My Life in a Nutshell

Here are some of my early ramblings on my memoirs.... let me know what you think...this is basically from early memories to right before going to kindergarten.

Once upon a time, would be a good way to start these thoughts, if it was in fact a fiction. If this was truly a figment of a child’s imagination, or a make believe tale that has been spun over and over, until it makes a beautiful yarn, which woven together makes a spectacular tapestry, “Once upon a time” would be an excellent phrase. However, this is not a fictional story. This is a story that is a common story to most people, but the specifics are known only to me, and by known, I mean fading recollections that are as precious to me as gold.

There are so many experiences in my life that I wish that I could recall. Some of them are easier to remember when confronted with certain tastes, smells, sights, and a sudden flash of memory comes back to me, if only for a brief moment. Those moments fade quicker and quicker as more memories are introduced to my life and my mind.

If ever anyone should ever read these that may or may not take part in these memories or circumstances, and may have a different perspective than mine...and that’s fine...feel free to throw your memories in when applicable. These stories (and by stories, I mean histories) will be as close to chronological as possible, but the best that I can do, is get them close to the correct timeframe that they happened. Some of these stories will be funny, some sad, some gross, and many probably have no real classification.

One of the first memories of my childhood is sitting in my yard on a blanket. I’ve been told that the reason why this is because as a toddler, I hated the feel of grass on my feet, and if I was barefoot on a blanket in the middle of the yard, I was “fenced in”. This was until I got brave enough to make a brake for it, and running across the alley that went along my back yard, (behind the garage and the shed, which are no longer there), and making my way to an old lady’s house. I think her name was Maxine, or Millie or something, but I just remember that it was a poopy greenish/brown colored house. I would just wander into her yard, and often straight into her house without knocking. I’m sure by today’s standards that would be strange, but back then, I think it was kind of being a friendly neighbor.

When I was a little older I began to be interested in baseball, which I’m sure delighted my father greatly. Daily, there were kids playing baseball in our yard. This is because it was a good size field and it even had a fence at the back of the yard, past the alley. However, if you hit it over the fence, it was an automatic out, because the old woman that lived there would not let you retrieve the ball, and would often call to parents to complain about their kids. Some of the kids I remember from the neighborhood were people like David Wheatley, Tony Phillips, Murrell Kuntz (sp?), Mike Potts, among many others.

Another popular member of the baseball gang (because I was too small really to play, but I always tried) was my dog Spot. Spot was my dog that we adopted from the dog kennel. He was an all white dog as a puppy, but as he got older, he became spotted with large brown spots. He was my first pet, and I loved that dog, but the dogcatcher eventually took him away because he wandered into the mean lady’s yard and she had him taken away.

On time my family took me to Kings Island for the day. I remember riding the rides, the bumper cars, and stuff like that. However, my first experience with a roller coaster was the Beastie.... seeing it now, its so small and ridiculous, but at the time, I thought it was great...until I got on it. I remember riding up that first hill, and reaching the top, and feeling nothing but utter terror. I remember screaming all the way down the hill...”GET ME OFF THIS THING” and my mom laughing at me and saying “its too late now!” I didn’t ride another roller coaster knowingly until I was a junior in High School. I did ride Space Mountain at Disneyland when I was 5...but I just thought it was some cool ride about space like ‘Its a Small World’ is about the world. I was deceived.

My first home was on Connecticut Avenue (I learned to spell Connecticut much later in life, and use spell check every time I have to type it, just in case). My house was on top of a pretty good size hill in the city of Wellston, surrounded on two sides by an alley/driveway, in front by a street, and on the other side by a hill. Across the street, and down the hill lived my first “love”, Amy Wright. I was 4, and I got a really cool present for my birthday, a C.H.I.Ps Big Wheel. As I became braver, I would ride my big wheel down the hill every day to see Amy (and her brother Daryl, but mostly just Amy). She had an Atari, which was my first experience with home video games. (It was all downhill from there, but I digress). I also played games in her room, like some sort of memory game, and also I believe that she had an Orphan Annie play set, or maybe it was barbies, but I would play some with those too, but not too much. (Eh hem)...I mostly wanted to play Atari, and always came up with some excuse not to help clean up because, well, I was lazy.

On one of these occasions, I was outside playing with neighborhood kids, and my mom called for me to come home from the front porch (and by called, I mean, yelled for me to get my butt home). I said “just a minute mom”, a few minutes later, she called again...”just a minute mom”...the third time, no calling, but I see her walking down the hill to get me, belt in hand. Now, remember I’m no older than 4 or 5, so I take off running up the hill. Halfway down this hill, the Potts residence had their own bee hive/honey hive, and my mom came down on one side. I will never forget my thinking in this one, I thought, “my mom is old, and I’m young, and old people are slow, and young people are fast, so I can outrun my mom back up the hill.” Ha! I took the other way around the beehive, but somehow my mom caught me. I was belted all the rest of the way up the hill. Ah, memories. (Also, side note, I could never figure out how my mom always knew when I was jumping on the bed when I was upstairs, and she was downstairs in the kitchen. I was belted many times for that...you would’ve thought I’d learn that mom’s always know.)

One of my first memories of my sister Kathy is that she drove a red car of some sort that had T-tops, and she too was faster than me even though she was “old” and I was young. She is about 13 or 14 years older than me, I can never remember exactly. Anyways, I remember going to see one of her friends, Frank, that lived on the other side of Jackson somewhere, near the Pike County line. Two things I remember, first, I remember her letting me steer my dad’s Chevy van on the “App” when I was like 4 or 5, and I remember she really liked to smoke “make your own” cigarettes. I always wondered why she had some cigarettes in a box, and others were pretty delicate, and needed to be rolled up and held with a pair of tweezers or something. I also remember that I liked the smell. Not until I was in high school and I smelled that special aroma again, did I realize exactly what was special about those cigarettes. Oh Mary Jane, I never really knew ya, and that’s ok too. I had my fill I’m sure as a 5 year old.

We had HBO on our TV at home. I remember watching Star Wars just about every time it was on. I usually didn’t really pay attention to the movie until the death star became involved. Light Sabers, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia (rowr), and Darth Vader. That was before George Lucas screwed up the saga by making those horrible prequels. I did practice the force, but I learned at an early age that I would never be a true Jedi. Also, someone should’ve sued Indiana Jones for being misleading about Archaeology. I wasted a good few months of my life dreaming of being an adventurous Archaeologist. Damn George Lucas.

My first best friend, I met at the downtown “greasy spoon”, Lee and Helens. He was a good friend. His name was Toy. Actually, it was Troy. Troy Smith. I just remember mis-hearing his introduction, and was like, Dude, Toy is a weird name. Luckily, that wasn’t his real name.

Now, in kindergarten my teacher was Mrs. Swonger. I loved Mrs. Swonger. I remember some very key things that were obviously very important in my life. One thing is that, there were two little black birds sitting on a hill, one named Jack, the other named Jill...they both flew away...and they came back. Also, that it sucked that my birthday was in the summer, because everyone got to pick all the cool toys for their birthdays throughout the year. I got stuck with some stupid suction cup eyeball that leaves a hickey on your forehead if you leave it on too long...at least that’s what I’ve heard.

Recess was a great time. There was a group of bushes and trees in the Kindergarten playground, that had many cool things for kids to play in, like snakes, sticks, and lots of thorns. We as boys would use this as our base to keep out the girls, which even at that age didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Don’t we WANT girls around? I didn’t get the whole cootie concept.

Two kids that I remember from that awesome kindergarten class and not for the best reasons, I’m guessing. One was a kid named Brad Smith. He was awesome because he ate crayons, and paste, dude we picked on him so bad. I think I pushed him off the last little springy, rocky thing that looked like a duck one day because I wanted on it. (Yeah, I was THAT kid...kind of funny looking back on it) Another kid was a kid named Timmy Massie. He got sent to the principal one the first day, and I learned that day that I did NOT want to go to the principal, because Timmy told us that he got paddled with the board...and not only that, but the board had nails sticking out of it, and he peed out his butt that night through all the holes it made on his hiney. I always wondered if that was true.... I guess I’ll never know for sure.

My first year of riding the school bus was in kindergarten as well. Things that I will never forget about kindergarten school bus riding. I remember getting lost on the school bus.... and everyone in my family getting freaked out because I didn’t ride the bus home. My old senile babysitter Maxine (whom I never liked) told me that I was riding a different bus home after school, so I did. Evil woman. (She also threatened to cut my finger off if she caught me picking my nose again, and made me eat sloppy joes, which always made me gag, and I still hate). Also, one day on the school bus, I got sick. I remember sitting by Buddy Shook (yes, that was his name) and it just happened.... no it wasn’t vomit. I crapped my pants.... not normal crap, but actual sickliness crap...yeah, I was THAT kid. Dad wasn’t happy with me that day, and I couldn’t figure out why. Its not like I did it on purpose.... and finally, I learned sign language on the school bus from Shane Long. I also learned that my mom didn’t think it was a good sign to learn, even if I didn’t do it with the right finger. (Which I was quick to point out)

Some people may remember that for a few years I had to wear a leg brace on my right leg. This was because I had a degenerative hip condition called Leg Perthes. It was an awesome brace. Imagine a big metal brace, not unlike the braces that Forrest Gump wore, that went straight up to my hip. I couldn’t bend my knee with that stupid thing on. I remember the day I hurt my hip. I was jumping down the stairs, and I landed, and couldn’t get back up. My mom yelled at me to not crawl like a baby, until she realized that I couldn’t get up to walk. It was that day, in which my quest to be a future Olympian was derailed.

At this time, I went on my first trip to California. At this time, I met my grandparents (that I remember) and my uncles and cousins. I remember going to sea world with my cousin Elsa, and Disneyland with everyone. I already mentioned my time on Space Mountain, this was also the time that I learned that the characters that walked around Disneyland, weren’t really the actual characters, but people in suits. What a total let down.

I was a decently smart kid, and while in kindergarten, I was able to move up to the first grade in reading. For part of the Christmas program, I was asked to read from the bible the Christmas story. So I sat on Mrs. Swonger’s lap and I read word for word what was there, and only had trouble with the words, Bethlehem and Nazareth. You couldn’t do that now in school, sometimes I think that’s good, and sometimes I think it’s horrible. If only life were more simple nowadays.

I also had another friend that lived down the street from me, or at least it was his grandmother’s house. Toby was a good friend, and every time we went for a walk as a family or even drove by his grandma’s house we would stop by and we would go play around back on the swing set. One day my dad was driving us in his Chevy van to go to Vacation Bible School at some church. Toby and I were sharing the front bucket seat on the way. I didn’t really like to share much, especially my seat, and as I said before, I thought I was a Jedi. These special powers were confirmed, when, on the way to VBS, I turned to the door, pointed at it, and said, OPEN SESAME, and it did. Centripetal force did its job as we were driving around the street corner, and out flew Toby into the street. For some reason, he still wanted to be friends with me after that, and we even continued on to VBS. I also remember playing superheroes with him, trying to hone my obviously developing skills. My heroes of choice were either superman, or Spiderman (even had the under roos of both), and his superhero of choice was Wonder Woman. We defeated many villains, including Lex Luthor, and Darth Vader.

In first grade I was in Mrs. Featheroff’s class. Luckily I didn’t have to spell her name much, because that’s rough going for a first grader. I remember being in her class with my girl, Amy, and she had the choice to sit by Patrick Denney or me. She chose Patrick. Broke my heart, and I could never take her back after that.

Mrs. Featheroff also taught me how to spell pumpkin, and that in some words sometimes you can’t hear all the letters that are in that word. It is not pumkin, but pumpkin. She also had a daughter who was a couple of years older than us that always came to visit her mom. She was SO hot. I looked forward to the time that she came to visit in class, just so I could see her. Yeah, I think she was rockin’ with her blonde feathered hair.

It was at an early age that I realized that I would have to be the sweet, caring guy to ever get the girl. Since I had that stupid brace on my leg, I couldn’t run and play tag like the other kids, or climb on the jungle gym, or swing on the swings with it. However, if I could kick someone with it, it inflicted serious pain, I just couldn’t catch anyone. So, at recess when we played “kiss chase”, the girls that didn’t want to be kissed or caught would always hide by me to be their protector because if I got them with my brace, they were crying. Yeah, I was always lookin’ out for the ladies.

One of the major things that happened during my first grade year, was finding out my parents were getting a divorce. I remember the day, and how I reacted to it. I didn’t really understand it very well, I just knew that my mom and dad weren’t going to live together anymore and I didn’t know anyone else going through it. I remember my dad asking if I wanted to come see his new house, and I was already planning on going to see David and Joey Riepenhoff at their house because they were good friends of mine. I chose David and Joey. I realize I was just a kid and I did just what seemed more exciting to me at the time, but sometimes I wish I just went to see my dad’s apartment that first time. I have since learned a lot more details in this situation, and well, let’s just say that it wasn’t just because they didn’t want to be married anymore like I was told.

