September 26, 2007 by Dave.

When you get to be over 30, there are times when we do something that makes you feel really old. Usually it’s something like making a reference that only people your age get—and usually no one in the room at that time is your age so people just stare at you. It’s usually that but it could be anything and sometimes it’s something not so public, in that only you know what it is.

So what is it that made me feel completely over the hill? I bought luggage. I never buy luggage! For the trip to New York, I bought red, telescoping handle, rolling luggage! Since I was a kid, I’ve always had backpacks or duffel bags to lug around with me. Something about that was easy, it’s compact, it still makes me feel like I can pick up and go camping at any time. This shit you can’t take into the back woods. Plus it’s that rolling luggage you see zipping through airports all the time. I don’t know why, but the second I paid for the damn thing, I felt like I aged about 10 years or so. If it weren’t for the fact that I desperately needed something to pack my clothes in at the time, I wouldn’t have bought it.

To add insult to injury, as I’m walking back to my mom’s house one evening, I see a good sized duffel bag being sold on the streets in New York. Of course since I already had the new luggage, there was no need to buy that duffel bag. Blech!

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September 23, 2007 by Dave.

It’s amazing how a three-inch doorstep can completely ruin your image. I wanted to look good for the H.S. of Art & Design class of 1987—it was the 20th year reunion after all. So I wore my tan two-piece, single-breasted suit, without the tie, for the occasion. Thought I looked pretty sharp, definitely felt sharp. At the doorway to the Carriage House gallery, I saw Jin Wen, a woman who I not only went to high school with but part of college as well. Smiling, I stepped inside not noticing the three-inch difference between the sidewalk and the floor. I went from Forest Whittaker to Homer Simpson in half a second.

“What an entrance,” I heard someone say sarcastically. I look up to see Morgan Liebman grinning and staring at me. At that point I said to myself that yes I had definitely stumbled back to high school. Or at least the reunion thereof.

Honestly though, the only thing busted in that trip was any false pretense I might have had. No one cared or was going to care about an image. This was 20 years later, people were glad that you showed up. My delusions of grandeur were replaced by vague ghostly images of faces from the past transformed onto the bodies that they became today. After saying hi to Jin and Morgan, Ben Erwin, a fellow media major, walked up and hugged me saying he was glad to see me here. Darrien Laffayette and Alfredo Pelaez simply laughed as I walked towards them. I joined them like old times, briefly catching up on things. I heard my name being called, but I swear I didn’t recognize the guy who said it. Then James Moore, another fellow media major, pointed out who he was. A lot of laughter was key to that night.

About a half hour into tripping into the event, the surreality of the whole event was hitting me. I was in what I can only describe as a full-blown, Apocalypse Now-flashback mode. It started with noticing the room was packed. It seemed it was only a trickle when I blinked and now it was filled with only one-third of the 400 students from the class of ‘87. Then I start looking at all the people and realized that everyone here was in one of three categories: those that aged but still looked similar to how they used to used to look in high school; those that aged (well and/or not so well) and looked nothing like they did in high school; and those that were taken right after graduation, shellacked, cryogenically frozen, and thawed out just for this event— you could ignore all of their post-high school memories as they are most likely from chips implanted in their brains. For the record, I must say that the women there looked better than they did in high school, but that’s pretty easy once all the feathered, big-’80s hair reaches the pupae stage. To drive the changes home, the organizers put up a slide show of photos from 1983-87, showing those in attendance and those absent. A majority of the photos were provided by the old high school metal crowd; one good thing about being a geek who hung around he peripheries of the the metal/punk crowd: I got to know who was who and know that I wasn’t in any of those old photos (who wanted evidence that they hung out with me back then?). While it was fun to watch the mullets and spiked hair of yesterday, the contrast between the then photos and the now right in front of us was a bit unnerving. (note: when the few people who asked about my hair did so, I pulled out a photo of my daughter and said, “If you want to see me in an afro again, there it is.”)

In addition, they had an ’80s pop music soundtrack to accompany the images— the same music I’ve spent two decades trying to avoid (with some exceptions). This other sound only enhanced the strangeness of things going on. The first sound is what I mostly keyed in on— although not at first, but it was now hitting me hard— which was the sound of the half conversations I engaged in. This was when you start a conversation with someone you just ran into, spend a couple of minutes briefly catching up, and halfway through that exchange suddenly get into a new conversation with another classmate who just had to say hello both of us at that moment. So for me, aside from the visual overstimulation, this is all I heard for at least 90 minutes straight:

“Oh, my god how are you?!?!”

…Take on me, take me on…

“You look good. What’s happening?”

