Chapter One: I was born with it
So, yeah, I was born. I've been born for twenty two years. I'm sure you know if you have been following but who has the time. I don't even have enough time to reflect. Maybe I can find a few moments to retell you moments from my life. I can't always hide behind these black shirts and black pants with black shoes. It used to be hair .
Long brown curly hair would cover my face. I had it long since the 6th grade. Not much upkeep, it would just form by itself. It started because I wanted it. I didn't really know if long hair was cool or not but by all means, it definitely was on me. My hair didn't let it grow out into a bowl cut. The curls would flow down my face onto my shoulders like a women's. At work I would mistakenly be called a girl from customers because of it. It was pretty cool.
It would grow and grow and I would hardly notice. Teenagers spend all their time looking into mirrors to pop pimples and fix their split ends. I didn't. I had my own shield, a mask that served me many functions. Kept the sunlight out of my eyes which helped me nap in class. Long, thick hair to look through so I could cheat on chemistry tests. But the more I used it, the more it started to identify me.
It was like a parasite growing on me. Curly, long haired teenagers have a few stereotypes that were usually directed towards me. Just to clear my record, No I've never been a hippy. The only tie dye shirts I own are made by me and my friend Jon. People would say things like "Nice Hair" and I really didn't know if they were joking at me or really complimenting my hair. Now I realize that no one actually compliments you. They probably thought I wanted to be a girl which is so wrong. Or that I was trying to be that quarterback from "Remember the Titans." Shit, I think he was a homosexual. That doesn't help my case.
It's not like I can say that I was the first person to have long, curly brown hair because that would be tirelessly untrue. So many people had long hair before me and hopefully after me especially if I was their influence.
The curls by my sideburns were the most prime. I had girls asking me for them if I ever cut my hair. Yeah that's normal. Just collect my hair like a trading card game. Maybe you could hang it on the wall like you would my art ten years from now. You'll be ahead of the time. But I never gave them any, I don't think I could. Yeah it's a little creepy asking me for the hair but isn't it ALOT crazy to bring in my cut hair in a sandwich bag to pass out at school. I would definitely look like some drug dealer.
Then the hair started sprouting around me. People I loosely talked to started having medium length hair after Christmas Break. I wanted to warn them but I actually felt like people were trying to jazz off my style. I was more like "Come On" because it's not like I had much. I only hung out with my friends that I've known since elementary school and the only thing I had was now becoming the new normal. And these fake cats are getting ladies too. It didn't just end at my hair though.
My friends were super cool punks. They stole liquor and smashed mailboxes. We had our own fashion code. I called ourselves the Suitcoat mafia. We would wear anything and to tie it all off we would wear a suit coat. Band T-shirts with a Salvation Army dusty camel haired suit coat. Put a hoody on it and you have a fashion statement to make. It was probably about eight of us that would periodically wear them. I'm not sure how it started out, maybe a few of them stole them, or one of us just had a great idea. I was always known for my great ideas. Even if I didn't start the trend, my group of guys did invent it, and I took it in full storm. Stopped by the Salvation army every few weeks and get a few. I would probably wear it all week like a work uniform. The coats would probably smell too. I started to have rips and tears and I would wash and dry them too. Then I remember the day a popular kid I knew wore one to school. I was an acquaintance with him. We used to play pee wee tennis and we were in the same science classes. He was weird though and wasn't a part of our group.
It was right before lunch when I spotted him. His locker was on the first floor right next to the cafeteria which is where I was heading to have lunch. I was wearing mine too when he said "Hi." The group talked about it at the end of the day like we were trying to plan a policy. We all agreed that it was uncool for him to do that. How could he feel so entitled? He never asked me or one of us. I don't think he wore it again though. I think our nasty looks in the hall way deflected his freedom to enjoy any clothing style. He eventually repaid me the favor by letting me "use" his lab notes in Physics. We were proud of ourselves, letting a prep be knocked back down to one of us cool kids, even though we went un-noticed.
But we acted out because that's the only way we could be seen. Like I said before my friends got into thievery. It got to the point that it was a schematic. They would only need me on certain occasions. The nights they would need to actually purchase things.
So here is how it went. Go in with the Suit Coat Mafia and wander around the store. Have on person actually get an object like a bag of chips and a soda. Possibly a three dollar transaction. I would grab my pay dirt and head for the cashier line. The two others already got the bottles and had them stuffed behind their leather jackets, in their suit coat pockets. Preferably the inside breast pocket. They meet me in the center aisle. While my good are passing through inspection or being paid for, my friends chit chat with me. We shoot the shit until I'm up next. My order goes through, I pay and keep the cashier occupied. My friends slip on by and head out the doors to the car. I get my goods and by the time I'm walking out they are already parked by the exit letting me in. Too easy. Sell it to kids, other high schoolers, that didn't know anyone that was twenty one and sell it for 200% market price. The kids were eager to give away their food money their parents gave them to have a weekend away. Got to love the easy ones.
Then we would do away with it. Money is for things that needed money. You know like gas to get places, to do it all over again. Yeah I'm a badass. And then we could do crazy stuff. Ever hit a mailbox with a baseball bat? I haven't but I've been in a car where we hit twenty six supposedly. Some were metal so it they were hard to dent. Others went in a splinter against the right side passenger door. Speed was definitely a factor. Location too. Some suburbs had them lined up in a straight away. But nothing happened. Cops got us after revisiting a crime scene but had no evidence. No one said anything after it happened. No reports were made because hell. When was the last time anyone has smashed a mailbox. People only hit those with cars now.
But it eventually got old. Going out gets kind of stale when everyone looks the same. The stealing got old for the Mafia too. Bigger and bigger. It was more of a story then it was a steal. Anything could be stolen. Bass guitar down the pants. If you are quick enough, you can just scoop and walk out. The only employees that can stop you are the security. A civilian probably won't do anything anyways. It got too ridiculous. Every day with a new story. I had to stop making all the events. I mightof been grounded on fake pretenses.
We got caught bat handed. Gage was hanging out the window with a baseball bat when two cop cars spotted us returning to a subdivision we already hit so we could pick up a guy to document the carnage. We couldn't get the back seat open in time to put the baseball bat into the trunk. But we got to leave, drop everyone off, get pulled over again. Seeing the same car we were driving parked near by. A yellow Monte Carlo isn't so suspicious.
But Adam and I talked on the way back to our home town Wonder Lake.
"We really fucked up this time." Adam.
"Yeah what are we going to say to our parents?" Egan.
"Well I'm just going to try and get to the phone first. Maybe pay off my sister."
"I think we could go to juvy. Isn't tampering with a mailbox a federal crime?"
"And then eventually I'll have to tell my mother."
"How does this happen? How did we get here?"
"I just can't let my dad find out."
"I need to write a letter to my parents. Man, we fucked up."
"Yeah, I'm 16 with a liscense, I need to get a job."
"I'm so grounded and we are in a lot of shit."
"How are we going to pay back all of that?
"Who has that money?"
"What about the people's house we hit?"
"What about the people's house we hit?"
Chapter 2: Friendships emerged.
Easily said, everything started in pre-school. It's when I really become cognite of my surroundings. My surroundings particularly being able to make friends. They were running around, all over on the playground on a hill. They just built a new jungle gym on the top with blue monkey bars. The top classroom would go to the new jungle gym for play time and the bottom classroom would have to use the old one. The old one was an ugly brown plastic, orange bared behemoth. It was mostly platforms while the new one was streamlined. It was blue and it was next to a fence.
This is where I met Jon. And Joe. Really I met a few friends that would eventually follow me all the way up to my final years at community college. I never moved and went down the stray path of public schools. It took 16 years for some of these friends to shade.
We met by building cardboard brick walls and charging through them and falling over. Then we would rebuild. We did this before nap time and there were others involved. The same concepts of play time when it was the room remained for the entire year at pre-school. Run around, play with the vehicles on tracks, and then switch the next day. Meet new people whose names escape you in the first night. But it was Jon's that would re-occur like a dream. He didn't just show up running over cardboard bricks in preschool but it carried over into Kindgarten. We had the same teacher. Our parents were both teachers. At the same school, living in the same town. The same as my father the local art teacher.
This is when he lived across town, not a block from his grandparents. This is still when I got driven to school and from school from my father. When I would leave Kindergarten halfway through school and hang out with my father when he was the supervisor for recess. It's where I met his brother, William, who was two grades in front of him but three years older. We played soccer on the asphalt with a map of the United States that I painted with my family last summer. Two opposing fences were are goal posts. Each fence was 50 feet wide and we had about three goalies. Kindergarden ended fast after all the chicken nugget happy meals and blisters from playing Mario 3.
Then I had a year to myself. Break away from the weights of past friendships and meet new children. Dance around and act my age. Not hanging out with the cool kids and the older boys. Trying to find the one carton of regular milk in between all of that chocolate milk. I got to branch out and meet new faces other then just teachers kids. People that lived in my subdivision. A street over and down the street. Right before the horsheshoe and close to the park. Not the park with open grass but the other park with no basketball net and only one hoop. Nobody lived by the park with the big swing set until next summer.
I remember me, as a little boy, jumping on my families new trampoline. Just methodically springing up and down right in the middle. A few huskies staring at my from inside their kennels, two pugs running beneath me trying to chase one another with their stubby legs. Moving trucks started arriving at the house a street over. I could see their driveway perfect from my trampoline. If I bounced higher they could see me.
And then the two boys that were unloading their belongings into there new house saw me jumping and observing. I didn't recognize who it was but I began to wave. One waved too and shouted my name. "Egan." "Hey, Egan."
It was the Waite's brothers moving a block away from their grandparents house. A block away from my house too. They both looked at each other when they noticed they were both waving. How did the other know who I was when they both knew? A piece of brotherhood ended that day. The only difference is I knew both of them.
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We had other friends but we were mostly a pact. I surrounded myself with the two brothers. They were closer to my age then my two brothers. I could show them what my two brothers have shown me and we could live on the border of the generational gap.
I remember never riding the bus. Staying late at the school I just attended all day, clapped shut in my fathers art room. Just waiting around and around, looking at the assortment of animals we've collect. I say we in the loosest sense, we as in a community. Lizards tamed, turtles from soft to hard shell roaming their tanks, fish and parrots, even chinchillas bouncing off the cages after you bathed their fur in dirt.
Then I went to the bus stop every day. Not mine but the one just before it where the brothers would go. The bus stop right across from their grandparents two story house. The one next to the park no kid went too.
School would always go by fast. Each day already manicured to a schedule. We would have an hour per subject which we all would just do our own things. Each group of kids had their own thing. I liked to get ahead. The farther I was ahead the less homework I had to do. The less homework I did meant I could maintain my grades and be able to do whatever I wanted. Whatever usually mean't being out. If I wasn't out I was in a video games collecting stars and finishing a level or just playing against one of my friends.
Pick a character. Monkey with top hat. Play on a team with your brother against 14 bots. Start the level. Run down the hallway. Try to find the proximity mines. Go into that door and go behind that table. You have a m-16 and a few grenades and the bots and trying to figure out how to open the door. Throw a grenade at it for good measure. Pull out your pistol and move from behind the desk to the wall. They start pouring in like glitched zombies, One after another until their polyons mesh against their partners. Shoot while dodging stray bullets shot from the soldiers still standing in the hallway behind the backs of three fellow soldiers. Grenade the doorway until all you see is faceless bots lying face down with their guns surrounding their bodies.
Or I could get off the bus. My mom was sleeping at home since she worked third shift. I could hang out with the brothers for awhile. Possibly skateboard in their grandparents driveway. All they had was a block of wood that we would try and balance on. Or if we got a little competetive we could set it up in the grass and ride up to it. Maybe ollie onto it. Then at times we could apply some unscented candle wax to it and try some slides and grinds. It all didn't really matter, the block was old and warped and stayed out in all weather conditions and it was only about a foot long.
Then I can go back to his actual house. A block over from mine and a the block between his grandparent's house and mine. We could skate in his garage where my dad built us a ramp. We could skate the railroad ties or the quarter pipe. We could film. We could watch television or play games. Being over at Jon's house was like being at mine but all improvements. We could just sit around and watch MTV for hours. Take naps, joke just like the commentators on those VH1 shows about the pop cultural references from a year that made it through. Or we could watch a skate film if it was nasty outside or if we needed to get hyped up. Nothing get's your blood ready to break your body like watching professionals do what they do everyday. Watching a skate film is like watching a quarterback, the flashyness, the spotlight, throwing to a reciever without any defense except the only way he can score a touchdown is by doing trickier and trickier tricks.
Nothing really compares to skateboarding though. Snowboarding possibly. But skateboarding has easily transceded all of the other extreme sports. Everyone stoped biking after they racked themselves and realized their balls weren't attached anymore. Everyone stopped surfing after they realized we didn't live by any waves. Everyone stopped snowboarding because you could only do it a few days a year. Yeah they will still go but it's not because of the experience of tricks and jumping and the adrenaline but it's a sport that ensures gatherings. It's cold, it's a trip, it's money. Only certain people go snowboarding and they have money and no responsibilities.
Skateboarding is the child of alternative. It's the thought process behind individualism in a community. No one I know skates alone. It's all about the celebratory reflex of adrenaline. A trick down some stairs. Everyone cheers the same no matter the trick because it's not about the trick but about the act. Imagine letting a group of people behind you ready to catch you, as in a trust fall. Now imagine that you are catching yourself while allowing phyics and training to also catch your board in mid air. Imagine being in that spotlight for once where the people that share your hobby celebrate you. It's not like football players all meet once a year in a mansion in an island and shake hands and hug. I really don't think all the presidents in the world get together and tell each other that they are doing such a rad job that they deserve to be clapped and yelled for. Oh yeah. And taped.