I remember going to spend the weekends with my dad, and just goofing off mostly with him. He bought a VCR and every weekend we would go and rent movies from Steve Martin Video. I remember the first time we used the VCR was to watch “Super girl” starring Helen Slater. When the movie was over, we just pushed rewind, and it took FOREVER to rewind and we watched the whole movie moving rapidly backwards to get to the beginning. We didn’t learn until a few weeks later that if you push stop before you push rewind, it goes a heck of a lot faster, and you don’t have to watch it. How far have we come since the VHS tape? Crazy. (Side note: The invention of the VCR also introduced me to something very extraordinary...Boobs. I’ll never forget watching Police Academy over and over just to see them. I always wished I was Mahoney, and wanted to be a police officer because I thought you got to see them all the time. What a great thing.)

Also, I had a tire swing in the back yard at my dad’s apartment, and there was a kid that lived next door to those apartments (once again, actually his grandparents). Little Stevie Green. I used to go over there and race big wheel and bicycle and usually got thrashed. I couldn’t ride a bike yet because of my brace had kept me from being able to learn. Stevie and I spent a lot of time together over the next few years, because eventually I moved next to his house with my mom. He got me into lots of trouble. (More on that later)

In the first grade, I was moved up to second grade reading, because I had everyone fooled into think that I was somewhat smart. I had it figured out that I would continue to read a grade ahead all the way through school and I would be like the envy of all kids in Wellston. When I was supposed to move up to the next grade, I was taken to the new classroom to meet my next teacher. After introducing herself, the second grade teacher asked if anyone had any questions for her. (Obviously meaning about class and the 2nd grade) My profound question was, “why did God make it so boys are always older than the girls they marry?”(I have no idea why I asked that question) Well, the teacher shot that down by saying that she was in fact, older than her husband.

Well, I never made it to that 2nd grade class at Bundy Elementary, because obviously one of the consequences of my parents divorce was not going to school at Wellston again, at least for a while. My mom transferred me to St. Peter and Paul, the local catholic school. My teacher’s name was Sister Marie Emmanuel, and I think that the reason why she became a nun was because to me, she was as mean as a rattlesnake. She had to do her penance by teaching young impressionable kids that obviously drove her crazy. She talked to us about sin, and how it was like a dark spot on your soul, which was on your forehead. I then nightly went home and took a bath and scrubbed as hard as I could to get that spot off using soap and a washcloth. Somehow, I don’t think it ever worked though.

We had a school program that year that we had to practice weekly for. We were supposed to learn how to do square dancing. Luckily for me, I was taken away on a vacation to Myrtle Beach, and couldn’t participate. However, a couple of weeks later my dad had a picture of me participating in that program. Someone had taken a picture of me, and gave it to him because she thought it would be nice for him to have. He displayed it proudly in his house, until I told him that it wasn’t me. It was another kid named Bobby Taylor, and he had no idea.

That year, one of the greatest movies of all time came out. It was a movie about how the underdog got the girl by destroying his bullies in hand-to-hand martial arts combat. That movie was The Karate Kid. I watched that movie at least 7 times, and studied Daniel-san’s moves. The way that he waxed on and off, how he painted the fence with long strokes instead of short strokes, and most importantly, the crane kick. I was supremely confident in my practiced ability to vanquish any foe so when I came across someone who was picking on someone else, I challenged him or her. Jason Via had obviously watched that movie more than me, because he was able to deflect my skilled punches and kicks, and even caught my crane kick. I knew a more skilled warrior than I had defeated me.

Not only did I move schools, but also I moved to another town. My mom moved me to Vinton County to live on a farm in an area called Creola, which is close to the spelling of Crayola, but not nearly as cool. It was about that time that I was introduced to my soon to be new stepdad, Don, and his family, but initially mainly two of his daughters, Rachel and Tina. We had two goats named Isaac and Sue (which I always thought was a stupid name), a sheep named Samuel (which is obviously a very creative and intelligent name), cats, and dogs. Across the road, someone owned some cattle, which as I observed them, were not very aggressive creatures. In fact, all they did was stand there, belt out some horrible noises, eat grass, and poop. I thought it would be great one day to go and make pets out of these cows, so off I went on a dewy morning to cross the road and climb over the fence to pet these cows. Now, I had heard stories of the fence down there being electric, so I was very cautious with the barbed wire that circled the pasture. I quickly tested it to make sure that it wasn’t electrified, and it wasn’t. I climbed through, and words fail to adequately describe the feelings that I quickly experienced at that time. Some unexplained force from somewhere I couldn’t see suddenly jolted me. That was it; I knew I was now dead. My mom would have to bury her youngest child. In fact, I was so sure that I was dead that I immediately took off running through a gate that I was too lazy to go to in the first place screaming, “I’M DEAD MOM! I’M DEAD! I’M DYING! I’M DEAD!” all the way back up the hill to the house. In fact, I think the electrification of the fence took my life away, and immediately gave it back to me, with a little added super speed to make it back up the hill as fast as I did. Yes, farm life was not for me.

Now, for everyone who has kids and is planning on going on a family vacation, please learn from the mistakes of my father. My dad thought it would be a great fun to go on vacation with me. We got in his little blue Ford Escort and went to the vacation destination of South Central Kentucky. (Which ironically enough is where I lived for almost 7 years of my life recently, but this trip had nothing to do with that fact.) On this trip we got to see the great, kid-friendly sites as Abraham Lincoln’s Birthplace, his childhood home, where my dad lived when he went to college at the University of Kentucky, and Mammoth Cave. Mammoth Cave would’ve been really cool, but the one tour of the cave we went on was the one that you could only use the lantern. If I was going to be in the cave, I wanted to SEE the cave, and I couldn’t even hold the lantern. It sucked majorly. From there, we travelled to Washington D.C. Through an area called Cucumber-land. Actually, it was Cumberland, and it was a lake, but it looked like cucumber to me. Washington D.C was a lot o fun if you enjoy watching your father being 18 kinds of frustrated because he couldn’t navigate the city (circles can be tricky, I guess) and because I didn’t want to eat at the places he wanted to eat. We stayed at a hotel near (or on) DuPont Circle. I remember this because of the 15 times my dad had to stop and ask for directions because somehow he couldn’t figure out that you didn’t have to take the first street off of a circle. I have no idea where I get my frustrated-ness.

Now, for everyone who has kids and is planning on going on a family vacation, please learn from the mistakes of my father. My dad thought it would be a great fun to go on vacation with me. We got in his little blue Ford Escort and went to the vacation destination of South Central Kentucky. (Which ironically enough is where I lived for almost 7 years of my life recently, but this trip had nothing to do with that fact.) On this trip we got to see the great, kid-friendly sites as Abraham Lincoln’s Birthplace, his childhood home, where my dad lived when he went to college at the University of Kentucky, and Mammoth Cave. Mammoth Cave would’ve been really cool, but the one tour of the cave we went on was the one that you could only use the lantern. If I was going to be in the cave, I wanted to SEE the cave, and I couldn’t even hold the lantern. It sucked majorly. From there, we travelled to Washington D.C. Through an area called Cucumber-land. Actually, it was Cumberland, and it was a lake, but it looked like cucumber to me. Washington D.C was a lot o fun if you enjoy watching your father being 18 kinds of frustrated because he couldn’t navigate the city (circles can be tricky, I guess) and because I didn’t want to eat at the places he wanted to eat. We stayed at a hotel near (or on) DuPont Circle. I remember this because of the 15 times my dad had to stop and ask for directions because somehow he couldn’t figure out that you didn’t have to take the first street off of a circle. I have no idea where I get my frustrated-ness.

Third grade was yet another move for me to another school. This time I was a student at McArthur Elementary School in Vinton County. My teacher’s name was Mrs. Saylor. In fact her name was Loretta Saylor. How do I remember this? Because when teaching us her name on the first day of school she wrote on the board Loretta Say-Loretta. I have no idea why she did this, if only to help us know how to spell her name, or know her name. Obviously it worked, because that was almost 25 years ago and I still remember. I also met a lot of cool kids, some of which that I still talk to today. I remember Melissa who was really tall, Cody who was a bit hefty, but was really funny, Jamie and her pigtails who was also on my baseball team, Brian who had lots of freckles, and a cute girl named Amber. I do remember their last names, but I think that’s how I learned their names initially. I also learned why Washington D.C was on the east coast instead of the middle of the USA.

One of the cool things that I remember about this year at school is that we had a pretty cool class project that we did. I don’t know whose idea it was, or if it was an every year kind of thing or what, but we got to make music videos with some of our favorite songs of that time. It was mainly just lip sync, and a lot of kids wearing costumes, but it was a ton of fun. I remember four songs distinctly. We are the World, The Leader of the Pack; Girls just want to have fun, and some song that I had to actually sing for the camera that my teacher thought would be fun. It was something about spurs that jingle jangle jingle as I go riding merrily along. That’s all I really remember. Oh, and I had to wear a “country” shirt for my solo, and I think that I wore (and I can’t make this stuff up it just now flashed into my head), a shirt from Tennessee that had a Rebel Flag on it. I swear that I have no problems with people who aren’t white and I have no affiliation with the KKK.

I think there were a lot of milestones when it came to girls in my life, and that probably sounds weirder than I intend. I guess what I’m saying is that I was always interested in girls from before kindergarten through my life. Third grade I actually got up enough nerve to call one at her house. Amber was her name. She was my on again/off again love of Vinton county. I don’t know what it was about her that made me get enough courage to call her, but we talked probably every day after school for like a week. I think it was love. Yeah, definitely. I think I should take this time to mention that I did cheat on her with two girls that rode my school bus. A second grader and a first grader. Neither one can I remember their names. (Play on playa!!) I remember hiding one of their pictures under the couch cushion so my mom wouldn’t tease me about her. She found it, and she summarily teased me. Moms can be so cruel.

We moved into town in the middle of the year and we moved into a house right across the street from a bank branch and next to my dentist office. I think I had recently watched Goonies, because I got in some sort of fascination with wanting to set booby traps for people who were in places that they weren’t supposed to be. I wanted to test my ingenuity so I decided that I was going to booby trap the bank branch across the street. I thought it would be great, that if nothing else, I would scare people into banking somewhere else.... somewhere safer. So, I got my collection of those white party snappers that you throw at people’s feet, and laced the whole premises of the bank with them. I even stuck one in the lock on the door. Mwhahahahaha! Those people at Vinton County National Bank never knew what hit them.

Another benefit of living in town was that we lived only a block away from the local police department. In wanting to proceed in my quest of being a police officer, so I could rescue people (mostly girls) from danger, and go to the police academy (so I could see more boobs), I walked there one day to volunteer my services to be an undercover cop. No one would expect an 8-year-old kid in that abandoned warehouse as a cop. I would take down the bad guys and save the girl. (Can you tell I watched a bit too much TV as a child? Probably even still today.) I just knew that they would see the intelligence in my request and immediately sign me up, and send me to undercover cop training. They just laughed at me, and told me that if did see any crime, not to try to stop it myself, but to call the police. Obviously they didn’t know that I was dead serious in asking them.

In the 4th grade, I moved back to Wellston. It was definitely coming home for me, mainly because that’s where most of my friends were. I liked my time in Vinton County, but I was never really a Vinton Countian. I was placed in Mr. Newman’s class. It was pretty strange, because I didn’t really know many of the kids in my class. People that I remember from this class are Mandy Wittkamp, Mandy Phillips, Melanie Aleshire, James West, Burt Leach, and Jessica Gray. There are definitely a lot more people in that class, but those were the ones that stand out to me. The thing I remember about Mr. Newman was that he would always threaten us with detention and Saturday school, and it would be put on our permanent records, and then no one would want to hire us for work, not even Giovanni’s. The amazing amount of homework that he would make us do was crazy.

Up until this point I was never allowed to have my own video game system at home, which was probably a good thing. However, I did get a state of the art computer system, my Commodore 64. It was awesome. I could play some great games, like frogger, Pac-man, and Baseball. All I was missing was a modem so that I could hack into the national defense system like they did on the movie War Games with Matthew Broderick. The great thing about this computer is that you could hook it up to your home TV, and didn’t have to have a fancy schmancy monitor, and I had the state of the art Dot Matrix printer. Be Jealous. I know you are :)

One of my favorite things to do on the weekends was go to the local Skating rink. I’m not going to lie; skating was not most gifted skill. I wasn’t very good at turning, and when they reversed direction, I was pretty much useless. I couldn’t play shoot the duck because, well I have no balance. The only game I could really play was 4 corners and that was because all I had to do was be able to make it in a decent amount of time to one of 4 corners, and hope they didn’t call out my corner. However, my favorite thing to do was the couple skate. Just to be able to hold hand with some sweet young lady and plan our futures together in about 3 minutes of skating before the song was over, and then going back to our separate corners to talk about it with our friends. However, more often than not I was left sitting on the bench too nervous to ask anyone to skate, or someone beat me to it. I was occasionally broken hearted by that which was evident by the amount of tears that I cried. One time I was crying so hard that I had a group of people around me, deeply concerned. Mike Williams was the one person that I remember there, and people were wondering what was wrong with me. I told everyone that I was upset because my dog Spot died. (Yes the same Spot that I didn’t have since I was like 5) I was pretty lame. A couple of times, however, the owner of the skating rink (Carolyn) would have her daughter Mindy skate with me. Mindy was (and still is) a good friend for putting up with me.

