When You're Strange, Faces Come Out Of The Rain, When You're Strange, No One Remembers Your Name

--"People Are Strange", The Doors

I've always known I was a little off. From a young age I developed habits and rituals that other people never seemed to understand. As I've matured I stopped calling them rituals and habits. Slowly but surely they morphed into my so-called "rules". Whatever, they're called they still rarely fall into the category of normal behavior. And over the years they still have drawn a curious, sometimes suspicious, eye.

It wasn't like I was completely clueless that such behavior would set me apart from the rest of the crowd. Indeed, there were times where I invited the singling out. However, most of the time, I wished I was better suited to fitting in, that I wasn't such a slave to my proclivities. Sure, I remembered having the realization that I was weird and from that point on just going with it. What never happened was my waking up one day and just deciding to gain such a reputation. It's my belief that it was a part of my character from day one; that I was born to the life as soon as my parents had me.

And it wasn't like it was always such a bad thing. On more than one occasion my tendency to forsake common sense or reason itself has provided a wonderful excuse for otherwise inexcusable behavior. When people expect you to act in an independent fashion you're free to act independently most of the time.

What it had been for a long time was a lonely state of being. When you set yourself apart, it's hard to all of sudden admit to others that you now want to be a part of something--even if it's only temporarily.

----

All that changed when I basically got to La Salle. I mean--it's all well and good to call Tommy, John, Paul, and Phillip; my friends from St. Rita's; my "friends," but at the time I thought I knew what the word meant. Up until that point I thought the main point of friendship was the idea of companionship and loyalty. Indeed, they are strong components, but it wasn't until I matriculated from junior high that I began to understand what getting to know someone well and becoming friends actually meant. People like Dan, Peter, Chris, and Omar I believe I got to know really well. More to the point I got to know their idiosyncrasies really well also. They were never something consciously given away; they were more byproducts of fate. If one spends enough time in the presence of someone else, the tiny secrets one keeps have a tendency to dribble out like so much drool. It's not something we choose; it's something chosen for us. It's my belief that who we are is a lot easier to reveal than it is to hide. It takes effort to mask or screen our character. It doesn't take any effort at all just to be ourselves.

That's what I think went on in high school. Once I was there it wasn't such a big deal that I was an oddity--at least not as much as it was during my time at St. Rita's. Once I was in high school I grew into my skin, so to speak.

That same rationale became even more pronounced once I met Lucy. Once you get to know someone as well as I know her, it's second nature to pick up on all the rituals and habits she thinks are okay but honestly surprise the hell out of most people. For instance, I learned early on in our friendship that she has a special relationship with the color orange. She takes her devotion to the color orange as seriously or more seriously as I take my devotion to the number eight. Visiting her parents' house and seeing her room and her bathroom--it's everywhere. Okay, it's nothing as ridiculous as her having her entire room covered in orange, but when the walls, the bedspread, and even the window frames are that particular hue you know there was deliberation somewhere.

Also, I know it doesn't seem so weird now, but it really weirded me out that she has an official nap day. It's just odd to me that someone can set aside one day a week for thirteen straight years to take a four or five hour nap in the middle of the day. I mean--I love naps, but I can only take them here or there. To devote fifty-days out of the year to the activity is, yes, admirable, but there is a hint of zealotry there too.

And don't even get me started on Toby. The hands thing, where her hands have to be pristine twenty-four hours a day, was quite a shocker to me. Coupled with her Monk-like obsession with cleaning her bathroom two or three times a week, and she's the closest I've come to meeting someone with OCD.

It's took awhile to accept these revelations as fact, as I'm sure it took both of them some time to come to grips with the strange obsessions I seem to have. Yet over time it's become like second nature to hear Breanne go on about some new orange serving dish she got or go on about how she broke her record for longest nap. It's become barely a blip on the radar hearing Marion cleaning her bathroom (again) while she's on the phone with me. It's the nature of the beast. When you accept a person truly into your life as something more than an acquaintance, you accept all of them. It's like Breanne says, "you can't unbake a cake." You can't separate what you like about a person from what you find odd about them; they come packaged together through and through.

And what's more, I used to think I was alone in feeling isolated. I thought I was the only one who had habits they just couldn't explain. But ever since knowing the girls, ever since getting to high school and beyond, it's gotten easier for me to see that all people are strange in their own ways. More than that, I've gotten to the point where most people's passions stop seeming all that inexplicable to me. I tend to roll more with the punches now when people reveal their likes and dislikes to me. It's becoming more and more where I'm understanding that it takes different strokes to move the world.

Sometimes too what I once thought was foreign and unexplainable starts to make sense to me the longer I'm around the influence. For instance, ever since I've gotten to know Toby and her statistics about just how many germs live on how many surfaces in a typical household, you can bet I too wash my hands in hot, not warm, water. As she says, it's the only way to be sure along with soap that your hands are germ-free. Or, even more succinctly, I've taken up a lot of Breanne's suggestions which stem from her minor weird habits. When I need to soften up ice cream I now stick it in the microwave for ten or fifteen seconds like she does. Or when I need to cool off a dinner plate that's fresh from the oven or frying pan I stick it in the freezer for a minute or two like she does.

The gods help me--after being around Breanne, those two habits just make sense to me, even though at the outset of our friendship they seemed particularly peculiar.

