subprocess

Since I’m turning old in about 3 months, I was thinking back on the first 30 years of my life. Figured it’d be easier if I wrote it down. So here is, mostly for me, a time line of defining moments in my life so far. These are moments my brain feels it should often remind me of, no idea what it’s motive is in some of the cases. Oh, I’m not good with dates… so, nyah!

July 2nd, 1979

Born. Came out butt first, sorry Mom. OK, I don’t remember this, but the timeline should start here.

Kindergarten

I remember getting in trouble for playing with the toy kitchen. I was told that I was a boy and should play with the boy toys, like all the other boys. Once my Dad found out, I was allowed to play with whatever toy I wanted. Yay Dad.

1st grade… I think?

My first timed math test! So there we are, sitting at our desks, and the teacher announces that we are NOT allowed to turn our papers over until she says so. She then passes out a multiplication test face down on all our desks. Once they’re passed out, she watches the clock and shouts something like, “Begin!”. Not really sure the exact words but I know for certain her words were not, “Turn over the test and begin!” So… yep, I did the test without turning the paper over. It was hard, but you could see faint lines fading through to the back.

While I did end up growing up to be a sarcastic asshole, this was not my motive. I was determined to follow the rules at school. I was terrified to do something wrong.

Oh, and I passed the test. I didn’t finish all the problems, but the ones I did finish I got correct.

Probably around 2nd or 3rd grade

I remember my two first good friends. Katy Dolly and Nathan Fredrickson.

Katy and I were good friends until things got weird.. She’d have me over to her house and we’d play in her room. I loved making her laugh. But then one day she asked me to kiss her and I didn’t want to. We didn’t really talk much after that. I still remember being a goof though, doing anything to make her smile. It was good innocent fun until she “put the moves on”.

Nathan and I were like brothers. We did everything together. At the time I thought I’d never have a better friend and we’d always be that close. We barely talked after 5th grade.

I’m not sure if this is the right year or not… but around here we got a NES. I have great memories of playing it with my Dad. He was so much better at Super Mario Brothers than anyone I knew. I still remember the day he got to level 1-4. There he was, up against Bowser. Bowser was, of course, protecting the princess. He fought and fought and fought and finally got past him. We were so excited, finally, the princess! But nooooooo it was toad, “Our princess is in another castle.” We couldn’t believe there was more to the game.

Shortly after Super Mario Brothers, we got The Legend of Zelda. Again, another one I have great memories of playing with my Dad. He got out graphing paper and we mapped out Hyrule. The overworld and every dungeon. Such great fun and such great memories.

Probably 4th grade

Remember that vice presidental fitness thing? I dreaded that. I remember our school making a huge deal out of it all. Running and other outdoor activities. One of them involved a hula hoop. There we were, the entire school, outside doing these things. We had to run to a hula hoop when we were up and hula it X number of times and run back. Everyone was watching, including my female teacher. I dreaded the moment, just knowing I was going to hula wrong and everyone was going to laugh. It was my turn and I ran to it, put it on and began to swing my hips. I felt like an idiot. I knew I was exagerating the hip swing or… just something wrong and awkward about it. And sure enough, there was my teacher, looking at me and laughing.

This was also, I believe, around the time of my introduction to computers. The computer lab at school were a bunch of old Apples. I have strong memories of playing Adventure and programming with Logo!

5th grade!

Square dancing! Oh how I hated it! Once a week our entire grade would meet in the gym and we were forced to learn how to square dance. The only part I really remember was a girl… her name was like, Marry Lou, or something like that. Definitley two names as her first name. I had a huge crush on her and would often get to actually touch her as we dosie-doed and whatnot.

Also, I started a Nintendo club with my friend Chris. We would meet once a week at his house and play rented NES games. This went well until he went PSYCHO. Seiriously… we were playing on the playground and something happened and my hand knocked his hat off. He went PSYCHO, grabbed my shoulders and tried to head butt me! I held him back with my arms straight and he just had this disgusting and hate filled look on his face as he kept trying to ram his forehead hard against mine. Finally when he calmed down I ran away sobbing. He never connected and didn’t hurt me in any way, but hey, I’m a wimp. This was my first and only fist fight I ever got in. No one connected with anything, no one was physically hurt, and I cried for a good 10 minutes.

