Dashing And Daring, Courageous And Caring, Faithful And Friendly, With Stories To Share, All Through The Forest, They Sing Out In Chorus

--"Gummi Bears Theme"

It had been the four of us back then, a small group with no real mission in mind, just a silly game to pass the time. None of us really knew when it began or why it started, but once it did, there was no stopping it. It continued on, almost propelled by the sheer joy manifested from it, for years and years. If anything, that was the point of it, four gals commemorating their camaraderie and reveling in the strength of their friendship. It had been myself, Torry (of course), Fawn, and Hanna, but we went by other names.

Breasy Bear was celebrated for her amazing good looks, incredible talent, impeccable manners, and amazing sense of humility. You could always tell Breasy by the thousands of bows she wore and by the fact she was always co-opting the other bears into getting some sort of mischief. However, beneath this penchant for trouble, lay the bear who feared being alone the most and maybe got in trouble to make sure people paid attention to her. Breasy was the definite ringleader of this splinter group of Gummi Bears. She was so named because a lot of things came easy to her or, as she used to say, "breasy" to her.

Sticky Bear was Breasy's second-in-command and you could recognize her for her devil-may-care attitude. She was the enforcer of the group because, while Breasy got the group into trouble, it was usually Sticky who kept them there. Another telltale sign that Sticky had been in the area was the volume of her call. It was said that "when Sticky got to roaring, ain't no one in the world could be snoring." You see, Sticky didn't get into trouble to grab attention. She made an example of herself because she genuinely had the temper and the love of someone who feels deeply. Sticky was so named because her fur was the color of caramel.

Misty Bear was the resident intellectual of the group. More to the point, she was its default conscience. If the group had any need for mothering or advice-giving, Misty could always be called on to assume that role. The hardest part of Misty was often feeling like she was always disagreeing the rest of them. She never quite got that was exactly why she was so necessary and loved by the rest of them. Anyone can tag along, but it was because Misty was so smart--"smarter than the average Gummi"--that she proved her worth. She could always be counted on to explain why all the hijinx they got into was actually done for good reasons. She probably was the best of them all. Misty was so named because she had a penchant for being able to burst into tears at a moment's notice should one of the other Gummis be sad for any reason.

Pixie Bear was the last to join and the baby of the group. Yet you would have never known because what she lacked in stature, she made up for in sheer dexterity. Breasy had the charisma, Sticky had the passion, Misty had the intelligence, but Pixie had the real talent. Watching her move, hell's bells, watching her live was like watching a ballet in progress. She could run, climb, forage, and dance like she was possessed. If there ever was a task that needed sheer athleticism, Pixie was your bear. She was so named because of her very cute Pixie haircut.

----

I often wonder how a group as tight-knit as we were suddenly loses all touch with one another. Is it an inevitability of growing up? Or did we somehow cause the change ourselves? For my part, I could have been better. I took it pretty hard when Torry left. I know I should have been a better friend to Fawn and Hanna after that, but it felt like the beginning of the end for the Gummis. It just didn't work with four. I don't know--maybe I felt like it would be dishonoring our fallen comrade if we continued without her. It would have felt like pretending she wasn't gone when she so clearly was. After that, I kind of took the other two for granted. I didn't make an effort or make time for them like I should have. Maybe I was the cause of the demise of the Gummis.

Yet that doesn't diminish all the great memories we had. It really felt like I was part of something special, something unique, something that would never come again. I've had friends over the years and a good deal of them have been great friends. I've even had more important friends in the scope of things, friends who've become more a part of my life than I could have ever thought possible. But it's true what they say, you'll never have friends like you did when you were young. Other friends come and go, but that group of silly, little group of bears is the group I always hold in the highest esteem. That's the model for every circle of friends I make now, that's the dynamic, that's the bond I always try to emulate whenever I become a part of a group of acquaintances.

I know I'll never get the band back together, as it were, but I've always thought it would be a neat experience to at least make the attempt.

But ain't it just like a Gummi Bear to surprise you out of the blue with a handwritten letter out of the blue? But which bear could it be.... hahaha

Breanne

I'll Be Missing You, After September, I'll Be Wanting You, So Always Remember, How I Loved You Girl, After The Summer's Gone

--"After the Summer's Gone", PC Quest

Last week Brandy sent me a gift I didn't know I had coming. I received a copy of PC Quest's self-titled album which was originally produced in 1991. It didn't cost her a lot--I think she bought off Ebay for less than five dollars--and I doubt to anyone else it would hold as much meaning does for me. The songs are all outdated, way too poppy, and probably are as saccharine sweet as any songs that have ever been played anywhere. I'm fairly sure almost anyone else would have filed the cassette away somewhere and never thought twice about it.

However, I'm not exaggerating when I say it's probably the most thoughtful gift I've received all year.


I can tell you that life isn't fair
But I still can't tell you why

Yes, there's a certain nostalgia associated the album. I still remember listening to almost all these songs on a certain trip up to visit my aunt in Bakersfield. I remember making a fool of myself in front of my family by listening to this innocuous little cassette through my headphones and belting each song loudly. It didn't matter to me that nobody cared for my singing and it mattered even less that the lyrics were far from being socially relevant. I liked the music. I liked how simple and infectious they all seemed to be. It was a perfect album in the sense there was not one song I wanted to skip over. I don't know--it could have been any album, but for some reason I found something universal within the ten songs contained on the album. On that certain trip on that certain day I just didn't care that I was the butt of my family's jokes. It's not often you find your bliss in something small and I sure wasn't about to let the moment pass me by.

Then, later on, I remember Raoul Bustamante asking me in high school where I'd heard of PC Quest. Apparently, that album had brought him a moment's joy a few years back too. It was the first time I thought an album I considered a guilty pleasure was somebody else's too.

So, yeah, the gift's merits does involve the actual quality of the material. PC Quest was a highly underrated band and I consider that first album one of the things proudest to have ever owned (twice now, I guess).

But for me the real value of the product and what makes it the most thoughtful of presents is the fact you can't even get the album on CD. It was never translated over. Their second album was, but never this one. That's where this album becomes special. Because--I don't know if anyone else has experienced this, but I'm sure someone has--I not only remember the music. I also remember having to play cassettes. I remember having to flip over this particular tape to listen to the B-side when there were actually B-sides to albums or tapes. I remember how fun it used to be to try and guess where a particular song was just about to begin simply by estimating how long I had fast forwarded or rewound. There's a whole set of circumstances, associations, memories, and feelings that are attached to this one cassette. It really was the jewel of a vast collection of cassettes I had before the advent of CDs and it makes me long for that time when people didn't have such easy access to all the music they wanted with a few simple keystrokes.

Back when I started listening to music, I used to have to wait however long it took me to get down to the local Wherehouse to buy an album. Plus, I never really got to sample an album before I bought it. If I was lucky, I heard one song on the radio before I took a chance on the new album. It was more of a hit-or-miss proposition. Sometimes you got lucky and the whole album was as good as that first hit single, but most of the time it wasn't. That's what finding albums like PC Quest's such a gold mine. It really was rare to find an album that rocked from stem to stern. Sure, you could buy singles if you really wanted, but it didn't match the access to buying songs individually from Itunes like we have now. You really had to commit to a band almost like a blind date when you bought their album. That's a faith that I'm afraid people never get experience these days, when an album leaks three or four weeks before its official release.

I know cassettes are obsolete now. They don't even hold the collector's value that vinyl has. They've been relegated to the back bin of a couple of vintage music shops and marked down to ridiculously low prices.