The point is, yes, I'm weird. But so is everyone else. And rather than trying to rid myself of my odd habits and even odder rituals, I guess I've embraced my outcast status to the point where it seems I'm adopting other people's odd habits and even odder rituals.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Girlfriend, Oh, Your Girlfriend Is Drifting Away, Past And Present, 1855, 1901, Watch Them Build Up A Meteor Tower, Think It's Not Gonna Stay Anyway

--"1901", Phoenix

Sometimes it's rather easy to get fooled into believing I'm the only one writing a blog. I write these stories that involve all these people I know and posit that my account is the only account of the events as they occurred. I'm not saying I don't know I'm biased, but it's rather easy to forget objectivity when all I ever get to read and reminisce about is the movie reel of my memories. I know I'm biased. I know that I forget certain key aspects of the milestones I've been through. All I can say is that everything I write here is represented as an anecdote, sometimes dressed up for dramatic purposes and sometimes incomplete due to my shoddy memory.

Lately it's been called into question whether or not the other participants of my stories would see things quite the same way. Well, I'm happy to report that, should any of you have lingering concerns, I'm no longer the be-all, end-all when it comes to sources of information concerning that period in my life. Almost everyone I know has some web presence. As you know, you can always contact Lucy and Marion here or at their Twitter accounts. However, I'm here to let you know that there are other sources you can ask.

----

Tara, the girl I once forgot how she looked like, I recently discovered is writing her own blog. It's entitled The Guerra Girls and mostly concerns her two young daughters. She doesn't list an e-mail address, but it would be quick work to discover one linking from this site.

And DeAnn, my most recent girlfriend and the only girl I ever lived with, had a blog too, but I think it's recently been abandoned. However, if one is truly insistent about gathering her take on me, our history, or anything else under the sun, she does list her Facebook account publicly--DeAnn.

----

A caveat here--I don't actually keep in contact with either Tara or DeAnn. I believe the last time I spoke to Tara was a month after I started dating DeAnn. And I believe the last time DeAnn and I exchanged letters was a few years back. Therefore, I'm not telling you to rush right out and bother either of them. I don't know--I just kind of wanted it out there that the people in my life have their viewpoints too and that their lives continued to flourish and change after knowing me. It's a little easy for me to forget that simply because I stopped talking to them or living with them that their lives don't just suddenly end. When I write these pieces about them here, sometimes it sounds like they're merely characters in my biography, that all they ever are to me are secondary personalities whose only purpose is to reflect back upon me.

It just isn't true.

Every story I relate here is just that, a story. They're almost always taken out of context. They're almost always tailored to illustrate a message. But what they aren't are finite things. Most of them do not have a recognizable beginning, middle, and end. Indeed, most of the dust-ups, meaningful conversations, or important events are almost always precipitated by months and months of build-up and are almost always followed by months and months of fallout. It simply wouldn't be manageable to put every little detail involving these steps into my post here. It would just be impractical.

It's also important to me that you readers know that most times the people who know me reflect very little about our time together, whereas I tend to obsess. I'm equal parts happy for DeAnn and Tara for moving on and sad at the ease with which they did it. I glance through their pictures. I read through their posts. All I'm left is with the idea that they've moved on and the notion that in grand scheme of things I was but a momentary blip on their radars, barely worth mentioning.

So, yeah, sometimes it makes me feel awkward that I spend so much time spilling stories here about two young woman that I saw for a time and most times they spend very little time talking about me. Yet it's no more awkward than it needs to be. I'm not trying to hide anything here. I'm not trying to fabricate stories about them that casts them in an evil light. And it's all because I know that were I to say anything malicious or ill-conceived they're swimming around in the same waters as I do. I also know that if they ever get a hankering to come looking me up it would be an easy task to come find me here as it was an easy task for me to come find them at those two places.

If ever something I say comes into question concerning them, now you can go right to the source and ask them if my memory is their memory. Accountability is very important to me, especially when it comes to the facts of the matter. I mean--if this blog was mostly opinion after opinion as most blogs are then, yeah, it wouldn't matter so much if you could verify my sources. But because this blog is more or less about the story of my life, it should be reassuring to know that there are other witnesses that can be called into testify. That way I can rest assured that the truth will get out, whether or not it has been lost to me along the way.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

She Don't Put On A Show, For Nobody, Not Even You, She's Gonna Sit Alone, Why Would You Ever Make Her Feel So Small She'd Just Disappear?

--"Little Rosa", Letters to Cleo

I recently purchase Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games and read it the same day. I had been getting recommendations over the last few months from various acquaintances, but didn't believe it was going to be something I would enjoy.

Was I ever wrong.

For those of you who don't know The Hunger Games is:

a young-adult science fiction novel written by Suzanne Collins.... It introduces sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in a post-apocalyptic world in the country of Panem where North America once stood. This is where a powerful government working in a central city called the Capitol holds power. In the book, the Hunger Games are an annual televised event where the Capitol chooses one boy and one girl from each district to fight to the death. The Hunger Games exist to demonstrate not even children are above the Capitol's power.

The entire novel is violent, disturbing, and quite often shocking in its brutality. I mean--I wouldn't blink an eye if the same plot elements concerned adults, but the fact that the violence described often involves children as young as twelve it really made an impression on me. Like Lord of the Flies before it, there's something truly fascinating about stories concerning what happens when children are left in an environment where there are no consequences; where, indeed, violence is not only okay, but encouraged. It gives you an idea what society would be like if a semblance of order were not maintained.