4th grade was also the year of another American classic movie, Ferris Bueler’s Day off. This movie was a great encourager for me because it taught me how to be deceitful when trying to get out of going to another day of school. In fact, I figured out how to play the system when it came to being sick. I knew that if I threw up at school, then they would have to send me home, regardless of whether or not I had a fever or not. I also knew that if I said I threw up in the bathroom and flushed it, then they couldn’t check out my story. So, I did this one-day, and got to go home and spend the day in my room watching TV, and playing on my computer. However, since I didn’t throw up at home, my mom sent me back to school. The next day, I did it again. Once again, I got to go home, and play. Day three, once again pulled the same prank, however, my mom had gotten wise the day before, and realized I was just pretending, so when I got home, she made me sit in my bed with no TV, or computer and had to do all of my make up homework. Yeah, suddenly I felt a lot better.

However, I finally did get really sick, when one of my nieces came down with the Chicken Pox, so in order to get exposed to them, my mom sent me to my sister Coleen’s house, and sure enough about a week and a half later, I got my first chicken pock on my stomach. That was at least two weeks of school I was going to miss. My mom let me watch TV and play on my computer because she knew I wasn’t faking this. I had my mom go and rent one of the best comedies of all time, Clue: The Movie. (If you haven’t ever seen this movie, you must go and rent it now, or better yet, buy it.) I watched it about three times a day. But even with that, I got bored, and I wanted to get back to school. I was told not to scratch my chicken pox, or they would end up scabbing over, and I would get scars from them. Which is true, but I thought, if I don’t have the chicken pox anymore, then I could go back to school, so I scratched them all. Pretty gross, but I did it, and have no regrets about it.... and probably gave chicken pox to a good portion of the 4th grade at Bundy Elementary.

Once in class, Mr. Newman was telling us a story about a man who once got his tongue stuck to a cold metal spoon while eating ice cream in the cold, or something like that. He told us that it’s a very true thing that if you stick your tongue to a cold piece of metal when it’s freezing outside, your tongue will surely stick to the surface. Not believing him, and it being wintertime, the next day at my bus stop, I thought I would try it. Without telling anyone, I just went up to the nearest street sign, and gently stuck the tip of my tongue to it. Well, let me tell you this. Mr. Newman was not a liar. At least not about that. I stood there for a good couple of minutes trying to get my tongue off that pole, and then I saw the bus coming, and I knew I had to get it off, so I ripped my tongue off the pole, skin and all still sticking to the pole. I spit blood on the ground, and spit it into my tissue on the bus until I got to school and then went to the nurse’s station. The tip of my tongue itches still to this day, and that’s the only reason I can figure for it. A couple of months later, my dad rented the movie “A Christmas Story” I think just to laugh because the kid Schwartz stuck his tongue to the flag pole and he knew that I did it. Everyone’s a comedian.

One thing I remember more than anything else about Mr. Newman’s class, and probably 4th grade in general is the weekly spelling contests we had with the other two classes. At the end of the year, the class with the highest overall spelling percentage, got some sort of party. Our class very rarely won the weekly contests, but occasionally we did. However, I got perfect scores throughout the year in spelling, because we had to write them at least 5 times each to learn them, and more often than not 10 times because we had a class full of hooligans who always got us into trouble. I probably was a good speller because of the lesson I learned about the word pumpkin in 1st grade.

I started a second part to my memoirs, because of the overwhelming popularity of them. I really didn't intend for as many people to read them or enjoy them as there has been, but I'm thankful for them. I know in writing these, that I will be missing out on some great memories, and people so I hope that if I do, that I'll be forgiven. Anyways, here is part 2, starting in 5th grade. If you are new to reading these, please see part 1 for my life up through 4th grade.

5th grade found me moving to yet another school, but this time in the same school district. In Fifth Grade I was in Mrs. Sollars class. She was the math teacher, and for the first time I found myself being a part of a school where you had teachers that only taught one subject at a time. Also, we found ourselves with new kids, that weren’t really new to Wellston, just new to all of us who came from Bundy. Also, we were going to the same recess as the 6th graders, and for some reason the girls in the 6th grade were more intriguing than the ones in the 5th grade. I don’t know if it was because we hadn’t seen them much over the past year or so since they left the city school, or because they were a little more mature than the girls in our same class. The three girls that I remember thinking were the most beautiful in the school were Kim Kilgore, Tamar Bennett, and Kendra Arms. I was slightly infatuated with them. I was also very much in incredible like with our language arts teacher, Mrs. Lautzenheizer. I always thought she was very beautiful, and I wasn’t the only boy in our grade that thought so.

I used to ride my bike with Stevie Green up and down our street, and we would always ride through the income-based housing development called Bundy Heights. We would usually ride through, down the hill, and through the huge field behind the apartments before retreating through all the bike trails and trees beyond. It was on one of these trips. Stevie and I did a lot of things together, and he usually got me in trouble. Usually I didn’t get into trouble until after he went home, but on one special occasion right after Christmas, Stevie got me in huge trouble, and he was around to witness it, or at least the beginning of it. I had received for Christmas a dartboard, which was to be hung in my room. However, I was not to use the dartboard until we got some special boarding to place behind it to keep from poking holes in the wall, in case I missed the board. Stevie one day decided he wanted to play darts anyway, and despite my pleadings, I gave in and joined him. I’ll never forget my mom coming in that day, opening the door very quickly. She calmly said, “Stevie, I think its time for you to go home.” while she had belt in hand. I knew what that meant...I was about to get blistered by the belt. I started screaming bloody murder. You would’ve thought that I was about to get beaten over the head with a baseball bat. I fought and screamed, and refused to turn around so she could punish me. I finally relented. Something extraordinary happened that day. The more and more she spanked me, however, the less I cried and screamed. In fact, I got more and more calm, so that by the time she was done, I was as calm as I am sitting here and typing now. The belt did not hurt anymore. I had gotten all worked up over nothing. That was the last time I was ever punished by the belt.

However, Stevie was very instrumental in my one major 5th grade relationship. I had finally gotten the nerve to ask out (or at least had someone ask for me) Tamar Bennett. She was my girlfriend, and I wanted to let her know how much I thought about her and loved her. (I mean, this was 5th grade, and she was an older woman...this was serious stuff). Stevie and I found a cassette tape of an awesome movie, and then proceeded to change all the important words to the song to refer to Tamar, and sing them onto another cassette tape. Never has the soundtrack to La Bamba been used more efficiently and beautifully, as it was when Stevie and I sang “Tamar” to the Richie Valence song “Donna”.

Later on that year was the school’s valentine’s dance. I asked Tamar, and she said yes. However, she stood me up. Something about her mom not letting her go out to school dances or something crazy. Whatever it was, I bought it. Anyways, while I was at the dance, moping around because my girlfriend wasn’t there, I was approached by a 3rd grader. I think approached wouldn’t be the correct word. Stalked is probably more like it. She followed me around all night. I think her name was Mary. She was a cute girl, but like I said, I was already in a deep, lasting relationship with a 6th grader. I’ll never forget sitting on the stage in the Coalton gym, listening to “I had the time of my life” from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, and have her coming up to me to ask if I wanted to dance. I had to tell her no, because I knew that somehow Tamar would find out, and she would dump me. I broke the poor girl’s heart. I’m such a heartbreaker.

It was also around this time, that I became heavily involved with an addiction that I haven’t been able to break to this day. It wasn’t drugs, or alcohol. It wasn’t pornography. (Although I did see my first playboy in my dad’s cousin’s garage at this age) it was...Nintendo. My parents bought me my first Nintendo Entertainment System. Both of them. I asked both of them for one for my birthday because both of them said they would not get me one. Well, they both did. I spent hours upon hours playing Nintendo. Super Mario Brothers, Metroid, Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, Pro Wrestling, these were just a few of the games that I mastered over my early owning of Nintendo. Over time, I became such a great video game player, that people from all over town would often call me and ask me for tips, strategies and cheat codes to help them beat their own games on Nintendo. I was the Wizard of Wellston.

I think it was a good thing that I was pretty good at Nintendo, because my athletic prowess was horrible. I tried to play baseball that year, and was on the Red Sox. My team sucked. In actuality, I was always on the worst teams in whatever league I was on. The only thing that I was ever any good at was hitting a baseball. I wasn’t very fast, or couldn’t throw worth a darn, but as long as people weren’t throwing at my head, I was always making contact with the baseball. I think that we only won one game that whole year, and I think it was against the Mets (maybe?) That was actually the way it went in every league that I was, except soccer. I was always on the great teams in soccer. I was a supreme defender. I would’ve stuck with it all the way through high school probably, but after the 7th grade, they quit offering soccer in Wellston. That sucked.

I also joined band in the 5th grade. I remember my dad taking me to the high school to the band room so we could have band tryouts. The tryouts weren’t to see if you would make band, but rather what instrument you wanted to play. I remember trying all the instruments. I would’ve played drums but I didn’t like the way that you had to hold the sticks. Mr. Shumate told me that I would probably be best at playing either the trumpet or trombone because I had the “chops” for it. I didn’t really consider it because I thought those two instruments were too easy. I mean, a trumpet only had 3 keys, and a trombone didn’t have any. I wanted something that was extremely difficult; that everyone would just look at and think that whoever plays that instrument must be extremely cool. So, I chose the saxophone. In all seriousness, I have often wondered how my life would’ve been totally different if I had chosen a different instrument.

The sixth grade has been a bit harder for me to remember. I don’t know why this is. I think because up through this point in my life, I had gone through so much change, that it was easy for me to remember stuff based on the changes in my life. The 6th grade at Coalton was the first time since I was before kindergarten that I had some sense of normalcy. I lived in the same house for more than one year in a row. I went to the same school for more than one year in a row, I had mostly the same friends for more than one year in a row, because I was in TAG, and most of my friends were in TAG as well. I still played sports, and like I said before, other than soccer, I was pretty bad at them. I remember one of my friends, Aaron Gill, saying once when he found out that I was going to be on his basketball team, “Great, we have Sam, we suck.” He was a good friend. Really, he was. He was just pretty competitive, and hated to lose.

Being in the sixth grade did come with great responsibility. Safety Patrol. I remember waiting for the day that you could sign up to be a part of safety patrol, and wear those awesome orange belts, that was kind of hard to put in the right way, unless you were a true veteran of the safety patrol ranks. My first choice was to be the boy captain of safety patrol, and was granted this position by Mr. Jaycox. I was to wear this title with pride. I was to be very fair and just. And then, we had a fund raising sale. I blew it off, because well, I hate selling stuff. I always ate half the candy bars I was asked to sell, and lost money that my mom would have to add money to the total amount. I was rewarded for my lack of selling by having the captaincy stripped from me and given to the boy who sold more than anyone else in the 6th grade, Eric Farney. Eric was a great guy, and in our indoor recess arm wrestling tournaments he was the “heavy weight” champion, mostly because he was a lot bigger than the rest of us guys. So, Eric became the captain, and I was changed from being captain, to being the Male Bathroom Monitor, which basically entailed me standing in the bathroom to make sure that no one got into any fights or was smoking or anything. Looking back, that was kind of a creepy job, having a kid stand guard in a bathroom. (Speaking of Eric Farney, I always thought his mom was hot. She worked at Steve Martin video, which I frequented very often, mainly with the hope of seeing her. I’m not sure if she was a hottie, but I always thought that she was.)

A funny short story. There was a kid in our class (Mr. Jaycox) named Don who was a pretty big goof off. He was always getting into trouble, not so much by being a bad kid, but just by being ornery, I guess. He always wanted to be the center of attention, I guess. Well, the funny thing was, for Christmas he got a Wellston jacket with his graduation year on the shoulder. I will never forget everyone telling him that his parents shouldn’t have put his graduation year, because he was sure to fail that year. He did. (Ok, that may not have been very funny to most people, but it always makes me chuckle because well, I don’t know.)

One of my favorite memories is the many times that I used to ride my bike into town, or have my mom take me to Jeremy Rawlins’ grandma’s house to play wiffleball with him and Jeremy Long. It was pretty fun. We kept track of homeruns, and stuff, and it was easy to play with limited number of kids. The only problem was, that Jeremy and Jeremy got to play all the time, so their homerun numbers were always a lot higher than mine. This was a pretty steady summer activity over the next few years until we were all in high school. Suddenly playing wiffle ball wasn’t as cool as it was in the 6th grade.

One of the highlights of the whole 6th grade year was the end of the year, summer trip to Washington D.C. This trip was the highlight of most everyone in the class; at least I think it was. We rode the bus with all of our best classmate buddies, and a couple of guys that we picked up from Logan (I think). One of the guy’s name was Rick, and the reason I remember this is because for the whole time in D.C. He was putting the moves on one of classmates, Tiffany Pappas. This made pretty much every guy in the 6th grade pretty upset for some reason, even though most of us were just friends with her, and had no chance with her whatsoever, but the fact that some guy from some other town had came in and weaseled his way into our “club” we didn’t like. I recall hearing people referring to him as “Rick the prick who had no.” One of the first things that I remember is when we first got into our room; we opened up all the doors to connect the rooms to each other all the way down to the chaperone’s room. This was so that we could have 3-4 rooms of fun, instead of just one. Also, Troy (Toy) brought some walkie-talkies and gave one of them to a girl’s room, and we kept the other one, so we could chat all night, because all of the phones were turned off in the room. However, they didn’t work very well, mainly because I think that things going on in their separate rooms distracted everyone. Speaking of having things turned off, I’ll never forget this. When we first checked into our rooms and we were checking out everyone’s room, I came back to James West sitting on one of our beds in OUR room (he wasn’t in our room) and had pushed the adult movie button. So, as much as I wanted to see what he was watching, I didn’t want to get into trouble, so we immediately turned it off. A few weeks later after one of our baseball game, my mom and step dad ask me about the movie that we watched in our room in Washington DC. Of all the kids in the room with us, my parents received the bill. Talk about embarrassing...especially when they brought it up in front of a couple of my friends, who were thankfully there in the room who could vouch for my story. On the last night in DC (I think) we all decided we were going to go to bed in our room, although not everyone in the joining rooms wanted to. Jeremy Long and I shared one bed, and I think it was Chad Nieratko and Troy in the other bed. I refused to let myself go to sleep knowing that other people were still up, because well, I didn’t trust them. However, Jeremy fell asleep first. Then came some people into our room, and decided they were going to mess with Jeremy while he was asleep. They took Jeremy’s finger and picked his nose with it, and then stuck it into his mouth. Now, I don’t think there was actual boogers on it, but it was the principal of them messing with him while asleep. I definitely didn’t sleep that night out of fear. One other thing I remember about that trip, which also included James. While walking through the Smithsonian, James started making some crazy noises to be annoying. I don’t remember everyone with me, but I believe Chad was one of them, and we wanted to avoid James because, well he was being annoying. He began to chase us through the Smithsonian making these noises. Finally he cornered us into a back hallway in one of the museums. I’m so shocked that some security guard didn’t kick us out because we were running through museum and knocking people around. Crazy kids.

7th grade brought a whole lot of new experiences for me growing up. I remember quit a bit about some of the 7th grade, but most of it was kind of boring stuff. However, there were a lot of changes beginning in my life, and in more ways that I could’ve ever possibly known. During this time in my life, I did like to watch a lot of TV. I remember catching the Wonder Years, and wished that I was Kevin Arnold and could date a girl as awesome as Winnie Cooper. As far as I know, things were good at home...or as good as they could be. During this time in my life, I had like 5 different bedrooms in the same house, got to spend more time with my dad on the weekends, but was often left at home by myself for days while my mom and step dad went on business trips. In many ways, I was a very lucky kid, but in other ways, I felt like I was missing out on a lot.

One of the first things I remember about 7th grade was the first day of school. I remember being gathered into the gym, sitting in the bleachers, and listening to Mr. Huntley give us all a lecture on how he heard about how bad of kids we were at Coalton, and how that was not going to be tolerated in Junior High. I knew what kids he was specifically talking about, and I know that kid wasn’t me. I was a pretty good kid, who usually never caused any trouble. We were told that if we got caught fighting, that was an automatic three-day suspension. No worries from me about getting into a fight. At least, so I thought.

My favorite thing about being in the 7th grade was lunchtime. It was the first time in my life that we as students had freedom in choosing where we could go eat. We had a ton of options. We had Giovanni’s pizza, BJ’s Pizza, Lee and Helen’s, or any of the gas stations around. My choice was Giovanni’s pizza. A dollar fifty bought you a slice of pizza and a pop (usually Pepsi), which left me 50 cents to play the video game in Giovanni’s. (Which was Outrun, I think). Occasionally, when I needed to get more of a sugar rush, we would walk down (which we always walked down, but I didn’t always buy something) and buy a butterscotch long john with cream in the middle. Those things were freaking’ awesome. I don’t remember if it was in the 7th grade or 8th grade, but then the restaurant Patrick’s opened up down on the other side of where Dairy Queen was, which was about 6-8 blocks away, and when you don’t have much time, it was pretty much impossible to get there in 30 minutes. However, I remember plenty of people trying and succeeding like Jeremy and Jeremy. I tried once, but about the time I got to the high school I gave up. I was more of a sprinter, not an endurance runner. (Both of those statements are pretty funny, especially if you saw me today). Anyways, I said all that just to get the point across that I loved lunch in junior high.

One of the major things that I did in Junior high (and a lot of the time through high school) was Show Choir. I tried out and was accepted into Happiness Follies at the end of sixth grade, and the beginning of 7th. I think I would be misleading if I didn’t tell you that the reason why I joined, wasn’t to sing in front of tons of people, but rather because Kim, Kendra and Tamar were all three a part of the group. Yeah, I was a typical boy. It was a lot of fun, and we got to sing awesome songs like, Shades, Jeans, and Elvira, to name a few of those songs. (I totally could sing those songs word for word right now, but I won’t...I have a reputation. or something like that) We got to travel to the Apple Festival, and put on shows. We even got to go to the Kings Island at the end of the school year. Good times. A couple of things I remember about the group (actually three things) is that my voice changed in the middle of a solo in front of a spaghetti supper fundraiser.... I was singing, “Give my regards to Broadway” and I started off in one key, and ended up in another. Chris Headley began to show me what it was like in the music trailer after the concert by showing me on the piano. Very embarrassing. I remember half of the group quitting, for some reason, but I think the main reason was basically because no one really liked Mrs. Fain, and those people had had enough of her, and all the practices she called. (I am probably wrong on that reason, but I can’t remember details, just the day that it happened) Finally, and probably the best, was when we were performing in front of the school, and one of the moves called for the guy and girl partners to be together, and the girl to sit on the guy’s lap. Mindy Stewart was my partner. I think the song was “let me call you sweetheart” and a part of it, I was down on one knee, and Mindy was supposed to sit on my knee gently. This particular time however, before I got on my knee, I lost my balance, and fell backwards. Mindy was in front of me, and didn’t know that I had fell over, and as she was sitting down, obviously missed my knee, and fell right on top of me. This all happened almost at the same time, so to everyone else in the audience, it looked as though Mindy sat on me and she made me collapse under her weight. This was not the case, I was just a klutz. Mindy got mad at me for a bit because she thought it made her look like she was too fat or something and I couldn’t hold her up. This was not the case, Mindy was the perfect weight. (which sounds kind of weird to say, but I’m just trying to say it wasn’t her fault....open mouth, insert foot.)

Short story here(I think). I remember somehow in 7th grade TAG getting on the topic of sex and condoms with Mrs. Swank. I remember her telling us that we should always carry a condom with us. If we didn’t have a wallet, we needed to buy one to carry a condom, just in case. I thought this was a weird conversation to have, because 1)I was like 12 or maybe early 13ish. 2) My mom and stepdad always told me not to have sex until I was married, and 3) she was our teacher, and she was telling us about her children and the rules she had for them regarding that. I went home to my dad’s and told him about it, and he was like, “she’s probably right”. I’m like, dude, I haven’t even held a girl’s hand yet. I know I’m a smooth operator, but chances were pretty slim that I was going from no hand holding to scoring on a whim. Confidence wasn’t my strong suit.

One spring day, I remember walking back from lunch with a group of my friends. I don’t remember all of them, or what we were even talking about, but I remember Troy was there. Somehow, Troy and I got into an argument, and I was pretty upset about it, and I think I pushed him or confronted him or something. Now, Troy could’ve easily kicked my tail, he was bigger, taller, faster and stronger than me, but I had a pretty good mouth on me. I guess in my life, I figure if I get mouthy, and such, then I could at least get people to back down before anyone(me) got hurt. I got all over Troy, and I think Matt Murdoch jumped in defending Troy. So, I jumped in on Matt, running my mouth, cussing like a sailor. Well, finally that ended and Chris Headley jumped in. Now, Chris was not only taller than me, but ALOT taller than me. Chris had had enough of this stupidity(on my part) and put an end to it. I’ll never forget him grabbing me by the neck, and me trying to swing and hit him. I couldn’t reach him because his reach was a lot longer than me. I relented and we stopped. No teachers broke us up, but I think it was the lunch bell that did. I was happy that no one caught us, because that meant I wasn’t going to be suspended from school. The next school period we were both called to the principal’s office, and told that we were given a warning. No suspension, which was good, because I valued my life at home. Mr. Downard called me slugger for a while after that.

A couple of significant changes happened in my life in the 7th grade as well. On a cold February night, I was baptized into Christ...in my bathtub. I was still a small child at the time, so I could fit in the bathtub pretty easily. My stepdad baptized me, and we got it all on videotape. I was kind of excited about that, but at the same time, I wasn’t really intending to get baptized. I was questioning what it was about, and my parents assumed that I was wanting to do it right then. I didn’t want to hurt their feelings, so I went ahead and did it. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do it, but it was that I wasn’t wanting to do it right then.

The second thing probably had a more profound impact on my life was it was at this time that I first notice my dad being sick. I’ll never forget the day he was taking me home and it was pretty sunny outside. I noticed something strange about my dad. He was a really funny shade of yellow, which I pointed out to him. Soon afterwards, he went to the doctor to get check out. He decided to have surgery to have it fixed, which he did. The doctor found a small blockage on the edge of his pancreas. He thought he got it all, but he wasn’t for sure. I’m not sure of all the details, but I don’t think my dad wanted to go through radiation or chemotherapy, or if that was even an option. He didn’t really talk about it much with me. I remember that it took him like a month to get out of the hospital, he decided to quit smoking, and that he was continually sick afterwards. He always complained that food never tasted the same, and because of that he didn’t feel like eating. One day, he got sick coming to school to pick me up, and had to turn around and go home. I had to walk to his house, and I think Stevie came home with me that day. I don’t know if dad ever really let me know, or show me how sick he really was, or felt. I know that even though he was sick, I never really considered him dying or anything. I was probably really naive about it, or just refused to accept that possibility.

Another funny story(especially if you know me decently well), is that at the end of the 7th grade year, I decided to run track. It was a lot of fun, except for the running part. I hated it, but I wasn’t allowed to quit, so Mr. Sollars decided that he would make me the team’s official score keeper. I still had to run some at practices, but I had no speed to speak of, nor did I have any stamina.( which thankfully didn’t continue through my life....eh hem...thank ya, thank ya very much.... (sorry)) I wasn’t very strong, and couldn’t jump either. I was an excellent candidate to run track. (I blame my leg brace)

In order to run track, I was given a physical. During this physical, Dr. Jones found an abnormal lump growing on my neck. This was pointed out to my dad, who told my mom, who then took me to numerous doctor’s appointments at children’s hospital in Columbus. Eventually, I was to have surgery to have that lump removed. I was to have all of the cyst(?) taken out, and part of my thyroid, unless they found more somewhere else. Thankfully they didn’t. They got what they needed to get, and that was that. It wasn’t until after the surgery did I ever hear the doctor say that it wasn’t cancer. Cancer?? That possibility never even crossed my mind. Like I said, I was probably really naive. Always stuck in my little world. A cool thing that happened as, I got like 3 Nintendo games out of the time stuck in the hospital. My favorite one was Little League Baseball, which we always played through the summer, when we weren’t playing wiffle ball.

Another thing I remember about my thyroidectomy is that I came home from the hospital, and went to school. That night there was a dance at the Junior High of some sort. I’m assuming that it was a fall dance because it was during the World Series. I didn’t have a date, but I had hoped to get some sympathy dances out there because of my recent surgery. My dad refused to let me go. He said something may happen, like my neck would open up or bleed all over the place or something. I thought he was being ridiculous, and to prove it to him, I went to bed at like 7:30 just so he knew how mad I was.(I don’t know how that worked, but somehow it made sense to me). I woke up a bit later wide-awake, and decided to watch the Reds/A’s game 4. The A’s were supposed to sweep the Reds because they were supposedly loaded with the Bash Brothers among other players. I hated the A’s, but I was in the minority among my friends. I’ll never forget the final out of the game, when there was a pop-up to the first base side at Riverfront stadium, and Todd Benzinger ran over and snagged it in front of the dugout to secure the World Series for the Reds. That was the last time any team in Cincinnati was any good.

Another thing I remember from the 8th grade was going to Mindy Stewart’s house for a huge party. I remember trying to play some flashlight tag or something. I was an excellent hider, and I don’t remember being found ever. I think this was either because no one knew I was hiding,(or cared), or because the game never really took off. I do remember the big “scandal” from the party. Someone or a group of people had cornered or jumped another girl in our grade, Jessica Littlejohn. Somehow it got spread around that she either was pushed down, or she tripped or something, and bunches of people were making fun of her. Anyways, she left the party crying, and she didn’t show up to school on Monday. She moved away on Tuesday. I’d like to say that we missed her, but I think that would be a lie.

Another thing that I couldn’t leave out in a story like this is a story about a time when I was bigger than my britches. I was at Chad Nieratko’s house one non-school day. Another friend of ours was there that I have mentioned a couple of times, and that was James West. Chad and James like to practice boxing a lot, because Chad had a set of boxing gloves. James challenged me to a boxing match. Now, if you don’t know anything about James, one thing that you need to know is that he was HUGE. He was a bit taller than me, a lot stronger than me, and weighed like twice as much as me. So obviously, I accepted the challenge. I had never boxed before, and I have never boxed since. We went outside into Chad’s yard and began “sparring”, if you can call it that. Basically what it ended up being was, I was James’ human punching bag, and he occasionally took a shot from me. I was getting frustrated so instead of jabbing, I kept trying to knock him out in one punch, which left me wide open for him to hit me like 2 or 3 times before I got my gloves up or moved away. He knocked me down, and I kept getting back up like an idiot. One time James let me get a good shot on him and even went down for me. The great thing about that, was as soon as he hit the ground, he let the biggest fart rip. We must’ve boxed for like 30-45 minutes out in Chad’s yard, as he just stood there and laughed the whole time. I was getting my butt kicked, but I wasn’t about to quit. Finally Chad had to step in because I guess one time I got up a bit more woozy than before, and Chad asked me a couple of questions, which I didn’t know the answers to. Ding Ding Ding, James won.

