When I drew the last name out of the deck for my Friend-A-Day Project and saw that it was Amy M., I wasn’t sure what to do because I did not know what I was going to write. I wasn’t sure if there would be enough to say. Even though I have known Amy ever since we were FOUR YEARS OLD in Nursery school (we were two of the original 17), I didn’t really KNOW her well enough for one of these retrospectives. And this was going to be the last post in the series. Did I really want to end this month-long blog feature with her? Do I put the card back and draw again?
Because even though I have known Amy for over 90% of my life (so far), I really do not know her. My impression of her all throughout elementary and middle and high school was that she was a very shiny, happy, bouncy, fluffy person, always smiling and being friendly and nice to people. She always seemed to be filled with joy, especially when she was with her best friend, Andrea K. (also one of the original 17), and their inseparable relationship paralleled that of me and Shay Q. These characteristics alone would probably be enough for one of these posts, as it already has for some people that I didn’t have anything else to say about. But the thing is, as I have found out years later, my impression of Amy back in our school days is somewhat different than Amy’s impression of herself in our school days. Amy mentioned the other day that she has “mixed feelings” about her high school days which came as a complete surprise to me because that statement goes against everything that I thought was true about her.
And then I came to the realization that these were my impressions, which were not necessarily the reality. Unless you really, really know somebody, a casual surface impression of a person may be completely inaccurate. The characteristics that we display to others might not necessarily be a reflection of our true selves … it’s a mask, if you will, that we wear in the outside world, especially in the environment of an adolescent life, when we do not necessarily have the emotional maturity to present ourselves the way that we truly want to be. And I know that this topic is not a new revelation by any means, and I’m not making a major psychological discovery here, but it is always surprising when it reveals itself to someone that you thought that you knew.
The best example I can think about is one of my fellow classmates, who I will not name (and I will delete any comments that make guesses or queries to his identity, although I’m sure that most of the readers will know exactly who I am talking about). This fellow was on the receiving end of many taunts during his four years in high school. I was one of those in the crowd pointing fingers and laughing at him. I had the opportunity, a few years ago, to see him again, and I apologized for being a jerk to him in high school. And he looked at me, a little befuddled, and said that he didn’t recall any of that happening, that high school was the best time of his life, that I was his best friend (if I was, I certainly did not act like it), and that no apology was necessary. Was he completely deluded? Had he suppressed all of those memories? Or was this, in fact, the way that he had viewed his years in school, completely oblivious to the teasing and the laughter? How could my impressions, my memories, of his situation be so completely wrong? I do not know the exact answer to this question, but this did open to the door to the possibility that what I had perceived to be reality might not have necessarily been the true situation There are very few people that I have talked to who say that high school was the best time of their lives. Every teenager goes through the same drama, the same crises, the same angst at that particular time in their lives. Most people say that high school was good, but not the best time of their lives.
So then there’s Amy. I am not suggesting that I now think that in high school she was dark and depressed and moody and her happy “act” was all to cover up her true nature — not at all. I am saying that I now do not know what she really was like in high school. She is probably the best representative of most of my Facebook friends — someone that I have known for a long time, but someone that I really do not know anything about. I had no idea until recently that she was a Springsteen fan (when she posted some lyrics in her FB status). There’s a lot that I did not know until we met again in 2007 at our high school reunion, and even then our visit was so brief that I didn’t really learn anything. But my impression of her, 20 years later, and now, is that she has become a shiny, happy person, and that she no longer needs the mask that she might have once worn.
(On the other hand, I could be completely wrong and she has been a psychotic serial killer all this time and I have revealed just a little bit too much …)
Related posts: The FAD Project: Introduction
1975: First met Denny. Became best friends. Always hanging out with William H., the three of us. I think we all had the same after-school babysitter. I have a fuzzy recollection that it was Denny who first turned me on to comic books, convincing me to go see Spider-Man make an appearance at the local Britt’s department store. Damn you, boy! THAT made a big impression on me. In the latter half of first grade, I stapled together sheets of paper and created a super hero comic book starring me, Denny, and William (covered in greater detail here). The publishing revolution began. Then Denny was in a different class for second grade, and we didn’t see each other except during recess, and we kind of drifted apart, and then he left. First day of school, third grade, went to the playground during recess, met William (who had a broken arm), asked him where was Denny, he replied that Denny had transferred to another school. Quite shocked, I was, to have your childhood best friend suddenly gone like that, and so I resigned myself to the fact that I would never see him again.