Various critics have flocked to the novel's anti-war and anti-government bent, but for me I came from the novel that it was more speaking out against any situation where the strong oppress the weak. Granted, that's a huge spectrum of society to be criticizing, yet the author does a great job of personalizing the theme. When you read about the stronger districts' candidates banding together to deny the weaker districts' candidates food, tools, and much-needed medical supplies simply because they can you feel the injustice in a system where inequality is the law of the land, even if it is only in a game show/reality show packaging. When you read about how some kids due to their personality and social connections are granted boons like water and shelter from generous sponsors during the games, and how other kids hailing from the poorer districts receive no such gifts, it make you want to scream out in frustration at a system that is rigged to make the supposed rich get richer and the poor even poorer.

But I think the gravest message the novel gets across is the strong will always dominate the weak simply because they can. When twelve-year-old Rue, the youngest of competitors, is run through with a spear by one of the stronger competitors, you don't feel sad because she deserved to die any less than any of the competitors. You feel sad because she is described as the smallest competitor, as the youngest competitor. You feel sad because there was that skulking suspicion that she never had a prayer from the very beginning. You feel sad because you feel the inevitably of her demise strictly due to her physical stature and experience.

We've all been bullied before. We know how the drill works. However, that doesn't change the fact it feels amoral in some way. Personally, I know what it's like to feel that feeling of helplessness when somebody more aggressive or more willing to push their agenda upon you decides to torment you. More importantly, I know what it's like to impose my will on somebody weaker-willed than myself. In either case it's always the same; you're either the guy climbing over somebody to stay on top or you're the guy being climbed over. At that age there is no such arrangement that a stronger individual will assist a weaker individual if the two of them aren't already friends. In high school the order of the day is to constantly assert your authority by showcasing your competitiveness and your willingness to belittle someone.

However, I believe the book would lose a little something if the characters were merely a few years older. Bullying still happens once you reach your twenties, but I think it's less prevalent. People at that age learn to assert their authority in other ways. In most cases it isn't as important to raise yourself up by putting others down. More often than not it's more of achievement to raise yourself up without limiting someone else. I think that takes real strength.

That's why I think the book's great for its intended audience. It really captures what it's like to want power, to use power without a thought to anyone else, and what it's like to be powerless--three conditions that every teenager goes through.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Fate I Guess, But It Seems So Unfair, At Some Point, You've Gotta At Least Pretend To Care

--"Remember to Breathe", Dance Hall Crashers

"You wouldn't be anything without me," you heard him say again. "You think you know what you're doing, but you don't."

You let the words soak in even while you stumble at their implications. You're usually not one to let words said in anger affect you like this. On most occasions you would be firing back with equal vigor. Today is different, though. Today you just don't seem to have the energy to retaliate. You've let him weaken you.

It's not often you consent to a two-hour argument in person, let alone over the phone, but this discussion seemed important enough to see it out to its conclusion. Good or bad--however it ended up this was an issue that needed some semblance of closure. The only way that would happen is if you fought the urge to cease negotiations prematurely. Nope, you needed to ride this particular bucking bronco all the way into the corral however much it might bruise you. You knew it would hurt you, but, hell's bells, you've been hurt before. Hopefully, this time wouldn't be as bad as previous occasions where you were left struggling for explanations later on. You try to tell yourself this time will blow over quickly. It won't be anything you can't walk away from and it won't be the first time you ever allowed him to put you in a position of feeling weak and frustrated.

"What exactly are you upset about? Because it sounds to me you're more upset at me for defying you than anything solid," you say. "You have to give me something to work with here."

"You promised me you would stay home tonight, Breanne. That's set in stone."

"No, it ain't, Patrick. And even if it were, I'd hope you would be understanding enough to make an exception here. What I do isn't a yes or no question. There are going to be times when my plans change that I can't control and you're just going to have to accept that, you know?"

"Except this isn't one of those times. This isn't an emergency that you can't control. This is you choosing to go. This is you purposefully choosing to hurt me."

"Hell's bells, that is not my purpose. It ain't even close."

"Then what is your purpose, Breanne? What are you trying to do to me?"

You sigh slowly before answering.

"I'm just trying to live my life the best I know how, Eeyore. That's all I'm trying to do."

Even after a year of basically arguing over the same issues, it still surprises you that the two of you can have this argument. It feels like the thirtieth time you've ran around the same thorny bush. You would be more understanding if it hadn't already felt like you had resolved this issue, but the way things stand you don't ever know if this issue will be fully settled. For all you know the two could be arguing the same point of contention well into your elderly years. That's more likely a scenario than ever coming to a peaceful settlement.

Sometimes it really does feel like the two of you fancy arguing for the sake of arguing--him more than you. You don't know why it is. Maybe it has something to do with your natures, but there are times where little 'ole you can summon a reservoir of stubbornness enough to put out any semblance of common sense. Sometimes it's more important to you to win the argument in the end than to be right. It's the same way with him. Most times it's not who can present the more logical rationale for their side; most times it's who can outlast their competition into submission.

The scary prospect of it all is you don't know if that's a trait you picked up from him or if it's a trait you had inside you all along.
You would like to believe it was his bad habit you happened to pick up like a dirty bit of honey, but the truth is little 'ole you may have had the capacity for petulance from birth.