Speaking of fighting and Chad, one day before school while hanging out in the gym we were all hanging out goofing off like we always did. All of a sudden I turn around and Chad hit me in the face. I was like, what the crap?? I think Chad said something like, “its not that funny is it?”. What had happened was, someone(I think Jeremy Long) had smacked Chad in the face from behind, and he turned around and saw me and thought that I had done it. When he hit me in the face, it really pissed me off, so I either swung back at him, or pushed him or something. Chad then charged at me, and I moved out of the way, and he tripped and fell over something right in the middle of the gym, which fired him up even more. Everyone thought I had thrown him down or something, I think, because everyone then circled around us. Once again, the bell rang, and I remember going up to Chad and saying to him “good fight”. I don’t know why, but I did. After school that day, I went to his house to hang out for a while and do homework. Guys don’t hold grudges especially ones that were good friends....a lot of ladies could learn a lesson from that.

I enjoyed watching sports in the 8th grade, and I enjoyed girls as well.  I thought, what a great idea to try to help out with the girl's travelling basketball team so I could get to know some of these girls better.  There was actually only one girl that I really wanted to know better, but as far as I could tell she didn't want to have much to do with me.  However, I persisted, and I think we dated for a bit(as well as kids in junior high can date. Which maybe meant a week...but I could be wrong)  I did have a huge crush on her, and it was a bonus that I could travel to places with the girl's basketball team.  Eventually I picked up that she wasn't really interested in me, and decided to move on(but that took a few years...sometimes I could be pretty dense)

Towards the end of the 8th grade, I had a girlfriend who I thought was swell. We were in band together, we were in the WJHS singers together(which used to be Happiness Follies). Heck, we even had the same doctor when we were born. It was destiny, or something. I thought Sharon was awesome, especially when we were partners for the Little Mermaid show that we were practicing all the time. My favorite song was “Kiss the Girl” which I had always hoped would’ve been some sort of subliminal message to her. We went on one date to the movies and I can’t remember what we went to see. I do remember that my mom wouldn’t bring me into town to watch the movie, so I had to walk into town, and mostly walked along the railroad tracks. I think Stevie went with me, and sat behind us at the movies. Finally, we were going to go to the spring dance together, or Jr high prom. We had a good time, and I think we even danced a couple of times. At the after party we went to change, and go back to have a lot of fun. There was a problem though. One of my friends(Jeremy Rawlins) was at the dance with us but he was in high school. They wouldn’t let him back into the dance even if he had a date with an 8th grader. I had a huge dilemma on my hands. Was I to leave one of my best friends outside for hours into the evening(he was spending the night with me after all), or was I to leave Sharon at the dance by herself and hoping that she would understand. So, I chose Jeremy since he was staying all night at my house. Sharon wasn’t as understanding as I would hope, and she dumped me the next time I saw her. Yeah, I was a jerk. However, we were still good friends, and even became better friends as the years drew on.

My last major memory from the 8th grade was also with Jeremy Rawlins, and Jeremy Long, and maybe Aaron Watters was there too. We decided that we were going to camp out in Jeremy R’s grandma’s yard which was in town. Only a couple of days before, someone or a group of people had gone through the town spray painting satanic symbols on buildings and streets. We thought it would be a great idea to see if we could figure out who did it and catch them, and then only way we could do that is if we could get out and investigate at night. We set up the tent. We hung out in Jeremy’s yard. We investigated abandoned buildings near by. I remember once that I looked into one building and saw someone looking back at me very quickly. I took off running because I knew with the satanic people running around, the spirits were roaming around too. I told the guys and they sent me back again to check it out. The second time I looked, I saw it again....however, it was just my reflection, but I wasn’t about to let those guys know that. I played it up that it indeed was a ghost. Later on that night, we got on our bikes and rode towards downtown. We got as far as the tennis courts at Blamer field, and it was there that I smelled something. It was a familiar smell to me, but not one I could put my finger on....it was then when I learned what I had always thought was “make your own cigarettes”. It was the scent of Marijuana. We never did catch the Satanists in Wellston. I don’t know if anyone ever did, or if everyone even knew who did it. It was probably the closest I had ever felt to being in a book or movie like the guys from “Stand By Me.” I was probably the fat kid who grew up being married to Rebecca Romijn . (ok, my poor attempt at alluding to a Family Guy episode). That was probably one of the best summers of my life.

The 9th grade was a huge transition period in my life for many reasons. Probably, the easiest to see is that I was in high school. The whole world was my oyster. I was going to be the Big Man on Campus. or something...it was a small town, and I knew that lots of people knew me, so I thought I’d be ultra popular or something.(I wasn’t. I was known, but not “popular”) It was also probably the time period of my biggest life change in my life, before or since. I was for a brief time taller than some of my friends, and caught up to my girl-friends(not girlfriends) in height, finally...that was a good thing.

One of my first experiences with high school started a couple of weeks beforehand when I started Marching Band. It was always hot, a lot of hard work, and it seemed to be torture. I wasn’t allowed to quit band since I had started it, and well, I had to make the best of it. I, however, was also the guy that the seniors picked on the most in band. And when I say seniors, I primarily mean two or three different guys, JP Fulton, Billy Smith, and Jeremy Rupert. They always liked harassing me more than most of the other freshmen. I enjoyed it for the most part, but part of me hated it, mainly because I think I seemed to be getting it worse than most of the rest of everyone else. In fact, we had band “initiations” which if these things happened today, would probably be a huge deal. I don’t remember much about it, but I remember being blindfolded with the rest of the freshmen....being toilet papered, baby powdered, and given baby food, which I refused to eat because it was nasty...I was told eat it, or wear it, so I decided to wear it because I didn’t feel like vomiting all over the place. For desert, I wore a can of sardines on my head. Nasty stuff. Probably the highlight of the marching band year was the annual “lights out show”, which I remember from previous years was a good time if you weren’t in band a good time to throw a couple of sucker punches on your arch enemy, or try to put some moves on some young lady....at least that’s what I heard, I never really got to experience that. Another thing I remember about freshman band, which took place during concert season was that JP and Chris Walton’s favorite thing to do was to throw spit wads into my saxophone bell. It was my first year to play baritone saxophone, which I enjoyed because it was the same keys as other saxophones but a lot easier notes, and I didn’t have to concentrate as much...(also, on a side note...never ever ever ever leave your mouthpiece connected to the neck of your saxophone just so you can save the 3 seconds to take it off to make it to the school bus faster. Especially over time. Just trust me on this one..)

Probably the hardest thing to write about is this next thing, but I realize in order to be somewhat complete in my memoirs I need to write about the major things in my life...It was a time that most all of us will have to face in our lives, a death of a parent. I previously mentioned that my dad had surgery when I was in the 7th grade to have a growth taken off of his pancreas and the doctors thought that they had gotten it all. Well, either they didn’t, or something else formed from something else, and my dad continued to be sick. He had lost 50 pounds or so since his first surgery, but always tried to keep a good attitude, and smile on his face. He did this for about two more years while he kept working for the school system. I remember that over time his hands and feet began to swell from some sort of fluid building up in his body. I tried to understand what was going on, but like I said before, I don’t really remember being very good at knowing exactly. I think there was a point and time where I thought my dad was going to die, but since it hadn’t really ever happened to anyone I had ever known, I had no idea what to expect, or how to react. I didn’t know how to talk to my dad about it. He would tell me from time to time that he had set up stuff so that I was going to be taken care of, and stuff, but I still just don’t know if it registered with me. I tried to spend a bit more time with him when he was able, and tried not to be as selfish with my time, but never the less, I think if I spent every waking moment with him, I don’t know if I would even thought that I spent enough time with him. I often have tons of regrets about this. I wish that I had asked him more about baseball, or money, or listened to more of his stories. I think this is why I am writing down a lot of my memories. I think I don’t want time to run out for me and not be able to tell my daughter tons of stuff about my life, and learn from my mistakes and my triumphs. I wish that I could see my dad, and ask him if he was proud of me, but I know that he loved me and no matter what I have done or will do, he would love me, and hopefully proud of me as well. I know this because I feel the same about my daughter. Anyways, Christmas 1991 was the last Christmas I was able to spend with my dad. Shortly there after, he was taken to a nursing home because he wasn’t able to really do much for himself anymore. I can’t stand nursing homes anymore. I know that they do a good thing, but its not really a place that I would like to end up, and I know what it means for those who do end up there. Anyways, when my dad went to the nursing home, I went to visit him a few times a week, usually. However, for some reason, it seems to me that the couple of weeks leading up to his death I didn’t make it in to see him much, if at all. I don’t remember why. I was playing basketball(or sitting the bench at basketball) and maybe that’s why I didn’t make it in. I did have time to go to the school psychologist that week before and talked with Jeff Cole for a while, and he asked me how I was doing about dad. Like I’ve said, I knew what was coming, but I didn’t feel it yet, I guess. Anyways, I remember making it in finally on a Saturday to talk to my dad. It was about the time for him to pass away, and everyone knew it, so I was for sure to be there. I remember him laying in bed, and everyone leaving the room so we could talk, for the last time. I sat down next to his bed near the head of the bed, because he couldn’t talk very loud, and I held his hand. He told me not to be scared, and that he loved me very much. I cried very hard, and laid my head on his chest and hugged him and told him that I loved him too. I think I asked him if he was scared, and he said no, and I told him that I would be ok and not to worry about me. I left the room and proceeded into the hallway and totally broke down for a couple of minutes. I wanted to stay the night and be there when it finally happened, but no one but me thought it would be a good idea, so I had to go home. My uncle and my sister Coleen stayed. I don’t remember much after that until hearing the phone ring at 5:30 the next morning. I knew what that meant. I just laid there and waited...my mom came and knocked on my door and said “Sam” and I said, “I know mom, I know”. And then she left the room. I got up and took a shower and cried the whole time. My mom heard me crying in the shower, and asked if I was ok, and I assured her I was. It was a Sunday morning, so of course, I was to go to church. I remember my step dad writing me a well intentioned note saying that now he was going to take care of me now that dad was gone. I appreciate his heart, but it wasn’t what I wanted to hear/read at the moment. I just kind of kept to myself all morning, and I think all day. As people from my church heard, they would all come and tell me how sorry that they were, and like I said, I appreciated their sentiment, but its not what I wanted to hear. I was very lonely. I was so lonely in fact that I decided to go to school the next day. It wasn’t because I wasn’t mourning, but I was lonely, and needed people to talk about something that wasn’t related to my dad. I have always been a guy that relied on my friends to lean on. I remember coming in the morning and sitting down at the same table that we all sat down at before school(second table back on the left in the cafeteria) and just talked to Paul Boggs and Chad Nieratko and whoever else came along about whatever sports were going on at the time. It was getting close to Tourney time, so I was probably talking about how Duke was going to roll the tourney and Paul probably said something about Notre Dame, and Chad was probably talking about the Lakers or something. It was good conversation, and no one mentioned my dad, and I didn’t bring him up, because I needed to think about something else. I’m sure that most teachers in the school wondered why I was there, but no one said anything, except Mrs. Smith the Home Ec Teacher. She was very angry that I was there, and I remember her saying “I can’t believe you are here today, he was your father, and you are at school?? I almost didn’t come in today because of it.” I understand what she was saying, and the way I deal with things is keeping my mind off of it, which is why I was at school. That night I went to the visitation for my dad. It was at Jenkins funeral home, which was probably as fitting place as anywhere, because it was two doors down from dad’s favorite “hang out”, Lee and Helens. There were tons of flowers everywhere. I expected tons of people to come and say “good bye”. They did. I did my share of crying before they opened it up to the public. I was there the whole time. I remember people asking me if I wanted to leave and take a break, and I didn’t want to go anywhere. People were there to see my dad and some came to see me. The one person I remember coming to the visitation was Mindy Stewart. I was sitting in another room, talking to people and Mindy came in from seeing my dad, and she was crying. I put my arms around her and told her that it would be ok. I’ll never forget what she said, “I should be here comforting you, and here you are comforting me.” I told her that I had already got my crying out for the day(which probably wasn’t true) and I was always there to help. The next day was the funeral. I was sitting in the 2nd row or 3rd row with my mom. I was crying pretty heavily. I remember them asking me to leave the room while they closed the casket. I declined. I didn’t want to leave my dad. They closed the lid to the casket, and I couldn’t control my crying, and just laid my head on my mom’s shoulder. One of my good friends, Tamar, came into the funeral late, and there was an empty seat next to me and she sat there, and held my hand the whole time, while I laid my head on my mom. I don’t remember much after that, but we went to the graveside visitation, which was in his hometown of Vanceburg, KY to be buried next to my grandma and grandpa. A few of my friends came with me to help me through it. We ate at McDonalds in Portsmouth, before we made it the rest of the way down. I don’t remember all of my friends that came with me, but I remember Mindy Stewart and Erin Brenner because they were checking out my Aunt’s brother there, because he was dressed in his Marine Blues, and they thought he was really hot. I think Troy was with me, and Jeremy and Aaron Gill, but I could be wrong on that. This is weird to say, but I had a good time with them. I don’t remember anything specific, but I remember that they helped me keep my mind off of what was going on, which was good because I didn’t want to cry anymore. They opened the casket at my dad’s graveside so people from Vanceburg would have the chance to say goodbye to him too. That was a bit disturbing. I was very thankful for all of my friends and family that helped me get through that time, and for being strong for me when I couldn’t be. Great friends are a blessing from God no matter when in life you come across them.