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They had I beams from a railroad track that we used to grind down. We were use there garden stones, purple bricks, to prop the rail so we could grind up it at heightening speeds and fly off doing spins or flip tricks out. Then his step dad made him a little ramp out of scrap wood that we would fly off of. Wills and I would skate off of it, trying to do tricks that we would catch in skate videos but usually they were far off. Professionals made it look to easy and when we would try them, they would take us hours to even get close and days to finally land and ride away, cheering in the process with the biggest smile on your face. We would then put those same bricks underneath the ramp so it was at jaw dropping heights. Jon would ride his K-2 roller blades and jump ten feet into the sky. Some days we would put everything they had at their house, bikes, scooters, the I beam, another rail and our bodies and Jon would gap it all, grabbing and spinning over our heads. It was a spectacle and sometimes our friends from other neighborhoods would come over and either skate or just watch. I felt on top of the world.
Then my dad built us a ramp and his moms boyfriend Pat built us a quarter pipe. If we didn’t skate all the time already, now we did. We started to get better and do tricks over things instead of just Jon. Even though the quarter pipe was out of our league of expertise we still tried to use it to his potential until holes starting showing up at the bottom of the lip. My dad had a video camera from the 80’s. You had to prop it on your shoulder to level it out and instead of digital or little tapes you actually just put a VHS tape into it and you could edit it which is a loose term because the editing was just titles with block print. We would start taping ourselves and we called them “Amateur videos” and we each had our own parts in it. It felt like we were actually paving our way into the skateboarding industry one step at a time. When we made these videos, usually in one days time on the weekends, we would film our whole part which consisted of three to four minutes. We had runs where we would skate around for a minute and try to bust out as many tricks on an obstacle course as we could. We would have just us doing bangers, which are just one trick that we thought were impressive, and then we would have the end which was our special trick. Mine was a rocket-air, which was when you touched both your hands to the top of the board, 180. The only thing was, because of our little knowledge into filming or editing, or even being necessarily good at skateboarding was if we screwed up we would have to rewind the tape every time and re-film it. Doing this sometimes lead us into cutting off tricks short but I guess that is why we covered ourselves and called them amateur.
It was so much fun making these and re-watching them. We never really got to many impressive tricks on tape because we would try and do it all in one day and by the end of it we would be so tired that we would practically pass out. When it was just about to be sunset we would then make a blooper real which consisted of skits of us getting hurt for the sanctity of America’s Funniest Home videos. The funny thing is we would try and make it so we didn’t get hurt but just fall but something always happened that would end up in extravagance tragedy and we would actually get hurt like the time a skateboard hit Wills in the back. Then when it was finally to dark to film anymore we would then go inside and watch our creation. We would obviously laugh because something always funny happened like Wills would get upset at Jon for being to good or Jon would get upset with Wills picking on him or one time Jon’s mom was in the background yelling at her boys to go get the mail. We would eventually step it up and get a better camcorder that was more compact and easier to actually edit. We didn’t need to film it all in one session but we could just get a tapes and tapes of film and actually make a real edit. It took the spontaneity out of the videos but it made us look better and we could travel to other spots since it was my camcorder such as skate parks and street spots.
But all this skateboarding meant I was never home and I rarely did homework. I was too busy doing something that I consistently loved and my only other passion was video games. I really wanted to be a professional because I felt like I was obviously getting better even though I hardly ever skated outside of my town. Probably the most impressive trick I ever have done, still to this day was when we took a piece of wood and stacked it up by putting milk crates underneath it until it was at least four feet high and then a pvc pipe that we used as a rail. We were taping and I went up the ramp, ollied to boardslide the rail and then did a shuv it out which consisted of moving the board underneath your feet without you spinning. I learned that trick from watching Shorty’s video “Fulfill the Dream” where Steve Olson would do that on handrails.
