Waste Of Ancient Wisdom

The place: Tacoma, WA

Aron Hakone’s dad was someone worth bragging about. He was a black belt in karate, was in really good shape, was really nice and, oh! was a black belt in karate. One day at school, Aron posted a sign-up list in our 4th grade class room. Mr. Hakone was offering karate lessons at his home, free of charge! I was one of the first to sign up, with visions of my throwing ninja stars with unprecedented accuracy and eventually landing a lucrative career in martial arts films running through my mind.

On the day the class started, I was ready a full hour before I was supposed to even leave for the Hakone house. I wore my gray sweatpants, a blank jersey with red, elbow-length sleeves, blue Adidas and the same pair of big-toe-sticking-out-of-a-hole socks I’d been wearing for three days straight. Since no one ever saw my feet, I rarely gave a second thought to their appearance or general lack of hygiene.

“Turns out we read the report wrong, Dave. It was a sign-up sheet for martial arts, not martial law. We, uh, we should probably start cleaning up.”

After being dropped off by my mom, I walked up to the front door where, taped to the knocker, a note read: CLASS IN BACKYARD GO THROUGH GATE LEFT SIDE OF GARAGE 

In the backyard, I found Aron, Clint and Wendell sitting on the grass. Aron had on a karate suit with a blue belt,

The Girl With The Bowl Cut Hair

The place: Mrs. Dell’s 6th grade classroom, Idlewild Elementary, Tacoma, WA.

***

As Valentine’s Day crept up on us like a pink disease, Mrs. Dell read aloud stories of love. Every one of the girls in class were attentive as Mrs. Dell read about love won, love lost, mythical love (both Greek and Roman). We boys, on the other hand, safeguarded our discomfort behind disgusted remarks and inappropriate kissy noises. When I wasn’t busy doing my part to mock the ridiculous concept of love, I kept a clandestine gaze on the chubby-cheeked smile of Kara Pennyday.

Since Day 1 of the fourth grade, I had carried a torch for Kara like an Olympic ceremonial participant on a hamster wheel. She may not have had the girliness of Molly Johnson or the burgeoning A-cup figure of Dotty Curtner, but I found Kara to be the most captivating girl in Idlewild. I was entranced by her bowl cut hair and her uncanny ability to be as well-versed in Star Wars characters as she was in members of boy bands. She was friendly and open-minded. Heck, she was even friendly with Sue Munsen.

It’s debatable whether or not a sixth grader is capable of experiencing actual love–it may be better classified as puppy love or as innocent infatuation. Whatever the correct term was, I was head over heels in it. And maybe the stories that Mrs. Dell read began to sink in because, despite everything my chicken hearted logic told me, I decided that I would try to let Kara know how I felt. The only problem was how to do it.

Aaay! It’s Fonzie Day

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With the exception of my first felony, growing up on that particular Oregon street was innocent, quiet and, if I’d known what a Beaver Cleaver even was, maybe even Cleaver-esque. Hillsboro was the sort of Nilla wafer-flavored suburb that angsty teens hated for its lack of anything interesting that ever happened, and the neighborhood cops loved to patrol for the exact same reason.

The self-centered, myopic life of a child is all about living in that particular moment, playing an endless number of games, using anything and everything as a toy and basically overworking one’s imagination like it were a Dickensian workhouse orphan. At 4 years old, life was simple, fairly straightforward and free of the obstacles that life would present in the following years (obstacles like telling time and learning to write a capital Q.) Each day was (if the system of mathematics I made up was correct) 132 hours long and a week was made up of, like, three months.

“Oh yes, sir. That’s is absolutely right. Going into space was way easier than writing a capital Q in cursive. That’s just damn near impossible.”

I would wake up, have breakfast, play some games that I may or may not have made up and, more or less, go to bed feeling that I’d accomplished

Holiday Rules For Everyone

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“Home is where the heart is.”

“Don’t spend more than you can afford.”

Advice that has been handed down for generations and stood the test of time are the result of a combination of common sense, downhome know-how and a cycle of emotional abuse that perpetuates the strict demands of those relatives long dead.

Holiday advice is, in many aspects, a tradition. And, for much the same reason that certain decorations are dusted off every year, despite their cracking, bending and being covered in black mold, tradition is one of the hallmarks of the holidays. (Fun fact: It is also one of the hallmarks of Hallmark!)

“Wait, so why am I putting this giant, Indonesian centipede on the tree, again?”
“‘Cuz it’s tradition, silly!… Now, where did that scorpion run off to?”

With tradition comes unspoken (but occasionally yelled) rules that are drilled into your young psyche, put through the ringer of dysfunctional family gatherings and, for a large investment, can be purged and unlearned through years of Cognitive Behavior Therapy.

As you ready yourself for a day of overeating, passive aggressive conversations and the opening of presents and old wounds, my egg nog-addled brain has put together tips that I believe will make this holiday season a win for you and a heartwarming* memory for your family (but, then again, I believe our cat understands everything I say).

*By  heartwarming, I mean in the emotional, full of good will sense and not in the defibrillator set to maximum sense.

Things That Go Bump In The Night – Part 2 – Physical Contact

<—- part 1 Field Trip

At lunch on Friday, Wendell and Clint insisted that Tim, Alan and I spend the night at Wendell’s. They ignored all of our questions about the evening except one, by far the most important question, one that would sway even the fiercest fence-sitter: yes, Wendell’s mom would be ordering pizza.

That night, we found Clint and Wendell in the garage busy at work with assorted tools and what looked to be leftover slats from a picket fence. As Wendell sawed down every other slat, Clint joined them to longer pieces with nails of varying length with equally varying accuracy.

“Yeah!” Alan yelled out, taking up one of the finished pieces. “Swords!”

Wendell grabbed the wooden sword, flipped it and handed it it back. “It’s a cross.”

“Happy birthday, Gary! I saw this place and remembered how much you liked wooden swords. Go ahead and pick one out!”

“Whatta we need crosses for?” Tim asked.

“For tonight,” Wendell answered, trying on the smile villains deliver when they’ve finally captured the hero. When villains did it, it was sinister and ominous, but Wendell looked like he was in need of a gallon of bicarbonate. “You’ll see.”

Things That Go Bump In The Night – Part 1 – Field Trip of the Damned (…disappointed)

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The place: Miss B’s 4th grade classroom, Idlewild Elementary, Tacoma, WA.
The year: none of your business.

*****

Not since the day Molly Johnson’s training bra had been visible beneath a sheer top had there been such a buzz in class. As the morning began, the first thing any of us saw were the words ‘Field Trip’ written on the chalkboard. Now, regardless if you were a straight A student or a straight D delinquent, field trips were like golden tickets to the Wonka factory. Even if our worst fears were realized and the trips turned out to be educational, it never mattered. It still meant piling into a bus and eating our lunches someplace other than Idlewild. It was like furlough from a work camp, a chance to see how the outside world worked between the hours of 8 and 3 everyday, a free sick day without having to secretly put the thermometer next to a lightbulb.

“Dont worry, Stevie. I’m gonna make sure the teacher takes us on a field trip, this year.”

Indiana Jones and the Infringement of the Copyright

The new adventures of Tom and Huck had been a failure thanks to Alan’s mom’s irrational fears of our contracting malaria from a local pond.

Was that the end of our filmmaking? Oh no. Our lofty and unreachable goals would not be set aside so easily. We were still in possession of the 8mm camera and we still had the drive to be famous, so we decided to begin our second first feature film.

This newest piece of cinematic artistry was to be titled Danger Boys of the Lost City.

Now, similarities could be made between Danger Boys and an iconic film about an adventurous archaeologist, but we, self-deluded and seemingly impervious to reality, had persuaded ourselves that our story was totally unique and would receive waves of awe from moviegoers and industry people alike.

So, what was Danger Boys of the Lost City about? How much adventure could be crammed into one film about two boys?

FADE IN…