But I still recall when cassettes were the bulk of my music collection and I recall what owning a collection of cassettes meant. It meant that I had assembled through trial and error a sampling of music I was proud to own. Rather than search for music I already knew I liked, I was compelled by the circumstances to venture out from my safety zone and listen to artists I had no idea if I was going to like. I don't know if it's a good or bad thing that we can make playlists and burn compilations of groups we know backwards and forwards. I don't know if it's a good or bad thing that we can separate the wheat from the chaff and only listen to those particular songs we like, that we don't have to listen to the whole album like I used to enjoy. Yes, I know you could still fast forward or rewind through songs back then too. I just know I seem to catch myself skipping to the next track more now, when it doesn't involve having to wait the twenty or thirty seconds it took to search out that next song.

That's what makes me sad. That with all this convenience I think we've done away with the ability to taking pleasure in something different than what we're used to. I think we've done away with some of our patience, our tolerance, our endurance for that which we're not comfortable. I'm not saying it's all CDs, Ipods, and Mp3's fault--but it is a sign of the times that we really can surround ourselves in a bubble of songs, movies, even people we know we already like. If we wanted to, we could go our whole lives never having to find new music, new movies, or new people. When you can call up at a moment's notice everything you already like, what need is there for taking the time to find out that next thing you might like.

That's what this cassette represents, my desire to revel in the obsolete. If I can still smile at a tape that I probably haven't owned in over eleven years, that can never be downloaded to my Itunes library, that would take some doing to burn to a CD, then I can still smile at the fact I have still have some use for that which I'm not familiar with.

I guess I feel that I'm already becoming obsolete and it gives me some kind of comfort that after my summer's gone there's hope that somebody still want me around, you know?

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

I Found You Sleeping Next To Me, I Thought I Was Alone, You're Driving Me Crazy, When Are You Coming Home

--"Laid", James

to: breasier@yahoo.com
from: mojo.shivers@gmail.com

Dear Breanne,

It's all your damn fault. You know what I just got finished doing? I walked around my bedroom with a bunch of burnt sage in my hand trying my hardest to ward myself from any evil spirits that might wish to do me harm. Then, after that, I placed a small dish of sea salt by the window, again, in the vain attempt to protect myself. This is the advice that Amber gave me because I came home today and told her about the wonderful night I had courtesy of you. My only hope is that it works half as well as she said it would because I don't want any repeats of what happened last night.

I'm not sure if it's all the ghost stories we traded back and forth or if it is actually because this place is haunted like I've always suspected. I'm telling you that something just ain't right with the place. I've always had my suspicions that living next to a hospital is akin to living next to a cemetery--some wayward souls are always going to wander through looking for the way out. And I'm telling you that one of them may have just found his way to my room last night. It makes me ill to even think about it. I'm trying to remember the last time you spun a tale for me and to think if it matches up any with what happened to me last night, but nothing comes to mind. I so want to blame this on you and your unnatural love for ghost stories, but I don't know if I can.

Oh 'twell! See if this jogs any memories.

I had gone to bed about 1 a.m. I left the computer running, but had the television off. Because of this I knew it wasn't any loud noise from the set or the computer that awoke me. Also, because of this, I knew it wasn't due to watching anything right before I went to bed that might have given me nightmares. I went to sleep in a darkened room with the computer having already switched to standby mode and the computer screen pitch black.

At approximately 4 a.m. I was awakened from dreaming with the nagging sense someone or something was watching me. I shot up out of bed and opened my eyes to an incomprehensible sight in front of me. There, floating two or three feet diagonally above my bed in the direction of the far corner of my room was the shape of a hazy human, definitely male but enlarged to the size of a trash can lid size. Because it was hazy and because it seemed to be emitting its own light, I first attributed to some weird light coming from outside the window. However, within the first few moments, I saw it for what it was--some type of ghostly head way too close to me.

At first, I did what most people would do if they were in a similar situation. I panicked and felt my heart almost leap out of my chest. You know me, I fucking hate ghosts. I don't ever really want to one (I guess, again now) and I don't ever want to talk to one. I'm all for reading about them or listening to someone talk about them, but there's a huge difference between reading about falling out of a building and actually falling out of a building. That's what it felt like to me at the time, an irrational fear swelling inside of me that I was powerless to control. I wanted to bolt. I wanted to make a dash for the door, but I remained still watching this eerie head shape just looking down at me.

Then I got pissed.

I don't know what took over me, but I started growling at it like you've heard me do before. It was kind of instinctual, the way dogs growl at something before they start chasing after it. I growled at it as a sign to leave me alone and to let it know that I didn't appreciate being woken out of sleep by it. It was kind of a bold move, but I think something clicked inside of me to let me know, if I didn't let it know I was in control of myself, it would have just stuck around. It suddenly became very important for me to get rid of it. I sat upright and growled again until it dissipated.

I guess I chased it away.

The whole affair probably took twenty seconds from when I woke up till when it disappeared. But after that I couldn't sleep. I think I was more afraid of just laying there, wondering if it was going to come back, than of it actually confronting it again. I made sure to turn on all the lights, the television, and log back into the computer to make as much noise and illumination as possible. I wanted to create a hostile environment for it to come back to.


I locked you out

The next hour was spent trying to get tired enough to sleep straight away. It was also spent kind of blaming you because you have my filled with all these ghost stories that creep up at the weirdest times. There I was, trying to get some rest, but feeling very alone and a little scared. I was so annoyed with you the whole time because there was nothing to reassure me that whatever or whoever was haunting me wouldn't come back as soon as I went back to bed. Thoughts of staying up all night or waking up Amber to tell her what happened floated through my head. I kept debating what the best course of action would be. All I knew was that it was your fault because stuff like this never happened to me before I met you. You're too intent on trying to scare the bejeezus out of me and I think this time it finally worked. You worked my brain up so much it has finally accepted that ghosts are real. And now all manner of ghosts can invade my privacy.

I hate you.

I don't look forward to going to sleep tonight.

I wish you were here.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

A Soul In Tension That's Learning To Fly, Condition Grounded But Determined To Try, Can't Keep My Eyes From The Circling Skies

--"Learning To Fly", Pink Floyd

So I was in the Gulf last year, I was doing this thing anyway. And I came up over this dune, and I saw the ocean... and it was on fire. The whole thing, on fire, and it was beautiful. So I just sat there and watched it, and that's when I realized there might be a meaning to life, you know, like an organic power that connects all living things, God, Yahweh, I dunno.
--Martin Blank, Grosse Pointe Blank

I've always preached taking time to enjoy the small moments in you life. When life gets complicated and stressful, I think there's always something you can be thankful for. It might not be immediately known and it very well may take your a few moments or minutes to see it, but it's there. This is the philosophy that has gotten me through many a rough patch and has been the soothing bath of sorts when all the world seems to be crashing in on me. It's always been during these times that I've come to a startling realization that got things turned around for me. It's also been during these times that I've come to appreciate what I had instead of taking it for granted.

One moment that stands out was when I had been two or three months into my sentence at Georgia. I had been terribly homesick, me having never been away from my daddy and mother for more than a week at a time. I didn't want to be my career at university to be marked by frequent visits home or constantly updating them on my progress. I wanted to prove to myself that I was every bit the independent gal that I fancied myself. But, hell's bells, did I miss them. I suppose being surrounded by new friends by the handful helped, but it was far from an equal replacement.