Doing these tricks meant that I would scrape up my knees really bad, hurt my arms, break my wrist, smack my head until I was barely conscious and most importantly to my parents, bruise my shins. In my families heritage, we had a poor medical record. Blood clotting was a big problem and my grandmother had her legs amputated because they were so bad and she was left in a wheel chair for 15 years of her life. My mother worried that all this skateboarding would do the same. One day I came home after school which was odd and my mother was home and I went and sat next to her. She just got done making dinner which was steak and mashed potatoes and decided that we needed to have a talk. I was in soccer too so she wanted me to wear shin guards when I went skating which I never did. She always nagged me to be careful but one thing about skateboarding is that it’s hard to be careful and to be gnarly at the same time. If I wanted to sacrifice my flip tricks then the only way I could is by just riding around like some street lurchen pretending that skateboarding was cool even though it is cool. But I could tell by my moms posture that she wasn’t just going to tell me to be careful. She was sitting in her comfort zone on the couch, the spot the furthest from the television with an armrest. Patricia would sit here most of the time and watch television or occasionally pull over one of our mobile television dinner tables and do her arts and crafts. Her head looked smaller then normal, she had her blonde super short hair cut which was her signature. I have never seen my mom without the same exact hair cut since I was born. Her green flannel on which she meant she was going to work and her happy grin was replaced with stern lips.
She let me sit next to her while we watched my favorite game show which was “Wheel of Fortune” right after dinner before she had to go to work. No one was home but her and I. She put one arm around me which was not usual in my household especially at my age. She started the conversation.
“So what do you want to be when you grow up?”
Even though a year before I wanted to be a science teacher because it was the only subject in school besides art, which my father taught, that you could be hands on. I liked reading and being analytical but I was only 12 so I liked to actually do things rather then hear about other people doing important things like in history or in math.
“I want to be a professional skateboarder.”
It came out of my mouth like I knew it was for sure. How could it be that hard? There was a lot of skateboarders that were professional and I never really thought that skateboarding was that big. I didn’t know about anyone else who really did it but I did not know anyone outside of my town. I was the one of the only skateboarders out of possibly eight and I felt like I was either better then them or had the wreck less attitude to be known. My mother took a breath and let me have it.
“You are never going to be a professional skateboarder. You are just hurting yourself and you are going to have leg surgery when you are older.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The words came at me like snowflakes on a open patch of skin. It stung and I was at a loss of words. My face started to sink into her chest but either she wasn’t having it and nudged me away or I voluntarily flung myself inwards to form a ball. It was turning red and it felt weightless like I couldn’t control it’s path. My eyes began to water and I mustered out. I remember just laying down on the couch and watching the blank wall in front of me, next to the kitchen entrance, where the pale yellow used to be white. My mother had a big frame, one that continually grew. Her drivers license said 220 but she obviously hasn’t changed that from the 80’s. But if anything it was either heriditary or from their nurture. Her two younger sisters looked exactly like her and they grew up in a house with no food except for dinner where her mother would bring home a bucket from KFC or some other drive thru restaurant.
“But Tony Hawk is.”
She looked at me long and hard and repeated herself practically.
“Yeah but you aren’t Tony Hawk, you will never be a professional skateboarder.”
But she was right on those remarks. Tony Hawk started skating at a different time then I did and he grew up in California which was a haven for professionals because skating was a year round activity. Tony, unlike myself, was a contest skater too which were really big early on in skateboarding history. It was the first time that I actually thought about what I was going to do in my life. I remember wanting to spite her for it and to prove her wrong but the upcoming years showed that she was correct. I started to be self conscious when I skated more and more through the years until I broke my wrist on that same I Beam. This was the first time my mom had a real conversation with me and I hardly gave any real dialogue back except some bogus remarks about how other people were what I wanted to be. It’s not easy being a professional at anything and just like any sport, skateboarding had a lot of competition and also a lot of connections. I really just wanted to keep coasting on the things that I loved but sometimes you have to look outside your comfort zone. Everything that I enjoyed was already done and it felt like that was true with everything. I was already an out of the box thinker but it’s hard to think outside reality when everything is streaming to you from the news to history lectures to word of mouth. It’s one big game, trying to find out who you are in life and what you will become. Some people like to call it destiny, that they have a true calling but it’s none of that. Destiny in itself, shows that you believe in the randomness of luck but it’s not that either. Life is all what you make of it. It might be selfish but all you have in the end, right before you die, is your story, first person, and it doesn’t matter if your normal, weird, dissolved or diluted it just means that you have to write it yourself.
