Sandwich in hand I went outdoors and around the corner of the house, heading for a big stack of lumber recently deposited in the driveway. While the purpose for this lumber eludes memory, it certainly promised an excellent location for eating sandwiches, but then something effectively changed my mind. A buzzing bee spastically harassed me and threatened the tenuous balance of the precious sandwich I meant to protect. I deftly executed an about face and returned hastily to the safety of the indoors.
Why do I remember the bee? How many bees have lived and died since that day in 1974 when I was little more than three years old? And yet this one is immortalized, though nameless, in these opening lines of my autobiblography (how carefully that word was just invented). I was infant. I’m guessing the bee was even younger. But today I turn 40. Bear with me while, for the sake of acclimation, I say that again. Today I turn 40. Almost one third of the way to my goal, January 29th, 2092 at which time I would have broken the record for the oldest man to ever live according to the Guinness Book of World Records, except that they recently decided that Shigechiyo Izumi had been using an older brother’s birth certificate and name and that he died when he was a scant 105 years old rather than the 120 he professed. So the true record for a man is 115 years held by Christian Mortensen (1882-1998), but I digress (something I hope you see a lot of as you read on). Anyway… so my original plan was to break the record in 2092, but apparently I will have to break it five years earlier than that, but I’m still going to go on kicking and breathing (no necessarily in that order) until 2092 because in all of my morbid artwork depicting my eventual grave marker, that is the year inscribed… what can I do? It’s set in stone.
I met the bee in Norridgewock, Maine, home of my earliest memories. I had a dream while living there in which I was pulling my cousin Melanie up a hill in a red wagon and stopped at a service station for gas, but once I’d paid inside the attendant motioned me to leave through a different door designated for the exit. This second door was not made of shiny glass like the first, this other door was dark and ominous… very much what you expect to see in a haunted house and just as I pushed it open I realized there were, stuck in the door, long bony fingers with claws protruding where fingernails might ought to have , and when it was opened they belonged to the Devil who grasped me by the throat and pulled me into a dungeon-like room and threw me onto an altar where there roared a savage lion… I scrambled to the edge of this sinister construction and dove headfirst off the side and into a barrel of orange goo in which I would surely have suffocated were it not for the discovery of my beloved pillow in the bottom of this receptacle signifying a return to consciousness.
I don’t mind remarking as humbly as possible that it’s a rare case for someone to remember so vividly the details of a dream from infancy. But there’s a reason for it. I was lying awake one night a couple years later and was troubled because I couldn’t remember the house we lived in when I was born. Couldn’t remember the one my little brother was born in either. So I initiated the practice at bedtime of reminiscing about everything I could still remember from my earliest years including the bee and the dream. And Easter when my dad hid jelly beans all over the house and then carried me piggyback to find them. To my older siblings this represented an unfair advantage because my transportation knew exactly where they were hidden, but I didn’t seem to mind. My dad made Easter magically fun for me that Sunday morning just as my mother has always had an incredible talent for making Christmas feel magical. Remembering such moments makes me wish to have children of my own.
To celebrate my 40th birthday I am submitting a timeline of my life so far:
1971 Born in Jamestown, New York
1974 Earliest memories of Norridgewock, Maine
1975 Moved into the basement of my Uncle Bob’s house in Blue Mountain Lake, New York where my cousin Becky became my first best friend.
1976 Parents divorced. Mother remarried and moved to Clinton, North Carolina with her two youngest (including me).
1978 Began reading the Bible and was baptized a Seventh Day Adventist. Also watched Gone With the Wind for the first time which became my favorite movie until 1992.
1979 Moved to West Virginia to live with my father and older siblings and new mother and sister (Connie). My first girlfriend was Julie Jacobson.
1980 Moved back to Garland, North Carolina and went to school in Clarkton.
1981 Developed an obsessive crush on 8th grader Julia Kinlaw and wrote on the inside of my Bible that I would love her forever. My mother removed the oath explaining it had no place in God’s Word.
See how the left page is slanted at the top?
1982 Became an avid stamp collector. Took home school.
1983 Moved to West Alexander, Pennsylvania and on the last day of school before Spring Break got lost and had to walk home about twelve miles. Before the week was over I had also survived a tornado and developed chicken pox. Also developed fanatic enthusiasm for NFL football.
1984 Fell into a deep case of puppy love with Tammy (Kitty Cat Eyes) Coon in Fletcher, North Carolina.
1985 Back in Garland again taking school at home. Got a kitten that I meant to name Touchdown, but all the way home he kept falling off the seat so his name quickly became Fumble instead.
1986 Moved to Nashville, Tennessee so my mother could be closer to her high school sweetheart who resided in the Tennessee State Penitentiary. Pet Shop Boys become my favorite music act.
1987 Obsessed with Song Baek at Madison Academy.
1988 Became an atheist on March 12th while praying. Dropped out of high school.
1989 Went to the movies for the first time and saw Rain Man. Passed my GED. Moved to Elmhurst Illinois and began journaling the next day which practice I have maintained ever since.
1990 Convicted of a misdemeanor while working for Blockbuster Video and assumed it was the end of my life.
1991 Living in Addison, Illinois and fell helplessly in love with Maggie Bashqawi while working at Ken’s World of Video. Went to school at EIU for two semesters in Charleston, Illinois.
1992 Moved to Madison, Tennessee and became infatuated with dear friend from high school, Ivy Dawn Farler. Platonic friendship with Tricey (she is to friendship what cheesecake is to food) officially commenced on April 11th. Unforgiven becomes my new favorite movie.
1995 Moved to Murfreesboro and went to school at MTSU where I met Mercedes and Pauli (My best and most devout friend).
1998 Procured a bachelors degree in English and Literature with a GPA of 3.86 which I think is respectable for a high school dropout. While studying for the GRE I begin compiling what I refer to as $5 words (prestidigitation, ubiquitous, floccinaucinihilipilification). Also decided to read every classic and to assemble them in the order that I read them.
1999 Returned to United States from vacation in Europe and developed obsession with chat rooms for atheists.
2000 Arrived in Washington on the first day of the new millennium without a job or a home or any acquaintances. Began dating Carolyn Marbas in November.
2001 Developing a movie project which prescribes watching movies in the order in which they are set… so for example you would begin with movies like Ice Age and 10,000BC and end with movies like Planet of the Apes and Star Trek.
2002 Become commissioner of the End of the World fantasy baseball league which is still thriving.
2003 Problem gambling. Began working at Muckleshoot Indian Casino.
2005 Coldplay becomes my new favorite music act. Perform my first amateur comedy routine. Perfect first date with Wendy.
2006 Wendy and I break up which takes several years to recover from because there’s simply no one else like her. But I don’t think everyone is meant to be in a relationship and I’m determined to prove I can be happy on my own. Well not completely on my own... there are amazing friends like Lindsay to help me along.
2007 Broke up a fight in the Poker Room between two drunks by throwing one of them over a side table. Found an enchanting friend on MySpace. She uses the alias Alyssa Shane.
2010 Completed 243 days of gambling abstinence and, thanks to the world's awesomest brother, have a cool TV mounted on my wall.
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| Nocturnal Desperado and Alyssa Shane Halloween 2008 |
2010 Completed 243 days of gambling abstinence and, thanks to the world's awesomest brother, have a cool TV mounted on my wall. 2011 Working slowly but surely on a novel about Lilith and the origin of vampires. 40th birthday.