I remember making my way to the roof of the building to collect my thoughts after an especially rough day. I'm not sure if it'd been the far from stellar results on the latest batch of tests or the fact that it seemed like everyone I ever knew had decided to be busy at the same time. I was feeling lost and alone, you could say. I was the firefly in the bird cage, as my daddy used to say, trapped in a funk only because I couldn't think of a way to free myself from it. I sat down atop the wall, the ground fifteen floors below me, while the sounds of the world of having a better life than mine surrounded me. I looked around, at all the students, all the people, just seeming to know where they wanted to be and wanted to be doing. That's when I realized how much I lacked that. How much I wanted that.

I tried to stay positive, but I just couldn't. I felt the weight of my own unmet expectations upon me all at once.

Then a funny thing happened on the way to my depression. I saw what the sun setting looked like from my vantage. It looked amazingly like the one I saw almost everyday for eighteen years from my balcony back home. I didn't feel anything like the American Tail syndrome where it made me feel better to be wishing and hoping under the same blue sky. To put it into words, it was more like seeing an old friend that you thought had left. I had an immediate reaction to seeing a sunset that reminded me of home. It calmed me. It filled me with a sense of motivation that I'm not sure any great pep talk or forced moment of advice could have ever done. In that one moment, where sun met horizon and I met my future head on, I had something substantial to hold onto. I had come to the complete truth that, wherever I go and whatever I do, there will be a gorgeous sunset waiting for me. It doesn't matter if I bomb my tests or get homesick. It doesn't matter how much the world seems complicated or jaded. I can always make it to a place that feels like home to me.

That sufficed me for the rest of the week and maybe the rest of my college career.

I know it cheesy to say and I can't believe sometimes I had an epiphany under such cliche circumstances, but sometimes it is the smallest things like seeing the sun rise or set that can remind us how good life can be.

Sometimes you can find meaning on the rooftops of my university housing.

Sometimes you can escape your birdcage and light up the world with your smile again.

I know I did.

Breanne

Is It Getting Better? Or Do You Feel The Same? Will It Make It Easier On You Now, You Got Someone To Blame?

--"One", U2

We were at The Cheesecake Factory over in Santa Monica sometime in 1999. It was supposed to be a quaint, little lunch at one of my favorite restaurants at the time. That particular Cheesecake Factory had been the first one I had gone to when I had first started driving myself around and it had also been one of the first few places I had gone on for first dates. Granted, this particular time wasn't the first time DeAnn and I had gone out. We'd actually been dating for a year by then, but it was the first time I had ever taken her to that restaurant. I still considered it a place filled with good memories and I had been hoping to add onto that catalog.

I think the trouble began as soon as we had been handed our menus. I saw her eyes move to the pages with the sandwiches listed on them. Great, I thought, she was going to order the club sandwich like she did in every restaurant. To think of it now, it seems like such a small thing, but back then it was a big deal. I've never been one to tolerate small annoyances graciously. I've always let the small things bother more than they should. Her audacity to order a club sandwich at every single place we went to was starting to border on feeling as an intentional slight against me. I know I had mentioned it to her before as a "friendly suggestion" that she might think of branching out when it came to ordering. I told her that broadening her tastes was, indeed, a good endeavor and would lead to us being able to go to a wider range of places to eat. I thought my pep talks had gotten through to her, but, time and time again, when the waitress would come to ask us what we wanted she would always answer with the same exact words.

Club sandwich.

It annoyed the fuck out of me.

It annoyed me so much that by that day in Santa Monica when I seemingly innocently asked her what she was thinking about ordering, I was almost daring her to say a club sandwich just so I could unleash holy hell on her. You could say that I was tired of her limited scope and felt almost embarrassed that this was the person I was choosing to spend the bulk of my time with. It was a total elitist attitude, but I think my motivations ran deeper than that.

When I told her there was no way I was going to let her order what seemed like the hundredth turkey club for the month, I honestly don't know why she didn't laugh it off. Or maybe she did and I was just so pissed that I took that as a sign of her mocking me. Like you can already guess, I wasn't exactly the most rational person in those days. However the sequence played out and whatever was said when, the end result was that I made it abundantly clear to her that under no circumstances whatsoever was she to get the club sandwich on that day. I gave her explicit orders to try something new for a change.

I think on the surface my motivation was to assist her, to make her into some ideal of a better person, a more well-rounded person. Yet below the surface, it really boiled down to a power struggle. As DeAnn pointed out to me many months and years later, she really was my first experience with a day-to-day relationship. Everyone else I was with we had hung out two or three times a week, but DeAnn and I would go weeks at a time where I was either over at her place or she was over at mine. She was my first taste of what it was like to be in some sort of committed relationship. On one hand, it was kind of nice to have so much access to another person's life and to not have to worry so much about scheduling and priorities. On the other hand, it led to a sense of entitlement that to someone like me was inherently dangerous.

Never before had I had a girlfriend where so much of my opinion she took to heart. Never before had I felt so influential in making someone else's decisions. It was both of our faults really. She wanted someone to look up to in terms of being firm-handed and intractable and I willingly made myself into some sort of all-knowing guide for her. Eventually, many months after we had broken up, we saw our relationship for what it was, borderline emotional abuse.

It's not a pretty description, but its a very apt one.

Never moreso than at that Santa Monica Cheesecake Factory.

We argued over her right to choose her own meal, which sounds ridiculous, but we went into the debate like it was regarding the fate of the entire world. Back and forth we lobbied over the merits of individual choice, which she was in favor of, and the merits of expanding one's horizons. I explained to her that somebody had to bring her out of her comfort zone, otherwise, she was just going to remain the uncultured and unrefined person I had first met. I don't know why it was so important for me to always want to improve her, but that was one of the many disguises I hid my stubbornness and desire to inflict my will and my standards upon her. It's always easier to tell someone you're doing something horrible to them for their own good; it allows your mind to remain guilt-free even while you consequently put someone else through hell. It's always easier to tell someone you're the only one who knows right from wrong, and that the way they've been doing things is completely ineffective. Once you have that moral or authoritative high ground it's very hard to give up again. That's the situation we found ourselves in that day.

Somewhere deep down I knew I shouldn't have been making such a big deal over her ordering the same meal again and again. I think what bothered me more was the fact she was daring to argue with me. It's like if she had just seen my point, I might have been okay with her having her way. It's the idea she wanted to contradict that made me fight so hard.

Or maybe I was just an asshole.

There we were arguing fairly loudly. I wasn't willing to budge an inch, but over time I started to wear her down. I could see it in her face, those big blue eyes of hers, that she couldn't comprehend why this was so important to me at that particular moment. She couldn't comprehend why I had decided to make it into a big enough scene that the people at the tables and booths beside us were all looking at us. She couldn't comprehend that the ordering of the club sandwich was periphery. What was really at stake was the idea that she knew better than me. What I was really fighting her for was control, control over her choices, control over who got to tell whom what to do in the relationship.

In the end, it didn't take much longer after those first ten minutes of arguing. The waiter came back for what had to be the fifth or sixth time to ask us what we wanted to eat and that's when she finally relented. She very meekly ordered the four cheese pasta and I felt a small twinge of vindication.

I had won.

I see it now. Somewhere along the way I had started thinking of her as less and less of a person. I saw her as partly someone who was an obstacle to our happiness as a couple and I saw her as partly someone who could be blamed for everything that was wrong with the two of us being together. It's like I had this perfect picture of how we could be like as a couple if only she accepted my word as law and my opinions as facts, which she never was going to do. And when we had our fights and our disagreements I always came into the scuffles with a chip on my shoulder. To me our fights weren't about ascertaining who was right and who was wrong; they were always about my trying to convince her of just how right I was.