After all of this my dream jobs changed drastically. After skateboarding which faded fast after my depression starting talk with my parents, then it changed to high school teacher because my oldest brother Kane wanted to be a college professor and my older brother Sean wanted to teach elementary school. But I never even reached high school when I had such impervious dreams. Then it was a computer scientist because of my knowledge towards computers, my passion for video games and my ingenuity that persisted in my head. I wanted to make my own programs like video games that would tether the world. But then I was accepted to UIC for it, one of the top fifty schools for the major. I felt like I could finally accomplish one of my farfetched dreams. I’ll be able to finally grasp the knowledge that it takes to learn a computer language. I have tried in the past but reading it from a book and actually being presented it to you is two different types of education and the latter never really worked for me. I would sit at the computer for hours trying to read “Java for Dummies” but all I understood was to copy the examples into my computer and act like I made a program. But it was to expensive and I familiarized myself with community college. But what you want to do in life never has meant to me what you actually good at. In a world where subjectivity is under sovereignty, being good at something means being a professional. Being in the status of a professional means that you have thin boundaries to resign too. But life isn’t continuous building upon itself in continuity but it’s how you perceive it. I found out that I was good at writing not by teachers telling me, not by friends raving over my work, not by being published but by my own eyes not only enjoying what I read but my eyes searching for these stories. Then my mind raced for the words to fit the atmospherically deviant to this life we all live differently in parallel. My origin of writing traced back to through documents on my computer from sixth grade where I would write folk tales and dream sequences. Then I picked it back up my senior year after I got a job and I felt like I wasn’t being self-productive enough. I wrote mostly poetry throughout the day during school and this continued through community college. Not only was I producing work which made me feel like I was getting things done but it actually, at times, have helped me get better grades. I concentrate on the work being read in class subconsciously while I try to write or even sometimes doodle. This has blended my creativity with my note taking abilities. This keen sense of writing helped me get through a lot in my life such as bad break ups and working meaningless tasks and it also helped me view the world through a bigger lens.
I have come to terms with the idea that everything could be based on a whim that no matter how hard you try, the littlest of action could of helped you to succeed. I realized this through fellow workers. We all had full time jobs, working five days a week but the one’s that loved their hobbies as much as I did and wanted to turn that into a way to live are doing it. They still do it on the side between lapses over shifts at work or taking care of the family. I used to think being professional meant that you made money in it but I was wrong. Since life isn’t luck, I never wanted to mix my passion with my job. They could blur one day, the definitions might become foggy, maybe I’ll change my mind like I have over the last decade but, just like those tapes, I’ve always wanted to stick to being amateur It’s this sweet spot between relying on your creativity and overburdening it with livelihood but still just pursuing the experience. I didn’t want to become a skateboarder for the money or the glory or silly, trivial reasons to justify my life over. A professional is someone that uses their interests to better enhance themselves through social or economical needs. A professional is also just smack dab center in their field but doesn't have the time to experience the other world around them. My definition of an amateur is a person that will do his work, his love, his passion not for the external benefits but for his internal garden.
Chapter 3. People Try to Fit In
We had grimy kids enter and leave our schools in a year. A class of fifty split between two grades. We could see at least two students being new. In a school where recess was through all grades, k-8. The friendships through the years begin to twine together. A group of friends at the end of eighth grade probably started when two people met each other in first. Each member a new ring on the trunk of our relations.
The tendrils of loyalty tend to respect heritage. But Wonder Lake, brought in many different breeds of students. We had the kids with short names that seemed completely lost. They wouldn't talk much and wasn't from the area either. Kids that got moved because of juvenile delinquencies Families from California or Mexico or just a town over. They were from Johnsburg. Because there are three different types of towns in this county. Bar towns. Shopping Districts & Residential.
Every year could of been a hit or miss depending on who you got in your class. Each student boiled down to a group of students. These students were something, a fraction that had their negatives and their positives. Ryan was bi-polar but overly nice in an older brother sense. He would look out for you but not in the right frame of mind. Popularity depended on a two way splitter each year too.
No one knew how they filled out class rooms. Did teachers pick or were we just some arbitrary number that was picked in a blind lottery. But it mattered. With only two sides to pick from, each student had two options to get the better teacher. Also the better class. Gunning for the best spot in public school was like trying to gun for the best job in life. Leave it all up to randomness to pull out the next gas into a star. All the students had was hope, if they even cared at all.
Even though John and I would always have the same bus stop, didn't necessarily mean I would see him. I don't know if it was me (me saying this probably means that it was actually I) but some years my recollection of hanging out with him is erased. I always had the option of riding with my father to school since he worked there. Or I had other bus stops in my subdivision (four) that had other fellow students that living in my quaint subdivision. Each street, one by one, named after Native American Tribes. Delaware, Algonquin, Iroquois None of the roads have been paved since they were still inhabited by the Indians too.
John would find other friends to hang out with and so would I. I had friends like Jimmy who was an only child and would offer gifts to keep you over at his house. His house was fun with a pool table and a table tennis table but the ambiance of snobbery quickly got my friends and I away from him. I also had Dan and Justin who both lived on the other side of the church so it was a brand new subdivision with paved roads and different folk. They liked video games and trying things. Much different from John and his brother.