…I’ll be gone in a day or two!

“I’m still in the city. Where are you at?”

…Come on Eileen, I swear…

“So what made you move up there?”

…Don’t you forget about me…

“I’m doing good. Married ten years.”

…’Cause you shine on me wherever you are…

“So you are still working in art. Good.”

…Ooooh, watch out, you’re gonna loose control…

“Did you hear about… Oh, my god, how are you?!?!?!”

…This is the end, beautiful friend the end…

A&D reunion. Shit.

This affected me two ways. One is that because of my brain being warped in overdrive combined with an already fading short-term memory, unless I talked to someone for more than three minutes straight— which was a rare occurrence for the event— or someone said something very specific to make it stick in my mind, people either had jobs as teachers or garbage truck drivers. I swear, when someone asked me what another person there did for a living, the only thing I could think of was teacher or truck driver— and it happened at least three times. My brain got stuck. The second was that I stayed close by a couple of close friends back in the day that I ran into at the beginning of the night. I thought I was losing my mind and needed some grounding before seeing more familiar faces. I know it held me back from mingling with a lot more people. However I felt getting out of my comfort zone would only lead to a bigger psychotic break, so safety in friends helped.

The thing is it goes back to something I wrote in an earlier blog on the same subject. Back in the day, we were so hung up on cliques and labels and who hung out with who and later you realize it was all bullshit. A lot of people at the reunion obviously felt the same way, too. People were chatting up other people that they never would have back in high school. The old new wavers were laughing with the old new jacks, geeks were smiling with their former bullies, outcasts were hanging with the big men on campus, and no one seemed to have a care in the world other than where you’ve been and what you’ve been up top for 20 years. As one of my friends at the reunion pointed out to another, I was targeted from day one at A&D. My last day at A&D, I got egged and had soda poured all over me. Needless to say it was not my favorite time in life and have no desire to really relive it. However, looking back at 20 years and this past reunion, it seems that had little to do with the school I went to and more to do with just being an overweight, geeky teenager. More than likely, I would have tortured even worse at another public school. At least in A&D, I found a career and life path that I learned to stick to. I learned valuable lessons that can be applied directly from school teachings into the workplace and life in general. I made best friends that I have, in one form or another, never lost touch with throughout the years. Reunions are never the chances to play out the same old contests from way back when, but a chance to reconnect with people you lost touch with, talk to those people you never thought you had a chance to, and to bury the past while seeing where you came from.

After Mario Sanabria came bounding through the hall— obviously fresh from his 20 year nap in a cryo tank— it felt like sixth period lunch all over again. Conversations were loud, happy and animated. No one wanted to leave, although back then it was because we hated the class we had to go to next; now it was that we didn’t want the night to end. A lot of people didn’t. I wound up hanging out with Greg Cowart, Ronald Davidson, Mike Young, Kirk Dewdney, William Jones, and Darrien and Alfredo over at the Westway Diner ’til 3:00 in the morning. Ronald, who rushed to the gallery after working until midnight that night, was grilling us all over details— about who was there, who wasn’t, how many fights did we get into back in the day (my record is 1-1), who had bad memories about high school (as already mentioned), and just laughing a lot for another couple of hours. I didn’t hang out much with these guys back in school, so it was fun to see things from a different perspective. This was an in-crowd for the night. Except for the fact that no one was out or in. We were all simply alumni.

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September 12, 2007 by Dave.

A couple of weeks ago, I took the car that I bought in April to my mechanic to have it looked at. When I bought it, I knew there were going to be some repairs needed for the car, including a possible gasket problem and the boots of the wheel wells. Seeing that I was low on money, I needed to know what to save up for in the fall. The response from my mechanic was essentially “make your peace with God.” He said the car was in bad shape and just ride it into the ground. Well, that happened the other day.

My problem is I can’t afford one easily. Actually I’ll be diving into my credit (again) to pay for a car, but I got to keep it somewhat reasonable to avoid more really big debt issues.

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September 9, 2007 by Dave.

I don’t drink coffee much anymore (except maybe decaf once in a long while), but I LOVE coffee ice cream. My roommate had an ice cream party last night and one of the leftovers was coffee ice cream—Starbuck’s no less. Dove into a couple of cups that. And of course, now I’m up at 1:00 in the morning and can’t sleep, even with a double dose of Wallgreen’s sleeptime pills (not that they’re that good). Still I’d like to get some sleep but no go. It also doesn’t help that I was already hopped up on Coke and Pepsi. So I’m blogging to get me to sleep hopefully.

