The Road Less Traveled

Man, does it feel great to be back at the computer again, putting my thoughts into words. If you’re not a dedicated writer, it’s tough to understand how defeated you feel when writer’s block takes over and you’re stuck.

I’ve been readmitted into WVSU and I am taking two classes this fall towards a Social Studies certification: Geography and a Sociology class called “Social Problems.” I’m really excited about both classes, which is amazing. I remember hating Geography in 7th grade and trying my best not to learn anything at the time. I remember being shocked in high school when I finally realized that Egypt was in Africa.

That Geography teacher is one of the best I’ve ever known. Her name is Mrs. Downey and she still teaches the same subject at the same school. A month or so into my seventh grade year, my grades were already slipping towards failure in two of my major courses (I was just barely Cs in English and Science). She kept me after class one day and asked one of the most important questions I have ever been asked by a teacher: “What do you love?” I paused, and she continued. “You love to draw, right? You love art?” I nodded. “Tell you what, you bring at least three of your school grades up to Cs or better and I will buy you a hundred dollars worth of art supplies.” It was the first time any teacher had ever made a promise to me other than, “If you don’t sit down, I’m calling your mother.” The greatest thing is that I kept my end of the bargain and she kept hers.

I found a folder in my drawer yesterday that had a collection of report cards from elementary school. One of them was from the second nine weeks of fourth grade. In the teacher’s comments it says, “I would like to schedule a conference as soon as possible to discuss my concerns for Jason.” Other information shows that I had trouble working independently, working neatly, and listening attentively. This was an improvement over the first nine weeks when I also had trouble following directions and completing assigned work on time.

Third nine weeks wasn’t much of an improvement. Teacher comments: “Jason has not shown much growth in his behavior and study skills.” And yet again, I did not work independently or neatly, follow directions, or listen attentively.

It is important to note that my fourth grade teacher, Mr. Copley, was also one of my favorites, especially after looking back, because regardless of my faults (and there were many) he still cared about me, treated me with respect, and always tried to make me smile. My mom has a picture of Mr. Copley and I standing together, him squatting down a little so he can get his arm around my shoulders. Our smiles are big and honest.

As I said, it feels good to be writing again. I haven’t thought about Mr. Copley or Mrs. Downey for a while and here I am writing about them. I have a lot more to write about and will try to get it posted in the next day or so. I still need to write about my rekindled interest in WWII that was spawned by a recent marathon of Medal of Honor games, courtesy of my little brother.

Until later — “There’s no turning back now that you opened up to your mind.”

Boredom has repercussions. I just answered a 33 question personality quiz and these were the results. Hope this code works:

Take Free Global Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Man, what harsh results. Especially the part about being “overly talkative… at the expense too often of developing your own individual interests…” Am I really that awful? I agree with the whole “overly flexible” and “improvised… at the expense too often of reliability, work ethic, and long term accomplishment.”

Come to think of it, I remember a conversation I had with a college friend that went something like this:

Friend: “You know, the thing I admire most about you is also the thing I hate most.”

Me: “What’s that?”

Friend: “You’ll talk to anybody. It’s like no one is a stranger to you and you know so many people. You’re like a politician or a celebrity or something.”

Me: “Okay? And you hate that… why?”

Friend: “You are under the mistaken assumption that everyone wants to or even needs to talk to you. You force your conversations onto people who may or may not even care what you have to say.”

Me: (pause) “Yeah, but… isn’t that how we became friends?”

Friend: (longer pause) “I said I admired it and hated it.”

So that’s me. “Overly talkative, outgoing, sociable and interacting at the expense too often of developing your own individual interests and internally based identity.” But that is how I have made (and in some cases kept) 90% of my friends.

Until later– “There’s no turning back now that you opened up to your mind.”

Want to tap into some forgotten part of yourself? I’ve perfected this more than I should be proud of. I have even managed to break myself down into tears trying this out. Heed this warning, though: Trying any of the following might just put you on an emotional roller-coaster that is undeniably out of your control.

1. Listen to a song from your past: This is more successful if you choose a song from a very significant time in your life and if you haven’t heard the song for a long time. The other day, I heard “Freshman” by the Verve Pipe and I was transported to trying to scrunch into the back seat of a Chevy Cavalier with three friends on our way to the mall. Most of those faces are strangers to me now but hearing this song brought all of them flowing back. “For the life of me, I cannot remember what made us think that we were wise and we’d never compromise…We’ve tried to wash our hands of all of this. We never talk of our lack in relationships and how we’re guilt stricken sobbin’ with our heads on the floor. We fell through the ice when we tried not to slip…” Man, that was some good stuff.