I thought it would be easier to live day-to-day with someone I supposedly loved, but in reality it was probably a task I wasn't ready for. I just wasn't ready to put up the effort to see what it was like to actually compromise and see someone else's opinion as being equal to my own. That's what annoyed me the most, I think, the idea that I had to cede any control over what I wanted to do.

When she started crying after the waiter went away, I was used to it. Our fights often ended with her crying because she had come to the conclusion that it was easier to let me win than try and fight me all night. That's what our fights come down to, my being more stubborn than she could be.

My first indication that this wasn't just an ordinary squabble was when she didn't stop crying when our food arrived.

Another indication was when she was literally crying when she was eating her pasta.

The final indication was when I was asked by the table next to me to take her outside and calm her down.

I had fucked up again and the worst part was I was content to let her cry through the whole meal as long as it seemed like it was only affecting me. But the instant it drew the raised eyebrows of someone else, suddenly I was embarrassed enough to remedy the problem.

I took her outside and we talked. I did what I always did, what every asshole control freak boyfriend always does. I apologized and I swore that I would never put her through such emotional torture again. I told her that she didn't have to finish the pasta. I told her I would go inside and pay the bill, then take her to wherever she wanted to eat. I tried to make up for a mistake in judgment that should have never come up in the first place.

That seemed to placate her and for the time being we were back to being okay again. I had fixed the problem for now.

But it was like trying to put a shawl on the shark at the end of the swimming hole, as Breanne says. It may cover it up for awhile, but in the end it'll still come to bite you in the britches. I didn't start becoming a better person until I realized I had a control problem.

But by then it was too late. We were already broken up and we would never be put back together again.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Nothing Could Change What You Mean To Me, Oh, There's Lots That I Could Say, But Just Hold Me Now, Cause Our Love Will Light The Way

--"Heaven (Bryan Adams cover)", Do (Dominique van Hulst)

Patrick (6:53:28 PM): Olive Oyl.

Toby (9:53:36 PM): The cartoon character

Toby (9:53:37 PM): ?

Toby (9:53:38 PM): I don’t see it.

Toby (9:53:46 PM): She’s a beanpole and not pretty at all.

Toby (9:54:01 PM): Popeye must’ve had other chances. Other girls he could’ve chased after.

Patrick (6:54:15 PM): Sometimes It really isn’t a choice. Sometimes it’s just fate.

Toby (9:54:25 PM): yeah seriously!

Toby (9:54:38 PM): yeah, when I met Jack I had no idea we’d hit it off.

Toby (9:54:46 PM): We had a lot of critics.

Toby (9:54:51 PM): Not that anyone has the right to judge.

Patrick (6:59:12 PM): And that’s fate right there.

Patrick (6:59:33 PM): It really isn’t something you understand, it’s something you feel deep down inside of you.

Toby (9:59:31 PM): RIGHT!

Toby (9:59:34 PM): I knew it was right.

Toby (9:59:35 PM): I just knew it.

Toby (9:59:37 PM): hahaha

Patrick (6:56:06 PM): That’s like Popeye, to him Olive Oyl just looks right for whatever reason she works for him.

Toby (9:56:15 PM): I get what you’re saying now.

Patrick (6:56:40 PM): Olive Oyl, right?

Toby (9:56:37 PM): haha i feel ignorant. I never understood why they had him paired with such an unattractive creature as her. Now I see it was some sort of life lesson.

Patrick (6:56:59 PM): Don’t feel too bad. Most people don’t.

Toby (9:57:52 PM): You are a wise man.

Toby (9:57:56 PM): I know what you’re saying though.

Toby (9:58:05 PM): People just click.

Patrick (6:58:29 PM): Or they don’t and think that they do. That’s even worse.

Toby (9:58:39 PM): I try to give people that benefit.

Toby (9:58:40 PM): Of the doubt.

Patrick (6:59:08 PM): You should.

Patrick (7:00:50 PM): My theory is that everybody has a type that they get along with. And it doesn’t matter how hard you try. You can’t escape it.

Toby (10:01:11 PM): Like a preference

Toby (10:01:28 PM): Or compatibility

Toby (10:01:41 PM): when you have a list of qualities you look for in somebody

Patrick (7:02:12 PM): Not exactly.

Toby (10:02:31 PM): off the mark again.

Patrick (7:03:04 PM): I think it isn’t like take-out—pick from column A, then from columb B.

Toby (10:04:01 PM): I like take-out. I wish it were like that.

Toby (10:04:17 PM): I wish I could order up somebody with all those perfect qualities. In one person that might be overwhelming.

Patrick (7:09:09 PM): To me, it’s more like a craving. You don’t know what you want when you want it, but you know what you want when you see it.

Toby (10:09:58 PM): Totally!

Toby (10:09:58 PM): haha

Patrick (7:07:24 PM): You have this general concept of what you like.

But in actuality it all rests on gut instinct. Something inside of you knows if you’re going to get a long with a person. A soulmate is recognized by sight instantly.

It’s just like you said. From the outside your boyfriend wasn’t who you wanted, but when you started talking to him more, it clicked.

Patrick (7:07:37 PM): You made the natural choice rather than the intellectual.

Toby (10:07:34 PM): yeah you could say that

Patrick (7:08:47 PM): Actually, what you mentioned before kind of fits us. When I first came across you I thought we were going to get along famously and that was only based on the type of people I already knew I liked toalking to.

Toby (10:09:10 PM): woah

Toby (10:09:15 PM): that’s weird.

Toby (10:09:27 PM): its true though. Something gets easier to talk to certain people.

Patrick (7:10:11 PM): What can I say? We were just meant to get along.

I always seem to go for that certain intelligent down-to-earth type, which you strike me as.

Toby (10:10:24 PM): too true.

Toby (1:10:31 PM): I don’t like to be too flashy and I’m too smart for my own good.

Toby (10:10:41 PM): But don’t go thinking you have me figured out all that easily.

Toby (10:10:53 PM): I’ll surpirse you when you least expect. That’s what I think anyway.

Patrick (7:11:43 PM): I’m not saying I have this psychic ability about you. But something in me recognizes something in you that’s familiar and comforting.

I don’t mean that in a weird way, but I always chat up the same type of people. People who care about things.

Toby (10:12:15 PM): I’d like to think I don’t live frivously. I like to contemplate rather than just go.

Toby (10:12:17 PM): yah

Toby (10:12:19 PM): yeah

Patrick (7:13:30 PM): That's what I thought too. You didn’t strike me as somebody who just flits by nonchalantly. You move and speak with purpose.

If you were to ever do something just for fun, at the very least, you’d reflect on it later. That’s exactly what I do. I can’t help it.

It’s people like that that I have a healthy respect and think highly of.

Toby (10:13:57 PM): that makes me feel really good

Toby (10:19:23 PM): I’m always worried that people think I’m stuck-up or trying to act superior. I don’t. I guess I take things seriously that most people wouldn’t.

Patrick (7:17:23 PM): You should. People let things pass by too easily. If more people took the time to really study things they’d get more enjoyment out of them.

It's like I said in a message I sent to my friend. I think there’s only a few people I would go to their funerals if they died. You could be one of those few.

I don’t know—contemplative people are just the best type of people I’ve found. They get things more and they put more stock into the world around them. They don’t let things pass them by. They scoop everything up.

Toby (10:18:48 PM): aww well i hope you dont have to attend my funeral any time soon and I don’t have to go to yours. That would be sad.

