I have been thinking a lot about friendship the last couple of days. The memory of an old friend long gone reminded me to think of my friends. When I was a child, I always had a “best” friend. Choosing a favorite friend seems so strange to me now because I compartmentalize my friends now. I have friends to talk about life with, different friends to get drunk with, different friends to spend lunch at work with and even different friends to remember and miss. Just like my peas and potatoes, I don’t mix my drinking friends with my lunch friends

Don’t walk behind me, I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me, I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend. Albert Camus (1913 - 1960) (attributed)

Back when I was a kid, though, it was a different story. The most important person in my life was my best friend. I didn’t want her to like anyone but me. It was a jealous love with no room for lunch friends. My best friend roller skated with me, ate lunch with me, talked about life with me and partied with me. There was no room for any others in my life. And if she found room for others, I became insane with jealousy. My best friend changed names many times over my youthful years, sometimes in spite and sometimes because friends just change with age

Later, there became a distinction between girl friends and boy friends. Once I started having boyfriends, I found that I had to make a mental distinction between my best friend that’s a girl and my boyfriend, who obviously would be my best friend that’s a boy. I believed that my boyfriend had to be my best friend, but I still wasn’t willing to give up my “best” friend, whomever she may be this month.

The friend that I’m mourning, however, was neither a best friend nor a boy friend. His name was Calvin Hardcastle. He was tall and thin with dark hair and eyes. I didn’t find him particularly attractive and I doubt he noticed me. During high school, I partied with the jocks and the cheerleaders. The same people who were reluctant to talk to me in the high school halls were perfectly willing to let me see them at their drunken worst. I was a cheerleader’s nerdy friend and Calvin was a football player’s skateboarding friend. We were both outcasts in a sense. We were both on the outskirts of popularity.

After one horrific party, I vowed never to drink at these damn parties again. This group of rowdy football players would have nothing to do with my sudden sobriety. The first party after the “incident,” I found my Diet Coke spiked with alcohol several times. Protest on my part only brought my situation to their attention. Later in the evening, Calvin pulled me aside. “If you don’t want to drink, it’s way easy. All you do is carry around a beer,” he put a red and white Budweiser can in my hand, “and when they’re not looking, you dump a little bit out. That’s what I do. I’d way rather get high than get drunk, but they get all bugged if everyone isn’t drinking. Just pretend to drink.” My eyes grew to the size of platters, “You’re a f**king genius!” I whispered. Why hadn’t I thought of it myself? I’m supposed to be the nerd-girl. I’m supposed to be the one with sense. Instead, I had to get instruction from the stoner skate-punk. That is my first memory of Calvin Hardcastle protecting me.

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable. Sidney J. Harris

Over the next couple of days, I want to tell you more about Calvin. What a strange friend. I don’t have a picture of him, yet I can remember his appearance vividly. I have no recordings of his voice, yet I can hear him clearly, “I’d way rather get high than get drunk.” I never touched him, but I can almost feel that beer can in my hand. What a strange thing memory is

We were drunk. I know I had made a vow of sobriety, but this was a quiet party. This was a small party. Only friends and people I trusted were with me, Calvin being one of them. Ok, I lied. All of us weren’t drunk. Calvin was high. How about this? We were impaired. Somehow that doesn’t sound as good as, “We were drunk.”

One reason I don’t drink is that I want to know when I am having a good time. Nancy Astor (1879 - 1964)

We were impaired and waiting. I have no recollection of what we were waiting for, but we were waiting on my best friend’s front porch. In our neighborhood, the front porch of our houses consisted of a slab of concrete. I’m not talking about one of those old-time porches that are covered and roomy. It was dark and we were sitting on a cold concrete step. Ok, I lied. All of us weren’t sitting. Calvin was skating.

Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with, that it’s compounding a felony. Robert Benchley (1889 - 1945)

Over and over, he jumped his board from the first step to the second. He was high, mind you, and he was skating perfectly. His soliloquy, however, wasn’t as perfect, “It’s my destinate to skate!” Just in case we girls didn’t understand him, he clarified, “You see it’s my destiny to skate, so it’s my destinate to skate, so I destinate!” He kept repeating that phrase over and over. I guessed that getting high must be very different from getting drunk. To him, he was saying something incredibly clever and important. To us, he was just skating very well and speaking poorly. Yet we were entertained and what we were waiting for became nothing in my memory while his mumblings are dear to me.

In the eighties, the suburbs of Salt Lake City didn’t have much of a culinary selection after midnight. If you didn’t want to sit in a greasy spoon, you were relegated to Sconecutter. My, this story needs a lot of explaining. Scones in Utah are nothing like scones in Great Britain. In fact, I think a place like Sconecutter would do well anywhere if the rest of the world would just redefine the word scone. In Utah, a scone is fried bread. Think of it as a hush puppy without the cornmeal.

Sconecutter serves savory and sweet scones. The scone itself is a rectangle approximately four inches by six inches by two inches, cut in half lengthwise (thus the name, Sconecutter). They will make them into sandwiches for you or slather them with honey butter. As if the scones weren’t abominations themselves, they also serve Scone Burgers, which are pretty self-explanatory, and Sconuts, which are scones that are frosted like donuts. Most abhorrent of all their greasy creations is the Scone Dog. I’ve never eaten, ordered or even seen a Scone Dog, but I suspect they are scones with hot dogs as the meat. So much for explanation.

Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them. Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900 - 1944), “The Little Prince”, 1943

So, it’s 1987 and I’m with the core group of partiers: Calvin, my cheerleader friend, her drill team friend, her football player boyfriend and me, nerd-girl. They’re drunk. Calvin’s high and I’m driving. It’s about 11:30 pm and we are at Sconecutter. Most importantly, they are all underage and if the guy behind the counter realizes they’re drunk, we’re all busted. The important thing is to be cool. “Be cool,” the football player tells me. Even though he’s drunk, you can’t tell because he is always cool.

I order and pay for myself. Little Miss Drill Team orders, Football Player orders and my friend orders and pays for all of them. It’s Calvin’s turn to order, “Scone Dog!” He pronounces it slowly and incredulously. He sounds like Sean Penn from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Worse still, he keeps saying it. “Scone Dog!” Now, he’s pointing at the menu at the item, “Look, Dude, Scone Dog! I want a Scone Dog!” Football Player lowers Calvin’s pointing hand and takes him by the shoulder, whispering, “Cool it. Dude, you don’t want a Scone Dog. Man, just order whatever you want, but C-O-O-L I-T.” He draws out the last two words in a ferocious whisper.

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances. Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)

The girls are worthless and they are laughing each time Calvin says the word again. I step up to the counter, “My friend doesn’t want a Scone Dog.” The guy at the counter is instantly on my side, “No, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.” I flirt just enough to get the attention away from Calvin and Football Player arguing about whether a Scone Dog is palatable or not. “So, what do you think he should order?” The two of us can still hear Calvin in the background repeating the words “Scone Dog” over and over. The guy at the counter appropriates Calvin’s voice and accent, and saying, “How about a Sconenut?” He drew out the word “Sconenut” in the same way Calvin kept repeating “Scone Dog.” I laughed and nodded. “Maple or chocolate?” I order both.

This story was told many times by Miss Drill Team and my friend. Whenever we remember Calvin together, the Scone Dog story is brought up. I never heard Calvin say that he wanted to get high after that. He just wanted to get a “Scone Dog. “

Not long after that, Sconecutter started an advertising campaign with the tag line: Let’s Go Get Sconed! I don’t think that Calvin initiated that, but it was brilliant and they still use that slogan today. Additionally, I noticed that Scone Dog is no longer on their menu. What a shame. Now I’ll never know.