2. Watch a movie: This is also more effective if you haven’t seen the film for a while and if you once watched it with someone close to you. I rummaged through my VHS tapes and found my copies of Casino and Goodfellas. Once again, memories of propping my feet up on the arm of my friend’s basement couch with the rest of the group sprawled out on the floor, in lounge chairs, staying up until 4 a.m. for our Mobster Movie Marathon. Other films of this famous insomnia inducer included Godfather I and II (we cursed III), Scarface, and Heat.

3. Read one of your favorite children’s books: This is a sad one. This summer, one of my fellow CWVWP participants taught a grammar lesson in which she passed out copies of Amelia Bedelia books to us. I spotted the one I wanted right away. Amelia Bedelia Goes Camping. Just seeing that book brought a wave of memories that nearly sent me out of the room in tears. And I had to fight them back again as I read the book aloud. My grandfather took me to the Cross Lanes library when I was about five or six and this was one of the books I chose. He read it to me in his gruff smoker’s voice, his country accent adding to the humor. Six years later, he died of a stroke on Christmas Eve. Seeing that book… man… it was like looking right into his face again. Moments like that can sweep you off of your feet before you know it.

So, that’s my adventure into the old vault. Heed my warning, though. Objects in the rear-view mirror are closer than they appear.

Until later– “There’s no turning back now that you opened up to your mind.”

I hate onions.  I know this is odd because they’re in just about everything.  I remember my mother cooking foods that needed onion and my stepfather shouting, “Put a buncha onions in it.”  Mom would wink at me and only sprinkle in a few.

On the other hand, I love ramps.  For those of you who are not up on Appalachian culture, ramps are a special type of wild leek and they taste something like a cross between onions and garlic.  They grow just like wild onions with tall green stalks above ground and round white bulbs below ground.  When you cook with them, the whole house radiates from the stink.  I know a lot of people who will never even try ramps because of their strong aroma.

But oh my gosh, when my mother would fry potatoes and chop up little bits of ramp into the pan, I would savor that smell.  It would last long after dinner was over, but we didn’t care.  I would bite into those potatoes with surprising enthusiasm. 

 My grandfather loved to cook pinto beans with ramps.  Pinto beans were always a childhood favorite of mine, but I remember turning down a bowl while visiting a friend because I could see chunks of onion floating on top.  But, mmm, when I saw my grandfather chopping those familiar bits of green into a huge pot on pinto beans, my mouth would drip with hunger.

I remember spending some time with my father in Ohio and talking to other kids in the neighborhood about ramps.  “Like boat ramps?” one kid asked.  This, I found out later, was very common.

That evening, my father drove me to the northern panhandle and we hiked up a small hill just beside the road.  A few times I kept peering down the hill at the flashing hazard lights on my father’s truck.  But when he said, “There we go,” I turned my attention to a small cluster of dark green stalks and smiled.

The next morning, we ate an awesome breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage, biscuits, and fried potatoes with… you guessed it… ramps.

Thus the mystery of my hatred for onions but my love of ramps.  Never have been able to figure it out.  Maybe this is a message to anyone who hates onions:  Try ramps.

Here’s a link to a wikipedia article about ramps.  It even says that they are “especially popular in the cuisine of the US state of West Virginia.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_leek

Until later– There’s no turning back now that you opened up to your mind.

When I was a kid, I used to sit on my tiny front porch step and wait to see if my father would keep his promise and come to take me to his house for the weekend.  At his every invitation, I would pack my clothes, bolt for the front door, and wait for his car to come puttering down the street, past the rows of identical suburban duplexes and come to a halt in front of ours.

Sometimes I would wait and wait and wait until the phone rang and it would be my father, apologizing but cancelling our weekend plans.  The excuses were always different but similar: plans to go hunting, plans to go hunting with a friend, plans to go out of town to hunt with a friend.

But when the next phone call came, I would pack my clothes again and wait on the step for his car.  There were times that he would not let me down and I would kiss my mom, run and toss my bag into the back seat of his car, and ride with enthusiasm to his home for the weekend.

I loved my father, regardless of his let-downs, because I knew there would be days when he would be there, grinning with anticipation of the weekend.  Even though he often put his own plans and desires before mine, I knew he was glad to see me when he could.  Over the years, when we were together, he shared the best and worst parts of himself with me: his temper and his tenderness; his selfishness and his sympathy; his anger and his amusement; his contempt and his contentment.

And now, I’m clinging again to a promise.  My father has said that he plans to return to West Virginia, promises to visit often, to spend time with me and his grandchildren.  I am that young boy again, sitting on my front step, waiting.  And you know what?  I’m just as excited now as I was each time I waited on that step, patiently and enthusiastically.