A couple of other 9th grade memories were when I played basketball. Bub Norris was our coach, and I don’t think he liked me much. I wasn’t much of a basketball player, since I had never even tried to play ball until the 8th grade(except the 6th grade, but that doesn’t count because I didn’t try). I always thought I was pretty decent at defense, because if it was something that I was good at was annoying people by being around when I wasn’t wanted.(My step-sister Rachel could tell you that). I never had the chance to play much. Not until the last game of the season with about a minute left, did I get into any game.(or maybe one other time). I remember catching the ball once, and throwing up my only shot for the season from the three point line, and nailing it. I had a perfect shooting season. I was that good.

Another thing I remember from that year, was Duke playing Kentucky in the NCAA tourney. Duke had rolled through the tourney to that point, and in my mind, Kentucky was a bunch of rednecks that only made it that far because they were given an easy tourney schedule. So, not thinking it was going to be a game I went to the movies. When the movies let out, I went next door to call my mom to pick me up, and saw that the game was close, and that Kentucky was playing great. (who knew?) My mom came and picked me up, and we went home to watch the end of the game. By this time it was in overtime. I’ll never forget Duke being up by 1 and Sean woods throwing up this crap shot of a prayer over Christian Laettner that banked in with a little over 2 seconds left. I was about to cry. My step dad, being from Kentucky, said “ it looks like us Kentucky boys are going to be your Duke boys.” I remember confidently saying, “There’s 2 seconds left, we’re going to win.” Grant Hill throws the pass down to Laettner, he makes a couple of moves, turns, shoots, and sinks the game winning shot. I was laying flat on the floor in front of the TV when this happened, and in one motion jumped up to touch the ceiling and then ran through the house excited because my team had won. Can you say, Dynasty??

One of my favorite memories from my freshman year, was the building and launching of our own personal rockets in Science class. My partners were Diana Bloomfield, and Beth Blankenship. Our rocket was different than everyone else’s rocket because it was in total, 6 feet tall. We decided to paint each section blue and gold which was Wellston colors, and since it was a rocket, I think I envisioned it being hung up somewhere as a mascot or a symbol because it was a thing of beauty. Well the time came for us to launch our rockets, and I remember Kevin Perko’s rocket was a three stage rocket, and it went straight up, and then the wind took it, and the next two stages took it straight to the south end of town, and we couldn’t go after it because it was so far gone. Then came our turn. Everyone was excited to see ours because it was by far the biggest rocket. I was looking forward to watching it go up and marveling at our accomplishments. The rocket went up, and as we waited for the parachute to come out to help it land softly and safely. I remember watching and watching, and the ‘chute never came out, and the rocket tumbled gracefully back to earth and landed in the visitor’s bleachers at the football field. Our once 6 foot, magnificent rocket, became a 3-foot mess. It was my fault ultimately. We glued our parachute in wrong and when it came time for the nose cone and the parachute to come out, it jammed and fell to the earth.

That summer after my freshman year was an excellent summer. I was able to attend basketball camp with the Varsity/JV teams. The great thing about this camp was, it was at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. This was probably the greatest thing for me at the time. I got to hang with guys from Wellston, practice basketball with some guys that I didn’t know, pick up some things, got yelled at by coaches, was mouthy with other coaches. Learned that some of your college basketball icons were really douche bags in real life after being told by one of them to shut up and get out of his face, when trying to get his autograph. Overall it was a good time, even though I wanted to kill Jason Via for being a jerk every night when we were about to go to bed.

During that summer, I had moved into my parent’s basement. Another great thing about being in my parent’s basement, I had my own room, and my own telephone line. What a great thing for a 15-year-old kid to have. That meant I could stay up as late as I wanted, watch whatever I wanted, and talk to whoever I wanted. I rarely took advantage of that stuff. I had never been a person to rock the boat, or push the envelope on rules. I think that’s why my mom and step-dad let me stay down there. They knew I was pretty trustworthy. However, during that summer, I became friends with a couple of girls from the grade below me, Bobbie may, and Dottie Van Bibber. Dottie was actually my stepsister Tina’s stepsister in law...which is kind of hard to explain on here. I thought that they were both awesome girls, and loved to talk to them. I would call Bobbie almost daily, and I think at one time I started talking to her at like 11 one morning, and except for meals and bathroom breaks we talked on the phone consistently until like 1 or 2 the next morning. What in the world did we actually talk about? I have no idea. I’m sure a lot of it was actually sitting down watching TV together, and talking about what shows we liked and didn’t like, or what movies or music we didn’t like. They were good friends. Heck, one time I asked Bobbi to the movies, and she said yes. She was actually my first kiss, but that was because I think Dottie pressured her into it. So, we went back to being just friends.

However, a new year of Band Camp preceded the start of the new school year. I remember being excited that Jeremy, JP and company weren’t going to be there anymore to harass me, and that there was now fresh meat to pick on. Once again I was miserable in the heat of band camp, and always having to lug my baritone sax all the way from the high school across Pennsylvania Avenue. Get stuff marked out on the field where I was supposed to be. However, I met my first “serious” girlfriend during that time. She was a freshman trumpeter.(I hope that’s the right term.) Her name was Candy, and she was pretty swell. We talked on the phone almost every night, and hung out on band trips and stuff. I’ll never forget waiting with her after the Apple Festival parade for her parents to pick her up. As we sat there on that rainy night, I decided I was going to kiss her(which I had done before) however, this time, she surprised me by biting my tongue...and didn’t let go. She thought it was really funny, but I was in obvious discomfort, didn’t think it was really all that great fun. Besides all of that, she was a pretty swell gal, but I knew she kind of liked another guy in band, and me not wanting to be the “jealous boyfriend” broke up with her, so she could date that guy, which she did shortly there-after.

My sophomore year, I decided to host a party at my basement pad. I invited a few of my friends, like Mindy and Troy, and I think Chad and a few more people. I had all of these grand ideas of games that we were going to play...like the game where people get locked in the closet together(5 minutes in heaven?) or whatever...stuff like that. I didn’t have a closet that would be a good place to do this, so we used the bathroom, which basically ended up being a time where the guy and girl sat in the bathroom and laughed about how dumb of an idea that I had. There was no alcohol, or drugs, just a ton of chips, and pop, and a relaxed atmosphere where there was no pressure to do or be anything that you didn’t want to do or be. One of the main things that I remember is that we used my phone line to prank call people. This was before the popularity of Caller ID. Instead of calling people in town, we would blind pick people from Jackson and call, and Troy would start harassing them on speaker phone so we could hear. I remember him being threatened and challenged to at least one or two fights, both of which he told them that he would meet them at McDonalds in Jackson.(which is obviously a great place to meet for a major fight.) Everyone who was there, later told me that they had a great time, and was thankful that there wasn’t a lot of structure, and that it was just a time to hang with friends. Mission Accomplished.

Throughout the year, I wasn’t very motivated to do my best in school. I kind of got lazy, I think. I was always wanting to be one of the top students because of my dad so I always put a lot of effort into it. My sophomore year, I began to actually just rely on just my intelligence(however limited that may be) to get by without actually trying to do the work. I was sure this was to catch up with a couple of times to be specific. Once was in sophomore English class. We went through the whole 9 weeks grading period taking grammatical quizzes. There were times, which I didn’t do very well, so I assumed my grades would suffer in that class that semester. I warned my mom so I wouldn’t get in as much trouble because of it. I ended up with an A. The second class was Biology with Mr. West. Mr. West was an old friend of my brother. I enjoyed his class, mainly because I just sat in the back of the room talking to a few of my friends. I remember coming close to the end of the year, I was a little low in the points for his class. I think I had a C without bonus points added in. I let Mr. West know that my mom would KILL me if I got a C, and he said not to worry that he would take care of it. When report cards came out, I got a A...which was higher than another guy who had a higher grade at the same time I had a C. I don’t know if my bonus points were a main reason for this jump, or if those teachers knowing me all of my life and knowing my dad were a reason for this, but I think these things directly effect the series events that would once again change my life once again.

Towards the end of my sophomore year of high school, my mom hit me with a bombshell. I was moving to Jackson. Jackson was our archrival. Well, I guess rivalry is a lose term because we were usually dominated by Jackson. I was told that even though we were moving to Jackson, I would be getting my driver’s license and a car so I could still finish out my schooling in Wellston, which I was ok with. However, after we had moved, my mom decided to let me know that I wasn’t going back to Wellston. She was to enroll me in Jackson City Schools. This pissed me off HUGE, and I said something to the effect that, “I guess you’re just lucky that my dad is dead, because if he wasn’t I wouldn’t have to listen to you, to leave my friends, and I could move in with him.” Yeah, that was a real douche bag thing to say, but its how I felt. This was possibly the second most important change in my life and probably set up my life in the direction that lead me to the place I am today.

It was also during this time though that I met a new friend of mine. His name was Ryan Naugle. His parents were looking to go to a new church, and they knew that Ryan was close to my age, so we all met at Pizza Hut and I was brought I think to befriend Ryan so that he would know someone if they ever came to the church. Ryan was a pretty quiet kid, but we liked a lot of similar things like video games, and basketball. He also was in band and played saxophone. Once I moved to Jackson, he was really my first friend that I actually hung out with. I knew a couple of other people, like my friend Stacy, but we didn’t get to be as close for a while. This made the beginnings of my transition to Jackson a lot easier.

A kind of funny story. When I first moved to Jackson, before I started school I went to a church youth function. While I was there, there were a lot of kids from Jackson there, and I went with Ryan Naugle. There were a few girls that caught my attention, but there was one girl who was pretty cool and funny, and she was about my height. I thought she was pretty cute, and so I wanted to know more about her. After the youth rally I started asking Ryan if he knew anything about her. He was like, why do you want to know?? I was like, dude she was pretty cute, and when I go to the high school, I want to maybe have a chance of asking her out so I want to know more. He was like, Dude, she’s in the 6th grade. I was at the end of my 10th grade year. I was like, there is NO way she was in the 6th grade, but I found out later from Ryan’s mom that she, in fact, was a 6th grader. I hate that girls mature faster than guys. I’ve since told Grace that story, and she thought it was funny, but I was pretty embarrassed when I found out initially.

One of the cool things about living in Jackson was living down the street from where I would take my AAA drivers education classes. It was pretty cool, because at that time I did actually get to meet some other people from Jackson who were my age. Two that I remember off the head were Traci Mapes and Cora Stockmeister. There was a guy named Seth in there too, but I can’t remember his last name. I got to know them a bit through the times of our classes, but I didn’t get to know anyone outside of class while I sat through and watched all of these horrible videos about traffic laws and making sure that I wore my seat belt while driving. A few weeks later I was doing my driving hours with a guy named Keith(I think) who I was told about a few months earlier by a guy from Wellston named Brian Rupert. He wasn’t as dramatic as Brian made him out to be, but he was definitely a cool guy. I looked forward to my hours driving with him, because living in Jackson, he would let me drive to Wellston to see if I could see any of my friends from there. I usually didn’t, but he at least gave me some choices of places of where to drive. When August came around, it was time for me to take my drivers test. The test administrator was someone who knew me because of my dad. He also had a daughter that was 4 or 5 years younger than me and who at one point and time had a crush on me. Since, from what I heard from the guy before me who almost got into a crash during his test, and because of the fact that I knew the administrator, my driving portion of the test consisted of 6 total turns. 4 of which were to the left at a stop sign. Easy. Then came the dreaded cones portion. I nailed it. Literally...nailed that freaking’ cone 3 times. Fail. I was heart broken, and cried as I was in the car on the way home. I was all ready to go and be “free”, but I would have to wait another week to be able to take the test again. The next time, though, I was ready. Perfection. I got my license. I was ready to go crazy. I was ready to cruise in my own car. Of course, I was going to go to Wellston because I didn’t know anyone in Jackson. I remember telling my mom and step dad that I was going to Wellston and I’d be back at 12….they told me that I would be back by 10. I was so mad, that I was actually home at like 9:30, just to show them that I wouldn’t be bound by their silly rules.(and the fact that I was almost in 3 or 4 fender benders because I wasn’t paying attention, so I figured that it was best for me to learn to drive and pay attention a bit better before I went out again.) The next night though, I was able to stay out until 11, which was generally my curfew unless I made prior arrangements from then on. I was never one to cause trouble, and I think that my parents wanted to see if that would continue once I got my drivers license, and when I got home so early that night, they realized that much wouldn’t change, and I was responsible to be able to stay out a bit later.

