I was born a poor black child...wait that's not right...
I was born into this world on the brisk autumn day of November 11th (Veteran's Day), in the bicentennial year of 1976. These are the Days of My Life...Pretty dramatic huh?
I was born in southern California, in the town of Loma Linda, I have one sister who is 3 years older than me. Although I can assume that I was the delight of my parents lives, I have to admit that those first few years after I was born are pretty hazy. As far as I know, the first significant event in my life is when my sister went off to school, I believe I was 2. The reason that this event was significant to me is that when my sister would get home from school she would always tell me about what she learned, this is the reason I learned to read at a very young age. After a while of this I began to demand that my parents let me go to school. How little I knew the folly of my ways!
I quickly established myself as very intelligent, quiet, and a little bit lazy when it came to completing and handing in my schoolwork. I much preffered to spend that time reading. At this time I also established another pattern that has persisted throughout my life. I tended to form small groups of friends who I was involved with in different activities, in this case what that meant was that I had a group of friends at school and another group at home, the two rarely overlapped. My best friend from the period of time between kidnergarten and 5th grade was my next-door neighbor, Fred Foglio.
Freddy was 3 years older than me and significantly more athletically inclined than me, however, he appreciated that these were minor differences that were easy to overcome and we were good friends anyway. The other pattern that was established at this time was my embarassment in showing any interest in girls. This personality trait came about mainly because of the taunting that was directed at me by my friends and my sister after I innocently became friends with a classmate of mine named April. My tormenters immediately decided that April must be my girlfriend, or at least that it would be fun to tease me about her.
The summer after my 5th grade year my parents decided that they no longer liked living in southern California and that we should move to northern California, closer to my mother's family, and so began...
My years in Lakeport are probably some of the worst in my life to date. Imagine moving into a town with a population of 4010 in order to enter the 6th grade. Now realize that the school system in this town somehow managed to form the most cliqueish environment I have ever run across. A recipe for disaster for someone who is already painfully shy and quiet.
6th grade was pretty uneventful for me, as the only friends that I made during this time were two guys named Bobby and Skylar. The only significant happenings I can recall for this year are that I joined little league and for the first time in my life was actually pretty good at sports, and the fact that I formed my first serious crush. The girl who was the object of my affections was named Jenni Hayes. I occasionally saw her at school, but I really became infatuated when I began to see her at the Quail Run Fitness Center. She was a gymnast and i would often watch her practice (I later learned that she was hoping to go to the Olympics). It was also during this year that I made what may have been a big mistake. One day while I was playing basketball during recess, a guy I barely knew, but recognized for the jerk I was later to verify that he was, came over and told me that Jenni liked me! I foolishly automatically assumed that he was lying and so I laughed it off and refused to believe him, but now I look back and think, who knows?
7th grade was quite a bit more eventful, but in very mixed ways. Skylar moved to Utah during the previous summer and I was left with one friend, Bobby, for a while. After Skylar moved away I realized that Bobby was actually kind of a jerk, as he soon made more and more obvious. Eventually we stopped hanging out together completely. After that point I became better friends with another kid I knew named Jared, Jared was kind of a smartass, but still a lot better friend than Bobby ever had been. The fall of that year I joined the flag football team, which my dad coached, I was quite a bit smaller than nearly everybody else in the school because of my being a year younger, so I wasn't a dazzling star on the field, but eventually I got quite a bit better. This is significant because it was during a practice that I got into my first fight at that school, if you could call it that. I was being picked on by a much larger kid (almost 6 feet in 7th grade) and i hauled off and smacked him, he immediately hit me back, giving me a black eye and ending the fight. I got into one other fight that year, with my ex-friend Bobby. It was truly a foolish and stupid thing, I was a Lakers fan and he was a Pistons fan. He came to school one day in a t-shirt on which he had written many anti-Lakers sayings and on which others had also written all day, I jokingly sprayed a tiny little spot of juice on the sleeve and he went crazy, demanding that we fight! I didn't want to fight him, so I ignored him and started on my way home. But he followed me and finally I turned and faced him. There wasn't a lot of action in the fight, I landed the only punch and knocked him to the ground, after which he got back up and we glared at each other for a while. At this point the lady whose house we were in front of came out and turned her garden hose on us. I eventually got fed up with the glaring match and walked off towards home. But he followed me again! The fact that I didn't turn around and fight him again was interpereted as me running from the fight by some and they declared him the winner.
The best thing that happened to me in 7th grade was that I joined the Drama class the second semester and performed in a play called Tumbleweeds, after a popular comic strip. I played the bumbling US Army Colonel Fluster, who loses his entire regiment of troops when they go on patrol. This was one of the greatest experiences of my life because it got me interested in acting, an interest I pursued for the rest of junior high, high school, and my college career to date.
8th grade was mostly more of the same of what happened in 7th grade. I got into a couple more fights with Bobby, by his choice, not mine, performed in two more plays (Little Luncheonette of Terror and Welcome to Carnie) and played on the basketball team for a short while. I was only on the basketball team for a short while because I broke my foot early in the season. On Christmas Eve in fact. What happened was that my family went to a movie (Twins) and my father, sister and I wanted to stay and go to another one. My mother did not want to stay and decided that if we wanted to stay we could do it without her. She got into the only car we had with us and started to drive off. In the course of leaving she backed over the heel of my foot, breaking i in 3 places and definitely making sure we didn't go to another movie. I spent the first part of that Christmas in the emergency room, bleh.
Other than that memorable event, the only significant thing that happened that year was my 8th grade graduation. I got a dress shirt and tie for the occasion and walked down to the stage in an version of graduation very similar to a high school commencement, except the people were generally shorter and less rowdy. After the summer of my 8th grade I escaped Lakeport as we moved to Washington state.
The summer after my 8th grade year my family moved to Yakima, Washington. Unlike the previous move, I was actually somewhat looking forward to this one, although I freely admit to some nervousness. 9th grade was great in comparison to middle school, I started at Eisenhower High School and found out that the kids in my class were from several different middle schools in the area, this situation led to it being much easier to make friends, since everybody was in nearly the same situation that I was, not knowing most of the kids around them. I continued my interest in drama by taking the class, although this one didn't get you a part in the play, it ws interesting, although most of what we did was sit around and watch Monty Python movies and talk. I also of course developed several crushes on certain of my classmates. This did not go nearly so well as I could have hoped as I discovered that living in Lakeport had made me very shy. In effect I was a spineless coward for most of my high school career when it came to women (in fact I still retain a large portion of my cowardice, a fact that frustrates me to no end). My only big mistake this year was joining the Freshman baseball team, I was still smaller than nearly everybody in my class and kind of awkward, but I didn't care, and this isn't what made joining the team a mistake. The reason it was a mistake was because most of the team members were asshole jocks who actually seemed to care about baseball more than almost anything else. I just couldn't understand this attitude and ended up having to spend far too much time with some very annoying people.
My sophomore year was pretty cool overall. I took drama again and ended up going to the Fall Tolo with a girl I met in there. I also actually made it into a play that year, called Black Comedy. I played the part of Emmanuel Shuppanzig, an german electrician who is mistaken for a wealthy art collector. Two other classe that I took that year were also to have a significant effect on me, biology and spanish. Biology was fascinating to me, I loved learning about how life came about and how we worked. After this year I decided that I wanted to pursue biology as a career, a choice that i still hold to today. Spanish was importatn not for the class itself but for one of the people I met in class. I took the class with Bryan Anderson, his class name was Diego (mine was Arturo). We became friends and started eatinglunch with a group of his friends, some of whom I knew already but wasn't friends with. These people formed the core group of the friends that I was to keep until the end of high school and after. One of those friends, Ely Cannon, introduced me role-playing this same year, another activity that I was to pursue for years to come.
My junior year I came even farther out of my little shell and made more close friends and acquaintances. I joined the yearbook staff, which was a very enjoyable experience, mostly because of the people (I was the only guy in class, woo-hoo!). It was during this class that I developed one of the most vexing crushes I've ever had. You see this crush wasn't on just one girl, but THREE! These three were Jenny and Carrie Lovell (twins), and their friend Amy Keen. These three were very close friends, something which, when added to my previously stated cowardice, truly confused me. I did nothing about the situation, although I still wish that I had at least tried. I had my 16th birthday this year, and I had a small party with just two people, Ely and Dave Helton. We played role-playing games, watched movies and ate pizza, exciting, huh? That year I went to Homecoming with Jennifer Moxin (imagine, me asking someone out!) it didn't turn out particularly well, since wedidn't talk a lot during the dance, but it was important because I learned that you really need to be comfortable talking to someone before you should consider going out with them. The last important thing that happened that year happened the in the summer. My family went on a trip to Tahoe and Las Vegas and i invited Ely along with us. We became very good friends over the course of that trip, and he is still my best friend from high school although I rarely see him anymore.
My senior year I started out taking far too many hard classes at once. My first trimester I was taking AP English, AP Biology, AP Chemistry, AP Physics, AP Calculus and CWP: Pac Rim! TOO MUCH WORK!!! I dropped CAlculus my second trimester and got to take Shakespeare instead of a history class. Second trimester I also acted in another play. It was called "Don't Drink The Water" and I played Yanis Kasnar, a foreign diplomat at an embassy party, pretty dern small part. The third trimester I decided to do physical stuff. I continued the karate class that I had started at the end of the summer, took a lifeguard training class for PE, and joined the track team. Best shape I've ever been in! At this time I also met a girl who I just couldn't seem to get enough of. I asked her to Prom and she said yes, I was very happy. We had a lot of fun, but we pretty much remained friends from then on, although I can't say I would have minded differently. I continue to campare women I meet to her occasionally, she always seems to win. I'm glad that we were friends though, because she became one of the best friends I've had and its that I missed more than anything when I didn't get to see her much anymore. And so my year continued, as we approached graduation my friends and I did all that cool senior stuff, Senior Lock-In, Graduation Party, etc. We also did a few nonstandard things, such as the root beer mile. To take part in this wonderful event we climbed the fence onto the track field and chugged a root beer and ran a lap, then repeated this process until we ran the whole mile. I don't think anybody made it that first time without puking (of course i didn't participate that time, because I forgot to bring root beer, I helped videotape it for posterity). I did participate thesecond time we did it, and I didn't puke! I have to admit though, I cheated, I only ran three laps, at that point I decided I liked my dinner where it was and stopped, shhhh! Don't tell anyone!
After high school I had intended to go to the University of Washington. I applied and got accepted and everything (1420 SAT score, yaaaaay!) But my parents decided that I should go to Community College for my first two years since it would be cheaper. Thus, disappointed, I started my time at Grays Harbor College.
GHC is in Aberdeen, in Grays Harbor County, the wettest area on the Washington coast. Now I had always lived in places where it was generally pretty dry and warm, and I was unprepared for the cold gloomy atmposphere of Aberdeen, its no wonder Kurt Cobain killed himself if he grew up here! But I digress. Grays Harbor College is a scool peopled mostly by out-of-work timber people and Running Start students from the area high schools, the average age for students is about 40, no joke. I managed to meet a few people my age through some miracle though. I was cast in a play called "An Enemy of the People", by Henrick Ibsen. I played the turncoat newspaper editor who betrays the protagonist as well as trying to get in his daughter's pants. It was during this play that I met several people, among them my friend Eric Reasoner. he played Seth Billings, the sneaky little reporter who worked for me in the play. The play was very cool and a lot of fun to do, although I eventually came to significantly dislike several members of the cast and become very frustrated with the director. When we did the performances I had Ely and Alana come up on separate weekends and see it, it was pretty cool to get to see friends from high school again, since rehearsal had kept me in Aberdeen for almost 3 months straight. After the play I spent much of my free time hanging out in the office of the school newspaper with some people from the play and several people I met there, since they were on the newspaper staff, it became a sort of a joke that I was an unofficial staff member since I was there so often. It was during this time that I started playing Magic with Eric and a few other people. We were pretty scrubby back then, but so are most people when they start out. During the last quarter of that year I was in another play, an original work by one of my classmates called "Playwrightitis". I played the dim-witted son who kept repeating the same line over and over again, "Whatever shall we do, mother dear?" It was a lot of fun since I got to take off my pants and run around in my boxers in front of an audience.
