Memories of a klutz

Well, I've considered putting up a blog for a long time. At times, I've thought that it was a self-serving thing to do, and at other times I thought it would be nice to get some thoughts out into the world. The funny thing is I never really read any blogs until the last few months, and I figured what the hell. If people chance upon them and read them, that's cool. If they decide that they're crap, no problem, they can just stop reading them. Then I found out that my younger brother (I haven't bee able to call him my little brother for quite a while now) has a blog here, so that just encouraged me further to get this started.

He started off by talking about his recollections of growing up. That actually seems like a good place to start.

One of my earliest memories is playing with matches. I was probably 2 or 3 years old. What do I remember most? My mother seeing what I was doing, and trying to stop me before I hurt myself. She didn't make it, my fingers still hurt when I think about that. I don't remember where in the Boston area that house was, but I remember the next house a bit better.

The next house was in Arlington, next to or very near a car dealership. One of the hilights of my young life was getting to watch as they took the cars off of the car carrying trailer. At that house I also had my tricycle stolen and trashed (not that I really remember that). Why in the world would you do that? It seems as though it would prove that you're an idiot, and not much else. I do remember being outside bare foot, and stepping on a huge piece (I was 3 so that's relative) and cutting my foot from the ball to the heel. I also had managed to lock myself out of that house one morning while everybody (it was quite a bit like a commune) was sleeping. It felt like I was out there forever, who knows, it could have been all of 2 minutes. This is the place where I had gotten my first visible scare too. I fell in the bathtub and cut my chin wide open. As I hear it, my father insisted that I eat dinner before going to the hospital.

The next place I remember, was a house in Warner, NH on School St. This was a tramatic experience for me, there were these weird things in the area that I later learned were trees. I turned 4 around the time we moved there, so Josh would have been about 1. I imagine that he sees this as the first place he lived, at least as far as his memory goes. So I bet when we moved from there, it felt about the same way to him as it did to me moving to Warner. OK, back on track....

In this house I remember playing with razor blades (Schick injectors or something like that) and I of course cut my finger. Not wanting to get in trouble for playing with the razor blades, I tried to bandage my own finger. This didn't work out so well. It was bleeding enough that the bandages wouldn't stay on. Of course my main concern was that I was getting blood all over the kitchen floor, and that I'd get into trouble for that too. Well, my mother finally found me, and got me to the doctor to get me fixed up (I can't remember if I needed stitches or not). While in this house, I also fell coming out of school for recess on my first day of school, and cracked my head on the pavement. I broke my leg on a bob-sled run in a neighbors back yard. My ear drum broke (this could have been in the previous house) and I was unable to go swimming from the age of 5 through 8 or 9. (Doesn't it seem funny how I remember the injuries more than anything else?)

While in Warner, I did the normal kid things. I played baseball (or at least tried to play), rode my bike, played in the woods, fished (if you can call going out with a fishing pole and casting it occasionally fishing) and generally had fun. I did managed to get picked on a lot. I was skinny, and for the most part uncoordinated (it turns out that is a symptom of a learning disability that I have). So I was bad at ball sports. I couldn't hit the ball in baseball that well (I never really saw it), and I couldn't catch it that well, so I was doomed to being the last guy picked for the team. I wasn't good at kickball or dodgeball either. So I was just the butt of everybody's joke. To make things worse, I got very good grades in elementary school. With the exception of reading (what my particular disability effects the most) I excelled in most subjects, especially Math and Science. Hence, my doom was complete. I was the kid that you could treat like a friend, and turn on when it was convenient for you. And I just let it happen.

After the fifth grade we moved to Durham, NH so my father could finish his MBA at UNH. I thought I'd be able to start over, and recreate myself (OK, not quite those thoughts, but that's what they amounted to). Boy was I wrong, I just made a bigger spectacle of myself in Durham that I had in Waner. I still sucked at sports, although for some reason I was the only kid in gym class that could long snap in flag football. To make matters worse, my father got me hooked on D&D, so the transformation was complete, I was a geek. A geek that liked Kiss! In what felt like the Disco capital of the world. Talk about an outcast. I hated Durham, and Durham hated me. I didn't even have good grades to look at here. I was getting Cs and Ds for the first time in my life, and it was killing me. This was probably my first bout with clinical depression, I just couldn't be happy about much of anything. Who knew?

After that excruciating 2 years in Durham, we moved to Bow. Could I remake myself here? No, everything I had started doing to try and fit in, in Durham was completely wrong in Bow. I had started listening to disco (I still can't believe I listened to that crap) and disco was seen as the devil's music (and rightly so) by the local school kids. Bow had a middle school that went through 9th grade, so I had 2 more years of it to go. The 8th started out OK. As far as 'coolness' factor goes, I started by trying out for the soccer team. I quit before the 4th practice, which caused me no end of shame. I was getting good grades, so good that I made the High Honor roll 2 quarters in a row. After that, the crash came. My grades went rapidly downhill, and I was in the dumps again. I had a mixed bag of grades to say the least. Some were very good (especially for someone that didn't do homework) and some were just awful. In the 9th grade, the school had a play. I tried out, and got the lead. This was of course, just as uncool as you could get. Later in the year I went out for track (nobody gets cut from the track team). While I wasn't good, I always improved and put in everything that I could. I made it out, and moved on to High School at CHS (Concord High School) where the trauma just continued......