During that summer, in the midst of getting my drivers license, and taking all the appropriate classes and such, another life changing thing happened. I went to church camp. One thing that I haven’t mentioned much during this whole writing is the amount of time that I spent in church growing up. I was usually there at least twice a week. However, even though I was a “good” kid in most people’s eyes, I still dealt with a lot of stuff, that most people wouldn’t deem very serious. However, that summer I went to church camp again for the first time in maybe 5 or 6 years. The only people I knew that were there, was Brett and Steve Fink, and Ryan Naugle. There were a few other people there from Jackson, but I hadn’t met them yet. One of those guys though became one of my best friends throughout my years in high school along with Ryan and Stacy. His name was Brian Ross. He was a good friend to me, even though I probably was a douche to him sometimes, and usually unintentionally. Anyways...it was during that time at camp that I realized that although outwardly most people would think that I was a “Good Christian Boy” and I had been baptized into Christ, I really hadn’t given my life to Christ yet. I hadn’t given my attitude to Christ, I hadn’t given my mouth to Christ, and I haven’t given my future to Christ. Up until that summer, when people asked me what I wanted to do with my life, I told them one of three things...I either wanted to be a con-artist(to get people’s money), a psychologist(to learn how to manipulate people to get their money), or a stock broker(to get people’s money legally.) Even though two of the three of those things were legitimate, the reasons for being those things weren’t. I had this attitude called out while I was at camp. This wasn’t someone specifically sitting down with me or pointing me out in front of a crowd, it was merely something that I learned and pondered during my time that week. I don’t remember what the actually teaching was about, but I remember walking forward to “rededicate” my life to Christ. Some of the key people that I remember from being a part of the reason for my choice that week were Brent Baker, Scott Blount, Mic Bowen, and Tim Gresham. They taught me that there was more to life than money and planted seeds that helped me understand that life is precious, and every one is loved and should be loved both by God and by others. This is something that I still struggle with in action, but realize in thought, and probably will always have that problem until my death...however, I strive to always see the world as a place where people need in many different aspects such as love, food, water, freedom, peace, etc.

My first day of school at Jackson couldn’t have gone any worse if I had written it myself. I had already been dreading the first day of school. I didn’t sleep well the night before because my nerves were shot. I knew probably 5 people decently well at JHS. On top of that, there was a guy who was in my homeroom who I had in the past when I had lived in Wellston talked a bunch of crap to him on the phone because of a girl thinking that I would never ever run into him. I had no idea how big or small he was, or if he would ever remember me, but I recognized his name in my homeroom and was scared to death. I was going to be beaten mercilessly because I was a mouthy kid. I had my schedule though, and was to begin my first day in hell. I thought I would get to school early because, well, that’s what kind of person I am. I am ALWAYS early if I have any control over the situation, so that first day, I got into my maroon 1989 Chevy Cavalier with tinted windows and proceeded to drive to school. Something else that should be known is that I lived exactly 1 block from school, so it was kind of weird that I was going to drive to school, but I wanted to show off my car, and have the option to go wherever I wanted to eat for lunch since it was an open lunch period. I started my car, and it kind of had a hard time starting, but I checked my fuel gauge and it said I had 1/4 a tank, so I just figured once it got started whatever was wrong, would work itself out. So, off to school I go…..until I pull into the parking lot….and there my car dies...completely...not in a parking space….so on my first day of school, I had to push my car into a parking spot by myself in front of the dozen or so kids already there waiting outside. The next big thing was homeroom. I was in Mr. Bowman’s AP Chemistry class, which was great, but I had yet to have chemistry yet. The guy was in the class also, and thankfully either didn’t remember me, or didn’t care, and if he did, I probably could’ve taken him or at least held my own. It was quickly pointed out that I shouldn’t be in that class and needed to go to the Guidance Counselor to get this change rectified. I went down and had my whole schedule changed, because that one class messed up every other class that I was to take the rest of the day and the familiarity that I had with my schedule was thrown out the window. I went home for lunch and had my usual peanut butter sandwich and orange juice, thanks to having no car to drive. After lunch, after walking up the stairs with my books in hand, I trip over the top stair with all of my books and notebooks kicked down the hallway with no one to help me pick them up, and me taking my life in my own hands if I were to bend down to do it because of the herd of other students returning from lunch. Yeah, I was THAT guy. After school, Brian helped me out and realized that my tank was indeed out of gas, and that I had a floating fuel gauge. He took me to get some gas to put into my tank so I could get home, and get some money to get more gas in my tank. That was the worst day of my high school academic life.

Over the next few weeks, I got to know a lot of new people who turned out to be pretty cool even if they were from Jackson. People that stand out from my classes that I got to know a bit better were people like CJ White, Zack Taylor,(from Algebra 2), Kevin Wolford, Chris Tripp, Bret Shoemaker(from Spanish 2), Marlana Malone(from Chemistry), Dena Hammond, and Wendy Fee(from Psychology), Chris King and Kristin Fields(from English) and John Jackson, Mandy Burge, and Scotty Keels(from American History). I know that there are many other people that I got to know even better as the year went on, but those were the ones that I immediately could place a face with the name when I started there. They helped my transition go a bit easier because they were all friendly to me even thought I was the new kid, and from Wellston.

One of the greatest things that I got involved with in Jackson took place because of my psychology teacher thought I was an excellent pretend “crier”. One class we were supposed to role-play, and pretend that we had some sort of problem going on and how to fix it. I don’t remember specifically what my “problem” was, but I remember whatever it was, I was just going to sit down and cry….just a little bit at first, but then let it grow into something bigger, and then all out sobbing. My teacher was then moved(I keep calling her my teacher because I can’t remember her name right now...but she was a funny little old lady...she told us that each of our desks were our personal “Kingdoms” and that we were not allowed to invade other kingdoms with our feet, or hands without the consent of the king or queen of that kingdom. Strange, but effective) She pulled me aside after class, and told me that I should try out for the fall play at Jackson High School, Frankenstein. This was something I had never considered before because we never had anything like this in Wellston. I think we had a drama once while I was in Jr High, but nothing I had heard of in High school. Anyways, I went to try out. I read some lines, and obviously I raised a few eyebrows, but probably because I was a new person to try out that had never acted ever in his life. She asked me about myself , and why I decided to try out. I told her that I had just moved from Wellston, and that this teacher had suggested that I should try out. Come to find out, that teacher was her mother. Well the day came, and I got the part of “Igor’s assistant”. I thought, that was pretty neat because well. I got a part! Mrs. Sites came to me later and told me that it wasn’t really a part in the play, but she wrote it in specifically for me because she thought that I had some sort of promise or something. Anyways, my role was basically to hang out in the laboratory where Frankenstein was created, and I made my role a bit comedic. I danced with the skeleton, picked on Igor, and got thrown down by Frankenstein. It was a great time. I was really glad that I had no lines, because I was sure that I would forget them all. My only “line” was squeaking when I was scared, happy, excited, etc. I was thankful to my Psychology teacher for suggesting this to me because it was something new that I hadn’t ever done before, but mostly because it opened me up to a new group of friends and people that I had never talked with/to before.

During this time, I did meet a lot of cool people through my classes and stuff. In fact, one Friday night as we were walking around the football stadium during the game, I had tons of people from Jackson stop to say hey to me, or yell “he” at me from a distance. My friend Brian who was walking around with, made the remark that he thought that there were more people who knew who I was in Jackson, then knew who he was and he had grown up there. I thought that was great, because I was scared I was going to fade into oblivion after growing up in one school district the son of a guidance counselor of all the elementary schools and jr. High. I didn’t want to move and just be another person that faded away. However, I did miss all of my friends from Wellston, because they were the ones who knew me, and still liked me even though they knew me. They had been there through my highs and lows, and I had to start over with a new set of friends that even though we got along, they didn’t know me like I had been known. I was also at the beginning of “reinventing” myself after my decision that I made at church camp the summer before my junior year. I was trying to avoid all the people that I knew could get me into trouble, and trying to be good….in probably the most legalistic sense I know. That was until I met one guy who helped nudge me down a more understanding, less legalistic road of following Christ.

One of my first dance experiences at JHS was with a very awesome girl named Molly Malone. She was pretty cool and she caught my eye from a distance. I don't remember exactly how we actually met, but I remember that she was awesome, and that we were pretty much opposites. Anyways, we decided to go to Homecoming together. Well, I asked, and she said yes, anyways...:) well, the time came that I was going to pick her up at her house, and I went and picked up the corsage. I went to her house, and I was pretty darn nervous and I had this corsage that I had to pin on her for that evening. When I arrived at her house I walked into her house and waited for her to come down. When she got downstairs I had to pin the corsage on, except I was too nervous and I was totally freaked that I would either 1) poke her boob with a stick pin, or 2) grope her boob(tee hee) in front of her mom(not so cool). Anyways, I chickened out, and had her mom do it for me....better safe than sorry I always say. Well, we had a good time(at least I did) and then we dated for a few more weeks after, but decided to call it quits, for some reason, which I can't remember today. Probably some silly teenage reason. We are still good friends to this day.

I’ll never forget the day that I met Matt Porter. It was at my house, and we were having some sort of lunch/dinner at our house around Christmas time, and Matt had come up to interview to be a weekend youth minister. I didn’t really know what that was, but I thought it would be a neat concept that I would like to try out at our small church on S.R 93. Matt was a pretty short guy, but really stocky, and liked to wrestle, mainly because we all thought because we were taller than him, we could take him, I think. Matt whipped us pretty much every time, except at basketball because we would block the snot out of him. Good times. I learned a lot from Matt over the next couple of years. One of which is, when you are a junior in college and you are dating a high school senior, you must skip out on the big Kings Island trip to take her to the prom, even though Kings Island was much more amazing even when it was raining all day. The more important things that I learned from Matt is that God is indeed love, and that there was a different way to look at the world and life than trying to always be the best rule follower and never mess up. He also helped me understand that there may be other ways to read the bible than just the way that I saw it. He also was a key member of one of the best, most memorable stories of my life which I’ll talk about in a bit.

Over the next couple of years, my mornings consisted of this particular schedule. Pray every day that we didn’t have school that day...refuse to look out of my blinds until my alarm went off and heard the radio man say if we had school or not, because I knew that if I happened to be too curious and look out of the window too early, I would jinx it and the snow would not fall, and we would have to go to school that day and it would be all my fault. I couldn’t tell anyone else this at school for fear of being shunned. Then I would get up, take my jam box into the bathroom with me, crank up the awesome tunes that I had, which included but were not limited to, Michael Jackson, Snow, Color Me Badd, Hammer, Michael W. Smith, just to name a few. After I made myself into a sexy young teenage stud, I then proceeded out of the door to drive across town to pick up my good friend Brian, and then from his house, we would drive back to my friend Stacy’s house, and continue to wait for her to get ready so we could take her to school...then from Stacy’s, we would drive over and pick up Stacy’s friend(and later my friend) Amber Pratt. Then we would drive to school. I did this almost every day for two years.

We did have a couple of great snow days...in fact, I think that one day actually turned into two weeks off of school because of the two feet of snow that we got. This was great fun, because eventually Brian and I made it out to Ryan’s house to hang out, to go sledding, and to cause mischief. One particular time, we spent the day digging tunnels from a large ditch, up to the road, which the opening was hidden from plain sight from any passersby...as cars would drive by, we would take turns popping up out of these holes and nailing those cars with snowballs…..and then quickly duck back through our tunnels, never to be found…...awesome stuff. Another time, I was hanging out at Stacy’s house(which I did often, because her house was a block from mine, and I had a huge crush on Stacy) her and her brother we being made to break ice and snow from their driveway….on this particular day, Stacy fell with a broom in her hand, and popped herself in the eye. I laughed for a long time over that...which Stacy didn’t appreciate very much…..and because she had a black eye. The next day, in order to get revenge on me for laughing at her, she told all of her friends that I had given her the black eye the night before…..I got many dirty looks from random people for a while which Stacy thought was funny...it quit being funny at that point. Stacy was a jerk.

Around this time, I kind of “fell” into a new group called America’s pride. I was hanging out with one of my buddies, who had recently joined this group, Josh Ross, and he had to go to the practice one day, and I joined him. Somehow, I managed to volunteer myself into the group, even though I was never really invited, but I guess they either felt sorry for me and didn’t want to tell me no, or were still looking for people to join. It was something that was right up my alley because I got to practice my show choir skills that I had learned in Jr high, and also my new found acting skills….I also got to hang out with a bunch of cool people, who were not as scary as I thought that they were from a distance. They were all people that I had talked to from time to time or saw in classes, but I didn’t really get a chance to know these classmates. Some of them that I can remember were Tami Doty, Geoff Matthews, Cindy Von Hatten, Traci Mapes, and Chad Grow, just to name a few. They were all good friends with each other, since they had grown up together for the most part, and I was definitely an outsider with this group. It was a lot of fun, because we got to travel a lot to other schools trying to promote a drug and alcohol free lifestyle to students. We not only travelled to Jackson schools, but we also travelled to Scioto County, Chillicothe, and other random places around the state. I bring this up to lead you into this next story that was one of my most favorite memories, and probably one of my most embarrassing stories.