It was the tail end of another huge, drunken party. The couples had paired off in rooms. The singles had gone home. They either were driven home by me or they had snuck their keys and drove themselves home. Frankly, I was seventeen and I had lost track. I was sleeping over at my friend’s house and I looked at the kitchen table, not wanting to clean up. I didn’t make the mess, why should I clean it? I sat down between the kitchen table and the wall and just observed.

Calvin stumbled up the stairs. One of the singles, it was time for him to go home, but Football Player was his ride and he was blissfully coupled in one of the bedrooms. My skate-punk friend plopped down in a chair opposite me. He awkwardly leaned on the high chair, and I realized that he was drunk. This was a rarity for Calvin. Drunk, not high. I actually had never seen it before and I handed him half of a warm beer. He winked at me, “Just pretending to drink.” “Bullsh*t,” I thought to myself.

I envy people who drink. At least they have something to blame everything on. Oscar Levant (1906 - 1972)

I don’t know what had spawned this drinking. Maybe he had been “just pretending to drink” and ended up drinking a little too much for his weight. He was painfully thin. I’m sure that his sister fed him enough, but he was so tall. It’s just hard to eat enough to bulk up a boy who is that tall, especially when he skateboards so much. Maybe it had all gotten to him. Everyone was coupled up except him. He was left with Nerd-Girl, cleaning up the cluttered kitchen. Maybe he was stone cold sober. I had never seen him sober, so his personality change could have been his actual personality. I’m just guessing fifteen years later what could have been the reason for his drinking, but I guess that doesn’t matter now.

Over the next three hours, Calvin talked like I had never heard him talk before. When he was high, Calvin would talk a lot, but say very little. He would repeat words and phrases, which gave us the impression that he was talking, but he really told us nothing. “Destinate to skate” and “Scone Dog” aren’t really personally revealing. They’re just funny phrases that didn’t tell us much. But then again, people talk to me. Sooner or later, when people need to talk, they come to me. The kitchen became a confessional and I became the female eunuch.

It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution. Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

As I sit here at the keyboard, I’m reluctant to put down what I remember from the conversation. Confessions of this sort seem privileged to me despite the fact that I’m not a member of the clergy, a doctor or a lawyer. I don’t know what causes these desperate and personal admissions, but I enjoy them when they happen to me because for that one brief moment, I bond with a stranger. What if I jinx it and the confessions cease just because I voice them?

I said that I was going to tell you about Calvin, and here I am at the most revealing moment I ever had with him and I am reluctant to share. I sit here thinking about his beloved sister, who took him in when he had no place to go. Would she want to hear this story? Would she be upset if the whole world knew it? What about Calvin? What would he think if I told the world his confession after all that has happened? I need to think about this overnight before I continue?

I can never predict when it’s going to happen. I never know when a normal conversation is going to turn into a confessional. Had I known everything, I would have recorded this long talk on a tape recorder. In Nixon’s office, I would have pressed the button with my foot and his words would have been documented. Maybe if they had been recorded, I would have realized that they weren’t that special. Maybe after fifteen years of thinking about that conversation, his confession has grown in significance than it actually was. All I remember are a few sentences from those three hours, but they seem so important to me.

Calvin looked around the cluttered kitchen. He had just sat down, was leaning awkwardly on the high chair and slurred, “Dude, why do you come to these parties?” I remember feeling like an outsider. Calvin, an outsider himself, was questioning my right to be there, so I defended myself, “She’s my friend. I have just as much right to be here as you do.” He shook his head and laughed to himself, “No. I mean why are wasting your time with these guys? You should be?” He lifted his hand arbitrarily and waved it around. It was the same hand that had the half-empty warm beer. He took a swig and I prayed that I hadn’t handed him someone’s chew spit. My friend had many brothers, all of whom chewed tobacco and spit into whatever was handy. I hadn’t even thought to check it when I handed it to him. He grimaced at the taste, put it down and got a cold one out of the fridge. Her fridge had a seemingly never-ending supply of beer.

He popped open the fresh beer and looked at me for an answer to his question. I responded, “Where should I be? Studying like a good girl. I do enough of that.” Instead of saying that I wasn’t good enough to be there, I was somehow too good to be there, which was just as insulting. It was as if he thought that smart people didn’t need to have fun. It was somehow beneath me. “Man, if I was you, I would study all the time. I would get straight A’s?”

Then it came, like a rusted pipe, gurgling and splashing brown and mucky liquid all over me. He told me everything. It was convoluted and messy, but he told me what he wanted. He wanted more than anything to be me. He didn’t want to change places with Football Player, who was poking a cheerleader as we spoke. He didn’t want to change places with the skater that we knew that went professional and was getting paid to play. He wanted to change places with me because I had a chance and he didn’t.

He had seen a lawyer on television. I don’t think it was an actor playing a lawyer, I think it was a real lawyer who was defending someone here in Salt Lake City. Calvin had been inspired by this man. This lawyer, who was probably some publicity-hound ambulance chaser, represented the epitome of success to Calvin. “If I could be a lawyer, I could do some good. I could talk to anyone and just talk so perfect that no one could argue with me. See, if I was you, I would go to college and get to be a lawyer. Nothing could stop me then?” He trailed off. He had been talking for a long time about the lawyer, about how much he wanted to be like him and about how I could be a lawyer, if I just studied harder. He was just staring at the clutter on the kitchen table.

“Calvin, you could be a lawyer.” The minute I said it, I knew I was lying. I had been thinking of the slimy lawyers on the back of the phone book, but even they had to pass the bar exam. I looked at Calvin and for the first time, I saw him the way teachers saw him. I saw him the way the world would look at him. The teachers saw Calvin, the Super Senior, who was taking four years to graduate instead of three. The teachers saw Calvin, the stoner, who got “sconed” every day and was rarely seen straight. The teachers saw Calvin, the abandoned, who lived with his sister because there was nowhere else to go. The teachers saw Calvin, the skater, who didn’t study because it was his “destinate.”

“No, but you could be a lawyer.” He had been pushing this idea during his confession, but I wasn’t having any of it. “I don’t want to be some slimy lawyer. That’s your dream. You could do it. I don’t know how you would do it, but you probably need to stop smoking pot first.” He shook his head. “I can’t. It’s too late for me.” I silently and guiltily agreed with him.

Calvin, if you are angry with me for revealing your deepest thoughts to the world, come haunt me, you skinny bastard. I haven’t seen your face in so long that I am eager for the meeting, even if you are angry with me.

My beloved car of my high school years was a white Volkswagen Baja Beetle. Mike Pinkston and I had spray painted a yellow smiley face on the roof of the car where rust was trying to grow. For years after I sold it, I would see it every once and a while. It would drive past me and all the memories of my high school days would come rushing back to me.

It had been one of those parties. If I had been drinking, I would have sworn off of it because it was one of those times when I needed to have all of my facilities. I don’t know what started it. Testosterone, yeah I think I’ll blame testosterone. I don’t even know who started it, but Football Player played a large role in the events of that evening.

Oh, treacherous night! thou lendest thy ready veil to every treason, and teeming mischief’s beneath thy shade.
Aaron Hill

By the time I walked out of my friend’s house, the Beetle was on its side. Twelve football players were in the process of trying to get it upside down. Anyone seeing their precious first car being treated so poorly would have screamed, so I had no shame in screaming and trying to get them to stop it. They were well on their way to turning it completely upside down when Calvin walked out.