I have one more memory with this friend, Chris. During one of our NES club meetings that turned in to a sleepover, we were up late watching t.v. in his living room. His Dad was single and had someone over that night. It had to have been like 2 am, his Dad obviously figured we were asleep. He comes strolling out of his bedroom in his birthday suit, on the way to the bathroom. I don’t think he ever realized we were awake. But there he was, stark naked, on his way to the bathroom. Eww.

6th grade.

This was the first year that they moved 6th grade to the Junior Highs. So instead of being a big kid at the elementary school, I was a tiny kid in Junior High. I started doing this new thing with my hair… it involved moose. I had it parted down the side and had this tidal wave molded in to my bangs. I started wearing jeans, now that tight fighting pants were no longer in style and I could find some comfy ones. (Up until this point I wore nothing but khakis and penny loafers, I also traded the penny loafers for some tennis shoes. Cheatah’s I believe.)

I often remember a night in 6th grade camp. Another kid, Ryan Alsup, was running past me in the dorm and somehow brushed the side of his face with my hand. This popped out his contact lens and he couldn’t find it anywhere. I felt horrible. After camp my parents told me not to worry, “his parents can EASILY afford new ones”. I guess they were known to be well off.

Also, I don’t think I ever stopped talking about computers at home. For my birthday I got my first PC! A Tandy 1000TL. Along with it I got a game, Space Quest III. I still remember sitting at the kitchen table all day long immersed into that adventure game.

7th grade-8th grade.

The rest of my junior high years. Sometime in Junior High I met Patrick. We became very good friends and still talk often today. Mostly about geeky things, like computer games and programming. I have many memories of Wing Commander games, Magic the Gathering, AD&D, and of course… Latin Surprise Party. More on LSP later.

The other strong memories I have of Junior High are kinda weird. Like… being made fun of by a girl I had a crush on because I didn’t know what a dildo was. Wearing green shorts overalls, with one strap on and one strap off. Reading over the lyrics to Ice Ice Baby all night long so I could recite it without the music from memory. Making a tape with Patrick that played bohemian rhapsody over and over and over and over again, both sides. Playing said tape until our ears bled.

I remember a college student from some nearby beauty school coming in and talking to our class. She asked “What do you all use to wash your face with?” And some kid snapped back, “soap and water.” And she repeated back, in a mocking dopey voice, “soooooap and water.” She said something like, “Well, you guys must have great water here in Waterford, because you all have such great complexions.” Of course… I had major acne problems and felt very embarrassed by this.

1993 – 1994

Freshman year of highschool! I became “Bob’s little brother” at this point. It all started off with band camp. There I was, no longer in to M.C. Hammer of Vanilla Ice, but diving head first in to grunge. Lots of great memories from band camp that year, meeting new friends, like Mickey.

Band camp of ‘93 was the first time in my entire life that anyone ever told me about Jesus Christ. Denny Early approached me and asked me if I knew who Jesus was. I honestly did not know. All my life my parents raised me without a religion. They always told me that there was a God and if you were good and nice you would go to Heaven. They never once mentioned Jesus or Hell. So this was all knew to me, but in line with what I was thinking. I love details and I’m a bit obsessive. So I ate up all Denny could tell me and shortly afterwards became born again.

My first girlfriend… I found out a girl liked me, which was a brand new thing for me. So I liked her back. We went on many group dates together, because her friends were dating my friends. The other two couples would sit and make out… we’d just cuddle. I knew she wanted to make out too, but I was too scared and too shy to make the first move. And she obviously wanted me to make the first move. We ended up dating for about 6 months. Turns out she also wanted me to be the one to break up with her. We both couldn’t initiate a kiss and we both couldn’t initiate the break up talk. So we dated uncomfortably for about 6 months. It felt SO good to break up with her. I was very proud of myself and remember just glowing that day when it was all finally over.

Summer of ‘94 I got my first job, and my first car. Started working the closing shift at Arby’s. My first car was a Blue Dodge Shadow Convertible. My Dad somehow got it for me. It was great. The job, not so much. It didn’t last long though.

I knew I could get a better job, so I started looking, with my Dad’s help, for an entry level computer related job. In the Fall of ‘94 I landed my first job in IT. I said goodbye to Arby’s and they all wished me well, saying they knew that I wasn’t going to be there long, and started my after school job at the Oakland Schools administration building.

Annnnd… Travis is asleep now. So this is the end of part 1.

Posted on April 13th, 2009 under Journal • Tags: Journal. • RSS 2.0 feed • You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed