March 6, 2011

  • Formative Years

    I've never really properly written about my formative years. Since I'm quite precocious, I sort of consider them to be from 3-7. After that, I was pretty much formed into my adult self.

    But, yeah, those who have had the honor of an adult beverage with me while nostalgia was rattling around in my brain have definitely heard about them, but that's really the only way I can encapsulate what it was like. My story is a unique one, and that's something I am proud of.

    Mention any song from the Beatles' White Album and I'll immediately go on about how I used to have to listen to that while living in a trailer in Austin. And I fell in love with "Rocky Racoon" there and then. Travelling Wilburys and Guns 'N Roses as well (in fact, November Rain spurred this thought). There is Nickelodeon. And having no money. And very literally and importantly collecting cans for money. And a man named Harry Bush.

    We had something like 13 channels, and they were changed on this strange little box that I don't even know what to call. We'd pull out the couch bed on Sunday nights and watch The Simpsons and Married With Children. The greatest thing is that for a child, that's ALL YOU KNOW. You'd never find it peculiar. And I never did at the time.

    I remember a very specific moment when my mom and stepdad were discussing money (we had none), and I came out with my collected quarters offering reassurance.

    I remember I was so frightened about being outside of the house, that when my stepdad forced me out, I cried violently while banging on the door. I remember walking with a Mexican lad to the trailer park park (weird phrase) without telling anyone, and my mom being scared shitless. I remember stepping in something very devious at the trailer park pool that may or may not have been human feces.

    Mention Price is Right and I'll go on about how we watched that continually. Summer of '89 must have been. Mention a wasp or hornet and I have a horror story about that. Funny thing: I got stung by a wasp on the neck 20 years later. Poetic justice maybe. Or just full circle.

    If there's a moral here, it's this: I wouldn't trade anything, anything. You take your conventional childhood, I'll take mine. When my mom was my age, she was an immigrant with a young child, working at a day care for minimum wage, living with an unemployed dude in a trailer park. Fuckin' hell, it took 20 years, but now I can respect the hell out of that.

    Now it's up to me to make sure that it was all worthwhile.