Calvin, the stoned skater. Calvin, the Super Senior. Calvin, the skinny outsider. “What the hell is going on out here?!” Suddenly, all twelve of the football players put the car down and started explaining. Football Player tried to get Calvin on his side. Cool as ever, he explained how funny it would be to turn my Beetle completely upside down. Calvin would have none of it, “Get the Beetle right side up! Quit being stupid.” He turned around and went back into the house. The remaining eleven football players immediately turned my car right side up and the party broke up. Amazed, all I could do was stand by and watch.

Do not protect yourself by a fence, but rather by your friends.
Czech Proverb

My image of Calvin was instantly changed. Calvin, the quiet despot. Calvin, the secret ruler. Calvin, the protector. The world was instantly upside down. Instead of weak, Calvin was strong. Instead of addle-brained, Calvin was smart. Instead of an outsider, Calvin was the leader. My car was right side up and so was I. The funny thing was that I didn’t realize that I had been living my life upside down for so long.

It was sitting on the counter at my friend’s house. “What’s this?” She glanced at it and answered, “A picture of Calvin.” I shook my head, “I know, dumbass. What are you doing with it? Why is it here? Where did you get it?’ She shrugged and explained that she was using up the rest of the roll and snapped a picture of Calvin. “Can I have it?” She shrugged and said that it was mine.

If I had a photograph of you or something to remind me. I wouldn’t spend my life just wishing. A Flock of Seagulls, Wishing (I Had a Photograph)

From that point on, my friend assumed that I was in love with Calvin. She asked me many times if I liked him or not and I truthfully told her that I didn’t love him. I couldn’t explain why I wanted the picture, so she just decided that I must be in love with him.

It sat in the back of the Beetle for a long time, reminding her of my supposed love each time she rode with me. Eventually, I put it in the photo album next to the pictures of friends at the prom and school pictures that had been given to me. That photo album is hiding somewhere downstairs in the basement and it might as well be lost to me.

I have a picture pinned to my wall. An image of you and of me and we’re laughing with love at it all. Thompson Twins, Hold Me Now

The truth of the matter is, I DID love Calvin. He felt like the big brother who would always be there to protect me. I didn’t have any brothers, so I had never felt that feeling for a guy before. It was a strong feeling and I was scared of it. I knew that I had no sexual attraction to him, yet I really cared about him. I didn’t know how to describe that sort of love to her. In retrospect, she would have understood perfectly. As I said before, she had many brothers. She was the youngest and the only sister, so I’m sure she would have understood if I only had been able to articulate what I thought.

“Did you hear?” It was a few years out of high school. I was married. My cheerleader friend was married and had given birth to a beautiful baby girl. She called me, which was rare these days and said the phrase that always prefaces a bad conversation. “Did you hear?”

It’s never good news. It’s either bad gossip or bad news. It’s never greatness that follows the phrase, “Did you hear?” I told her no, wanting the conversation to get over with as soon as possible and hoping that it was just gossip. “Calvin’s dead.”

Death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home. Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)

I don’t remember where I was. I don’t know if I was at work or at home. I don’t even remember where I was living at the time. I don’t even think that I said anything after she told me. “You need to go to the funeral,” she told me. “Yeah, sure. Do you want to carpool or meet me there?” “Oh no. I can’t go. I can’t let Football Player see me after having this baby. You know, he’s married now.” “Calvin got married?” “No, Football Player!” She was frustrated with me.

So, I went to Calvin’s funeral alone. Once again, I was the outsider and this time, I didn’t have my friend with me to justify my presence. The funeral was at Goff Mortuary. I have trouble remembering phone numbers, but the name of the mortuary where my friend was eulogized is in my memory forever.

I sat at the back of the room. Football Player and all the rest of the gang were there, decked out in the most horrid colors: yellow, purple and green. They were dressed in the team colors for the Utah Jazz. Of course, all of us are Jazz Fans, but Calvin had his last laugh because all his friends carried his coffin looking like the biggest dorks on the planet.

Always cool, Football Player’s face was stoic and unchanging. I don’t remember what anyone said at the funeral. Calvin’s fiance spoke about him and I tried to reconcile her with the lawyer’s wife that I had imagined for him.

Calvin had died in a car accident. They didn’t say whether it was drug related, alcohol related, sleep deprivation or whether Calvin was even driving or not. I never really found out what killed him beyond a couple of tons of twisted steel. I guess that’s enough.

There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to the same species; and it was strange to think that but a little while before they had spoken and moved and eaten and laughed. W. Somerset Maugham, ‘Of Human Bondage’, 1915

They buried him at Wasatch Lawn Memorial Park. Of the many times I’ve driven past that place, I don’t think there was a time when I didn’t think of Calvin. I haven’t returned to his grave, but the day I stood by it, I remember thinking that this place was too quiet for him.

I wish that I could tell a different story about Calvin. I wanted to tell the story of the man who beat adversity and made it through law school. I wish I could tell you that Calvin is representing drug offenders in the Utah courts. I wish I could tell you about his beautiful wife and his beautiful house. I wish I could tell you how he got there. Instead, he is so much worm food at Wasatch Lawn Mortuary.

Sometimes when I see a thin, curly haired boy skateboarding, I feel that essence of protection that used to surround me when I knew Calvin was at the party. I know that he haunts me to this day and I tell his story in a desperate attempt to exorcise him. If I had my way, I would relocate his grave to the skate park at Taylorsville Park. I think it would be a much better gravesite for him.

(transcribed from handwritten document)

I had forgotten how good it feels. The moment I put the pencil in the sharpener I could feel the excitement. This was no ordinary pencil. This pencil is shiny and prismatic. This pencil has my name printed on the side. This pencil is special. I turn it in the sharpener, watching the shine and prism slowly peel away, exposing the dark lead.

All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things. Bobby Knight (1940 - )

I had forgotten the smell. As a child, I imagined that the scent of freshly cut wood would be like the smell of a recently sharpened pencil. I was so disappointed by the actual smell of freshly cut wood. It smelled like greenery and Christmas. Nothing like a freshly sharpened pencil. If you were to ask me to describe the scent of thinking, I would tell you to sharpen a pencil and hold the tip to your nose.

I had forgotten the sound. I remember listening to thirty pencils all writing on single pieces of paper. It was most noticeable during a test. If you were to ask me to describe the sound of thinking, I would describe the tones of thirty pencils writing feverishly.

Even more intimate, I had forgotten the sound of one lone pencil, my own. Knowing that I am alone working. It is a comforting squeak and click. The dots on the “i”s, the crosses on the “t”s and the final periods all click with reassurance. The squeaks of the “s”s and the connected letters of script remain constant and hopeful. I am working. Even if I write and hide the paper in a drawer, I am working.

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self. Cyril Connolly (1903 - 1974)

I had forgotten the feel of the pencil in my hand. The wood is rough on my middle finger. The large and calloused lump on it has evaporated after years of clicking keyboards. I find that my hands have betrayed me. They are no longer strong and fit for writing dark lead-bound letters on paper. They have developed muscles for typing and are weak when it comes time for no batteries required.

Even more intimate, I had forgotten the feel of a pencil in my hand. The pen writes immaculately every time. You never need to turn it ever so slightly to get a better point. With a pencil, there is that microsecond of a delay. Just enough time to think of the best word and phrasing. It slows me down just enough to write my best, despite the power of the eraser. If I had to say what thinking feels like, I would tell you to turn your pencil to get a better point.

I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear. Joan Didion (1934 - )

I had forgotten the sight. My letters. My design. My darkness. My spacing. No matter how many hand written fonts I encounter, I will never find one that is exactly like mine. Yes, that’s the question mark of my design. Yes, my “a”s have an umbrella. I decided between fifth and sixth grade that my “a”s would have umbrellas and my “t”s would have tails. It wasn’t until junior high that my “y”s, “j”s and “g”s would have extra flourishes. It only comes alive again with a pencil in my hand.

