Who said no one posts anymore?
The following is, to the best of my knowledge, completely true.
A Memoir, part 1 of 4
Eight Years Is Never Enough
Famous people write memoirs. They lead interesting lives. They get paid ridiculous amounts of money. That’s because people actually care about them. The average guy on the street can identify with the rich famous guy because the only difference between them was some lucky moment in time that thrust the latter into prominence and left the former working his shitty job. Ultimately, they’re both just as talented, smart, funny and attractive, right?
I’m not all that talented. People occasionally say I’m smart or funny, hardly ever attractive. When you’re a kid, that’s all that matters: what other people think of you. People think that government officials and businessmen have to work the hardest on reputation; these people obviously never went to high school. Rather, they forgot high school. Dont judge them too harshly — I’m only four years out and it’s already starting to get hazy. That’s the part of time that’s always been the hardest to understand for me. Eight years goes by in a blink, but even last week seems like forever ago. Must be relativity or something.
When I realized that looks and reputation didn’t really matter, then I finally became an adult. Ha, but that never really happened. You can’t fool anyone with that crap. That’s like when you tell some fat kid she’s beautiful on the inside. You’re really saying, “Yeah, you’ll never be on MTV or People Magazine no matter how kind and wonderful of a person you are, and everyone will always judge you by how you look.” First impressions are deadly.
So what do the rest of us do? We who aren’t picture-perfect, all-star athletes, math whizzes, prom queens, most likely to succeeds, movie stars, supermodels, geniuses, natural comedians, successful politicians, soap opera stars, talk show hosts or novel writers. When faced with the bland reality that, statistically speaking and given our situation, we will likely never be rich or famous, we will likely never experience the exaggerated life portrayed in mass media, our life will never be like a sitcom, romantic comedy or action flick, we move on. We get involved. We have highs, lows, and in-betweens, and it is our network of friends and family that keeps us afloat.
We may not be the next presidents, but neither are we likely to lead lives of crime, poverty, or even chronic bad luck. We are the great Average, which means that, though we are unique, all the great and terrible situations and feelings we encounter are exceedingly normal. It is our commonality that lets us say to another, “I know, I’ve been there too. You can make it.”
If this sounds like more philosophical crap to you, you’re right. We don’t need another Chicken Soup for the Teenager’s Soul. We don’t need another Dr Phil. We don’t even need any more damn advice. What do we need? I don’t know, probably nothing. Everyone has different needs, yet I believe that people have everything they need within themselves.
I did the math on this: the eight years I spent in high school and college account for about 36 percent of my life so far. That’s only a little more than a third. But that short time saw the greatest changes in my character by far. Think about the difference between a 14-year-old and a 22-year-old. That’s where I was, and here I am now. It’s a transition everyone encounters, and some handle it better than others. My story isn’t all that different from anyone else’s. So why should it be told?
It’s mostly for me. It’s probably a little self-indulgent. No one will ever read it. Well, I don’t give a shit. If it never impacts a single human being, at least I will have gotten something out of writing it down. And if anyone ever comes across it and finds even a speck of truth in my story, then I guess it will have been worth it.
The Early Years
I was born in San Diego, California, into a family of sailors. My mom entered the Navy after a series of nowhere jobs and community college. Her mom was a hippie, and her dad’s a jazz saxophonist. My dad entered the Navy after a series of nowhere jobs and a little undergrad. His parents were in optometry. We later moved to Florida, where I took care of some elementary school, and then to Virginia, where I experienced middle school. But these are just facts. And the story picks up when I arrived at Great Bridge High School in the Fall of 1997.
Let’s be painfully honest: life was awkward at 14. Cliques or scenes were not phenomena I was aware of by name, but they existed nonetheless. And I sure didn’t fit in to any of them. I was suffering from acne, myopia, and braces simultaneously — life was not good, at least not on a social level. Not to say that I didn’t have friends, but that I didn’t necessarily choose my friends. Some of these people have turned out to be (I hope) lifelong pals. Others … let’s just say we haven’t spoken in a while.
I have a tendency for exaggeration. Some like to call this lying, but I like to be euphemistic. I would invent wild stories to explain grades and other misdeeds, and sometimes just to fulfill some inexplicable need for attention. My personal favorite was that my family and I were illegal immigrants from Russia. I even bothered to learn a few random phrases (none of which I currently remember). Now, I can’t imagine anyone taking this quite seriously, but I spent a lot of time on it. Many were rightly skeptical.
“How do I know that you’re not just picking a common Russian name” — Ivan was the name I had picked — “and making up this story just to get attention?” JP asked. I’m sure I had no good answer to this. To my great dismay, my world history teacher Mrs Roberts caught wind of the pretense, and insisted that I read some book that was in Russian. Of course, Mrs. Roberts was also famous for her chain smoking, and an odd exhibition she called “The Mummy Dance,” in which she danced and sang a little rap about getting “chummy” with a mummy. To this day, she still thinks I’m a foreigner.