Until later– “There’s no turning back now that you opened up to your mind.”

Those who have been friends with me for a while know that I have a passion for wolves.  My house is decorated with framed posters and paintings of gray wolves, ceramic figurines of wolves, resting in the snow or stretching their necks in a silent howl.

It used to be an obsession.  I even had wolf slippers that howl when you pinch their ears.  Now, it is just a deep love.  When I was a young teenager, I had a dream where I was hiking at night and got lost.  After stumbling through thicket, I had given up hope.  The trail I was on opened to a circular clearing and standing in the center was a wolf with snow white fur.  “Lost your way?”  His voice sounded like mine.  “Come on, it’s out this way.”  He led me away from the clearing and back into the woods.  After that, the dream was disrupted by my alarm clock.  This changed my love of wolves from a simple liking to a great respect and appreciation.

Native Americans studied and revered the wolf as a guide for behaviors like honoring family, hunting with grace and pride, and surviving in difficult conditions.  After my dream, this is how I also looked at the wolf, as a guide, a symbol of sorts.  My totem.

My favorite game when I was growing up was spotlight.  There is just something unexplainable about the summer nights I spent chasing my cousins around our yard in pitch darkness, trying my best to search for flip-flops poking out from behind bushes or the glint of jewelry in the rays of my flashlight.

Our favorite place to play was at my aunt’s in Poca, WV.  Miles away from big city lights, the yard behind her house became our fantasy nightmare world of shadows, reaching tree limbs, and mysterious noises.  In the beginning, when I was it, my cousins would choose strategic hiding places and torture me with spooky groans and wails.  Little did they know that even as a youngster, I had sensitive hearing and a good sense for where the sounds were coming from.  After a few times of getting caught, they quickly stopped their taunting and sat in desperate silence.

When I finally had the chance to hide, I was probably the biggest cheater.  I would scramble up a nearby tree and sit in silence on the highest branch that would hold my weight.  After a while, though, my cousins got wise and started searching high for my scrawny silhouette perching on the branch of an elm somewhere.

I remember one year, during the fourth of July, our summer night spotlight was made even more magical by distant sparks of the fireworks my uncle was setting off in the front yard.  After a few minutes of searching with the flashlight, I turned it off and watched the dark back yard until a bright flash from the air lit up and I could just see my cousin Jamie’s sandaled feet behind one of the bushes.  Without turning on my flashlight, I ran in the direction of her hiding place.  Another flash lit up the yard and I could see her preparing to run.  The yard went dark again and I ran as fast as I could, reaching my arms out until another flash of light exploded in the sky and I felt my hand barely touch her back.

“You’re it!”

I know I made this all sound so melodramatic, but I don’t think I write enough about some of the positive memories I have of my family, especially my cousins.  And, as I have said before, childhood has some sort of magic to it that we don’t really notice until we outgrow it and look back on it with longing. 

Most of the time, when I bring these memories up to any of my cousins, they smile and say, “Um, I guess…  I don’t really remember.”  They do remember that I was a spoiled child who whined a lot when things didn’t go my way.

But, like me, they remember that there were good times, games we played together, where for a brief amount of time we were all getting along.  In my memory, spotlight was one of those games that kept us busy for a while, that brought us together long enough to get along and remember that we were family.

I know I’m just as tired of saying this as you are of reading it…  It’s been a long time since my last entry.  I discovered a lot over the holiday, about myself, about my grandmother, about Alzheimer’s.  I found myself spending some of my Christmas money on others (my wife and my grandfather), an act that used to be the equivalent of chopping off one of my hands.  But I think I’m finally growing up to the point that I give without much thought, especially to people closest to me.

I used to whine about not having anything (as far as possessions go) to connect me with my grandfather, no handed-down pocket knife or toolbox, nothing.  This Christmas, however, I bought him a pair of slippers that looked like moccasins and while I was at it I bought myself a pair.  I felt like a child, smiling over how cool it was to have the same pair of shoes as my grandfather.  I also bought him a thick shirt that can be worn as a jacket.  I didn’t get one of those for myself, but I bought it because I knew he would love it.

As for my grandmother, I watched her become nervous and confused on Christmas Eve as she tried to recognize the faces of her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren while they opened presents, munched on ham and meatballs, and kissed her goodbye.  She finally became so nervous that my aunt opened a package with a baby doll in it and handed the doll to her.  “In hospitals and nursing homes, they give these to alzheimer’s patients all the time to calm them down,” she said.  It amazed me to see how quickly my grandmother relaxed as she rocked the baby doll and even showed it off to us.

Christmas Day, I returned to my grandparents to take another shirt to my grandfather.  Gramma was is good spirits and as I was leaving she asked, “Do you have school today?”

“No, Gramma, we’re on break,” I answered.

“Oh.  Well do you want to spend the night?”  I hesitated because the question caught me off guard.  She had not asked me that since I was about ten years old.  Later, at home, as I sat upstairs alone, I thought about her question and could not stop my tears.  Gramma had recognized me, but in her mind I was a little boy again, the young school boy I used to be, coming over during Christmas break to spend the night and eat ice cream or play with my new toys.

A part of me is still that little boy.  I’m tempted, now, to take her up on her offer, to come over and stay for a week or so in the summer, or even just a couple nights.  I miss that wandering, curious little boy who used to find comfort in morning cartoons and a big bowl of cocoa puffs, mixed with cheerios, rice krispies, and raisin bran.  I miss eating Grandpa’s cakes that stretched just a little beyond the recipe.

I don’t know, maybe I’m just emotional, but there is a quote in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle from one of the characters that says, “We all missed a lot.  We’d all do well to start over again, preferably with kindergarten.”

Until later– “There’s no turning back now that you opened up to your mind.”

            It’s a sign of age when the things you learned to love and expect are no longer there.  For example, I spent a lot of time during my high school days at the Charleston Town Center Mall… and I mean a lot of time.

            It quickly became a tradition to spend the night at my best friend Eugene’s house every Friday night, sometimes as many as six or seven of us, sleeping on the floor or  (when the weather cooperated) outside on the porch.  We would stay up late, talking, watching television, playing video games until someone finally wizened up and said, “Guys, we need to get some sleep.”

            Although I was usually one of the last to fall asleep, I was always the first one up, sometimes before sunrise.  I would quietly get showered, dressed, hair fixed, teeth brushed.  Then I would carefully, cautiously wake up every guy in the group by flipping on lights or shaking them with my foot.

            “Get up, guys, come on, let’s go, we’ve gotta catch the bus.”  Of course, they would all groan.  At times, it would be like waltzing through a lion’s den, pulling each lion by the ear.  But I always persisted and the guys would get up, one by one.  There was always a special order to things.  Since
Eugene was our host, he was first of the late risers to the shower.  Will would call “shotgun” on the shower next.  Then, as the door opened, steam pouring out and filling the hallway, John would kick Will in the shin, sending him to the floor, and proudly carry his clothes to the bathroom.  Jamie would apologize for his brother’s harassment and promise Will that he could have the shower next.  As John swung the door open, spilling out yet another blast of steam, Jamie would sneak behind Will’s back and into the bathroom.

            This went on until Will was last and all hot water had been exhausted.  He always handled it like a trooper, only whining a little after his shower.  We laughed as he shivered and assured him that next time he had dibs on the shower, after
Eugene, of course.

            We rarely took more money than was necessary to catch the bus.  Why should we?  We weren’t going to the mall to shop.  We were going to spend the most valuable days of our live with each other.  Oh, yeah, and to meet girls.  Many of our relationships started and ended in the hallways of the mall, out in the parking garage, and sometimes on the bus trips to and from.

            It may sound odd, but one of my favorite things to do once we arrived was to ride the elevator from the third-floor picnic area to the first floor.  There was a small pool of water beneath the elevators with small fountains sprouting up all around.  I used to imagine that the elevator would keep going down, below the water, and there would be this new secret world under the surface of the mall.

            And now, ten years later, I am sitting on a carpeted floor that used to be the water fountains, watching nearby Starbuck’s customers as they sip their coffees slowly, wishing time would stop and keep them there just a little longer.

           Much has changed.  The escalator is still there, the same up-escalator that I tried to walk down and nearly broke my ankle.  The same escalator where I learned that if you kick it in just the right place hard enough, it will stop running.  But now sadly, the fountain is gone.  Just carpet and tables for coffee drinkers.  The childish part of me thinks the carpet was put there to hide the underground kingdom once and for all.  Will got married and no longer speaks to any of us.  Jamie joined the Army National Guard and is somewhere in Iraq.  John still lives with his father and makes a little bit of money repairing firearms in his basement.  Eugene moved to Sheffield, Ohio where he enjoys a daily view of Erie Lake and works in one of the tallest buildings in Cleveland.

           And I am still the old me, father of two and happily married, wondering if there is another world beneath my feet, wishing I could try the escalator thing again.  The same old stories are calling to me:  Spencer’s, Hot Topic, F.Y.E.  And like before, I’m not here to shop.  I’m here just to enjoy.