I just realized that I had even forgotten the taste. It tastes like that bite into the wood in times of thought. I can’t bear to bite this shiny pencil so lovingly embedded with my name. Yes, thinking tastes like paint and wood bitten firmly. I am so tempted. It has been so long since I’ve tasted the wood in thought. Maybe just one bite…

When I was a teenager, I wrote in my journal every morning. I woke up at 5 am, turned the heat up and sat on the floor by the heater vent. The warm air would fill the blanket that I had brought from upstairs. Every morning I took a warm air bath and it was delicious. This heater vent was positioned in such a manner that I could lean my back on the kitchen bar. I was comfortable and warm. It was the perfect environment to write out my teen angst every morning.

Don’t let yourself forget what it’s like to be sixteen. Anonymous

I still keep my journal every day. I type one full page of Arial 10 point text with half inch margins on all sides. I type until I fill the page, even if I feel empty. When I feel like I have nothing to say, I type the words, “I have nothing to say. I feel empty.” It usually only takes me a couple of iterations of those phrases until I realize that I’m not empty and that I DO have something to say. Typing on the computer is vastly different from the morning routine of my teen years.

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards. Robert Heinlein (1907 - 1988)

This weblog owes its existence to that morning page. I would post those words, but when I read them they tend to be full of the mundane and irrelevant. I find that the words that end up in my journal are useless. I think of my journal writing as a mind dump. I get rid of all the silly things that are floating in my head so that I can actually write something coherent and interesting.

Journal writing is a voyage to the interior. Christina Baldwin

In July, we moved to a new home closer to town. It’s smaller and much older, but we are really lucky. It has a forced-air gas furnace that works like a dream. The other morning, the heat came on and I couldn’t stop myself. I sat down on the hard wood floor right by the heater vent. The air filled my nightgown and the memory of all those teenaged mornings came to me. The joy of it was too good to stand up and get started with my day. There was only one thing that concerned me: how can I sit on the floor and write my morning page at the same time? Maybe it’s time I went back to paper and pencil.

I’m leaving for Las Vegas tomorrow. I feel sad for Hugh Elliott. He has never been to Vegas. He has never seen the glamour and he has never stretched his neck in awe to the sheer gaudiness of it all. Yes, even you, Hugh, would have to stretch your neck at it. It’s that big and that gaudy.

Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas … with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether.

Hunter S. Thompson (1939 - ), “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”

  I remember the first time I saw Las Vegas. I was ten and my mom woke me up. “We’re getting into Vegas, honey. Wake up and see it.” I couldn’t find my glasses in the motor home, so it was a blurry flurry of light. We stayed at the Circus Circus RV Park overnight. After taking us kids to the circus games, Mom, Carol and the rest of the adults went to the casino and stayed out late. I remember waking up Pat because I had botched up changing the baby’s diaper. She was suffering with a hangover, but her skilled hands wiped him up neatly. I learned that you had to lift them by the legs to wipe them up properly. Late that afternoon, we headed to California and Mickey Mouse.

Judged by the dollars spent, gambling is now more popular in America than baseball, the movies, and Disneyland combined.

Timothy L. O’Brien, Bad Bet (1998)

My next memory of Las Vegas was a tired splash of color on the way to Long Beach. We should have stopped there to sleep in the Legoland Castle that was the newly built Excalibur. I nearly fell asleep driving after the California border. We slept in Baker for a few hours before finishing the trip. Vegas could have become just a blur on the way to California in my memory, but fate intervened.

Noting his mother’s visit to Las Vegas the weekend before she died. “She got to go to heaven four days early.”

President Bill Clinton

Then there was Comdex 1993. The Internet was still spelled with a lowercase “i” back then. I was intent on getting some of that Virtual Reality stuff (thanks, Sun Microsystems). We stayed in Jean, Nevada because we couldn’t afford the sky rocketed hotel rooms in Vegas. We met our friends there and they showed us the coolest booths at the convention. All of us envisioned a world of computers and none of us could have predicted Dot Com, much less Dot Bomb.

Many Comdexes and InterOps later, we are now going to Las Vegas for fun, not work. There is no computer show excuse to write off this trip. We will get a donut in the Legoland Castle. We will meet friends and dance the night away in the Glass Pyramid. We will get a cannoli at the Statue of Liberty and eat some stinky cheese underneath the Eiffel Tower.

Casinos and prostitutes have the same thing in common; they are both trying to screw you out of your money and send you home with a smile on you face.

VP Pappy

Michael rues the day when he gets old. He is worried that when he recalls his Vegas trips to unsuspecting strangers that they will think he is senile. “On the first day, we went to Egypt and Medieval Europe. On the second day, we went to Paris and Venice. Watch our for the Pirates, they’re right across the street from Venice. The next day, we saw Simon and Garfunkel at the Green Lion.” Even knowing the true itinerary doesn’t make it sound more sane. Where else in the world can you see all that? It’s still a blurry flurry of light, but if you blink, you’ll miss it. No excuse, Hugh! Get your ass to Vegas!

Tonight we will experience a total lunar eclipse. Check out the Clark Planetarium’s website for the technical data and times. It’s a total lunar eclipse, even if our mountains might hide the moon for part of the time, it’s guaranteed to be spectacular. Of course, this is Utah. Our sky could be completely encrusted with clouds and the Star Party planned at the Planetarium with be a big disappointment to the Astronomy nerds.

Why dost thou gaze upon the sky?
O that I were yon spangled sphere!
Then every star should be an eye, To wander o’er thy beauties here. Sir Thomas More (1478 - 1535)

A couple of years ago, we had meteor showers in our sky. It was winter and the showers were only at their best at two in the morning. Mike and I bundled up and drank hot chocolate and kept our eyes peeled for about an hour looking for shooting stars. We saw about two or three of them, but after an hour, I was so cold that I just wanted to go back in. It didn’t matter to me that I had only seen a couple of meteors. I was cold and tired and I wanted to go back to bed.

The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape… Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973)

The first time I saw a lunar eclipse, we lived at Barrington Park Condominiums. I was excited to see an entire eclipse and had planned for it. The window in my bedroom was the best way to view it. I set myself up on my bed and I sat and I watched. I saw a tiny shadow on the edge of the full moon. I eagerly sat and watched for about an hour, but I must admit that after that, I just wanted to go to sleep. I didn’t care whether I got to see the whole thing or not.

We shall find peace. We shall hear the angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds. Anton Chekhov (1860 - 1904), 1897

I didn’t realize how long an eclipse takes. Maybe astronomical pursuits are out of my range of ability. They are sequestered to the evening hours. Maybe Astronomy is for the intellectual who is kept awake by her insights rather than lulled to sleep. I can excel at many things, but staying awake is not one of them. If my eyes automatically open at six in the morning, that means they also automatically close at 10 in the evening. I will leave Astronomy to others and be content to watch stop motion photography.

People get their underwear in a bunch sometimes, don’t they? Remember the Barbie that talked and said things like “Math is hard?” People got really riled up with that one. I was an adult at the time and I remember being very angry that the Mattel Corporation would treat our young women with such disrespect. Even to this day, I make fun of the Mattel Corporation by saying the words, “Math is hard” with a bubble-headed girl’s voice.

Guess what? I was wrong. It’s hard to admit it, but I can do it when I need to. I just realized today after reading Hugh Elliot’s weblog entry that I was so wrong. I feel like I need to make a formal apology to Mattel, but there really isn’t a form on their website for that.