Toby (10:18:57 PM): haha i dont know im still young... Too young to live too seriously.

Toby (10:19:06 PM): i just kind of have always been this way

Toby (10:19:17 PM): I like knowing, feeling, and being sure of everything before I do anything.

Patrick (7:20:35 PM): I appreciate that in you.

That’s my whole point with Popeye. People see something of themselves in those they associate with. Something about Olive reminds him of himself. You remind me of what I like about myself.

Toby (10:21:22 PM): aww That’s making me blush.

Patrick (7:22:12 PM): I know it’s kind of dumb, but in a way we were guaranteed to be friends.

Toby (10:22:50 PM): i don’t think it’s dumb. I don’t start out not wanting to be friends with someone. I don’t put anyone on some sort of blacklist. You have to earn that distinction.

Patrick (7:23:26 PM): May I never get onto that blacklist.

Toby (10:24:04 PM): hahaha yeah well people have been known to be reinstated.

Toby (10:24:16 PM): i wouldn’t worry.

Patrick (7:24:33 PM): Crisis averted.

Patrick (7:24:40 PM): I'm glad you could clear that up.

Toby (10:24:32 PM): Watch. In a few months you’ll be begging me to leave you alone.

Patrick (7:24:53 PM): Never.

Toby (10:25:03 PM): I must warn you about something before going any further.

Patrick (7:25:17 PM): What?

Toby (10:25:24 PM): I don’t look like Olive Oyl.

Patrick (7:25:38 PM): LOL


Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

By Now You Should've Somehow, Realized What You Gotta Do, I Don't Believe That Anybody, Feels The Way I Do About You Now

--"Wonderwall", Oasis

It’s my belief that there are certain bridges you do not cross. Chalk it up to my upbringing, my faith in some power greater than ourselves, or maybe good ‘ole stubbornness, but I’ve set up some guidelines for myself that I always thought I would abide by. I was always kind to my family (mostly). I was always respectful to my elders (mostly). I’ve never been cruel to animals. I’ve never taken liberties with the truth. I’ve never been duplicitous and conniving. I’ve always done what I thought was right at the moment I thought it was right to make that decision. I’ve never shirked a duty I was given or I took upon myself. I’ve always tried to be friendly, trustworthy, and, for the most part, part of the solution and not part of the problem. Those are the immutable laws of Breanne, the laws that would never and can never be broken.

Most of all, I’ve always believe in some sanctity of marriage. I always looked to my parents, how much they got it right, and I’ve always thought it would be an easy task to emulate their every step. I never thought of the commitment and dedication to making a relationship work as being something I would ever be lacking. I just didn’t. There’s always been an attitude of “get the fire going or freeze to death,” as my daddy likes to say, about how I approached making all my relationships work. I never had it in me to put the blame on somebody else when there was still time and room enough to fix a problem. That’s part of the reason I settled on Greg in the first place. He had this way about him that clued me in on the fact that I would always be the one wearing the trousers in the tent. It was never a matter of who would solve the problems in our marriage, only a matter of how I would accomplish it. It was never a question if we’d stay together, only how I would accomplish it.

For you see, that was always one of my firmly held tenets of existence. You don’t get divorced. Divorce to me equated to giving up. Divorce was only a solution for the weak-minded and people who were too dumb to get at the real problems.

I never thought I would ever be someone who would consider divorce.

----

We were both seated on the couch in the living room. How we had ended up there is beyond me. For most of the fight we had been standing, cursing at one another while we stalked around the room, neither of us able to get a firm location from which to launch into our respective offenses. We were two tigers, each trying to get the upper hand, but never settling on who exactly was the weaker of the two. Then, suddenly, the storm had abated. Suddenly, all we were left with was the “storm after the storm,” as my daddy likes to say. All we were left with was the mess we had made for ourselves and the arduous business of cleaning it up.

Looking at Greg, I saw all the reasons why I loved him, all the reasons I had fallen in love with him. It was there in his bespectacled countenance—all the graciousness, all the malleability, all the features of his personality that usually made him such an easy person to live with. He tried to hide a frown from me in his folded arms. I saw through it, though. Like everything else, I saw through these positive attributes and saw all the reasons that had built up to make it such a chore to live with him as well.

“It’s not a big deal. We weren’t even close to signing anyway. They’ll be other times, sugar,” I tried telling him.

“But we had agreed that this was something we wanted to do. You agreed, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I had, but the timing wasn’t nearly where it was supposed to be,” I explained.

I think there’s an art to telling somebody bad news that I just never picked up. I was born without the gene to breaking it gently to someone news that could ruin their day. Oh sure, I’m fairly skilled at picking up the pieces afterwards, but when it comes to telling somebody news that’s sure to upset them, I’m fairly blunt. Again, I can only be Breanne—no more, no less. I’ve always thought that if news of the severity and condition of bad news truly were that bad, I’d want to build told in as few uncertain terms as possible. But that’s just me. I’ve always thought of myself as being rather strong, of being able to accept the burden and weight of bad news of any type.

Greg, wasn’t built the same way, I’m afraid.

It was true. I had agreed.

But it was also true that I had changed my mind.

It was true that I no longer wanted to adopt a child to call our own anymore.

That story, though, wasn’t as easily wrapped up as most stories involving hurt feelings and complicated relationships never are. I don’t know anybody who has ever had it completely easy in a relationship or a marriage they thought was worth fighting for. Why should I be any different?

“I just don’t get it. I don’t get why?”

“You know why, Greg. You’ve known why for awhile now.”

“No, I don’t, Breanne. I really don’t.”

“Because of us. We’re not in that place anymore.”

That, more than the baby news, was the sad truth that I thought Greg really needed to hear. The whole adoption decision I had arrived at was merely an outcome of what was really struggling between us. It was a symptom of a larger disease. The real problem was that we had stopped being anything new. It wasn’t that we were growing apart or drifted in different directions. If that had been the case, I could have righted the ship. I would have nudged us in the right direction until my nose bled. Nope, the real problem was we had ceased thinking about the two of us as something exciting and vibrant. We had grown complacent and had settled for something less than what I wanted—what we both wanted, I guess.

Yet whenever I had tried to bring this to my husband’s attention it had practically fallen on deaf ears.

And I’m a person that likes to be heard.

“What place?”

“The place that you promised me when we got married. The place you spoke about at our wedding ‘where happiness wouldn’t be the exception, but the rule as long as you drew breath.’ Or don’t you remember that part?”

I don’t know what his definition of happy was at that moment, but what we had, what we were going through, certainly wasn’t mine. I had began to look at life as being something to measure in terms of time passed—a tally of how much I had accomplished, the restaurants he had taken me to, the anniversaries we had muddled our way through, all the nooks and crannies we could store memories in. What I had stopped thinking about was how life used to be about what more could be done, where we could go next, what distant shores lay on the horizon.

“This isn’t the life I was supposed to lead, Greg. It isn’t. I don’t need fancy, but I do need new.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“And that’s why we’re having this discussion, now isn’t it?”

It’s taken all this time to admit it to myself, but I had built a bigger pen than I had a herd, when it came to imagining what my married life would be like. I had liked that he had allowed me to make the bulk of the decisions, but what I hadn’t counted on was the fact that he was so passive that it really got tiring to be the driving force behind our relationship all the time. It got tiresome to feel like the only one who gave a damn. It was like I was the only one who had dreams and aspirations for what the two of us could be. I was dreaming for the both of us and I had begun to slowly lose the will to do that anymore. I needed him to start dreaming with me, which was something he hopefully could do for me.