The second year I was in Grays Harbor I found a new hobby, the internet! I spent a lot of my free tim MUSHing on the computers in the school computer lab, since most of the people I had hung out with the previous year were gone. MUSHing is a highly addictive activity which can take up far too much of your time if you aren't careful. Beware! I continued to get together with Eric outside of school to play Magic and trade cards, we gradually grew better and better, we participated in the first tournament in our area, me as a player and him as a judge, and I came in second. We also met our friend Rick during one of these tournaments, he won and we talked to him afterward. I also got to know my friend Jess a lot better since she was one of my fellow internet junkies. it was during January of '96 that she introduced me to Cons. She took me to RustyCon and I got hooked. Damn those things are fun! That was about how I spent my year, I ghraduated with my associates degree and was ready to move on to a four year college, but it fell through again and I've been staying in town here saving up money to go since then.
This last year I've been doing several different things, among them getting used to not being in school for the moment. Eric opened a card and comic shop the summer of '96 and I ended up spending far too much time there ( I got the nickname Norm). Rick lived in the apartments above where Eric's shop was, so it was a very convenient place for us to gather and play Magic and Hearts, or meet in order to go off and play tennis. It was during this summer, at Eric's shop that I met my friend Walt, who became our magic-playing, movie watching and later RHPS-going companion. Towards the end of this summer Rick took Eric and I to go see The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Varsity theatre in the U district of Seattle. Yet another activity to which I quickly became hooked! Throwing rice and screaming at a movie screen seemed like a great way to spend a Saturday night! Around Halloween Eric and I started spending a few evenings over at my friend Scot's house (met him at RustyCon and he followed Jess back to Aberdeen), Scot was in the habbit of having a party every weekend or so and I attended several. They were...interesting to say the least. Now I've been going to Cons and working at my new job as an Entropy Management Technician (read: janitor) at the Shilo Restaurant in Ocean Shores, all I can say about that job is yech, and that I hope to find a better one as soon as possible!
**!**!**!UPDATE!**!**!** I escaped my job at the Shilo as of mid October of '97, I no longer live in a haze, disconnected from all around me! However, this does mean that I am now unemployed, something that is exceedingly difficult to remedy in the Grays Harbor area, but I'm workin' on it, kinda...
**!**!**!NEW UPDATE (4/24/99)!**!**!** Wow, its been a while I guess, huh? Let's see, what's happened in my life since October '97? Well, the period form then up until around September '98 was pretty much more of the same, slacking off, hanging out with Eric Rick and Scot along with a few visits from Nate thrown in for spice. In December of '97 I did find a new activity that I enjoy a lot, skiing! Its really strange, but I just love it, despite the fact that I despise both the cold and winter (mainly because its cold in the winter). I'm certainly not very good yet, but its hard not to improve from your first try in something like that, so I'm happy. I talked my parents into getting me a set of used skis for my birthday in '98 and for the first time in my life I fond myself -=ANTICIPATING=- winter! Anyway, its lots of fun and not really that significant a development in my life, so I'll move on. The most important thing that happened to me was that I moved out of my Dad's house and started at the UW Tacoma campus in September. Eric and I got a cool apartment and proceeded to get on each other's nerves for the six months that we lived together, all your standard roommate problems that you hear about, but its cool, I managed to save the friendship (an overstatement, it wasn't really in trouble) by transferring to the Seattle campus for spring quarter. So, now I'm here where I've wanted to be and I've just about gotten it into my head that this -=IS=- where I want to be and i should really make an effort in my classes, I'm living in a dorm right now and probably will continue to do so through the Fall quarter, not sure what I'll do at that point, but who cares, I'm in a real city! Yaay! I am about to undertake a serious job search at this point in order to finance my ever-so-hedonistic lifestyle and assure that I don't end up one of the people who are always asking me for change when I walk down the street in the U-district, maybe I'll let y'all know how it turns out. The other major development isn't in my life its in Ely's, he's getting married on 5/1/99! I was gonna go anyway, but its turns out that its kind of important that I do so, since I'm the best man and all, I'm happy for him, his fiance is really cool and they seem to really complement each other. So, other that a few standard wierdnesses with various women which I shall choose to keep to myself at this juncture, that's my life up to this point. Thanks for being interested enough to read this far.