"Well, your living your life always seems to come at the expense of me being able to live mine. Why is that?"

"I don't know. It can't be helped I reckon."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"It means you don't have to let what I do influence your life as much as it does. You choose to let it."

"I can't help it if I care about you and that I want to feel close to you as often as possible, Breanne. I'm sorry."

"You don't have to apologize, Patrick. You just have to allow that being close doesn't mean being in contact with each other twenty-four seven."

"Not twenty-four seven. I don't think that's what I'm asking for here."

"It feels awfully close."

"That wasn't my intention."

"Well, as my daddy says, 'You may not have invited the bear over, but you still have to run once it gets here.'"

"I know."

You didn't really need to go out tonight. But more important than having actual plans was the idea that it was important you establish a demarcation of what you had the right to decide for yourself. It was all well and good that he wanted to be in your life, but it was your life. It was vital to your continued happiness that you retain the prerogative to decide for yourself how that life gets spent. You were arguing not for the right to go out with friends for a few hours, but for the right not to be under the thumb of your best friend, however well-meaning his intentions were.

You hear him on the other end of the life. You hear the desperation in his voice and you imagine what it's like for him. For you it's one night out. For him he must be picturing this as the beginning of the end, the height of the inevitable slide into obscurity.

"What are you afraid of? Are you scared that I'm going to like my friends here better than you?"

"Somewhat."

"It's never going to happen. No one's going to replace you. Not yet at least."

"It's that 'yet' that bothers me."

"Honestly, Patrick, I don't know how much more of these little 'ole discussions I can take. They're happening a bit too frequently for my tastes, you know?"

"I can't help the way I feel. I thought that you liked the way I speak my mind."

"Well, can you focus your mind on something other than how I choose to spend my time? Is that possible?"

"Sure," you hear him say before pausing, "but right now you're the most important thing in my life. And when it feels to me that I'm losing the most important thing in my life I can't but help responding to that. I don't want to let go of something that vital to me without putting up some kind of fight."

"If you don't let me go just a little, Eeyore, you might end up letting go of me a lot."

You hate making the threat. You hate the prospect of your fate ending up in that condition. Yet if there's one aspect of you life you're most proud of it's the fact you remain independent of everyone's expectations of you. You love people. You love helping people, of being kind, courteous, and caring as often as possible. You love that's people's opinion of you. But at the bottom of it all is the central belief that you're a good person because you choose to be and not because somebody is forcing you to be. And at the bottom of it all is the central belief that you are there for your friends because you choose to be and not because your friends force you to be that way. You have never been guilt-tripped into compliance and you're not about to start now.

You think it's peculiar that he's so intent on you staying home tonight. However it's the fact that he keeps trying to corral you into doing so be playing on your relationship with one another that puzzles you more. You have gotten used to his passive-aggressive manner of debating with you. Frankly, you've always preferred that to the times when you're screaming down each other's throats. But sometimes it's disconcerting how often he'll play the friendship card in the name of getting his way.

Can't he see how underhanded a tactic it is? Can't he realize how much it makes him appear villainous at times?

You know everyone's not perfect. Everyone has their flaws, you realize, but there is something to be said about dealing with a friend whose main tactic of keeping you close is preying upon your sense of loyalty. If he were a better friend your sense of loyalty would never come into question. It would just be assumed. There are times when you despise the idea that your friendship is a conditional state--"if you're my friend," "if you cared about me," "if you want me to be happy," &c.... If he can't realize how much you already give up for him than that's his failure as your best friend, not yours.

"I don't want that to happen, Breannie."

"Of course you don't. I don't want it to happen either. But right now you're on a path that's going to lead me to one of two conclusions. I'm either going to do as you say and stay miserable at home with you as my only friend or you're going to force my hand into ending this right here and now. Is that what you want to happen?"

"No."

"Then back off a little. I'm not saying you need to let go of me completely, but my wanting to break apart from the routine for one night shouldn't cause this much consternation."

"I just miss it when we can't talk."

"And that's not a bad thing. It's a good thing to miss me. It just means the next time we're able to talk you'll be that much happier to hear from me. And you know what?"

"What?"

"It just means that I'll be that much happier to hear from you too, Eeyore. Missing me for a couple of days ain't the end of the world. Missing me for the rest of your life would be, you know?"

"I think I understand what you're saying."

You prepare to hang up the phone, content that both of you had managed to dodge what could have been a major stumbling block. Yes, your mother was right, the two of you seemed to do nothing but argue with one another. But the difference was the eighty percent of the time the arguments seemed to end positively and without very many tears. Even in the other twenty percent of the time you two always managed to right the ship. As long as the both of you had the fight that whatever disagreements you had would be resolved before long you know the special thing you had built here continue into perpetuity.

That made these fights more than worth it.

"Then say good-bye to me, Patrick, and I shall speak at you later."

"Good night, Breannie mine, with your eyes so bright, tears so silvery, and my kisses still wet on your cheek."

Breanne

For Though They May Be Parted, There Is Still A Chance That They Will See, There Will Be An Answer, Let It Be

--"Let It Be", The Beatles

One of my clients the other day made the remark that all folks eventually lose touch with their friends from high school. I had never stopped to contemplate that thought before but can see the truth behind it. Of all the folks I consider my friends the majority of them are people I was friends with in college. Otherwise, they're the type of friends I've known all my life.