There were kids like Brandon that just moved in the area. His family just fell into quite a lot of money so they went big. Two story house with a trailer at a camp site three towns over. The kid wasn't the smartest, he was unfortunate enough to have such blonde hair it was still white, and he was pretty good at skateboarding. Better then me and I knew it in sixth grade. He could flip his tricks and catch them too. I just had the predictability of the spins, and the shuv its.
Jams got competitive. He always wanted a part in our videos even though he never said anything. He would always show up during filming and we would have to stop. We had no other way to edit so whose ever part we were on was the only one that got filmed for a few hours to a span of a couple days.
We would have ramp sessions though. All go off the ramp consecutively each copying the trick just done or doing better. Other times we would try to jump over the most junk. Put a bike under the ramp or even one of us. Other times put the rail somehow up to the ramp so we can grind down. There wasn't much to do but board slide.
Then another time we found a red plastic chair at a yard sale. We couldn't necessarily ollie over the kiddie chair off of the flat ground so we put up the smallest ramp we had and didn't add any extensions or bricks to elevate the surface. It was hard to clear. John had roller blades on at the time and his brother wasn't up for it. Didn't think he could do it. I couldn't even get over the thing. Each time I would hit my nose on it if I didn't bail. Brandon was riding up to it each time like he could do it. He was closer then I was but still he still couldn't clear it. He didn't know what the landing would feel like.
The night started to turn grim. We have been riding at this red chair for about a half an hour and it's getting hard to see. Neither of us have made it but we've started to pick up the pace. We weren't thinking about the trick, the preparation or a breather but it began in a spiraling game of trial and error. If one of us went enough times, we would do it by accident and land it before the other. He went and wouldn't make it. He would then place the chair. I went and wouldn't make it and then I would replace the chair after hitting it down the driveway with my nose. The placement was were you could determine how close the other skater would come to your attempt. If he ollies high but not length wise then put the chair out farther and vice versa if he ollies long but not high.
Brandon probably could of 180'd this or even kickflipped it but we were just going for a silly ollie. Just one ollie. I hated Brandon at this moment. We both looked like fools trying to jump over a chair with a board on wheels. I just wanted to do it. He could flick the board all day but at least I could ollie a chair first. He's just making me look stupid.
I hated him way before this moment. This was just the last memory I had of Brandon when he still lived in Wonder Lake. He moved somewhere or just went to stay in his trailer because his family lost the house. He came to John's grandparents after school once when we were all there. We skated and then eventually branched off. Brandon was making John laugh and they were doing cool stuff by themselves. William and I were talking about living on an island with Tony Hawk and skateboarding with him and his children all day and he would pay for our rent.
We told Brandon that he wasn't invited. John obviously was. Brandon told me that I was being a jerk. And I looked at him, his wiry body, that was smaller then mine and his white hair that hung over his right eye and said "Yep, I am. A Big, Fat, Jerk." Wills laughed. Wills laughter, a sneer at another's scrutiny, pushed the power further. Brandon tried to talk, tried to say more but it was blocked out by I making donkey noises yelling "Eyonk!"
I ollied that damn chair and landed it and rode away into the street. Hell I might not even have turned around and just kept skating home. Just two lefts or two rights.
Chapter 4
Power, Loss, Gender, Control
When the amplifiers roll through you for the first time, reality tends to change. Experience circumvents knowledge and then turns inward leading back to prior knowledge. Guitars begin to show you talent and repetition Drums show you how hard you could beat yourself out of an enclosed situation. Bass shows you structure. Vocals then tells your how to feel, where to be, or how to live. And then the band plays together.
Music was what my oldest brother was in to. All three of us had our own foray into popular culture. Sean having trading card games and mine being comic books. Kane would guest host a radio show with his best friend Brian when he was still a senior in high school. From all the swag he got during these shows, or just through hosting, he would bring home crates and crates full of cd's. Since I was still a pre-teen, way before I started using the internet to find musicians, I was confusingly dumbfounded. How could there be so many bands?
Seriously, each cd in a milk crate had about four band members each. You could probably fit over thirty cd's in one of those crates. Each thinking that they have a chance, one breakthrough on one college radio show could get them a gig, a better deal, or even a few fans. All these bands had cd's, in plastic cases, that were getting pushed by some record label owned by someone.
Not like today's music and this is just ten years later. This will always be a story about how one thing could change so much. My music taste was starting to become cultured. I was still on the cusp of finding, listening or at least knowing about bands when they broke into the mainstream bubble. While some students were out just listening to music they heard through car windows and in the background of movies.
I wanted to go to a concert when I was a freshman in high school. Bands are playing everywhere but a show has to come down to perfection. The venue has to be right, the band has to fit the stage, and the night has to adjust to the occasion. You can't just see a band play but you have to see the band act. None of us would be able to drive. Hell I didn't even have my permit yet and the show didn't get out till way past our curfews. We would have to call in some sort of reinforcements.
