words, words, words
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
If I begin to detail myself here, will you understand?
P. I am me
Q. I don't always know exactly who that is
R. I am Quaker
S. I like words and playing with them
T. I like genmaicha tea
U. I like the word napkin more than most others
V. I spend time walking my neighborhood
W. I cook rice often
X. I sleep well most every night
Y. I eat large amounts of fruit and vegetables
Z. I munch, sleep, write, create, cook, bike, watch, walk, listen, hope, learn, drink, live, breathe, touch, know, question, taste, copy, read, stare, carry, talk, dance, finger, try.
raisin@gmail.com
albums:
Magnetic Fields: 69 Love Songs
Erasure: I Say, I Say, I Say
Depeche Mode: Black Celebration
The Beach Boys: Pet Sounds
Marvin Gaye: What's Going On?
David Bowie: Hunky Dory
George Michael: Listen without Prejudice
George Gershwin: Porgy and Bess
Yo La Tengo: And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
songs:
Wild is the Wind: Nina Simone
Come Undone: Duran Duran
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini: Rachmaninov
My Funny Valentine: Chet Baker
Feeling Yourself Disintegrate: The Flaming Lips
This Must Be the Place: The Talking Heads
Hyperballad: Bjork
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Friday, June 25, 2004
I gained increased independence each year of high school, both at school and at home. My parents never put a curfew on me, and once I could drive, I was often responsible for everything I needed. We rarely ate a meal together during the week, my mother being very busy with her law practice, me with sports and school, and my dad, well, I never did know what he was doing. He was often helping out with the law practice, i guess. When my brother left for college, my last two years of high school were pretty free. My parents would often go to our lake house an hour away for the weekends and I would stay home because I didn't want to be up there without any friends. I ate chinese out often at Panda Express near my high school, or made something at home - I did at least half of the grocery shopping for our house it seemed. I loved it.
I enjoyed my Mother's company, but my dad, well, he's never learned the trick of friendship. he's a good entertainer, and my friends often thought he was funny, but he never seemed to be able to have a close conversation. My best memories of him are when i was younger, when there wasn't a need for conversation. Maybe that's just the typical man though, who has loose friends based on sports and tech equipment, can't relate to his children, and mostly seems uninterested in much of the world. i want to paint my dad as a villain, someone who purposely and cruelly hurt me and my brother. But perhaps he's just a normal self-interested person who never cared much beyond his own needs. He wanted me to sit with him and watch sports on tv, but I never cared for that. I tried to interest him in the track meets I loved, but he didn't seem interested. He was often just there, at my football practices and games, on the couch watching tv, in the background. I know he liked me, and I know i was somewhat intimidated by him. I knew he could make me do things i didn't want to do; I felt I had an obligation to obey him, even if I thought he was wrong.
Our team couldn't lose my senior year. We hardly even had a challenge the first couple of games. Nice for me because since I started, part of the third quarter and the fourth quarter were left to the second string, so they could get some practice in once the team was clearly ahead. I just stood around and watched the clock roll down. All I could think of was the end of the season. I had started to make up my mind that I didn't need to play football in college. Regardless of what my dad had told me, I knew I could get a full-ride academic scholarship to Oklahoma University for being a National Merit Scholar. i was also working on getting into the Air Force Academy and was fairly confident it was going to happen, without having to play football. If i could just hold on until December, it would all be over, the five years I had put into football done forever. I had a sense of accomplishment about it, that I had survived something I hated for five years, that I had proved my ability to sacrifice for the greater good. That was my way of dealing with the pain. Did i serve the greater good? no. But i wasn't ready to face that.
But we did lose. To a team that had no business beating us. It was kind of funny, actually. At homecoming the weekend before, I had gotten hurt. I was near the bottom of a pile-up in the middle of the game, and when I tried to get up, my left leg didn't work. i didn't have any idea why, but it just wouldn't do anything. So I sat there - I didn't feel pain, I wasn't worried, I just knew I couldn't stand on my own. The trainer came out on the field; he and another guy helped me to the sidelines. He had me put my weight on my left leg to see for sure if I could walk, and that's when I felt the pain. i about fell there, but they held me up. Then i noticed the clapping. It's a weird part of football that when a player gets hurt, both sides clap them off the field, as a tribute or a reward or a hope that they'll heal quickly. It's a nice feeling, although, you sort of expect people to clap for you when you do something good, not when you simply get hurt. I sat around the rest of the game, with ice on my leg, shivering as the sweat dried on me. I remember my friends all concerned, rushing down to see if I was all right, and I just smiled at them and said I was fine. Of course, what was going through my head was that I wasn't on the field any more, and if my leg was broken, I wouldn't be on the field for some time.
Coach Lancaster, who never thought I did a good job on the field, decided not to replace my position. Instead, he put in a new linebacker, and tried to shift the line over a bit, expecting that since I hadn't been helping out the team anyway, they didn't need to replace me. When we watched the videos after the game, it was obvious what had happened. The fullback ran, almost every play, down the lane I should have been in. And because nobody was there to replace me, he made enough yards to get a first down. They ran that play the whole game, and won. The next game, the coaches put someone in my spot. It was the audacity of the coach who thought I was doing nothing that lost us the game, and lost our top ranking in the nation. It took me a long time to realize that; I was never keen on paying attention to the videos, and frankly, was just happy to not have been in the game. But I've been laughing for years at Lancaster for his bias against me which lost him a 14-0 record. Of course, the whole team suffered because of it, but then, the team generally suffered because of Lancaster.
5:24 PM
|
|
| |
|
|
|