A decade after Hugh put his G.I. Joes in the storage box, I was still playing with my Barbies. Back in the seventies, Barbie didn’t work. Barbie was a teen fashion model. She had a boyfriend, Ken and a little sister, Skipper. Kelly hadn’t been born yet and her mom is still M.I.A. (yet still able to give birth to a new baby sister, figure that one out). Barbie was a Super Star and a beach bunny. Malibu Barbie was totally cool because she had a tan lines underneath her bathing suit. They were painted on, and if you took her out swimming too often, they would chip right off. I swear, what kinds of kids test these toys? Malibu Barbie HAS to go swimming!

Anyway, we were talking about why I was wrong. Mattel told me back in 1977 that my only goal as a woman should be to wear pretty clothes, walk gracefully and get a tan. As a child, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass what Mattel told me. Barbie wasn’t a teen fashion model. Barbie was a mom. Barbie was a career woman. Barbie worked in insurance just like my mom did and she made a ton of money. Enough to drive a purple Corvette (I saved all my chore money for weeks just to buy it. It cost eight dollars back then, but that’s another story). Barbie could do anything and she didn’t need Ken to do it either. Ken was great fun to have around, but if he skipped town (or got a bad haircut, damn you, Stacey) he was out of there. No matter what propaganda Mattel fed me, Barbie did exactly what I wanted her to do.

When my sister Stacey was in her Barbie phase, Mattel had finally gotten the picture. Her commercials sang, “We girls can do anything!” I loved that slogan. It meant exactly what “playing with Barbies” was for me. They went from teen fashion model, to “We girls can do anything” to teeter at “Math is hard.” And guess what? All of that didn’t matter because Barbie does what I want her to do, not what the commercials tell me. Apparently, it was the same for Hugh.

I forgot to tell you one more story about Calvin. I know I spent more than a week talking about him, but I realized a few weeks ago that I had one more memory that I hadn’t placed in writing. It was the one time that Calvin failed me, although I didn’t recognize it for what it was when it happened. More importantly, it was filed in my head in a different folder. I had placed it in the Sexuality folder instead of the Calvin folder and I really think it was filed correctly, so I’m not planning on changing everything now. I just need to add a photocopy to the Calvin folder. (How I wish my memory really worked like that.)

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It was one of those parties. Calvin and I were the only sober ones there and things had gotten a little out of control. I think it started when my friend announced that she had porn. She always had access to porn. Once again, she was the youngest sister with five older brothers. There wasn’t a time that I can remember when we didn’t have access to porn. Our first exposure to it had been in fifth grade when we sneaked into her oldest brother’s room and found the magazines. I don’t know why she decided to unveil it at that time. I don’t know what was different about this party, but it was quite different because she told everyone that we had access to porn.

I’m not talking magazines. I’m not talking full frontal nudity. I’m not even talking about soft core. I’m talking hard core hetero-porn videos with everything you could possibly think of and maybe some things that you couldn’t (I wish I could throw out the electric toothbrush scene in that folder and wipe my mind clean). That evening, the videos were played, rewound and replayed constantly all night.

My wits weren’t about me. I hadn’t been drinking, but it was three in the morning and I was getting tired. By that time, all the couples were coupling. The only people left were Calvin, Jerry and me. The videos were still running. Calvin and I were sober, but Jerry was drunk and still drinking. Calvin entertained us by making fun of the porn. There were a lot of things on the screen to make fun of and we laughed together.

It had been a normal party for me. No guys had hit on me. I had tried to create some order from the chaos, making sure my friend’s house didn’t get trashed. I had worried all night that we would be busted because the guys had stolen the beer that everyone was drinking from a local convenience store. There had been a lot of drama between the couples and I was feeling a little jealous that I was alone.

I was just about to drift off to sleep, safe in the knowledge that nothing bad could happen to me with Calvin there. That’s when it happened. Calvin stood up and said he was going to sleep. Fine by me, I thought, but he walked into one of the empty rooms and shut the door on Jerry and me. I was suddenly wide awake and alone with some big football player that I had never met before the party.

It wasn’t like Jerry was a stranger. He had been to many of the parties. I had classified him as pretty but a little dumb. It wasn’t a fair classification. He had just been put into the football player mold. That was all that I knew about him. He was a football player, just like the one that took advantage of the other cheerleader I knew. He was a football player, just like the one that dated my friend. He was a football player, just like all the rest of the perverted football players out there.

Calvin had walked out of the room. I was in shock and wanting to bring him back to us. I could just walk over there and open the door. Jerry was saying something, “When Calvin was here, that was really funny, but now it just seems creepy.” He stood up and turned off the porn. I hadn’t even noticed that it was still playing on the television. I felt unsafe. Jerry and I had been sitting on the loveseat that was right across from the TV while Calvin had been sitting right in front of us on the floor. Calvin had been sitting right there. If he came back, I might be safe.

I stood up and knocked on the door, but Calvin didn’t answer. If only he had left the door open, then I would be safer. I turned around. Jerry was back on the loveseat. I felt trapped. I couldn’t go home. It was three in the morning and my mom would have a fit if I showed up there when I was supposedly just at a sleepover at my friend’s house. There would be many questions from my mom if I just showed up at home at that time. No, the only way out of this was through. I could see that it was going to be a long night.

I sat down on the large couch to the left of Jerry’s loveseat. I hadn’t received enough confessions to recognize it for what it was, but Jerry confessed it all to me. I am not clergy and I could tell you all of the problems that troubled his eighteen-year-old mind, but I won’t. He had had a girlfriend in the past. He had made mistakes. He was thinking about his future. He was scared of screwing it up. He was alone. They are all universal and the details weren’t logged into my journal, so I can’t even remember all of what was confessed to me.

After the confession, I was scared. Some of the things he told me surprised me. I had classified him as a dumb jock, but he had broken that image. I had classified him as an unfeeling pervert, but he was in pain over this girlfriend. Over the course of the confession, he had moved from the loveseat to my couch. By the end of the conversation, he asked me if I wanted to sleep with him. I had been jealous of my friend and all of the other cheerleaders because they were sequestered in rooms with guys, but this wasn’t right. No matter how beautiful he was, I knew it would be wrong. I instinctively knew that it was improper to even touch him after a confession like that.

I told him no and he apologized for asking. He moved away from me to the other side of the large couch. I told him that he didn’t need to apologize, but he shook his head and pointed at me, “I’ve got you all cowering away from me.” I became aware of my body. He was right. I was curled into an upright fetal position at the very edge of the huge couch.

My whole life I thought I knew why the guys never hit on me. I had blamed my appearance for the lack of boyfriends. I had convinced myself that I was fat and that was the reason that the guys didn’t want me. At that point, cowering in the corner of the couch, I knew I was wrong. Wrong with a capital “W.”

I had a good looking football player telling me his life story and hoping to get lucky with me, right there on the couch next to me. He was perfectly willing to do whatever I wanted. If he thought I was fat, it wasn’t getting in the way that night. It was that night that I realized that men love women. They love us whether we are fat, thin, ugly or shockingly beautiful. They love us whether we are shy, outgoing, prim or shockingly vulgar. They love us merely because we are women.

Even more importantly, I said no. It wasn’t even a question in my mind. I said no with my body and my words so loudly that he didn’t ask me again. I had convinced myself that if I was thin, I would automatically be a slut. If I were thin, the guys would want to have sex with me, and I wouldn’t be able to say no. I would want to sleep with any guy that was willing to come to my bed. Again, I knew that I was wrong. I had been lying to myself. Here I was in a very private situation with a very eligible football player, and I said no. Not just no, Hell No.

I realized that the guys didn’t hit on me because I didn’t want them to. Just like when I was cowering at the edge of the couch, I told all the guys at the parties that I didn’t want them to even touch me with my actions and maybe even my words. I never got drunk at those parties, which is a huge flashing sign that says, “I’m not going to lose control.” I made it perfectly clear that I didn’t want to be alone with any particular guy by staying in the public areas and never “crashing” in a room all by myself. I had even found a protector that didn’t want me for himself: Calvin.

Speaking of Calvin, I wonder if he truly failed me. Looking back, maybe he thought that he was helping me out. Jerry and I had been laughing at and talking about the porn for at least an hour and maybe he felt like a third wheel.  Maybe he thought that I wanted him to leave so I could finally be alone with Jerry. I don’t know and I never asked him about it. In fact, I could never look Jerry in the eye after that night. It was as if I had seen beneath his skin and found all the tender and painful spots. I was still new to receiving confessions and didn’t know how to continue a friendship after one so vivid and painful. It was something that would take me a long time to learn.

There is a point when I am waking up in the middle of a dream in which I don’t know what is the dream and what is my imagination. My eyes are still closed and suddenly, I can control the events within my dream. I must be awake and imagining a finale to the dream so that I’m not left feeling like I left the movie theater before the climax.

They say dreams are the windows of the soul–take a peek and you can see the inner workings, the nuts and bolts.  - Henry Bromel, Northern Exposure, The Big Kiss, 1991

Last weekend, I had a dream about a teacher and some students in detention. I have no idea where the dream ends and my imagination begins. I guess it doesn’t matter. The memory from both were both wholly created within my mind. For some reason, I feel like I’m not responsible or even own my dreams, whereas my imagination is my own. It is a source of pride and shame, whereas my dreams are merely interesting fodder for talk

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.  - George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

When I was a teenager, we shared the bathroom. My mom, Stacey and I would all be together in the bathroom getting ready. The schedule for the showers went as follows: Me, Mom, Stacey. I would shower first, then move on to the makeup vanity. Mom would shower next and by the time she was done, it was time for me to do my hair while she put on her makeup. Stacey would stagger out of our bedroom right before Mom’s shower, but she needed food before she could be civil, so she ate breakfast before finally coming back upstairs to shower while I did my hair and Mom put on her makeup.

A schedule defends from chaos and whim.  - Annie Dillard

We were three women in a bathroom every school morning. Every morning we talked about our dreams. If we didn’t remember our dreams, we wouldn’t talk about them, of course, but almost every day one of the three of us remembered a dream. Stacey’s dreams were long rambling and incredibly detailed. I remember once she started telling her dream, I stepped downstairs for just a minute that turned into thirty minutes and when I came back, she was still talking about the same damn dream. We didn’t get to analyze her dreams. There wasn’t time. We just listened.

Dreams are postcards from our subconscious, inner self to outer self, right brain trying to cross that moat to the left. Too often they come back unread: “return to sender, addressee unknown.” That’s a shame because it’s a whole other world out there–or in here depending on your point of view.  - Dennis Koenig and Jordan Budde, Northern Exposure, Roots, 1991

Most of the time, we were able to analyze. It was like a game to play every morning. “What do you think this dream means?” We didn’t base important life decisions on the analysis. It was all for fun. It was like a parlor game for the bathroom and we played it every morning. With three active minds, there was always a dream to play with.

Dreams come true. Without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.  - John Updike (1932 - )

I miss that game. Mike can’t play it. Sometimes he tries to play it with me, but he doesn’t have ten years practice like I do. He takes the analysis too seriously. It’s like he’s worried that I’ll make a life changing decision based on the random firing of neurons. I don’t even know how to teach him to play the game correctly. After thirteen years of marriage, I don’t think it’s going to happen. Maybe I should just call my sister every morning so we can go through our dreams together. Of course then, the phone call would be two hours every time she wants to tell me one of her dreams?

The first time I ever saw a dehumidifier, we were in North Dakota. Bobka, my great-grandmother, used to live in her own house in Pembina, North Dakota. It was right at the Canadian border. It was also the first time that I ever saw The Flintstones in French. I wasn’t bothered that Fred was speaking French so much that it was a different voice coming out of his mouth.

Anyway, there was a strange machine in her basement. Maybe it was an air filter. Maybe it was a furnace or something. I didn’t know what it was, but Bobka emptied a bucket of water out of it twice a day. Twice a day, this machine made water. Cool?

The more I thought about the machine the more confused I got. If Bobka wanted a machine that would make water, why would she just dump it down the drain twice a day. Why didn’t she drink it? Why didn’t she use it to water her lawn? Why did she just dump it out? I finally asked my grandma what the strange machine did and she laughed at me. I was an item of amusement to her with my weird little thoughts. It was a dehumidifier. It didn’t make water, it took water out of the air so it would be less humid in the house.

My desert eyes were amazed. There are machines that can take water out of the air? This could solve everything. I had just come to North Dakota from one of the worst droughts in Utah’s history. Why didn’t we have one of these machines in Utah? We could take the water out of the air and use it to water our dying grass. I had just lived through a summer in which I was not allowed to run through the sprinklers because of the drought. Our grass had turned dry and brittle. This machine could fix everything.

After I got back to Salt Lake, once again I became the subject of amusement. I told my mom about the magic machine that Bobka had that could take water out of the air. We should get one for the grass. My mother was a native of Millwaukee. She knew the machine of which I spoke. It wouldn’t work in Utah. There’s no water in the air to remove. That’s why we’re a desert. That’s why our grass is dying.

Last week, Mike and I bought a humidifier for our house. With the humidity at 19%, all of our plants were dying and the static electricity was threatening to mess up our electronics. After an hour of operation, the humidity was up to desert levels (25%). I wonder what a child from North Dakota would think about my magic machine that actually puts water into the air. Probably just be bugged because Fred Flintstone speaks in English with a different voice.

As drove home from work on Wednesday, the fog was so thick that I could look directly at the sun: no sunglasses needed. The massive red disk was just starting to dip into the mountains. If I had left for work five minutes later, I would have missed it. It looked spectacularly huge when it slipped right behind the Chevron refinery. It became part of the refinery and snapped out of the distance into the foreground. The sun looked like it was part of the refinery process, like some huge, red carefully controlled burn.

A child could have drawn this sun. It was perfectly round. There were none of those pesky sun beams flying off it, blinding me. It was just a huge crimson circle in the sky. I half expected to see a smiley face to appear on it.  I have been complaining about this fog, but I had forgotten how beautiful it can be. I had forgotten how it can obscure the sun enough to give me the opportunity to look straight at it.

The first time I remember being able to look straight at the sun, I must have been about six years old. It was after I went to first grade, but it was before my grandma moved to Billings. I was out in the backyard of her home on Windsor Street. Attached to her back porch was a trellis and there were large and orange honeysuckle blooms clinging to it. It was a hot evening and I was surprised that I could actually hear the wings of the hummingbirds, feeding on the honeysuckle.

I was just sitting in the backyard listening to the insect noises of the hummingbirds, when I noticed the sun. There were clouds obscuring it on the horizon, so I could look straight at the sun. I remembered a biblical story in which someone was blinded by the sun. I had accepted that story literally, not realizing that the sun can “get in your eyes.” I stared at the sun, trying to see if it would make me blind. It made a round burn mark that floated in my line of sight. I didn’t really consider that blindness. I stared at the sun until it went behind the Oquirrh mountains.