Around the spring time of every high school junior and senior comes a time that most everyone looks forward to...Jr/Sr prom. This year was my first experience of taking a girl to the prom, since I was a junior. I had pretty much made up my mind that I wasn’t going to go to the prom, because there weren’t really any girls that I wanted to go with. However, one night about a month before prom, I was attending youth group with our new youth minister leading, and this really cute girl from Oak Hill showed up. Her name was Crystal, and I thought she was pretty hot. Even her big poofy early ’90’s hair was pretty cool. Anyways, that night after I met her, I asked her out on a date, and she accepted, even though she probably thought I was a weirdo for calling her after just meeting that night, but we had seem to have hit it off pretty good at youth group. After a couple of dates I decided that she was the girl that I wanted to take to the prom. So, I asked her, and she said yes….I was smooth :) Anyways, later on we found out that our group, America’s pride, had been invited to a Lock-in about 2-3 hours away in a town in Eastern Ohio called Steubenville, and that lock-in was the Friday night before the Saturday prom. We got very little sleep that night because we were all trapped in this little office trying to catch some zzz’s...and then we had to drive back to Jackson the next morning. I don’t think I got any sleep until around noon, and then I had to be up 5 to get ready for prom, to pick up Crystal, do the picture thing, and then head to the prom. I should mention at this point, that my parents were out of town this particular weekend, and I can’t remember why, but it was probably a business trip of some sort. Also, Matt, our weekend youth minister was spending the night at our house because he rotated between different houses of people in the church...and that weekend was our house. I was kind of glad, because I knew I was pretty tired, so I may need him later in the night. Well, the night had pretty much went pretty well, I thought. I got to go to the dance with someone who was pretty much out of my league(I thought) and dance, and stuff. I even was pretty smooth, and was making out with her at the prom...until she told me my breath stunk, which I knew couldn’t be true, because I had probably brushed my teeth like 3 times from the time I woke up, until the time I picked her up...not to mention gum and stuff…..I chalk it up to nerves...I hope...and I haven’t gotten many complaints since. if ya know what I’m saying…HA! Anyways, I was pretty wore out from my lock-in, and driving, and dancing and she pretty much pissed me off with the bad breath comment, so about 11:30ish I decided it was probably time to leave, and get her home. However, she lived probably 45 minutes round trip back in the sticks of Jackson county, so I thought I may fall asleep on the way home, so I drove by my house to see if Matt would ride out to Crystal’s with me so I would have someone to ride back with me so I didn’t fall asleep. So, with Matt in the backseat, and Crystal and I in the front, we drove. As we were driving, I was noticing how many stars were out that night, and how it was just a really beautiful night. About a mile from Crystal’s house, I was about to fall asleep and was just staring off into the road in front of me, when I saw a stop sign...it didn’t register to me though in my tiredness that it was MY stop sign, until I saw a car fly across the road in front of me, and I slammed on the brakes and slid along the road right into that intersection, luckily with no other traffic coming. We then shortly pulled into her driveway, and Matt laid down in the backseat so we would have our “privacy”. I then walked around to open her door for her, and she dropped something out of the door, but it was so dark that we couldn’t see it, so we had to leave the door open so the inside car lights would help illuminate the ground. While she was looking on the ground for this, I was zoning out and still checking out the stars, and thinking how awesome they were….then I heard her say, “I found it”, so I shut the door pretty solidly. The door didn’t latch, or make the sound that it should’ve made when it shuts, and I then look down and see Crystal still leaned over holding her head….I had just slammed my girlfriend’s head into the car door….of course, I did what any great boyfriend would do...I busted out laughing….and she began to cry. I felt bad about it, I really did, but it took me so off guard that my first reaction was to laugh .I then walked her to the door and told her good night. I walked back to the door, Matt moved up to the front seat and asked me if I had kissed her. I told him that I didn’t think she wanted to kiss me. He asked why, and I said, “because I just slammed her head in the car door.” Crystal and I broke up the next day. We did date off and on for the next few years, but we never really “clicked”. I have never figured out if it was because we were too much alike, or because we were so different.

Another highlight of the school year was our spring musical, Annie Get your gun. I had won the part of Pawnee Bill, which was the rival of Buffalo Bill in the musical. It was at this time, I met the girl that I had then crushed on every day for the rest of my high school career, Suzie Harley. Suzie was awesome, cute, funny, smart, and talented...pretty much the exact opposite of me. Even though nothing ever happened between us, I did get to be decent friends with her over the next year and a half between being in plays, band, choirs, and some classes together. It was a good time.

At the end of the school year, I decided that I would give band one more chance. I enjoyed band in Jackson, or at least just watching it, because I liked the songs that they played, and it seemed like everyone who was in band had a great time. I talked to Mr. Berry about signing up, and that I played Baritone Sax, and he told me it would be great to have me, so I was a first year senior in Jackson band, and I was pumped about the whole thing. So, I had a lot to look forward to for my Senior year. I knew that my Senior great was going to be awesome. It was something that I had looked forward to since my freshman year and being tortured by the seniors, and I was determined to have a great time, and not be the jerk to the freshmen like the seniors were to me. I had totally reinvented myself in Jackson, and I wasn’t about to look back.

Well, being the first year Senior in Band I had to learn a bunch of new stuff, like marching style, chants, cadences, dance moves and stuff so I could teach the freshman when it came down to band camp….but because of my experience being a freshman in band, I knew that I wasn’t going to be hard on them at all….but I was supportive and tried to teach them the best I could. In fact throughout the whole school year, I was always friendly to the underclassman, because I know the same wasn’t shown to me when I was coming up through high school. Also, one of my best friends was a freshman, Stacy, and she would’ve put me in my place if I was a real jerk to anyone. Since I was now a member of the band, and had been in Jackson for over a year, I decided to go all in and show my school spirit, and Jackson pride. I always tried to be at every sporting function I could be at, usually as a member of the band, either marching or pep band. I loved being a student at Jackson, way more than I could’ve ever thought. I did still miss my friends from Wellston, and tried to make it up there to see them when I could, and enjoyed when we played them in football and basketball, but I was a very busy teenager, so those times came by very rarely.

I did have a great schedule as a Senior. I had Music Theory first period, 2nd period I had study hall, 3rd I had government, 4th I had Pre Calculus, 5th AP English, 6th Choir, and 7th band….Music Theory came pretty easy to me, and after we got our work done, it usually consisted of chatting, and playing cards, usually Euchre. 2nd I still stayed out in the band room with Study Hall. I hung out with Kristina Johnson, and Cora Stockmeister. We sat in the practice rooms and chatted, but occasionally we would have to help out with the 8th grade band. I thought they were both very cool girls, and had a small crush on Cora. In government, we learned about the inner working of our national government, but mostly Joe Rapp, Chris Dalton, Richie Schwab and I played Euchre. In Pre Calculus, I actually had to do work because Mrs. Kight was a hard teacher….very good at what she did, but it was never easy stuff...at least not for me. I thought AP English was going to be tough, but it ended up not being very difficult at all. I don’t hardly remember anything from that class at all.(you could probably tell by my grammar and such throughout all of my memoirs) Choir was, well Choir. It wasn’t difficult, although I hated singing a lot of the songs Dr. Boothe chose...usually about bleak midwinter and such. Then Band. I loved Band. I loved being a senior in band, and playing Baritone Sax. Ryan Naugle also played Baritone Sax, and was much better than me at it, although I wouldn’t have admitted it then. I was mainly a screw off when it came to band throughout my whole time there. I never practiced as much I should’ve, but I took a lot of pride of being in band in Jackson,

I also was in the drama department as a senior. Our Fall Play was called, “You can’t take it with you”. It was about a really eccentric family that lived together. I was some cookey man named Mr. DE pinna who lived in the Basement that made fireworks or something. That play was a lot of fun to do. It had a small cast with a lot of people who were very talented in the Arts. James Cochran, Peter Luhrman, George Plymale, Eric Hatfield, Suzy Harley just to name a few. However, I think of all the times we performed it, we only actually got it right one time...the last night. We often would mess up the lines, and miss cues for us to come out on stage and leave stage because of missed lines...I remember some of the backstage people remarking how they had no idea where we were in the script because we kept jumping around. There were a lot of lines that were similar between the first act and the second act that we often jumped back and forth. Like I said, lots of fun, but low quality. However, our fall play was entitled Brigadoon, and it was my favorite of all the plays that I was in throughout my two years. I played Jeff Douglas, who was the 2nd male lead. I thought it was great, because he was very sarcastic, which I was/am, and had 0 singing parts throughout the musical. Not only that, but all the parts where I may have had to been in the chorus, I was on stage and couldn’t sing. It was great. Not only that, but my huge high school crush Suzy was in the play and played the part of a girl who had a huge crush on my character...it was awesome. She had to act like she was in love with me. I begged the director to write in a kissing part for our two characters, but for some reason that never panned out. Bummer. Daniel Armstrong was the lead male character, and he was only a freshman, but we had a good time. I think we had good chemistry because we played best friends in the play. I had a part in the play where I had to act drunk. I had never had to do that before, and I had no idea how to do it. I sucked at that part. I couldn’t do it, mainly because I had never been around people who were drunk or had never had any alcohol. Overall, it was an awesome play, and I wish I could see it now on video just to see how good(or probably bad) it really was.

In band, our senior year, we got to take a trip to Louisville, KY for the Annual Pegasus parade. It was a parade that kicked off the annual Kentucky Derby. I don’t remember much detail about it. I think its because we were all go go, and I was pretty worn out. Things I do remember about the trip are this. Before the Trip we knew we were taking 4 buses in order to get all of the students, parents, and equipment to Louisville. I had the bright idea of dividing each bus up according to class. That way everyone could hang with their friends in their class, and it would be easy to organize everyone. Mr. Berry thought it was great. Everyone else hated it, because that meant they couldn’t ride with their friends from other classes. I didn’t speak up and take credit for that one. I think I’m alive today because of that. I remember practicing marching around our hotel in Downtown, Louisville. We also took a trip to Churchill Downs, and the Louisville Slugger factory. We went to visit the falls of the Ohio, which was pretty neat, but I was probably in the minority of people who enjoyed that stop as well. When the parade time came, we found out it was a straight March...about 2 miles, I think. We marched, and played the entire course of the parade. Before the parade started, I had this weird pain in my leg...more in my shins than anything. I have always assumed it was the beginning of shin splints, but I couldn’t hardly walk at all. I didn’t want to tell anyone because I was afraid I would get into trouble or something. I limped the first part of the parade, but the pain eventually went away, either on its own, or because of my adrenaline because of marching in the parade.

My senior year, we lost two people as a part of our Jackson High School Community. A teacher and a student in two separate occasions. Mrs. Kight, one of my favorite teachers, passed away suddenly while on a walk with her husband. This was a hard thing for most of the students in Jackson to get over, because she was such a favorite of everyone. She challenged you to be a better student, and person, but wouldn’t leave you hanging if you needed help. She was always willing to take the time to help you out if you wanted to put in the work. She was always at school 30 minutes early so if you had questions with your homework, you could go to her, and work it out. I used this often, mainly because I didn’t want to do my homework at home, but mostly because I just enjoyed her as a teacher. The second one happened on the say of our high school graduation. A student, Brett Shoemaker, was killed in a tragic car accident on a street in town. He was a year behind me, but was a pretty popular kid who played basketball. I got to know him a bit the year before in Spanish Class. He sat in front of me and was always asking me for help with Spanish. I just had to laugh at him because he was goofy. He was a really good guy, and it was a tragedy that he lost his life so early. Death sucks.

Well, when school was coming to an end, it was time to vote for the Senior Class awards. These awards consisted of "Most likely to succeed" all the way down to things like class clown, and class flirt. I really lobbied hard to many of my fellow Senior Classmates to be a part of one of these awards, and really thought that I had it in the bag to be class flirt. However, I didn't get it. People thought that Danny Beiting was a bigger flirt than me. I was crushed. However, I did manage to snag one of these awards. I was voted the Male person with Most School Spirit! Only two years after moving from our archrival in Wellston, my transformation to Jackson Ironman was complete.

Graduation was a bittersweet night. Like I said, we found out about Brett’s car wreck before Graduation, but at the same, we were finishing a milestone in our life. Being a part of the Acapella choir, we were to sing a couple of selections for the graduation ceremony, including the Michael W. Smith song, “Friends”. Because of this, all of the seniors who were to sing were moved to the front row, seated just behind the Valedictorians/Salutatorian so we could get to the front quickly and easily. It was fun to be in the front row, but all of the excitement happened behind us. Someone thought it would be fun to bring a Beach ball and pass it around the senior class, not to be outdone, someone else(or maybe the same person/people) brought a couple of smoke bombs and set them off. I never have figured out who did that, but at the same time I have always had my suspicions...but I probably would be wrong if I guessed. That night we went to a party thrown by Lori Cline at the 4H camp. It was the last time I saw a lot of those people to this day. Its amazing how people you have grown so close to over the years and have a bond with, no matter how big or small, suddenly disappear from your life. People begin to go their separate ways and start forging a new path for themselves. Oh the places we will go was read to us by one of the senior valedictorians, Mark Lloyd. I had never heard the story before, but I thought it was probably the most inspiring, and most true to people who are about to start a new phase in his or her life.

That summer, I decided I was going to attend Kentucky Christian College to begin a new phase of my life. Who knew the places I was about to go and the new story I was about to write in my life.

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