Except I didn’t know how to tell him in so many words.

“This is about him, isn’t it?”

My face immediately turned beet red.

“Hell’s bells, now is not the time to bring up that particular subject.”

“Well, Breasy, you tell me when a good time would be to dig up that old chestnut and I’ll be more than happy to oblige you by asking my question then.”

“Never. It’ll never be a good time to bring it up, okay?”

Like I said, there are some bridges that you never cross and one of them is to allow a fight to devolve into listing everything fucked up under the sun about a person. I wanted to keep the discussion straight forward and limited to the topics I had consented to discussing. I would have to leave whatever other issues plaguing us for another day. You can only rope one calf at a time, after all.

“Don’t you feel it? Can’t you see unhappy I am?”

“Not really.”

“I always thought I was being obvious.”

“Not obvious enough.”

I looked into his eyes, hoping to catch him in the lie that I mistook his answer for. That’s when I saw that he really wasn’t kidding. He had no clue as to the depth of my dissatisfaction. And there I thought I had been so forthright with him. It came as quite the shock to me when I saw that all that time he had been patently oblivious to how I was feeling. That’s when I thought that the restriction on him reading this blog could have been a mistake. Perhaps if had read a few entries I wouldn’t have had to explain so much about how I was feeling to him. I could have just referenced a particular date and time, and that would have been all the evidence I would have needed. Instead, what I thought would be a marriage-saving conceit, turned out to be yet another piece of evidence at how little we knew each other after five years of being married.

“That’s my fault. I take full responsibility. I can’t expect you to be a mind reader.”

Maybe that’s why I had taken this opportunity to clean house because some part of me already knew that there was so much of me that I was leaving unsaid. Maybe this was my subconscious alerting me it was about time I cleaned house.

I would have liked more warning, but the fight had just erupted like an open dishwasher, spilling blame and hurtful words everywhere. It hadn’t been pretty. I had let the first few outbursts light a fire underneath me and the resulting twenty minutes had probably been my finest hour of burning through a dictionary’s worth of expletives. My daddy used to say that I was never content to let the water stream. “You’re a waterfall person, not a stream person, Breanne,” he used to say. “You like the loud bang, you crave the excitement.” It’s true, I’ve always been attracted to displaying myself grandly and noticeably. I need the spotlight even if it means calling attention to the worst aspects I possess. I don’t care, as long as people don’t take me for granted.

So we had fought.

We didn’t have a winner.

We didn’t have a loser.

But there were casualties.

“I don’t know how to be any other way, Breanne. I can only treat you how I treat you.”

“I know that. All I’m asking is that you stop with me and ask yourself if a kid is really the solution to all our problems.”

“I would have loved that baby so much,” I heard him say after a short pause.

“I know you will… someday,” I said, allaying his fear that this was a decision on my part that would never be reversed.

I will be a mother someday. That has never changed. But another unbreakable tenet I still hold is that I will be a great mother someday. I’m not going to have the relationship my mother had with me. I will be a great mother in every way imaginable. I owe him or her that much. I don’t have it in me to fail at the one thing I know I was always destined for. That includes bringing a child into a household that has no room at the moment to love him or her. Things will be perfect when we do bring a child back home with us.

Perfect.

This wasn’t the first time he felt like I had betrayed him. In a sense, I had repeatedly betrayed every time I had opted to change my mind. For the most part he never said anything. When I told him that I was remodeling the house a few years back he never questioned the decision, but he had the look of betrayal then. I saw it there, in his eyes, lingering like some far-off candle. Up until that point it had been “our” house, a house we had decorated together, a house we had dreamed of together. At that point I made some decisions on my own, inconsequential and small, but decisions nonetheless. I could see his view. I was taking over the one place he thought we had equal say in. I was co-opting something we were partners in. I don’t know why I didn’t consult him. I can’t say that I was intentionally trying to shut him out. I saw a few problems that needed revisions and I set about revising them.

Maybe that’s what the problem with adopting was. Maybe that’s why he had felt so hurt. I saw the problem, the tension, the waiting over the baby was causing and I thought of a solution. I called the agency, I contacted the correct authorities, and broke them the news that we had decided to go in another direction but that we would like to keep their names and numbers for the future. And that was that. Problem solved.

Yes, we had deeper issues that needed fixing and the distraction of going back and forth with this person and that person every week was a distraction. But I should have let him some kind of input, even if the end the result would have been the same. I should have done that much for him. That would have been the correct thing to do.

Wicked Breanne messes up again.

“I’m sorry, Greg. I had no call to do what I did.”

“No, you didn’t.”

That’s always been a wall between us, my acting without thinking and his thinking all the time without acting fast enough for me. It’s what my friend calls a marriage between a rock and a rolling stone.

I can’t seem to keep it straight how a partnership works. You think after five years I would have gotten the hang of it. That’s what happens when you marry younger than you should have, you make all the mistakes you would have had you remained single, except somebody else becomes affected by it, somebody else gets to share in your misery. It isn’t that I regret getting married right out of college, but I get to feeling that I missed out on so much of my life that I would have experienced had I been only thinking of myself. I would have been like the eagle with the whole country spread beneath him or even the whole world. I could have seen Australia. I could have seen my koalas in person and not behind some bars. I could have experienced what it’s like to live in another part of the country. I could have turned myself into somebody completely did. I could have had the adventures I always wrote about when I was younger.

When you marry you make a commitment. You make that commitment to somebody else to stay faithful, to stay true, to stay by their side. But what if staying by their side keeps your feet firmly planted to the ground? What then? What do you do then when your whole life has been about sticking and moving at your own pace and by your own whims? I stay because I love him and not because I love the life I have with him.

Not yet at least.

And, yes, I’ve made mistakes. I’ve been like the bull charging the fences keeping him in. I’ve broken my fair share of egos in the attempt to assert my independence. Hell’s bells, I’ve even done my damnedest to drive him away one time or another. I’ve strayed, I’ve wandered, I’ve tested the waters. I have been far from perfect. Yet I remain with him because my heart tells me it’s my business to remain with him and because my mind tells me he’s the best man for me. I remain because my stubborn streak won’t let me give up on something that hasn’t completely been blown to bits.

Any bull ride you can walk away from, right?

“We’re going to work through this. It may not be perfect tomorrow or even a year from now, but we’re going to work on perfect till it’s perfect, darling.”

I heard him try to stifle a laugh.

I smiled.

That’s also another big reason I stay. I can’t think of too many people who can deal with all my craziness and impulsiveness and still remain optimistic about my prospects. Sometimes, admittedly, I am a handful. But I receive as good as I give. It’s the least I could do. If he can learn to stand my imperfections, then I can learn to stand his too. I know giving our marriage another shot in the arm is the right thing to do. It’s the only thing to do.

I will never give up. I will never surrender. Not without one hell of a fight, at least.


there are many things that I'd like to say to you
but I don't know how

I sidled up to him on the couch, hoping that he would see my desire to be closer as a sign we were working towards something rather than away from something. I wanted him to see it as a small armistice in the wake of the terrible battle we had just fought. I swung my skinny arms around him playfully. At first he resisted like a spoiled child, but he eventually got the hint. He let me move my head closer to him and slowly rest on his shoulder. From that point on I was whispering directly into his ear.

“I haven’t forgotten how to be your wife if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“But can we still work?”

“I’ll make sure of it.”

----

I never thought I would ever be someone who would consider divorce.

I still don’t.

