—THIS IS WHAT 8^TH GRADE (AND COMPLETELY LOST) LOOKS LIKE

 

 

…I wonder what it means when you edit yourself after you’ve already journaled your thoughts.

 

…I’ve learned a long time ago that being a great friend means being there when it’s not easy, comfortable, convenient or pretty.

 

…There are far too many books to read, and isn’t that one of the biggest blessings ever?

 

…I’m fairly superstitious, even though I’ve had that notion backfire on me plenty of times.

 

…Eight days until the draft. Pray for me, please.

 

…It seems like years since you held a baby.

 

…After the basement flood, I found a yearbook photo of myself from the 8^th grade. I totally looked like a hoodlum, like some kid ready to hijack your Tesla. What’s funny is I remember being too shy to even speak to the photographer who snapped that pic. He kept telling to me move this way and that, so I did so soundlessly.

 

…In my 10^th grade yearbook, also barely salvaged, I had about seven or eight (“friend”) inscriptions in the whole thing. They were all from guys, except for one random girl who wrote, “You don’t know me, but I think you’re really cute. I’m Tina, pg. 112.” And then her phone number. 

So, did I just read that back, then keep on flipping pages?

 

…I also found dance pics from early college days with girls/young women I can’t name or remember now. How does that happen? Is that just Feeble-me, or is it normal to spend an evening with someone, at a semi-important event, and then not even remember anything about it, or them? 

 

…These nights, the lake doesn’t even look real. 

 

…Who knew a silly pastime like baseball could nearly send a guy into cardiac arrest?

 

…There’s no getting around it any more—the skin on my hands looks like the webbing on a turtle’s neck.

 

…Good Lord, there are 329 pages on this particular, rambling document. Pinkie Swear.

 

…Not everyone’s going to understand, or relate, but should you deem to keep coming here, it’ll have to be enough.

 

…The taste of a strawberry always has a lot to say to me.

 

…Wednesday is my favorite day. This week, Wednesday was beautiful, close to 92 degrees. I saw Bud the beaver doing his laps at 6 am and I watched all kinds of people frolicking on the lake. Yet it was still a blue, blue day.

 

…I wonder if I’m as opinionated as my friends. I hope not, but I have an inkling that I am, and that maybe I am even more so.

 

…I do think opinions are important. It matters to stand up for something, even if you’re in the minority. Especially if you’re in the minority.

 

…It’s taken me three-quarters of my life, but I’m finally, slowly, learning to let go.

 

…Pinkie Swear, a deer walked straight up to the house last week, pushed her nose against the window next to me, then trundled a few steps and nosed the front door. I would have thought it was a man in a deer suit, sort of like the people who thought that was a man in a bear suit at the Chinese zoo instead of it being a sun bear. But the deer kicked away in a hurry once the door opened. 

 

…I never in my life would have taken myself for a sickly person, but, in the words of Justin Bieber, “Never say never.”

 

…First 45: “Two Divided by Love.” 

 

…First Album: “The Partridge Family,” (after wrangling over an hour between that and Bobby Sherman.)

 

…First time I can remember crying: Age 5, in a trailer in Bismarck, ND, listening to my parents shout at each other the entire night, a few days before my mom would drive with us, and my soon-to-be-stepdad, a thousand miles to Spokane, WA.

 

…First time I had sex/lost my virginity: I honestly don’t remember, or know what the correct answer is.

 

…First time I almost died: We used to take one vacation a year to Ellensburg, WA. Mom and (step)Dad would get a room at the Holiday Inn and we’d (the kids) stay in a camper in the parking lot, but use the hotel pool plenty. I was about 9 and my brothers were teaching me how to swim, the same way they’d learned, by chucking me in the water and waiting for me to dog-paddle my way out. I was doing fine for a few minutes but had nothing left when I got a few feet from the poolside. I just kept sucking down chlorinated water. Four of my brothers thought I was faking drowning, laughing at me, but luckily Ron jumped in last minute.

 

…First (real) regret: Not becoming a writer right away.

 

…First drink: Age 9, Jack Daniel’s, straight out of the bottle. 

 

…First theft: Two pieces of penny, sugar bubble gum that looked like mini suns, stuffed into my sock.

 

…First time speaking in tongues: My parents, for a while, rotated churches like people do their underwear. We went from being Baptist to Lutheran to Catholic to Assemblies of God. At the latter, I was to have memorized a certain part in a play and during practice I hadn’t done it, so, sitting in the balcony of the church after being called on, I started spewing what sounded like sacred gospel gibberish. To this day, I don’t know if that was me covering up for my neglect, or the grace of God.

 

…First obsession: Vampires. I wanted to become one so bad. I thought it would solve everything, plus Barnabas seemed scary and bad-ass, yet in charge of his own destiny to a degree.

 

…First crush: Monica-somebody. She was a lifeguard when I was five. In my memory, she’s the actress in “Summer of ’42,” but who knows?

 

…First experience with racism: It was at that same pool where Monica was lifeguard, in Mandan, N. Dakota. Until that time, I’d never seen a person of color because the entire state was white. Then one day a black kid jumped in the pool. He was my age, smiling and skinny, just really happy. But immediately, without a word, everyone in the pool leapt out. (It sickens me to recall that.)

 

…First Joy Ride: Over the cliff and into a corn field outside of Moscow, ID, with Clinic, Ling, Lersie, Zinga and others in tow. (Where in the hell Oz was, I still don’t know.)

 

…First drug: Pot in the Mandan High School parking lot. I inhaled wrong, so nothing happened. But I sure reeked the whole day in class.

 

...First (real) suicidal thought: A few weeks later, in a trailer in Bismarck, ND, sleeping on a vinyl sofa with a butcher knife tucked under the pillow, sleeping with one hand on the handle.

 

…First job (paid by an outside source): Milky’s strawberry fields, age 9. I would go on to set the record for most flats picked by anyone ever—21—in a single day.

 

…First pet(s): “GoGo” and “Thunder,” twin Guernsey calves.

 

…First prom: 9^th grade, Linda LaFountain and The DeFranco Family, “Save the Last Dance for Me.” I can’t even imagine what I would have said to her.

 

…First movie in a theater: “Beauty and the Beast,” and not the animated one. I was 5 and was so scared, and cried so much, that my brothers had to take me outside, then promptly home. 

 

…First drive-in film: “The Born Losers” (aka the first “Billy Jack” movie.) Holy hell was that terrifying back then.

 

…First concert: Bachman Turner Overdrive, although I really just hung outside the ballpark, listening in the parking lot the whole time. (Actual tickets were $12.00, a fucking fortune at the time.)

 

…First idol: David Cassidy (he maybe still is.)

 

…First non-celebrity idol: LeRoy Ashby, History Professor at WSU, who once introduced class by unrolling Playboy magazine and holding out the centerfold to us all (300 plus on a hot Friday afternoon) with taped pieces over certain body parts, saying, with aplomb and not a trace of sarcasm or mirth, “This is Candy Loving.” 

 

…First person(s) I knew and loved who died: Hala and John.

 

…First poem I wrote: “The Pill”—Take a pill/swallow it first/then some water/to quench your thirst/hop in bed/your pleasure be/no need to worry/she’s pregnant free” (as an angry reaction to learning a girlfriend was on birth control before even meeting me, which just goes further in explaining how stupid AF and naïve I was then.)

 

…First book read: Gulliver’s Travels. (It changed my life.) 

 

…First memory of parenthood: Watching Madison being born, then two minutes later hearing her stop crying as soon as I said, “Hi, Madison. It’s so good to meet you.”

 

…My first and best miracle: Somehow finding Mike.