I don't know why this is. It just is. I do have some thoughts, though. My theory is that the friends I've known all my life were and still are the people I've just come to count on simply due to the fact they've been around the longest, you know. As my daddy says, you only need to learn to ride a horse once, and you only need to learn what a true friend is once. Those early memories of who and what I look for as far as decency in a human being are particularly strong. I reckon they're the kind of feelings that are easily dismissed. Friends like Fawn, Patrick, and even Katie I would lump into this group.

On the other hand, it can't be a coincidence that Fanny and Anna, the two gals I dormed with are still my girls even after almost ten years. The college years are the real formative years. I know everyone says high school's where all the development takes place. While that might be true, I reckon it's the decisions we make once we reach adulthood that define us for the rest of our lives. Hell's bells, we're only children for a very short time and we're teenagers for an even shorter bit. But once we're old, well, we're old for a very long time. The friends you first make as an adult set the pattern for every other friend you make from that point on. The friends that only know us as the responsible, world weary, lazy, and even occasionally wicked people we know ourselves to be are the friends that aren't going to have to endure any further changes to our temperament. They know what to expect of us at the point. They know what they're in for.

High school friends unfortunately have got to endure the most change. They first see us when we're just beginning to find ourselves. Often times the person we came into that period in our lives as isn't the person we are when we leave. I found it hard to find traction as a human being at that point if only because my desires and wishes were in a constant state of flux. I made friends, of course, but I was only fooling myself into thinking they were anything but temporary. The sad state of affairs is that we all came in attending different schools in different cities and we most assuredly left in the come state of affairs, you know?

This isn't to say I didn't attempt to stay friends with a majority of them. There was a time there where I would invite the twenty to thirty people I felt closest to during high school to all my major functions. Birthdays, get-togethers, even the occasional girls' night out--I would send out an extremely warm letter of invitation to all of them. As time grew on the folks who kept showing up became fewer and fewer until within a few years it was pointless for me to even send out a customary invite. We both knew what the answer would be.

I'd like to think there is still hope of making a connection again at same later date. I have hope that every person we come across is worth knowing in some shape or form. I acknowledge that some of my friends from high school were there to see some fairly momentous events in my life--getting my driver's license, living through my first friend dying, losing my virginity, &c.... It ain't like I'm eager to forget them. I would definitely welcome them back with open arms and an open door to my home if one were to make that call to me one night.

Yet that's the thing about losing touch. Everyone would welcome a call, but no one ever deems it important enough to make that call because of the fact it has been so long. No one ever thinks friends who are different than you remember them are worth saving once they've been classified as being not so.

So, yeah, there's a chance I could be bumping into one of them one day and finding the friendship rekindled. There's always that hope. But for the time being, my friends from high school are like the songs I listened to back then. It always feels good to hear them every once in a while, but they're not the kind of songs I actively look for any more. They simply aren't the songs I listen to these days and they simply aren't my all-time favorites.

They were what they were, momentary pieces of happiness that got me through a tumultuous time in my life. That is all.

Breanne

Sometimes In The Midst Of My Worries, I Feel The Need, But It's Painful To Me To Look, I Look Out The Back Window, And Watch You, I See You Disappear

--"About The Picture", Smoosh

Speaking of Little Manhattan, I was watching it again tonight. I'm telling you I feel like watching that movie every single time the McRib commercial comes on. My response is almost Pavlovian--it's that consistent.

I found myself watching the sequence in which Gabe and Rosemary go to visit the prospective apartment in the Village. Basically, they sneak out of their respective households during a summer day without telling their parent where they're going and what they'll be doing. They spend the day riding the subway farther than either have been by themselves to go visit a promising new apartment for Gabe's dad. After that they ride his scooter all the way along the Hudson till they get home. Not only is it a charming scene of a burgeoning couple just finding their feet, but it's a sequence that I've always appreciated for its simplicity. It isn't like they run away or the end up going somewhere impressively far. They manage to stay in the city and probably are only gone for six hours.

It's the idea of getting away that ties it altogether and makes it one of my favorite parts of the movie. It's the picture I have in my head of what first love is supposed to look like. Doing all these small things together that from the outside seem rather plain, but to the people involved end up being a lifetime memory. It's one of those moments that make you feel confused and wonderful and happy all at the same time. Indeed, I'd put the experience up as one of those moments that everyone should have the pleasure of going through.

----

As some of you may know, I never had one of those moments. I'm what some call a late bloomer. I never even started seriously going out with anyone until I was well into college. As a result I missed out on all the confusing, maddening experience of imbuing all those tiny moments with significance. For me, the first moments going out with Lucy or Tara were pre-planned moments where I was already driving and able to make reservations at places to eat. They certainly weren't the organic surprises of fate that childhood romances seem chock full of. They certainly weren't anything I would call a "you had to be there" moments in my life.

This isn't to say that my moment were any less significant to me, just that what should have been a phase I grew into was instead the phase I started with. Whereas everyone got to see this film we call love from the beginning, it's rather like I walked in somewhere in the middle.

And I would have to say that I've always felt the absence somewhat. Indeed, that's why Brandy thinks I'm so many of my favorite themes in music, movies, and plain stories revolve around the themes of coming of age and/or first love; because I feel the emptiness so thoroughly in my own life. She believes that every time I grow enamored with a movie like Little Manhattan it's because I'm trying to live vicariously through them to fill in the holes of my own lack of childhood flirtations and puppy love. For the most part I would have to agree with her.

Falling in love when you're already in your twenties just isn't the same as falling in love when you're ten or eleven or twelve. That's the age it's supposed to hit you like a freight train. That particular train just never came for me, I guess. When I write a story like The Carisa Meridian, with the eleven-year-old protagonist falling in love with the ten-year-old girl down the block it's because I want that life. A lot of my stories end up being like that--adolescent and young adult individuals all reminiscing Wonder Years style about growing up emotionally as well as physically.

It's also why Epcot believes I get so fixated on befriending people around the fourteen-fifteen mark because it's the age where I believe that I wanted to be in love so badly and it just never happened. I mean--the evidence speaks for itself. Going in order--I met Jina when she was twelve but I didn't start having feelings for her until I went to go meet her on her fifteen birthday. The same for Breanne--I met her when she was thirteen, but I didn't allow myself to feel anything for her until she was well fourteen. Tara--sixteen and I was madly in love with her right away. Even DeAnn, as the oldest, was only nineteen when I met her and we started going out.

And that's only the people I actually started liking. If you go through the list of friends I made in the last few years the same pattern emerges. Carly? I met her when she was fifteen. The same thing with Toby. There's something about that age that just draws me as well as appearances might draw something.

Somewhere along the way I just equated making a new connection with folks of that age. And since I can't go back to being fifteen, I do the next best thing and ostensibly only let new people into my life who are of that age.


to myself I know
it's all about the picture

I know it's a silly criteria to fixate on, but it's kind of my version of a mid-life crisis. However, instead of hitting me all at once once I got into my thirties it's a condition I've had most of my adult life. One part of my mind knows I missed my opportunity to fall in love that first time when I was that age, but another part of my brain keeps trying to get a second chance at it. That's why I keep flying out to all these places to "hang out" with girls half my age. That's why I keep trying to keep in touch with my friends here who fall into the demographic--not because I'm solely into them for them, but because I'm into what they represent. I want that second chance and that's the only manner in which I know how to get it.

Hell, the closest I ever came to having a whole day with a girl when I was the appropriate age was the day I got lost at Epcot with, ironically, Epcot. The day back in 2001 when Brandy and I scampered around that particular Disneyworld park is as close to having those tiny moments when I was fifteen with a female human being. The only problem was I wasn't in like, let alone love, with her. I'd only met her that day so, as special and as memorable as that day was, it hardly qualifies as one of those sweaty palms "I'm all confused" type of experiences everybody else can relate to.

Nope, I was robbed of that forever. My feeble attempts to get them back can do nothing substantial to change that. Having a Toby or a Carly in my life now, while good, just isn't a replacement for what I imagine the experience would have been if I had had it then.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Wake Up The Dawn And Ask Her Why, A Dreamer Dreams, She Never Dies, Wipe That Tear Away Now From Your Eye

--"Champagne Supernova", Oasis

SUNRISE ALONG SHORE
by E. Patrick Taroc

Fair heart, another amber Sun
And another day without you
At that hour alighted anew,
At that moment made its coming.
Saddened, this letter I begun
That I might allay this numbing
At having none to share that scene
Except she my mirror can glean.
And so penned these words of woe
That, by chance, my own might wane--
Far too long they within remain
If left tacit beneath my tears.
My sorrow I felt forced to show
To you, who still now quells my fears
By reading these unsteady lines,
And myself, who for you now pines.

I would like to hear you once more,
But an ocean severs us two;
To journey those paths we once knew,
But no common road spans the break.
Yet these phrases shall reach your shore
And their message you shall not mistake:
One shared sunrise I left you then
And one sunrise I'll share again.

(11/27/94) Copyright 1994, 2010 E. Patrick Taroc

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

And Love, Such A Silly Game We Play, Oh, Like A Summer's Day In May, What Is Love, What Is Love? I Just Want It To Be Love

--"Love", Matt White

The first time I heard Matt White's "Love" was in the film Little Manhattan. As soon as I heard it I knew I liked it. It had this light jazzy sound to it that complimented the movie well. Plus, the lyrics with their focus on how love is this indefinable quality that's filled with joy paralleled my own viewpoint on the subject. I made it a point to track down the title and artist of the track so that I might place in regular rotation on my playlists.

But the biggest selling point of the track was the movie itself. It went so well with the film that I just associated it as the main musical theme of the story even though on the soundtrack it isn't listed as such. I mean--they never exactly play it repeatedly throughout the film and it doesn't provide a key turning point in the plot. It's just a pleasant sounding song that really caught my ear upon my first listen. And, since I really am still enamored of the film, I continue to be enamored of the track it spawned for me. For me this song is part and parcel of the larger film it came from.


who can tell me? I am lost.
I just think that I am strong.

You can thus imagine my surprise when I heard McDonald's recent use of the song to advertise their McRib sandwich. Now I'm a huge proponent of the delectable offering, but it honestly irks me that they have appropriated this particular song for their own devices. Normally I don't mind so much the relative ease with which one song can be used for multiple purposes. I myself am tickled most of the time when I hear a song I haven't heard in a while pop up in a newer advertisement. It's also kind of cool when a song that was made popular from a movie in my youth gets recycled in a newer movie. I always think how it's wonderful that it gets exposure to a younger generation than the one I hail from--kind of like passing the torch of classic ditties down.