Breanne

And I Was Making Bad Bets, For When The Odds Look Good, You Gotta Play The Hand You See

--"Would You Come With Me", The Elected

Here's the reason I hate Meerkat Manor, it fools you into thinking it's some nice show about adorable creatures of the desert. They give them all these fluffy names, show you all these playful scenes of them taking care of one another, and even allow you to really connect with them. Yet, once you've made this bond with them, they set about the business of showcasing how difficult choices must be made and, in the end, sacrifices must be made.

In short, way too many meerkats die on this show.

Now, normally, this wouldn't be a big deal. It's a nature show. I understand that. And, as most nature shows do, it has the task of allowing the audience to see both the joyous and not so joyous sides of life. For every birth, they have a responsibility to show you another one dying. I understand that. What I don't understand is why it shies away from this responsibility at the most crucial moments. It doesn't permit the viewers to witness the actual dying, but merely the prelude. I know this is to preserve the family appeal of the show. However, I think somewhere down the line someone is going to have to explain to little Timmy why Squiggy won't be seen again on the show. I mean--they have the cameras filming every new litter being born and that's a part of life. I can't see what the difficulty would be in displaying the end of that same life.

I think it sets a bad example.

For instance, the episode I watched tonight had two of the newest cubs, Len and Squiggy, making their debut with the tribe. Len was a normal pup, but his twin brother, Squiggy, was born with a deformed foot, which is never a good sign. Let's just say Squiggy's fate was sealed the day he was born. I knew it. I don't think there's anyone who watches the show who didn't knew what his ultimate outcome would be. Yet they spent enormous amounts of time showing Mitch taking care of him, showing Mitch helping to feed him, showing Squiggy barely squeak by with the rest of the group.

Then, just as quickly, he's left behind after holding the group one too many times and that's that. You never see what happens to him. You never see how long it actually takes for the desert to swallow him up. You never see any of it. That sends the wrong message to people. Yes, it's unpleasant to watch a lovely creature die. Yes, it's sad to think that they can abandon a pup not more than five weeks old. But, for chrissakes, all Squiggy to have some dignity. It's when people gloss over the unpleasantness of life that people start to lose appreciation for the fragility of life. It's when people start ignoring the awful and scary aspects of the world around them that they're allowed to continue and prosper. It's when people start taking a blind eye to the cruelty of life that cruelty begins to grow.

I know that's the way it is with me. There are many facets of existence that I would rather not experience. I don't want to know about all the stuff out there that can make me sad, or hurt me, or upset me. I'm rather fond of keeping an even keel. Sometimes, though, I think it's good to go through a little adversity to let you know that you're alive. It's good for me to stay and watch something that bothers me like Meerkat Manor because it really does hit home with the point that everyone faces challenges and not everyone succeeds. That's a lesson I believe I need ingrained in my psyche. A big part of my personality knows I haven't been challenged enough which means I haven't failed enough to make me truly want to succeed. I've been content to coast through at an even pace. I haven't really fallen all too often or all too far, but I think I also haven't made it to any sort of summit or pinnacle.

I think that's because the majority of my life has been lived according to philosophies of the editors of the show. I've been to the brink of really seeing the horribleness of life, but I've never really been exposed to it. Like those selfsame editors who cut away Squiggy getting killed or another Meerkat being separated from the group, I've been unlucky to have people who've tried to keep those adverse consequences from ever getting to me. I've never really felt as bad as I really could have.

I'm not saying that I enjoy the pain because I don't. But I know deep down that I haven't really felt the loss and the sadness and the tears that other people have. I need to get rid of those filters that never allow me to really feel something truly devastating.

Otherwise, I'm just going to go right on through life believing that the hand I was given can always be redealt, instead of acknowledging the fact there are some choices I make that are binding for life and that not all mistakes can be corrected.

I need to develop that healthy respect for the life I was fortunate enough to have been given as well as a healthy fear of that life being taken away too soon from me.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Don't Want To Make You Grow Numb, If It's Not What You Thought It Was, Legs Are For Discovering, This Is What It's Like

--"For The Actor", Mates of State

I was at Camp Cherry Valley located miles away from the mainland on the small island of Catalina contemplating my future. I was probably eleven or twelve at the time, the summer before Eighth Grade, and I was away on a week-long camping trip with my Boy Scout troop. That right there was the problem that had me troubled. At that point in time, laying on that wooden floor, above a dirty and sweat-filled sleeping bag, I was contemplating whether all of this "fun" was really worth the effort. I was contemplating whether or not I had the correct intentions for persisting in this very foolish endeavor known as scouting.

The trouble started a few years earlier when a former alumni of my elementary school/junior high, St. Rita's, came by to recruit for a new scout troop he was putting together. He had, apparently, risen high in the ranks and thought his talents could be best served by reviving the old troop number of St. Rita's. Admittedly, I was excited. I had been in a Cub Scout troop that had been fun for awhile but had splintered apart under bad leadership. I was looking forward to experiencing what a troop done right would be like. However, I think the real reason I wanted in was because all my friends were truly gung-ho about it. Some kids experience peer pressure to trying out drugs, alcohol, and smoking. My first and most memorable exposure to it was the Boy Scouts. After all, if the only group of people I spent time with outside of my family had up and decided to join a cult, I would have probably joined a cult too. Nobody wants to be the odd man out and I certainly didn't want that distinction either.

However, that's exactly what ended up happening.

For the first years, it was actually fun. We did all the things I had imagined went along with the camping, hiking, and crafting mythology that went along with Boy Scouts. For the first few years I actually couldn't wait to show up to the troop meetings. For the first few years I couldn't spend enough time hiking and camping. That's actually where my love of the outdoors came to fruition.

I think the trouble began when my friends tasted the few sweet sips of success in scouting. Suddenly, it became less about having fun and become more of advancing in rank. I didn't have this huge push to become an Eagle Scout. To me this was just a fun way to spend time with my friends and have permission to be big, huge goofballs miles away from my parents. To me it was just an extension of the hijinx we usually engaged in and away from school. I couldn't make the distinction when and where scouting suddenly became this serious pursuit full of serious plans and serious commitment.

Cut to Camp Cherry Valley. I had spent the first few days hanging out with my friends, but on that day I found myself alone in my tent because my tentmate and my other three friends had signed up for yet another merit badge class. Sure, I could have signed up for the same class, but it involved copious amounts of sleeping directly on the ground and foraging for your own food. Neither of which interested me at all. The only depressing part was they had all signed up for the class and they all had departed for the overnight part of the class, leaving mojo alone and without a person in the world to talk to. I suppose I could have hung out with the younger members of the troop, by my four friends were the only people the same age as me and I was still at that age where soon-to-be Eighth graders did not hang out with soon-to-be Seventh graders. It just wasn't done.

So there I laid, after dinner but before bedtime, trying to come up with reasons why I should continue doing something I didn't really enjoy. I mean--it was one thing to be involved when my friends were all involved at the same level as me. But somewhere along the way they had taken this secret vote to change gears and shoot for the big prize at the end of the rainbow. Somewhere along the way it started becoming a life plan to them instead of the postponement of real life that it still was to me. That night I realized things would never be the same. I had seen the writing on the wall and it said that night would only be the first night of many where I could only be seen as lagging behind all of them. I was never going to be as dedicated to their goals. I was going to be the dumbass who couldn't get serious enough to start earning his badges left and right. I was going to be the one left behind.