1984: Denny returns to Model Lab in our sophomore year of high school, albeit with a new last name and a completely different hairstyle — which is why, walking down the hallway that first day of school, and he comes up to me, that I have no idea who he is. But he’s still the same old Denny. It’s almost as if the last seven years did not exist … and, as if to prove the point, Denny steers me back into the creation of comic books (which I had stopped doing in seventh grade in favor of writing novels) and we co-create a number of new characters and adventures, most of which are drawn during Ms. Replogle’s Spanish class. Comic books give way to “Band Adventures” and then Denny joins in the band in his junior year. The thing that is great about Denny is that he is such a sociable guy; he can be friends with just about anyone and fits into so many roles, from being Joe B’s sidekick in band class to hanging out with me and Nick in Physics class. We graduate, he goes to EKU, I go to UK, I come home on the weekends, I see him behind the counter at Radio Shack at the Richmond Mall when I come in every month to get my free battery. Then he leaves to move to Florida or somewhere that there’s a beach. I honestly expect never to see him again. One day, around 1994 or so, I get a surprise e-mail from him, and we maintain casual contact over the next few years, until my Hotmail account implodes and I lose his address and by then I haven’t seen or heard from him in years, and so, well, that’s the end of that chapter.
2007: Denny shows up at our high school class’ 20th year reunion, albeit with a wife and a completely different hairstyle — really, none at all — which is why, walking into Earl Ray’’s basement for the first gathering of the weekend, I barely recognize him (having already learned the previous year, via the Band Reunion, that almost everyone that I knew from high school has become taller and wider than I remember them). William is there as well, and the Three Superheroes are reunited. Denny is some IT consultant at a university, doing smart guy things. But he’s still the same old Denny. We hang out during the weekend, we discuss a lot of things, I get to see his parents for the first time since I cannot recall, we go back to Richmond Mall and walk past the old Radio Shack. Good times.
It was probably the last time I will see Denny for awhile, as South Carolina and Louisiana are not necessarily close to each other or on-the-way to Kentucky. But until the next time we meet, there’s always Facebook.
Wow, actually, that last line was more depressing than I thought it would be. Denny, get on your Harley and I’ll meet you over on the Natchez Trace …
Related posts: The FAD Project: Introduction
In my junior year of high school I discovered, all at the same time, three writers whose work greatly influenced my perspective and my writing style, and set me onto a whole new path of thinking and creating. Those writers were Douglas Adams, Kurt Vonnegut, and Larry O. Grand. While I never had the opportunity to meet Mr. Adams or Mr. Vonnegut, I have spent many hours with Mr. Grand, as I was first introduced to his work when I met him for the first time, in Richmond, as he was passing through on a “research” expedition. Devouring all of his work and demanding more, we began a creative collaboration that has lasted almost 25 years.
Egads. Twenty-five years. That’s a lot of words. From his assistance with my “Band Adventures” stories to my plot input for his failed comic book script, we created a number of interesting worlds. His forte was always in dialogue, and mine definitely rested in plot, and we generated some really good stuff, if I do say so myself. No one will ever read it, though, as Larry O. Grand was in charge of the master Mac floppy discs upon which these words resided, and then he misplaced them at about the same time that he misplaced his sanity and whatever else has been grounding him to this planet.