But damn it all, "Love" is and always should be Little Manhattan's and Little Manhattan's alone. They are just some songs that are synonymous with one particular place, one particular moment in time, or one particular element of one's life that it's rather sacrilegious to ever think of them linked to something else entirely.

I wouldn't say it spoils the song for me, but it definitely calls undue attention away from where people should first encounter in. Admittedly, it isn't misused entirely in the McDonald's ad, but it definitely lacks the "awwwWWWwww" moment it has when it's first heard in the film. I believe that's what annoys me, that people's first impression of this song is going to be from some food advert instead of in its proper context of as the backdrop to an excellent coming-of-age/love story. For an entire group of people it's going to be a song that's dismissed because of its commercial use instead of being something to be cherished like it is for me.

I don't know--I know it's just a song. But when a song takes on meaning greater than itself the way this song has it's almost like losing a bit of the magic when you know other people are experiencing it the wrong way. For me it's like seeing the ocean at night driving by in a car when you're half-tired instead of in its full glory, standing on the shore under the noontime sun. It's like having a steak cooked by Applebee's instead of a steak cooked at a proper steakhouse. It's taking a plane trip to the city ten miles away from you instead of the other side of the country.

Sure, they're both the same song, but the context in which it's heard is the thin line between making a memory that will last a lifetime and a memory that lasts only minutes.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

'Cause We've Shared The Laughter And The Pain, And Even Shared The Tears, You're The Only One Who Ever Knew Me At All

--"Against All Odds", Phil Collins

Continued from And Maybe Then You'll Hear The Words That I've Been Singing, It's Funny When You're Dead How People Start Listening...

Lily Feld was having a problem corralling her children. Claire, the younger of the two, was refusing to come out of the bathroom even while Jimmy, ever impatient, stood pounding at the door. Claire only recently had learned to go to the bathroom by herself and now she was taking full advantage of her newfound independence.

"Come on, Disgusting," Lily heard her son say, "You've been in there for thirty minutes. What are you doing in there?" Jimmy was eleven, but had already mastered the finer points of teasing his sister. Disgusting was a relatively new nickname he had taken to using. It had served its purpose, though, if the recent crying jag Lily had to endure on the first night of their family's vacation to L.A. had been any indication. Now that they were well into their fifth day she feared that its effectiveness may have worn off. Worse yet, because the pallor had diminished, Lily feared that it might very well be a nickname that stuck with Claire for some years yet. She could imagine no worse fate than Claire going through her school years being shackled with the nickname of Disgusting.

"Don't call your sister that," Lily abruptly reminded Jimmy.

"But, mom, she's hogging the bathroom again. She does this every time we get back to the hotel room."

"I know. Your sister's learning to do things on her own. We've just got to make allowances for her for the time being. It wasn't that long ago that you were learning to go to the bathroom by yourself either, remember?"

She watched as Jimmy scrunched up his face severely.

"Aw, mom, that's disgusting."

"Yeah, well," she began. "Go find your dad by the pool. He's probably wondering what's keeping you anyway. I'll get Lily to come out and I'll take her downstairs when she's ready."

"But dad told me to wait for her...."

"And I'm telling you different."

She watched as Jimmy's came up slowly in their particular way. When they came down he finally started making his way to the hotel room door. He opened his mouth one last time as he was turning the knob.

"I'm going. But if he tells me that I didn't listen to him..."

"Then you have my permission to throw me under the bus all you want, son. How's that?"

"Whatever, mom."

And then Jimmy was gone.

Lily loved her son with all her heart, but it was painfully obvious which parent he took after. She was the more patient of her and Alan. Alan was always preaching to their kids about keeping each other safe. Jimmy, being the eldest, bore the brunt of it. You've got to watch out for your sister. She's too little to look out for herself just yet. He was forever drilling that into Jimmy's head. How little Claire was, how defenseless she was--those are the things that Jimmy grew up hearing since he was, well, Claire's age. Never mind caring about her or loving her--that part Alan assumed came with his initial instructions.

If there was one directive Lily wanted her son to grow up abiding by it was the one where he needed to love his sister all his life. And not just love her, but show her that he loved her in the little ways most people often miss. For one, he would have to outgrow the name calling. That would just not do.

She remembered she had never taken to calling Syl any derogatory names when she was younger.

She knocked on the bathroom door softly.

"Claire? Are you alright in there?"

"Yes," she heard the peep come from the other side.

"Because if you need any help in there I'm right here, honey."

"Okay."

"Okay," Lily said, smiling to herself. She had to hand it to her daughter. Claire wasn't given to wild bursts of emotion like most kids her age. She simply went through life plugging away with little complaining. Lily also knew which parent her daughter was most like as well.

Growing up, Lily didn't share the same similarities with her parents. She knew them to be highly emotional people from the get-go. They loved her, sure, but it was the manner in which they showed their love that always bothered Lily. They weren't content to merely say it once or twice a week, or show it upon occasion. They were the type of people who could literally smother you in kisses. It was always a source of concern for Lily. She felt constrained by their insistence that she give as much as she got. She was made to feel inferior subtly by her lack of outpouring of emotions.

It was funny. She didn't feel much like a robot out in the real world--only among her family.