I don't know if you've ever been in that situation, but it isn't pleasant. I don't much care for being thought as being lazy or for being thought of as a malcontent. I wanted to keep pace with them. Honestly, I did. But as I trolled through my thoughts, I came to the conclusion that my sin did not lay in being unmotivated. My sin originated from my ever joining in the first place. It's one thing to commit yourself to something and then abandon it for the next pretty pursuit that tickles your loins. But it's another thing to know something holds no interest for you and still doing it because somebody else you like is doing it. Yes, you never know what you'll like until you give it a try, but sometimes the best thing you can do when it comes to something that gives you a bad first impression is to just say no. What you should never do under any circumstances is continue to pretend to like something for the sake of others. It does you no favors and only makes the feeling of being let down all the more acute for them. I say once you dislike something, once it fails to make you happy, then you should stop.

I was too young at that point to put it into so many words. But even then I had a gut feeling that there are just some activities, hobbies, or callings that are not suited to a person, just as there are some people not suited for one another.

Yet with a few years time, I came to realize that that too may have been part of the problem. My friends were okay for that period in my life, but even they were not suited to me. They possessed a drive and thirst for betterment that I simply did not share. I was perfectly content to assist and co-operatively better a group, but I don't have that competitive edge so many others were born with. I have never relished matching up with my peers. I'd much rather be part of a collective that are opposing another collective. That's the extent of my competitive drive.

Before I went to bed that night, I came to the decision that after that summer Boy Scouting and I would part ways. I had no thought of continuing my scouting well into eighth grade or beyond.

Yes, my friends saw me as a coward and a quitter, but I always thought what I did was more courageous than they ever saw. I think it takes real focus and a real understanding to know what you want and you don't want. It takes real courage to walk away from people you have grown close to because staying would mean being someone you just aren't.

I was never a real Boy Scout.

I was just a guy who tagged along when his best friends had all decided to become scouts and who ended up staying three years.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

It's Undeniable That We Should Be Together, It's Unbelievable, How I Used To Say That I'd Fall Never

--"Back to One", Brian McKnight

You felt it in the wind that something was different that day. There was something different about the way the unnamed boy carried himself, the way he stood, the way he was. Or maybe it was you, in the way you saw, in the way you felt, in the way you were. Whatever it was, it was incredible how complete the transformation was. It wasn't the gradual fall that your friends and family had described to you, the one where you saw the person the tiniest bit differently each and everyday. You would have been prepared for that. You had a contingency plan all worked out. Love wasn't going to conquer you that easily. Gradual was something you could have fought to your dying breath. Gradual was doable.

But this, this was a whole other headache. This madness masquerading as desperation was nothing short of unbearable. This wasn't falling. You weren't feeling the pulsing gravity of inevitability. It snuck up on you and you were different. Before that day you were one way. After that day you were another. It was that simple. You thought you had your life well under heel. You knew what to expect. You knew what you were in for. You didn't think it would fool you so badly. After all, you had maintained control for most of your better years. You hadn't anything let anything short of a hurricane derail your plans and aspirations. You were unstoppable. You were the juggernaut of determination. Even your mother, who normally pushed you to your limits, had lately been commenting that you were losing track of everything else that should have been important to you--love, chief among them. You thought you had no time for love. But it turns out it certainly had enough time to covet you.

And how did you handle it? What did you on the day love came landing on your shores? You pretended it hadn't. Such is the contrarian nature of your emotions. Whatever you feel, whatever you hold within your heart, you have to act the opposite. Before, you didn't have that grasp around your neck, so you acted like this boy and that boy could steal your heart away at a moment's notice. You played the overemotional and giddy schoolgirl. You mimed the drama. After, when it had wrapped you up completely in its hold, you went limp. You acted as if no one mattered, especially him. You tried erecting a ten-foot thick wall, within its confines pretending not to care. What you didn't count on was that wall being made of solid glass and the whole world was able to see right through you. There was no fooling anyone. You had it--whatever it was. You had it bad.

That first day, clamoring after the unnamed boy in your own clandestine way, was merely the first step in a larger pattern. You've only come to realize that this is what you always do. You place yourself in positions of emotional instability. You don't go after the safe bets. You go after the longshots, the dark horses, the one-in-a-million payoffs that just never come. Love should be everything or not at all, right?

Right.

Sometimes you long to go back to before you developed this sickness. Sometimes you long to go back to the beginning and teach yourself the sane way to love somebody. You want to go back to emotional boot camp--break yourself down to build yourself up again. That way you could reject all ideas of attaining the unnamed boy for good. That way you could only accept the advances of those who actually wanted you back. That way you could learn to love most those who loved you the most, instead of equating true love, real love with the amount of adversity you faced in defending it. That way you could finally comprehend that love really isn't all that hard. All you have to do is find someone who truly loves you... and spend the rest of your life showing him why you are worthy of such enamoration.

That way you could have seen the forest for the trees. You could have jumped at the chance when it was presented to you, instead of holding out for something more exciting. Sometimes it really does fall into your lap and all you have to do is recognize it for what it is.

Sometimes the unnamed boy you're supposed to end up with really does have a name and isn't as mysterious as you'd like you want him to be. Instead, he turns out to be everything you already knew you needed, everything you already expected from him, everything you know would make you happy.

Can you feel that? It's the wind saying it's not too late, Breanne.

Breanne

And When I See You, Take The Same Sweet Steps, You Used To Take, I Know I'll Keep On Holding You, In Arms So Tight, They'll Never, Never Let You Go

--"High", The Cure

I've been wrestling with the idea of putting an escalator into my house whenever I get around to buying it for the sole reason I've never seen an escalator in a person's home before. Frankly, I think it's way more practical than my former idea of a spinning house, which gives me all the more impetus to attempt it. It would be kind of fun and funny to walk through the front door and step onto my escalator to head up the bedrooms and upstairs bathroom, or what have you. Plus, think of the conversation piece it could be. "Mojo, I've never seen an escalator inside of a home before. What made you decide to install one of those?" "Oh, that old thing. It came with the house. To tell you the truth, it's terribly inconvenient. But what can you do? It's part of the gal's charm, wouldn't you know."

I know what you're saying. How does a person get down if the only means to the second floor is a upward escalator? Short of reversing the direction every time I mean to use it, I could literally be stuck without a way down. I mean--I suppose I could try to run down the stairs every time I need to go into the kitchen, but that would be rather tiresome and time-consuming as well.

Well, that's where the second part of my plan comes in.

Fireman poles.

That's exactly what the house would need should the escalators become a reality. A swift slide down and I could be transported straight into the kitchen. I think that's the only solution that makes sense. Plus, again, it would be a conversation piece when my guests are mulling about the kitchen area. "Why is there a pole running perpendicular to the ground here, Mojo?" "Oh, that old thing? It came with the house. Apparently, the previous owners liked to think of themselves as amateur superheroes. You can imagine the rest."


as high as i might
i can't get that high

I have no clue why I keep on imagining these eccentric additions to my dream house. The only explanation I can give is that I abhor conventionality and praise originality. I don't want my house to be the same cookie-cutter floor plan that everybody else. I don't ever want someone to think of me as someone who does things normally. I always have to put my little spin onto things. If I can't do that literally with a spinning house, than I shall have to devise another way to show everybody that my house is unique, that my house is special. Brandy says that's why I do a lot of things to call attention to myself, because I equate weird and unconventional with being unique. And I equate being unique with being regarded as special. I don't like the feeling of being overlooked or forgotten. I like the feeling of being remembered and being distinguished from everyone else.

It's just like my escalator.

Why take the time to climb stairs with everyone else, when you can rise to the top right away?

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers