Greetings and salutations and thank you Riko for deeming me worthy to grace one of your ever-enjoyable 'Focus On' threads. I really enjoy these as it tends to be a positive spot amidst what can at times be a rather dense morass of negativity. The world and ACF are lucky to have people like you.
It was a dark and stormy night...
No idea really if it was or not, but I've always wanted to start off something like that. Thank you Charles M. Schultz for your contributions to my childhood.
An early morning or right about a Boston last call depending on how you tell your time, saw my arrival into this world some 33 1/2 years ago. (It may or may not, as previously mentioned, been a dark and stormy night. For the purposes of this narrative it really is immaterial and you can pick whatever sort of weather you like for the scene. But no locusts. Locusts are not a weather.) 8 pounds 13 ounces. My mom sure did love me. Or was tired of always carrying me. Or both. But either way, she had me and has been mostly happy about that since methinks.
(note: as per Sue's request, this got quite long - feel free to skip directly to flaming if you have the patience of a caffeinated gnat. Okay - this is REALLY long - damn. I suppose you only ever get one focus on. I'm doing this with mine. Checking back up again - this might be the longest post ever on the boards.
)
A large part of what makes me who I am is due directly to my family. I have two of the best parents that a guy could have and a sister who I would do anything for. While my sister and I never really got along all that well as kids (gross understatement) we have always loved each other and even up in arms battling each other we stood firmly together against most outside evils like sneaky parents, mean kids and hidden freshly baked cookies.
Growing up saw me to be a very bright kid, I could read early and well but I always had issues when "playing with others." I was the last kid to get off the street in baseball when an approaching car signalled "game off!" I never was quite sure of the rules of baseball and frequently ran the wrong way around the bases. I could figure all kinds of stuff out and do math well and take apart and fix stuff quite young. When it came to people however, there was a lot that I just never seemed to get apparently. All would be made clear by the onset of school.
First Grade
When I went into grade school the first day of first grade was both very cool and rather traumatic for me. I was placed in the slowest reading group which baffled and upset me as well as confusing my parents later on since I'd always been an extremely advanced reader for my age as far as they could tell. On the other hand, I was given a locker along with the other kids and which was
really cool and I promptly locked myself inside it which was not.
Just prior to lunchtime, I had needed to go to the bathroom and the teacher let me go. When I got back, the classroom was empty so I kind of hid until everyone got back. Lunch happened without me and I had no clue what was going on. As kids came back into the classroom some time later, I came out from my hiding spot (no idea where or what this was, just that I'd hid) and blended, getting back into my seat so that I could continue to look out the window. My teacher decided that I was constantly daydreaming and didn't pay attention and consequently was a rather dull-witted child.
Come the end of the day, we were herded as a class to the cafeteria and separated out and put in line by our bus numbers which I had dutifully memorized and know to this day. I stood in a little line with the other Bus 15 kids until that moment when the teacher asked the question, "Who has a locker?" and began to line those kids up. Knowing full well that I had been given and locked myself into my very own new locker I promptly left my bus line and got over into the line with the other locker having first-graders. Kids from my street beckoned in that frantic subdued manner one can only do while trying to avoid attracting the attentions of Authority, but I knew that I had a locker and stood firm.
Bus by bus all of the kids were escorted outside while the few proud locker having kids stayed in the cafeteria with me. We were then led outside to the parking lot and released. Just about the time I stepped out the front door, I observed the bus, my bus with it's stencil painted red 15 on the side, drive blithely past. I waved frantically and began to ran after it. A bus, even going slowly in a parking lot is much much faster than a scared and determined first-grader. After watching it recede in the distance a third-grader saw my plight took pity and informed me that we could catch it on the other end because it had to make a big circle. We ran. We RAN. Made it to the other side, crossed the street to be on the right side to be picked up and I morosely watched the spray paint red stencilled '15' pass by implacably once more.