Doubtless the best part of the day was Mrs Matish’s geometry class. Mrs Matish had several revolutionary teaching ideas, all with apropos yet mysterious catch phrases like “The Home Court Advantage.” Since all of her assignments were done in groups, I managed to get a decent grade without learning a single thing about geometry. Instead, I occupied my free time by harassing a studious Chinese kid named Peng Peng. My co-conspirator in this never-ending quest was one Brian “Shock.” Our friendship was cemented by our common dislike for a few other students, who felt our wrath via the “cross-slash” symbol that found its way onto their papers. We also teamed up to create the most infamous periodical ever to come out of Matish’s class, The Geometry Monstrosity. This mock newspaper, another group assignment, had so many insulting references to Peng Peng that Mrs Matish actually thought he was in our group. Peng’s only recourse to our persecution was to play “Ski Free” on the class computer, which because of his accent became “Ski Fwee.”
Underneath all of this, I was sort of a wreck. A combination of hormones, dislike of family, rebellion and passive-aggressiveness led me to attempt suicide on two occasions. I admit, both were pretty weak attempts, but the motive was there. In the first instance, I don’t really remember much about the timeframe, except that the weather was pretty warm. I recall telling Deric and Kevin during lunch that I would be “going away” for a while. Secretly planning to go home, put the title track from Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness on repeat — I was a huge Smashing Pumpkins fan — and use my dad’s handgun to blow my brains out, I went through the rest of the day with a quiet confidence, believing that these lessons no longer mattered. Deric foiled my plans by telling an administrator; I’m glad he did.
Need I say that my parents were a bit freaked out? I began counseling, which consisted of drawing pictures about my home life for a matronly psychiatrist. Oddly enough, this was the start of the slow reconciliation between my parents and me, a reconciliation that is still in progress. For the first time, I felt like people cared, and that feeling is worth a ton.
The second attempt went a little better (worse?) and happened the following summer. I was employed painting the interior of our house, by myself, and I think the fumes (among other things) got to me. I took about half a bottle of aspirin, and drank a glassful of engine antifreeze, assuming that all the health warnings were serious. Most painful mistake I ever made. I kept it all down, but I got so sick that I couldn’t eat dinner without throwing up. I really thought I was going to die, and of course, all of the sudden I didn’t want to anymore. After I got better in a few days, I vowed never to act towards my own destruction, a vow I have, for the most part, kept. The smell of antifreeze still sickens me.
I know that in a good story, the greatest drama should approach some sort of climax, which is usually near the end. Well, I didn’t plan very well, because freshman year and the following summer were probably an all-time low for me. Sophomore year came and things were looking up. I got my learner’s permit, I started making more friends, and my lifelong love of catch phrases began.
A catch phrase, in our specific high school vernacular, is a (sometimes actual) word oft-repeated and put to a completely new use. By far the most successful is “oof.” Oof is an interjection expressing surprise, pain or displeasure. It has been documented in such prominent media as Foxtrot and Calvin and Hobbes, and is ostensibly a variation on a similar Spanish exclamation. Its usage is best explained by example:
“Dude, this sucks. I have to read Moby Dick this summer.”
“Oof!”
See, it’s that simple. All you have to do is make up new words (or take old words and make new definitions for them), use them every other sentence, and before you know it, even your mom will be using them.
I also began to exhibit a vandalistic streak that year. Every day, on the bus, Shock and I would stuff paper and defaced books into holes in seats, pull the fire escape lever, and be menaces in general. My favorite was a revamping of Salinger that found its way into the hands of the bus driver, who asked if anyone had lost their “Ketchup in the Rye.”
I was even deadlier in gym class, a period I learned to truly enjoy. My first trick was sticking the water fountain in the on position in order to flood the hallway. Next, I would “inadvertently” miss while playing basketball, “accidentally” hitting the exit sign or clock in the process. Now they cover those with metal grates. Then, after gulping down inordinate amounts of water, I would transform into my alter ego, The Phantom Urinator. This fellow went around and, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, urinated on doors, walls and floors. I can’t say I’m proud of any of this, but I can say two things: that few others were this immature, and that we were completely unsupervised.
This year, my nemesis was my English teacher, Mrs Underhill. She was a strange woman, and she seemed to have a new outfit for each day of the school year. We later found out that she was a ballroom dancer. In any case, I have no idea why I took out my anger on her, but she was such an easy target. She told us that the textbooks we were using were going to be replaced, and that we should feel free to take notes in them. The next day I showed up with the first page completely blacked out with sharpie marker. I also employed my burgeoning vocabulary by lacing margins with cuss words and other obscenities. But the coup de grâce, my everlasting contribution to the hallowed halls of learning, was a single inscription carved with care into my desk. It read “Patrick the Great,” and to this day still adorns a desk somewhere in Great Bridge High School.
I can’t talk about sophomore year without mentioning my first car. Everyone retains fond memories of their first auto, especially in our gasoline-powered society. But not everyone had The Oofmobile, a red 1993 Mustang LX with personalized plates that read in block-letter glory, “OOF.” Whatever mischief I was up to, the Oofmobile was right there with me. I was to keep her for over four years, before the demands of long-distance driving obviated her usefulness. Even so, I think I will always have a red vehicle.
To be continued…