Plus Sophia whimpers a lot at night. I never know if it’s a bad dream or the heat or something else. Either way she lets out a cry, whooshes around in her bed and goes back to sleep. She does this every couple of seconds for a couple of minutes, only to repeat it an hour or so later. Drives me nuts because I never know to wake her up or not. So I’m stuck in limbo until I can get some sleep.

Tomorrow is church homecoming at Medford church and we’re doing a water communion. Sophia and I got our water from Spy Pond this afternoon. It’s practically in our backyard. I was hoping to do some from the sprinkler park we usually go to, but as I said in the last entry the sprinklers are turned off for the fall on Labor Day. And I didn’t think to grab some last week. So the pond will do in a pinch. We’ve been going to the playground there a lot so it’s perfect.

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September 5, 2007 by Dave.

Sunday was the last day that the water would be turned on at the Belmont sprinkler park. Hadn’t known that before but was glad that I took Sophia there before they shut the water off. Two interesting things happened this day at that park. 1) This was probably the smallest attendance I’ve seen at the park all summer—of course, it was a holiday weekend; 2) among those in attendance were pretty much every MILF in the town—at least much more today than usual. I mean, there are usually some attractive mothers with their kids out there, but this day was just ridiculous. By my guestimates, 90% of them were—in the words of Flight of the Conchords—”Pretty enough to be a waitress.” Granted 90% of that 90% were there with their husbands. The other 10% that were single, I just stood back and watched a lot.

For all my complaining about romance and dating and never meeting the right woman, the truth of the matter is I have no game whatsoever with women. I’m better off just ogling from afar.

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September 4, 2007 by Dave.

Sophia likes to make friends at whatever playground we’re at. This time she was playing with a little boy at the time on the gymboree. They were talking

Boy 1: What do we play now?
Sophia: I know. How about Jack and Jill? I’ll be Jack and you be Jill.

I’m not sure if this means she wants to be a boy or that she wants to bust her head wide open.

= = = = = = = = = = =

At the same playground there was a mother and her young son playing on one of the set ups there. He ws pushing her mom on one of the sliding monkey bars. Then he says, loud enough for people to hear from yards away:

Boy 2: Mom, I don’t want to sound mean, but you have a hole in your pants and I can see your underwear.

Not sure it was mean, but boy was his mom embarrassed. I told her at least he was being honest.

= = = = = = = = = = =

Going back home, I stopped at a spot as I saw a duck swimming around the pond. I tried to get Sophia to see the duck, but she seemed to keep looking right past it even though I kept pointing it out. As she sat facing away from the pond, the duck finally it let out a couple of quacks.

Sophia: It sounds like a duck.
Me: That’s because it is a duck.

Somehow I don’t think she got it yet. The duck lets out another quack and then she spins around.

Sophia: You were right, daddy, it is a duck.

Am I confused or is she?

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September 2, 2007 by Dave.

The other day I’m trying to drive to work from Waltham. The lanes are so friggin’ weird there anyway because you have to keep changing lanes in order to avoid being forced to make a turn. Anyway, I’m driving through there and I’m behind what must be one of the slowest and dumber drivers around. I can’t see their head over the seat, which gets me thinking elderly. They slow at an intersection to let a truck make a left turn, even though they had the right of way. The truck driver was even letting the driver go ahead but they wouldn’t. I was trying to blow my horn at them but couldn’t in time (biggest damn drawback to airbags is that the entire steering front can’t hold the horn anymore!). Finally they drove through, and I’m right behind them to not get caught in the red. I try to remind myself that they might be old but I’m way too upset. Still behind them, they start heading to this other crazy intersection leaving Waltham (if you know the area, it’s the Rte 60 split from Rte 20). There’s nothing but green lights, but they start hitting the brake. I’m yelling to myself “You’ve got to be kidding me?!?!”—although I’m pretty sure I was actually yelling it. I finally lay on the horn and they drive faster through the light as it’s changing to yellow. I gun it to not be caught in another red because of this fuck!

I get through the intersection, and start to pass them as we’re heading up the bridge because I don’t want to be behind them anymore. I’m so pissed off that I’m ready to honk at them and curse them out out the window as I drive by, which is something I rarely ever get angry enough to do, but this was just really stupid of them. I gun the engine, start to pass them and I finally notice the person in the driver’s seat as I’m getting ready to yell out my window. First thing I see on the driver…

…A habit. It’s a FUCKING NUN, so I can’t even do anything but stew in my own juices and drive off grumbling. But now I’m not sure if I’m pissed off because I can’t curse her out because she’s a nun, or that I didn’t curse her out because her driving SUCKS!!!

This is what driving in Boston does to you. I really have become a much angrier person since getting my license and driving in this town!

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