The Letter

Reaching back into the Geek Boy vault for this post written in June of 2008. But I think its as relevant now as it was back then...

Have you ever been in the situation, where you were talking to somebody really attractive—like the best looking person you’ve ever had the pleasure of being in public with—and exactly 2 minutes and 43 seconds into the conversation you realize that they are unbearably dull?

Well this happened to me, only I didn’t know it because I was 15 years old.

Recently my parents sold the house in which I grew up, meaning that a few weeks ago two boxes containing all of my old stuff arrived at my front door. Going through the boxes, I have never been so happy that not only was I a pack rat, but I was an incredibly organized pack rat. I know it will sound really nerdy of me to admit this, but I actually kept all of my notes, journals, term papers, creative writing endeavors in chronological order. I’ve since been spending evenings here and there re-living my teenage years. The mountain of paper that grew out of these boxes provides a very vivid and accurate portrait of yours truly right in the midst of his most gawkiest, rawest and hardest teenaged years.

But those times weren’t all bad because in the summer of 1988, I met a girl. She was one of the most memorable “J”s in a long line of girls I’ve dated whose names began with that initial. This particular J was, to me at the time, the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. And she liked me. I mean really liked me. She liked me in the only way a 15 year-old girl likes anything—totally obsessed for a very, very short period of time. And I liked her back. I mean I really really liked her back. This was true pimply puppy love. We spent two glorious whirlwind romantic weeks together before I shipped off…on a teen tour across the country.

Before I left, there was a teary goodbye between us that could have been lifted from a sweeping Forties-era romantic epic. She promised to write. And she made good on her promise with a nearly 50 page handwritten correspondence that came to be known on my tour bus as, “the letter.” The Letter’s magnitude was unprecedented in the brief romantic experiences of the 50 or so teens on that bus. It's very existence and the fact that it was sent to me became the stuff of legend. It helped make the summer of 1988 one of the most memorable I’ve ever had.

Exactly 20 summers have passed since then. And in unpacking the boxes I found, nestled between my journal and one of my high school yearbooks, the letter.

Before I get into the letter, here are two things you need to know about this girl:

1) She dumped me the moment I returned from my trip. Literally as I’m driving back home from the airport.

2) Years after that summer, I learned she was severely anorexic when she would show up at the gym with less meat on her than a chicken. She was topic of a lot of gossip by my mother’s friends.

The contents of this letter are truly astounding. It is written in the classic bubbly girl scrawl. The one where all of the dots over the “i”s and the periods are little puffy circles. In reading this letter, I immediately realized that this girl was the most vapid, shallow and boring girl ever. A good majority of the letter was spent telling me about the minute details of her day. You see, J led a very simple life. Her summery days were spent exercising to Kathy Smith’s aerobic workout videos and weighing herself. In the afternoon, she would sunbathe on her deck and then cool off in front of the TV watching reruns of “The Brady Bunch.” That doesn’t leave a lot to write about. Often in the letter she would just list what songs were playing on the radio. A typical passage of the Letter went like this:

“The song ‘Electric Blue’ is on Q107. Before they were playing ‘Faithfully’ by Journey. WAVA is playing ‘Hungry Eyes’ by I don’t know who [Eric Carmen, by the way]. But I’m listening to Q107. They’re in the middle of a 10 in a row overflow. Pretty nifty."

I’m not kidding. This went on for pages and pages. In another section she refers to one radio station as “the black people station.” Holy shit. She’s a racist too!

Of course, I had absolutely no idea at the time who this girl really was. All actual memories of real conversations with her have eroded over time. But this letter serves as a perfectly preserved snapshot of this girl in the neon-colored time that was 1988, and how a young geeky boy ignorantly and blissfully fell for a beautiful blonde.

I’m so thankful that the 15 year-old me knew that the 35 year-old me would totally love this stuff.

Is Sharing Caring?