It is only recently that I have come close to being able to appreciate the horror my mother must have felt as she watched my bus, number 15, come up and disgorge child after child onto the street. That is, every child except her firstborn. In what must have been a grand state of panic she leaped to her trusty car and sped to the school and found me across the street, sitting on the sidewalk where the Third Grader, having exhausted his expertise in matters bus-catching had left me. I was calmly eating the sandwich she had sent with me to eat at the missed lunchtime.
It was not too long after this that it was discovered that my eustachian tubes (the tubes connecting the inner and outer ear and allowing such things as sound to pass through) were too small and clogged easily. In short, I had gone through life to that point as hard of hearing. I never heard cars on the street that I didn't see, I couldn't hear teachers talking in class. I had no idea what other kids were saying if they weren't close by and/or I could see their lips. I wasn't dumb after all! It turns out that in addition to missing the lunch instructions that while being all proud of my new big locker, I had completely misunderstood the question, "Who is a walker?" I failed the first day of first grade.
The rest of school
Now we fast forward: School sucked. I was really smart - aced tests and hated (read: never did) homework. From about 4th grade on I ranked pretty much 99% percentile on standardized tests. I blame my lack of hearing on the social problems that I had as a child. I really never "got" how a lot of the interpersonal relationships worked with people and was picked on and an easy target throughout much of my childhood. I'd regularly get off of the bus crying up until my sophomore year of high school. My first day of high school, the captain of the football team who I'd never laid eyes on before decided that he didn't like me, walked up and punched me in the side of my face and bounced my head off of the bus window I was sitting next to. Not an auspicious beginning.
I played basketball my freshman year and averaged 4 points per season. After that, my dad discovered a swim team that I and my sister could join. We were both fish. Growing up each summer my family spent a whole month and many weekends at the family cabin on a lake nearby. It was tough to keep us out of the water and we took swimming lessons at a nearby beach. I went all the way up to lifeguard and ended up both lifeguarding and teaching swimming lessons there once I turned 15. Kickass job at 15 let me tell you! Swim team was awesome. My sister and I both excelled in our age groups and for the next three years we had a competetive venue in which we both did fantastically. Sadly there was no swim team at our high school or we would both have been varsity for 4 straight years. Instead this three season sport pretty much excluded us from sports at our own school. On the plus side, I grew taller, got stronger and with the exception of this one bastard named Bob, noone ever really picked on me anymore.
The summer after my junior year I discovered theater and acting - man do I love this. Did show after show after show. The summer after my senior year I discovered martial arts. Were it not for a work-related back injury, life would have been much much different as at one point a close friend and I were being trained for the Olympics. *shrug*
Since school
My professional life has been amazingly varied and I have done a rather extraordinary amount of things. At 12 I did yardwork for a local couple so that I could buy my first "real" bmx bike. At 15 I started my own dj company and did weddings, anniversaries, house parties and school dances and did that until I was about 22. (In retrospect, it's rather amusing having your mom drive you to be a dj at a 25th anniversary
Never really thought about that until now.) I have sold cellular phones, sunglasses, men's clothing, jewelry, luggage, sneakers, cars and software. I have run nightclubs, been a bouncer, promoter, dj and everything in between. I've waited tables and bartended. I was in a startup .com dot bomb that a friend and I started in a spare room of his apartment, grew up to a 19 person company with a solid, sustainable income within eight months, had a two million dollar offer on the table and then watched crash as nearly two hundred thousand dollars was stolen from us because we were just too inexperienced to know what was being done to us.
Nowadays I am running a Nextel store and doing website design on the side. I actually sell it and I have a great artwork guy (el es dee) a talented web admin guy as well as an excellent hosting place. On my own I've put together a little site where you can see the amazing talent of one of our own - SLAgent. A bizarrely creative mind, and a compelling story to watch unfold in it's fantastic art and bad spelling. If you haven't done so, check him out at
http://sooutclassed.com
Driving
A relatively aggressive driver by nature, I did little to help my cause when I would continually tell police whatever came to mind when they pulled me over.
him "Do you know why I pulled you over tonight?" me "
ou were lonely and needed someone to talk to?" him "Please step out of the vehicle." I made a list of stupid things that I'd said to cops in an email to friends back in '96 or so. About a year or so ago, I got it back as an email of "Things to Not Say to Cops" and it was my email, slightly reworded with another five or so new ones tagged on to the end. That was really bizarre.Due to aggravating law enforcement I have taken more drunk driving tests than anyone else I know.
At one time in my life, I was getting pulled over every single day for OVER two and a half weeks. Every single day. I want you to think about that. Once a day at LEAST. Wheel on the yellow line. Wheel crossing the fog line. License plate illumination lamp out. Weaving. (I can't even knit officer) Stopping too quickly. Heck, one time a cop pulled me over because he thought that he might know me. As you might imagine, my friends got quite a kick out of this and delighted in asking what I'd been pulled over for today and would HOWL with laughter each time that I could tell them.
While working at my job in the mall, the duty cop walked by and I was talking to him like I usually do because I'm a friendly guy. I said, "Jeff. I know you're a cop and you're cool, but I really hate Nashua cops."
He said, "Why?" and I explained that I was getting pulled over daily - all the time - for stupid stupid stuff. He gave me one of those disbelieving looks but then I got to watch a change come over his face as realization crept in. He said, "Do you drive a maroon Nissan?" And when I nodded, he laughed and said, "Oh...my...god...it's YOU!" and laughed some more.
Apparently one of my flip answers had pissed off a cop and they were passing my car description and plates around at the briefings before they went out on patrol. Jeff got them to stop soon after though. Stupid cops.
Footnote to driving: I lost my license for 3 1/2 years on a technicality (really - too long to explain in an already too long post) no drunk driving or anything of that nature, just a slew of inspection sticker tickets due to junky cars and minor speeding tickets. It was during this time of not driving that I was introduced to Asheron's Call.
Women
I have had two really important relationships in my life with women, not counting my first love which is special, but was never really canted to a life togther. The first woman in my life that I thought I would marry I had decided that I would ask once I had proven myself. I went career and embarked on a plan that would carry to management, good income and a house. Once I hit that mark, I had determined to ask her. She didn't want to wait and during a part of that where I moved 2 hours away, cheated on me. She knew that it was coming, she loved me and I her, but she was very needy and manipulative. She'd start arguments, get me on the defensive and then asked me why it was that I was starting a fight. I felt guilty a lot in that relationship.
That was probably the lowest point of my life. I had been working 95 hours a week on average, for months. On my 1/2 day off each week, I would get into my car, drive the two hours to her, change out of my suit and into my clothes for the evening en route and spend the night lavishing attention on her taking her out to dinner and a movie or a show and buying her gifts on that one day each week. She never came to see me. Never saw where I was living.
My life came crashing down after about 6 months. I lost my job. I lost my girl. I moved back home for a few months and my car was reposessed. My family took me back in fortunately and I was able to get a new job fairly quickly. I got parts of my life back in order, but sadly I bear many many scars from that time of my life.
The woman in my life now is amazing. Quite young in comparison to me, but a team player and the love of my life. We're in a rather tight financial situation right now, but coming out of it. However, I needed a suit for the interview that I just had with a bank and where I did not have the available cash she took the last of her remaining money from her tax return and bought it for me. I have always been one to give in a relationship. I like to buy dinner whenever possible for instance as well as gifts and the like. I am not however, used to being on the recieving end. The suit is a purely physical manifestation of the emotional support that she's shown me. She's a strong and determined woman and decidedly my better half.
That is myself and the woman I will marry. You know her as MissManners. I know her as my love.
Thank you ACF for caring enough about the people that make up this community to allow these threads to exist and flourish. Thank you Riko for shining a light here on these boards. I am honored to have been selected to post here.
To the many good people that I have met here, thank you for all of the experiences I've had.
Last but not least, I'm going to play proud uncle and show you the newest love; my niece Zoe at age one.
Til next we meet, farewell.
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"thank god for spell check! " ~Lairs Boldsnog
CLiKK
"far as i know i have a vagina and boobs so no hand jobs here
" ~Arlis Bongsold
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