My parents asked my brother Kane if he would take me. This had to be so inconvenient for my him at the time. This was when he was going to college, being an RA, and working at a radio show. I was ecstatic that he would say yes. He invited his friend Brian too and now the whole ordeal was in place. Now it was just up to us to see who would come.
Bands are hard to sell even to friends. Musical taste is so fine tuned that a band could easily be passed on with only a few seconds of play time. The band can then be labeled "Shitty" and passed in the waste bin of culture. So now its up to an individual fan to try and pass down their taste to other people. But a friendly relationship can embed rivalry. Your friend might not want to listen to your music so your different tastes can be your togetherness. You both bring new things to the table of tastes and can leave it at that. You don't want to pass your taste just to create more fans for a band you like. That's like corporate exec lame and you just want to listen to it. It's not here to affect your life but effect your taste.
We really wanted Jon to come with us. I didn't know anyone else besides us that knew about Modest Mouse. They were a summer sensation that never really fruited in our youth. But we knew them far beyond the capacity of "Float On." We had a past occurrence with the band before we even knew it was them. As many things, skateboarding led us to know Modest Mouse. Back when I turned 12, Jon and Wills got me a skate video by Foundation titled "Art Bars Subtitles and Seagulls." Jon West had a part that featured "Different City" from Modest Mouse's album " The Moon & Antarctica."
When we finally had tickets to the show, we decided to get to learn the band. We each both got cd's. Wills got the recently released one which was "Good News for People who love Bad News." I got "The Moon & Antarctica." We heard "Different City" and instantly felt it. That knowingness that what just occurred is uniquely familiar to it. It's like Adam joining fingers with God, or two separate ropes being tied to each other. The music was only singular but it made the experience plural. We searched through skate videos and skate parts to unfold the mystery.
Jon couldn't make it though. He made plans with his girlfriend Jordan to hang out which was ironically coincidental. I knew Jordan. She was in my math class and Jon and I's biology class too. This is how they knew each other. I talked to her in math. It was quite easy since I had an ulterior motive. Get Jon a date. Girls fell for Jon and I was a perpetual wing man. I still am because it's much easier doing work when you know what your goal is. It's much harder getting a date for myself because I don't know what I want. Usually Jon didn't either but it was always fun too because it seemed relatively easy. I knew Jon and always had a connection to him. And his uncertainty would be persuadable due to his alluring fortune. He got the girl and I would help.
We were on our way to the show. Kane was driving and we were going to pick up Brian. The show was up in Milwaukee during January. It was freezing outside. Wills and I couldn't believe Jon didn't come with us. Kane was overhearing our typical conversation and pondered why he couldn't with a smirk. It was a set up to a punch line we've all seen. "Because of a girl."
And that's how it always turned out. I helped and it turned against me. Here are the fast facts. I helped orchestrate him dating Jordan. After a few months it wasn't going anywhere. I can be a jerk so I helped end it through the confidence the internet has given me. Fights broke out and it veils were pulled. Set ups were revealed. It all happened before and she started to realize it. Jon's a ringer.
Then there was Jonelle and Cassie and it's all just funny. But it was also hard because to get a person to turn a feeling into an action. As much as I want to say that it had to be all an act I can't stand behind that statement throughout the process. To really achieve anything, I had to fall too. I had to form a relationship between these two that spawned from trust on both sides. Cassie happened twice and left Adam and I as friends due to the same hatred. Jon. Because no matter what I did, I was always honest. I didn't just speak with fictional emotions or lies because it was easier to just tell the truth and the easiest thing to do with the truth is to circumnavigate it to archive your own version of the truth.
The venue had shot speakers and tall men there so went to the balcony where no one was. We watch two drummers play and the lead singer pull banjo's and guitars out of a mystery box in the middle of the stage. One of those drummers was being cut out of the band and having to teach his replacement live. It must be a difficult process on all of the members. The drummer making collaborative art is now leaving his songs behind to be played by a worker that's being paid to play. The other band mates see him leaving either force-ably or on his own, a person they got to know for years and felt comfortable enough to make work and art together.
Modest Mouse rocked and rocked. I hardly knew any of the songs but it was great hearing instruments actually play the music. To see the singer/songwriter perform his songs, piercing music into stage work. It was also great getting a t-shirt. First band t-shirt. Supporting something that was bigger then me. A band that paid me no service, that's independent and makes music for themselves, and me giving them money to do it. No favors in return. No actions that I'm expecting. Just organic support.
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