How much do you want to share of yourself when your kids grow up? A generation ago, this question would have probably been irrelevant. The lines between parents and children were a lot more defined. But in this touchier, feelier age in which we live, parents are friendlier and closer with their offspring. Add to that the transparency of social media and blogging, and it becomes seemingly harder to stay opaque. So when it comes time that your kids are going to start to get into the same kind of trouble that you did, stare down the same demons, what are you going to say?

I’m a long way from this, but I think about it a lot. I’m fairly confident that my parents, especially my dad, had their share of shenanigans growing up. Yet when it came to the inevitable talks about using substances or sex or any of the other things that keep parents of teens up a night, my folks never shared anecdotes. That was probably for the best. When it comes to learning about your parents, there are many things better left unsaid.

As for me, I was not a real troublemaker, but I was no angel either. Let's just put it this way, I'm really glad there was no such thing as Twitter when I was in college. As per usual, my teenage years included lapses in judgment that sometimes resulted in trashcans filled with puke or walks of shame (every once in a while, both).

At the end of the day, I don’t think my kids need to know everything about me. Just like I don’t know everything about my parents. I love my kids, but they are not my friends. Even though I call my son "buddy" all of the time, he is my child. Knowing the trouble I got in to, or narrowly avoided, would probably give him license to do the same things. Right?

What say you? Do you acknowledge your past in the present?

A Young Man's Game

I am not a 24 year old, though I often wish that I was. I want to indulge in the lifestyle of my youth but I cannot. I feel like Tom Hanks in Big, a young man trapped in the body of somebody who's much older with much more responsibility than I should.

It's not that I'm decrepit. Sometimes the wants of the younger me conflict with the needs of the elder me. Take for example this Halloween weekend. My favorite band is coming to Southern Califorina to play a 3 day festival. It sounds completely awesome and is something that if my life were completely my own I wouldn't hesitate to do. But my life no longer belongs to me alone. It's Halloween weekend and there is no way I could or would miss out on that day with my kids. They could be crushed. I'm kind of bummed to have to miss it, but honestly it's for the best. They're probably saving me in the long run because the physical toll of three days of living like it's Woodstock would most likely take weeks to recover from.

I have to face the sad fact that I can't bounce back like I used to. I was talking with a friend of mine about the old days when we would say up till dawn with Red Bull and booze coursing through our veins. She's still single and mentioned that we should all go out like that again. I looked at her as if she had more than the normal amount of appendages. We didn't even start those nights till 10pm. Most nights these days, I'm passed out on the couch by 10:30, Family Guy reruns playing in the background while a small line of drool runs down my face. (Sexy image, huh ladies?)

I still think like a young man, but I traded in that lifestyle the day the first umbilical cord was cut. Kids don't care if you've been up all night. They won't stop soiling their diapers just cause you're hung over. Their hunger doesn't subside cause you need a nap.

What about you? What do you miss most from your pre-parent lives?

Normal Childhood - Military Training (part 2)

Catch up on Part One if you have not read it yet.

By the time morning hit, we could hardly wait to see if we’d caught anything (or anyone) in our traps. We ignored the stealth policy as we bolted through the woods to the location of our creations. One by one, we closely inspected them, noticing nothing but a few random piles of animal scat and a small handful of porcupine quills.

Disappointed with having caught nothing we regrouped for a new strategy. After thoroughly discussing the mater in detail, we thought that the best plan was to lure someone into one of the traps. Yes…I was the one with 3 sisters and it was decided that little sisters make great prey.

Upon returning from my neighbor’s house we approached my middle sister, taunting her with a large bag of Twizlers and candy corn, we told her to count to 100 and then if she could find us at our fort that she could have our bag of sweetness. She began counting and we bolted into the forest snickering at our own genius.

A few minutes later, as we had taken up position in eyesight of each of our traps, we began to hear the crunching and twig snapping of a non-trained civilian tromping through the woods. Excited beyond belief, we all sat completely still, awaiting our catch.

A few seconds later, she appeared on the path…only 20 feet or so from our spring snare. Prancing up the path with thoughts of mouthfuls of candy, she neared the hidden danger. All of the sudden, we heard it. She had kicked the trip wire and *swoosh* the slip knot had tightened around her feet and she was hoisted into the air. Screaming and struggling, head bobbing a few feet off the ground we all emerged from the bushes, laughing and impressed with ourselves.