After it was gone, I ran inside to tell my mom and grandma what had happened. “I stared right at the sun and it didn’t blind me.” My mom dismissed what I said, “You couldn’t have stared directly at the sun. It would blind you.” I argued with her for about five minutes and I regretted that I hadn’t brought her outside to see the sun sink. She probably doesn’t remember that day.

Many times I have seen the sun look like this. It’s usually on a foggy day like Wednesday, but I have looked directly at that yellow disk through thin clouds. Sunsets, sunrises and daytime I have observed this phenomenon. It’s like I feel like I need to keep looking to prove to myself that it really happened because someone didn’t believe me once.

They say the Eskimos have a large number of words for snow. I think that’s baloney. Two, maybe three, words tops is all I’m willing to believe from them. It’s not that I think that Eskimos don’t have the creativity to name all the different types of snow, it just that every thing that I have ever been told about another culture has been a lie. I’m reluctant to take this one at face value.

According to The AFU and Urban Legends Archive, it’s all bogus, so I guess my instincts were right. Well, if Eskimos don’t have a million words for snow, we Utahans should make some up. When I started writing, we had that tiny and  fine snow that reminds me of dandruff. It’s just enough to muck up your windshield, but not enough to clean the dirt from the street. Sometimes it just fools you and you think that the fog is really thick, but when you look closely, it’s snow.

When I was researching the Intuit words for snow, the flakes got bigger. They were only about half the size of Christmas Snow. It was the size and quantity of snow that sent my mom into a terror-induced trance one evening. It wasn’t the year of the horrible snow. It was before that and it was before the divorce, so I was younger than eleven years.

We had gone to Valley Fair Mall. You know how things are at the mall. They are warm. You take off your coat and carry it around with you, wishing you had just left it in the car. Eventually, you forget about the outside world and get lost in your errands. That’s what happened to us that night. It was a wonderful evening with my mom and Stacey when we stepped outside. She froze. The most vivid part of this memory is watching my mom just look straight up at the sky at those snow flakes.

Whenever I tell this story, careful listeners always interrupt me. “Isn’t your mom from Wisconsin?” I can see their minds click. It’s like a little cartoon balloon is above their heads. “Wisconsin gets major snow. Why would she be scared of snow?” I remember the day when I asked her those exact questions. “I grew up in Wisconsin, but I learned to drive in Virginia.”

Ah, yes. Virginia. My father was stationed in Portsmouth, Virginia during part of the Vietnam War. I was born in Virginia. I always imagine my young mother on the bus when she realizes that she could just learn how to drive my dad’s car. I can see her on a  bus in 1969 with a baby, trying to bring home groceries. It was so much easier to shop for groceries before the baby came. Here she was suffering, when she could just learn how to drive that car that just sits dormant while he’s away at sea. Easy decision. It’s a time of revolution. Women can drive cars now.

Ah, yes. Virginia. There are bugs the size of rodents and rodents the size of small dogs in Virginia. The reason the bugs can get to the size of rodents in Virginia is because it never gets cold enough to kill them. It doesn’t snow there. I had a friend who went to school in Virginia and she said that the one time it snowed while she was there, the entire city shut down. She said that there wasn’t even an inch on the ground.

Plus, there was that horrible frozen 7^th East incident. When my mom first moved to Salt Lake City, she got a job at Grand Central on 7^th East and 21^st South. Ironically, I live within walking distance of the store in question, except it’s a Circuit City now. After closing, one snowy evening, my mom spent hours trying to get to my grandmother’s house on 17^th South and Windsor Street: a three mile drive, tops. She spent several hours trying to drive a couple of miles back home on a “sheet of ice.” Every time she would use the gas, the car would slide. Don’t get her started on this story. The length of time it took her to get home gets longer every time she tells it.

So, my mom was scared of snow. She was scared of the ice. She was scared of getting stuck. She was scared of getting the girls home safely. She was frozen in a trance, looking at the snowflakes coming down from the sky. All of that fear faced her at that moment. I remember suggesting that we just call Dad and have him pick us up, but I saw something change in her for a moment. It’s a time of revolution. Women can drive cars now. She got into the car and drove us home that night.

They say that there can be no courage without fear. Unlike most things that “they” say, I know that this one is true because I saw the courage fill my mother’s body that evening. If I were given the chance to name the kind of snow that’s about half the size of Christmas Snow and falls quickly, covering the ground thickly within a few hours, I would call it Mother’s Snow. Eskimos might not have a million words for snow, but I do.

Hugh Elliot is back and Standing Room Only has reminded me that I lived at a very momentous time in our history: that dawning of the computer age. I saw so many things come and go during this time.

It was eighth grade and I was saving my program on a tape recorder with an Atari 800. I thought that I had forgotten that joy. If you listened to your program on a normal tape recorder, it sounded like beeps and screeches. The tape machine could play music, though. I’ll never forget the sound of Weird Al Yankovic blaring while we programmed in Basic. Back then, the programs were fun. They were games. We made the screen change colors. We made it say the phrase, “Ataris are cool” over and over until it filled the screen.

Back then, I never thought about programming something useful. I didn’t have a computer at home and I was only allowed a couple of hours after school once a week. What good would a useful program do me? Sure, I could program the computer to tell me what day Easter would be on each year, but why would that help me?

When we were first married there was a window of time when it was more practical to program it ourselves than to wait for an application to take care of the problem. By then, I had relegated the programming to Mike. He had written the BBS from scratch. Mike, could you program the BBS to have another room just for me? Sure, but right now I’m programming it to give a different quote every time you press return without typing something?

And that was it. That was the mythical gleam in Mike’s eye. It was an Easter Egg in his BBS program. Now, the idea of a bulletin board system is just as archaic as saving one’s program written in Basic on magnetic tape. The BBS has been replaced by chat rooms and text messaging on cell phones. No more calling the BBS in the middle of the night, only to get a busy signal. We can all be on it at once.

What are you doing? Have you slept at all? No, I’ve been typing in quotations for the BBS. That was the first wave of the collection. Mike’s sarcastic collection of quotations was growing. All I could see was that he had to go to work on no sleep. My vision was a little myopic. I didn’t know about the Internet and back then it was still lurking quietly at the universities and government institutions. It was waiting.

It was waiting for Mike’s quotations. It was waiting for Hugh Elliot’s thoughts and ideas. It was waiting for Real Live Preacher’s inspiration. It was waiting for me. I have seen so many changes in the computer industry pass over the years. Things changed so often and so quickly that I thought it would always be like that. Over the last four years, the industry has stabilized. The changes are slower. Sure, the processor speeds are doubling every year, but the computers are so fast now that it’s hard to notice. From the ground, the speed of light and the speed of sound look the same.

They call the old times the “Good Old Days.” I don’t subscribe to that. I would call those times good, but by no means were they better than right now. You couldn’t pay me enough to go back to programming on an Atari 800. My telephone has more processor power than that old monster (we still have it, sitting in the basement alongside the Atari 2600). I lived at a momentous time in history. I am grateful to have experienced those times, but there is no place I’d rather be than right here right now.

When KCGL went out of business, all of us punk kids cried. We had been informed that they were changing their format to Christian Rock. We protested. We went to the radio station, begging them to reconsider. I don’t remember calling any of the advertisers, which would have been the smartest thing to do. When you’re seventeen, the financial side of radio is the last thing on your mind.

Nothing that we could do could stop KCGL from changing their format. It wouldn’t have been that big of a difference except that there were no other alternative or new wave stations on the radio at that time. Suddenly, we went from 24 hours a day down to one or two hours a week on public radio. After a couple of months, I was desperate for new music. MTV was good, but it wasn’t the same as the radio.