She often wondered if it was some rebellion characteristic that was inherent in every family. She wondered if she'd been born into a family of shepherds if she--she didn't know--would somehow want to be a cobbler just to spite them. She contemplated whether or not there's a black sheep born into every generation. Because if there was then she could have some semblance of an excuse why she had been made to feel different all her life for loving her family less visibly, less ostentatiously, than they loved her.

She'd done okay, she thought. She had managed to raise a family according to her worldview of loving in the small ways and they didn't seem to have suffered for it, had they? Of course they hadn't suffered through a tragedy like her own family had. She wondered if that had been the point when everything had changed for them, when she had started to notice how much more insistent their love for one another had grown.

Lily turned on the television in her hotel room while she waited for her daughter to finish her business in the bathroom. On the screen slowly appeared the face of her sister Sylvia.


and there's nothing left to remind me
just the memory of your face

Syl was on yet another talk show. This one was called Strange Life and seemed to be dealing with run-of-the-mill "whitelight" witnesses, people who supposedly were to have died and come back to life. Sylvia seemed to be the guest of honor, even though her story didn't exactly jibe with the remaining guests.

Lily sat down on the edge of the bed her and her husband shared to watch. Her sister looked old, she thought. It was a painful reminder of how old the two of them had gotten in the intermittent years between when the incident happened and now. It was especially excruciating when they flashed up a picture of Syl at the time when she went missing right next to the present-day version.

As usual, Sylvia was beaming brightly on stage. Lily had to give her credit, Sylvia never had grown disgruntled over the years. She had never balked when another reporter or tv host asked her to repeat the details of her unique story for an audience that had probably had already heard it in their life. She was the "Time-Traveling Toddler"--which was a complete misnomer since Sylvia had been seven at the time of her disappearance. She was the "Nowhere Girl from Navoo," a name Lily had always liked. Nowhere Girl sounded much more exotic than the rest of the names Sylvia had been called. Whatever appellation they'd applied to her, Sylvia soaked it all in with a laugh. She knew her fate was sealed for being a freak. She never saw much the point of fighting against it. Indeed, she never turned down an interview. She never got mad when she was stopped on the street to have her picture taken. She was very complicit in the dozen or so books that had been written about her.

When they were teenagers, many years after she had come back, she had told Lily, "We all want to be famous for something. We all want to make an impact. This is my chance, this is my shot." And that's how she lived, embracing the destiny that life had bestowed upon her. Some of her critics had said she was milking what had to be a hoax for all its worth, but Lily knew her sister better. Sylvia was just like her parents. She had to do everything big and grandiose because if the world didn't take notice than it couldn't be real.

Meanwhile, Lily had been the one that had tried to keep a lid on all the hoopla surrounding their lives. She never volunteered the information that she, in fact, was the sister of "The Nowhere Girl." Why would she? It was nobody's business who she was related to. It was nobody's concern what the details were of the ordeal that her family had survived through. They hadn't seen the year of suffering her poor mother had gone through, worrying what had happened to their precious daughter. They hadn't been there when her father had taken her out "one more time" to search the outlying areas of the town in the vain hope she was would once more turn up. They hadn't earned the right to know the story at all.

All the world knew was the happy, if incredible, outcome. They knew nothing of the tragedy that had almost been.

Watching her sister on the tv yet again, fielding questions from the all too eager audience, she didn't feel the pangs of anger that her sister had grown famous and wealthy trading upon her life story. It was her life story, after all. She was entitled to tell it to whomever she wished. If anything, Lily felt rather sad for her sister. She would never know what it was like to lead a normal life. She would never have a family like Lily had. She would never settle down. She was destined to be "The Nowhere Girl" for eternity.

Lily had it easy. The questions and the requests for interviews had stopped once she had married. Nobody wanted to interview Lily Feld--not like they had once wanted to interview Lily Dunning. That was one thing she was glad about her new life. She had never wanted any bit of the spotlight in the first place. It was a large comfort when that part of her life came to an end. She felt like she finally had permission to begin the new phase of her life. This phase was quieter, less garish. It was more subdued like Lily wanted.

The biggest worry she had these days was how to get her much too eager daughter out of the bathroom and not being put on display on national news.

Lily decided to pick up the phone while she watched the show. It had been too long since she had talked to Sylvia--almost a month now. She had almost forgotten to tell her of Claire's big achievement and how much Jimmy had grown over the summer. She figured Sylvia would like to hear that.

Mom and dad, they treated Sylvia like a miracle in the flesh ever since she had come back to them. Lily always held them responsible for fanning the flames of Sylvia's ego, when up until then she had been relatively laid-back--well, as laid-back as most people were in their family. But Lily? Lily always treated Syl like she'd always treated her. She treated her like the annoying little sister she had been. She treated her like she was her mentor and role model, two titles she felt she had never lost even after the incident. In short, she treated her like she loved her, which she had never stopped doing even when Sylvia had disappeared.

She wanted to be the one normal person in Sylvia's life.

When everybody else called her to be seen with her in public and get her to do yet another signing or appearance, Lily could still ring her up merely to catch up with her. She could always her the gratitude in her sister's voice. Lily was the one thing that was simple in Sylvia's life; she was the one person who still knew her the best.

After a few rings she heard Syl pick up the phone.

"Hey, Syl, it's me. I just called to see how you were doing."

Breanne