We stood in a circle around he, patting each other on the back, completely ignoring her cries for help. After a few brief comments and a bit more laughing, we decided that it would be best to leave her there for a while. Backing away and heading out on the path towards our house, we peaked over our shoulders just to see her squirming, and tears streaming from her eyes and landing in the cushion of pine needles that lined the forest floor.

We got back to my house and in an attempt not to tip off my mother, we busied ourselves with our bikes and the construction of a jump at the end of the driveway. About an hour later, after one of my friends launched off the jump and crashed into a tree at the edge of the woods, we all looked at one another with a touch of fear in our eyes and we took off into the woods. We had forgotten about my sister who had been hanging upside down in the middle of the porcupine and fox infested woods for close to an hour.

When we arrived, we saw my sister, still crying, but too tired to struggle. It seemed that she had just enough energy to tilt her head enough to see us approaching. Her sobs were faint, but at least she was still alive. We quickly released the knot at the base of a nearby tree and my sister fell with a thud to the ground. As she got up and began to stumble down the path she yelled to us that MOM was going to kill us and that we were going to be in big trouble. Chasing after her, with the bag of candy held out in front of us, we bribed her with the contents of the bag along with mild threats of further violence if she did tell.

As far as I know, our secret lived on and from that point on we re-adjusted out traps to only catch animals…which we did.

Childhood Adventure - Part 2

If you have not already...Read Part 1 first

He first peered inside. Not seeing much of anything, he remembered his difficulty in getting out of the trench. Finding a few large rocks that he could roll, he one by one, rolled them into the bunker to use as a ladder if he could not find a door. Then he dropped to his belly and began descending into the bunker, feet first. Inside the bunker it was dark, the air was still and…he had no flashlight. Walking around the room feeling the walls for a door, he noticed that there was a bunch of stuff on the floor. In the dim light he could not make everything out so he lifted items, one by one into the light from the sliver of window. This room was a gold mine for shell casings…he even found 2 belts of shells…where they were all held together by little metal pieces. These, he knew, were used in the large machine guns.

Finally he found what seemed to be a mini door in the wall that opened to a stairwell. He could see nothing in the stairwell. It was pitch black. He sat there for a moment, contemplating whether he would brave the stairwell or go back the way he came. The internal argument was brief…he’d come back another day with a flashlight for the stairs. Climbing up on the rocks that he’d pushed down into the bunker, he was able to emerge from his first explored room with ease. Once back on solid ground, outside the bunker, he searched for something to mark the bunker with so that he could come back to see where that stairway led. The only thing that he could find was a bunch of rocks. He grabbed them, one by one and piled them on top of the bunker, in a pile that he’d be able to see from a ways off.

At that point, he decided to head inland from the cliff to see what was there for him to explore. Passing by several flat cement circles, each with a few sets of holes in them, he noticed huge amounts of spent shell casings and knew that there must have been machine guns mounted there. He took a few minutes to pretend that there were still guns mounted in position. With his hands up in front of him, he shook back and forth and turned back and forth, making machine gun noises. With that, he thought to himself what a great vantage point that spot was. He had a great line of sight up and down the beach…as well as the ocean to the east.

Moving on, the boy came to a set of stairs which led down about fifty feet to a large open area. Seemingly an old staging area for the military personnel, to him it looked like an un-kept playground …with no equipment. Reaching the open area and turning to look at the hillside toward the ocean he marveled at the number of stairways, doors and open passageways that riddled the embankment. As if he were a trained soldier, he squinted his eye, peered back and forth and then seemed to KNOW which direction to head.

As he started to the north-East, he noticed something that stood out to him. It was not the shape of all of the other things he was finding…and it looked to be halfway stuck into the ground. Crouching down in front of it and brushing some of the dirt away from the sides…it became clear what he had found.

To be continued….

Posted By BedsideTalesMan