heart. I sent her this rose anonymously and i remember her coming up to me and asking me if I was the one sending it to her and I denied it because i was terrified that she was going to reject me. Apparently Iwasn't over some internal issue. I suffer terrible commitment issues. Anyway after 3 weeks I broke down and told her that yes it was me. She didn't believe me and was mad at me for not telling her. She had hoped it was from me. Course she never said that to me did she. So we sort of started going out, only thing was i was her boss and we weren't supposed to date coworkers. Maybe it was just an excuse that i used to keep my distance. It was at this point that I started to write to. Actually it was when I saw the movie Stand By Me. For some reason that movie affected me so deeply. I saw it 18 times at the movie theatre and I was depressed, literally depressed for like almost a year. Something in me was like missing, something in me wanted something, and I didn't know what. I don't ever want to feel like that ever again. It hurts to feel that way. Everything from that time that year, seems all gray. But I searched out the book, written by stephen king and I thought I could write a story like that. I proceeded to write this 400 page opus that at the time held my energy like nothing else. I wa fascinated with these characters. It was about these 4 boys in this orphanage and they want to run away from the orphanage. It was badlt run and the kids were placed in homes for the right amount of money , they were forced to do work, and all kinds of terrible things ( I was still suffering some parental issues I think as this was not the only story that I had spun out of my imagination in which the parents were either not present, or dead) Anyway after awhile the story lost its impact on me. I wish i would have finished it. I still can I'm sure but still. My mind and heart were distracted at the time and I started another book. This one was a "love story" this doctor (aka Cristopher ian Scott) meets this young beautiful fashion designer (aka the love of my life) and they have all sorts of mishaps that screw up their relationship. I remember writing a chapter at night and bringing it up to work, and at the time i had a readership of about 10 people. And I would have to print out all these copies and I was a hit. then things got a little rocky with the love of my life (totally my fault) and the story faltered and well it turned more or less into a love letter that i never signed my name to. I was talking to her the other day and she told me she wished I would finish. I read it now, and the writing is terrible. I was still in love with her, but I was terrified. I don't understand why. I guess i could blame it on any number of things, but truth be told i don't know what I was so afraid of. I think of her and I am heartbroken now. She is married, to a man who if murder was legal, would be dead. She has a beautiful daughter who has her eyes and smile. I talk to her at least two or three times a week. I have tickets for us to go and see beauty and teh Beast at Bass Hall (brand new ritzy theatre hall) on the day before new Years eve. I used to think theatre was for the women folk and the rich snobby folk that have their opera glasses. Since then I've come to my senses. Now I love it. I've been like 11 times in the last two years. its really cool. I figure I need to catch up on my culture. I remember when i was taking creative writing (took it three times) and she was making us go watch a play or soemthing and I was thinking what the hell for, i don't want to see no stupid play. Now people scramble to be my guest to go to a play. I figure if i am going to go, I am going to have damn good seats. So I have a list of people that have to take turns to go with me. The last two years I have taken some awesome vacations. I go with my mom, which kind of takes away from the experience, but its only been in the last 4 or 5 years that our relationship hasn't been a bit strained. I love my mother, have always love my mother, I was just in doubt as to how she felt about me for a large part of my life. Anyway last year we went to Europe. Some of the most incredibly beautiful things i have ever seen in all my life. I wish i could show you my phot album, actually there is a link on my diaryland pull down spot that has a link to my europe picutres that I have uploaded. Some of my favorite pictures. Anyway it was awesome. We toured 7 countries. It was a tour so there were like 30 of us on a bus travelling about Europe. made some wodnerful friends. Actually they were almost all of them older retired people. but there were some young people too, so i didn't stick out like a sore thumb. But everyone sort of adopted me as son or grandson so it was cool for me. My mom got a crush on this guy and it was embarassing to watch her flirt with him. this year we went to Great Britian it too was wonderful, though not as photogenic because it was too wet and rainy and the skies were almost always gray so nothing really stood out as beautiful. But some of it was incredible. the lake district in grasmere was amazingly beautiful. I have this one picture where tehse two swans are in the water and there are a couple of clouds in the sky with all teh mountainside in the background, but the image reflected on the water are these clouds and they look like a swan. It is so cool. I have that picture uploaded on my england trip site. (also a link) Anyway i am contemplating where I wasnt to go this year. last year tehre were tickets to England for like 250 round trip. and then you can stay in a hotel for like 50 a night. But that's only when tehy have these offers. So I am hoping to go again. The good thing about a passport is you can pick up and go at anytime. So I am going to do just that. You don't have to have a car for london. there public transportation is phenomenal. When we were there I bought tickets to see les miserables. By far the best theatre production of anything I have ever seen in my entire life. Course some of the cast have been doing the show for the last 15 years but it was phenomenal. A couple of years ago a friend of mine went to england and he saw it and had bought the cd soundtrack. After a couple of years I too bought the soundtrack, after I became cultured. then when i was in England I saw it and when I came back I put on the sound track and the experience was doubly cool, because many of the people on the sound track were still currently in the play. If you are ever going on a trip over seas go to London. It was awesome. Other than that, I guess i work in a bookstore, i am starting back to school again after a couple of years on hiatus, because I got lazy. I was going to start last semester but my trip came up instead. So eventually I plan on getting a teaching certificate so that I can teach high school student. Everyone asks me , with incredible looks in their eyes, why i want to teach high school. And I ask them where do they need the most help. And they look away. Everyone knows there a problem, but nobody wants to help, it seems. I want to help. the only reason I have waited so long, or at least what I keep telling myself, is because, well I am not the most mature of people. I need to be more mature that my students. Right. So I am gonig back again. And that is me in a nutshell. I guess i could have done better that that but this is a spur of the moment off the cuff biographical analysis of me to date.
While not the most exciting of stuff its been good living it. Through all the ups and downs it has brought me to here and now. So there you have it. Great stuff huh.
Hope you have a safe flight. And a happy holiday with all the friends and family. I can just imagine your reception, especially from your little brother. I have images of him running up to you and giving you this hug both of you smiling, filled with contentment. Family is great for that kind of stuff. Merry Christmas and safe new year. Please be careful
Andrew PS since you made it this far, you might want to Scribble me something about you in the ol' guestbook |