I remember haunting KCGL. I kept listening in the vain hope that they would change their minds. Maybe if they didn’t make any money with this Christian Rock stuff, they would eat crow. Once I heard them play U2. I thought that they were changing back and immediately called them. No, U2 is considered Christian, apparently.

I knew things were really bad when I saw the movie Pretty In Pink. I heard new Smiths, New Order and Nik Kershaw. It was a whole soundtrack of new music that I hadn’t heard before, except for the title track. After that, I started asking all my friends, “Have you heard anything good lately? What do you recommend?”

I bought more albums during that time than I had the previous year. I was still making the same amount of money at K-Mart, but I was spending more of it on music because the radio was gone. All I had were audio cassettes to rely on after KCGL died. I would buy albums just because one person said that they thought it was good. I didn’t weigh my options anymore. I just bought it all because I was so hungry. 

Then it happened. “Have you heard anything good lately? What do you recommend?” I was asking Pinkston. Unstable Mike Pinkston. Beautiful Mike Pinkston. He had just returned from picking pineapples in Hawaii and his forearms were bronze and bulky. I had been crushing on him since sixth grade. I’m sure he knew it, but he didn’t want me. Just like every other crush I had encountered up to that point. “Here, try this. You’ll probably hate it.” He handed me Japanese Whispers by The Cure.

I returned Japanese Whispers the next day. I had listened to it twice. Once while I copied it onto a cassette tape and again on the copy to make sure I did it correctly.

Whadja think?

I loved it. It made me happy.

It would.

What do you mean?

You’re just the kind of person that would get happy listening to The Cure.

What does that mean?

You’re just so f**king happy all the time. Not even The Cure can bring you down.

Yes, I fooled Mike Pinkston. The mask was so complete that he couldn’t see beneath it.  I was a normal teenager. I had as much angst as the next teen, but I hid it very well. I put on a Pollyanna attitude, thinking that I should fake it until I could believe it.

The truth of it all was, I wasn’t lying to him. I really liked that album. It really did make me happy. Listening to Robert Smith cry out made me know that I wasn’t alone. It helped me to see that my angst wasn’t nearly as bad as it could be. I wasn’t suffering alone and I wasn’t suffering nearly as much as I could. Yes, The Cure made me happy.

Japanese Whispers was the first of a music starved binge. I went to every music store in town looking for albums by The Cure. I bought them all. I’ll never forget my birthday that year when Dylan bought me a very rare live album. It’s sitting in my basement now. I believe I listened to it once so I could tape it onto cassette. Very rare Cure record, only played once. I should try to sell it on EBay.

That is how The Cure came to represent the Eighties for me. I rarely danced to them, but dancing was my whole life back then. If people who knew me would have described me, they wouldn’t have even thought to put me in the depressed Goth category, mainly because we only had two Goths when I went to high school. NecroNerds were really after my time. Most people put me with the Jocks and Cheerleaders in retrospect, but I really was a Punk Rock Girl.

Now, I look at my prissy Selma Blair in Legally Blonde hair. I look at my secretary costume and I feel like I’m behind another mask. I’m not pretending to be happy to mask teen angst. I’m pretending to be traditional to mask my punkdom. I look like a soccer mom, but I’m not a mom. Worse still, I’m always just “this close” to kicking someone in the balls. I never do because that might bust my mask, but still, that violence is right there, hiding beneath it all. So, tell me. Have you heard anything good lately? What do you recommend?

I’m too young to know about Dick and Jane. I was born in 1969 and I should have learned to read using all those hippie/disco books that they gave us in school. I didn’t learn to read in school, though. I learned to read at home. I learned to read at my grandmother’s home. I learned to read with Dick and Jane.

One of the books was at my home. I think it used to be my mom’s and after looking around on the internet, I’m shocked to realize that the small book that I learned to read with is worth hundreds of dollars. I could have given it away to the DI if I didn’t love it so much. I don’t know if I have the book or if Stacey got it. It doesn’t matter. I can buy a reprint for about eight bucks. The memories are in the pictures and the words, not in the actual book itself.

I remember the first time I got all the way through that book. I had been reading for days and the stories toward the back were much harder to read than the stories in the front had been. I felt such a feeling of accomplishment when I got to the end of that book. I felt like a grownup.

Months later, I picked up the book again. I remembered feeling so good when I finished that book and thought that I should read it again. I picked it up and read it all the way through in one sitting. Instead of days of reading the words, it took only hours. I was strangely disappointed. Instead of the arduous task that I thought it would be, it was an afternoon of reading on the heater vent. But, I did read it all in one day. That must be a book for babies.

I don’t know why, but my book followed around Sally a lot more than Dick and Jane. I don’t know if it was a book for younger children or if I just got a different one in the series. I really don’t know too much about Dick and Jane except that they think that everything Sally does is really silly.

Mike swears I was born in 1948. There are so many things that I find fun to reminisce about that are just not age appropriate. I remember watching my dad test television tubes at Grand Central to see what needed fixing. I remember how it feels to have a strong sense of patriotism and I know how to hang, fold and salute a flag. I remember Dick and Jane. I know I’m too young to know all these things. Knowing them doesn’t make me feel older, just isolated from my generation. It’s all good. So what if my homies are a generation older than I am. I can also tell you who Britney Spears married in Vegas and the name of Big Bird’s dog. Maybe the problem is that I just can’t forget inconsequential things.

When I was four, my dad told me that he was going to take me to school. I was so excited. Stacey hadn’t been born yet, so I was a lonely child left at Grandma’s house every day. I wanted to go to school so badly. I wanted to play with other children. At the time, my best friend was Miss Julie on Romper Room.

He tricked me. He took me to church. He took me to a “school where you learn about God.” That would have been fine if he had taken me to a church that had special classes for children while the adults had their own, but he had decided that we were going to be Jehovah’s Witnesses. Instead of playing with children my age, I had to sit quietly while the adults discussed the philosophical ramifications of refusing blood donations. I remember thinking, “When are they going to stop praying to God?”

Becoming Jehovah Witnesses required a lot of changes in our lives. Mom stopped smoking. I personally think that she did it because she was pregnant with Stacey, but Dad saw it as a sign of her newfound faith. We had to go to church three times a week. We had to go “out in service,” which meant that we knocked on doors and talked to strangers about “the Truth.” Most importantly, it meant that I would never live my ultimate fantasy, which was to appear on Romper Room and actually meet Miss Julie in person. You see, on Romper Room, they all pledged allegiance to the flag and little girls who are Jehovah Witnesses aren’t allowed to do that. My heart was broken.

By the time I was in fourth grade, I knew the routine. Every day when the pledge was said, I stood respectfully with my hands at my side. Every time there was a major holiday celebrated at the school, my dad kept me home. Art projects were pretty much off limits to me: handprint turkeys, Santa, cheesecloth ghosts, and those frilly paper hearts were forbidden. I was used to it by fourth grade. After four years, it had become routine.

The Demon of Perfection haunted me even then. Academy Park Elementary School had these little certificates that they gave to students who did well. There were High Achievement certificates for children who had good grades and there were 100% Attendance certificates for children who had good attendance. By fourth grade, I noticed that I had never received a 100% Attendance. It became vitally important for me to get a 100% Attendance certificate. I knew what I needed to do: I needed to go to school every day, even when they were celebrating holidays.

Of course, my dad was just fine with this. If I said that I wanted to go to school, even on Halloween and Christmas, then he wouldn’t have to find a sitter. It was easier for him and he got to believe that his daughter was strong enough in her faith in the Truth that she could withstand even the sirens of the holidays on her own. I embarked on the second term, determined to win the 100% Attendance award.