Oh, Larry O. has always been a little odd, or eccentric, or just a little off. You would have to be in order to be a writer of his level. But sometime around 2005, during the last time he actually put down words for NaNoWriMo, something clicked in his brain, and he hasn’t written anything of considerable significance since. His self-published fanzine disappeared. His blog withered and died. His website is covered in dust. We still maintain contact through email and Facebook, but I can never really tell is what he tells me he is doing is, in fact, what he is actually doing. He will blow into town every few months, stops by for a cup of coffee, mumbles something about his “continuing research,” and then ambles off to his next destination. The last time I think I actually saw him was last spring, when I was in New Orleans in the back seat of Anne’s car, and we passed by the Arby’s on Canal Street … I am almost definitely positive that he is the guy peeking through the window. But by the time we parked and I ran over to the restaurant, he was gone.
Let me say this: obtaining a photo of Larry O. Grand is quite the complicated task, as he refuses to be photographed and had gone to great lengths to ensure that his likeness is not permanently captured in any way. I figured this out years ago when I came to the realization that the photos on the back of his book jackets did not resemble him at all. My multiple requests for a photo to illustrate this piece were met with email attachments containing Photoshop-enhanced intentionally fuzzy and pixelated images extracted from a music video that Jeffrey Scott Holland and I shot in his storage room basement years ago (nice try, though). Finally, he sent me a cropped image from one of Mr. Holland’s better paintings and, actually, that’s not too far off. It is the image at the top of this page. Well, it’s closer than the shot of the marshmallow Peeps being smashed. It will suffice.
Anyway, Larry, I wanted to thank you for being a profound influence on me all of these years. I hope that once you figure out what you are trying to figure out, you’ll come back to us and finish all those novels that you never quite finished. Your three fans eagerly await to see how those storylines conclude.
And yes, I am listing Larry O. Grand’s full name — in direct contradiction to all previous entries in this series — because I have done the research and the number of searches for “Larry O. Grand” on Google is so minuscule that a search bot will probably explode if they were to come across this page. And because the bum still owes me twenty bucks.
Related posts: The FAD Project: Introduction
Meena, Meena, Meena, Meena, Bashful Little Meena …
For your 16th birthday, Shay and I assembled a cassette of songs (not entirely a mix tape as we created some of the songs ourselves along with Central Rock Company) and one of the songs was a variation of the Israeli-American folk tune “Tzena” that we had practiced in band, from which the lyric at the beginning of this post originates.
At the time, though, it did seem to be a rather false statement, because you were anything but bashful. I wish I had drawn your name when I was writing all those entries for “nice” people because you would not be out of place in that group. You were one of the few people who would say “good morning” to me every day at school with a huge smile that was always one of your most prominent features. I guess it didn’t hurt that I have known you ever since you were born, as our families were pretty tied together back then (thanks to the EKU Family Housing System). Even though we were never really close friends, you were one of the more pleasant characters to have around in my oval of friends (I could never quite get the hang of having a circle of friends).
Do I have any photos of you in which you are not smiling?
No, I guess not.
Incidentally, that birthday album was recorded, mastered and packaged that afternoon before your party, literally minutes before we had to leave (kind of like this entry). The cassette that we gave you was the master tape. You should know that I rarely give away pieces of myself, but there wasn’t time for me to dub a copy for myself. I would not have done that for anybody, but for you, there was no hesitation. And … if that tape still exists … well, I don’t really want to know …
(Photo on the far right taken by Mary Lou Stephens; photo on the next to the far right taken by Shay Quillen)
Related posts: The FAD Project: Introduction
Oklahoma Hills Rudely Interrupted by an Interstate
There were a number of instances in elementary, middle and high school when I found myself, in terms of age and grade, between two siblings. For example, there was Dawn and Shay Q., Ranjan and Meena M., and Neal and Stephen J. In each of these cases, the first person listed was the older, and one grade higher than me; the second person listed was the younger, and one grade lower than me. And in each of these cases, I was better friends with the younger of the two. I’m not sure why, maybe it was because the older kids always intimidated me, or maybe it was because I was one of the younger ones in my grade and felt closer to the kids in the lower grades?
On a related note, I graduated with Cindy’s older sister, Tracy, but I was better friends with Cindy, who was three grades lower. Hmm, that’s not really anything like those other situations I just described. Oh well, at least that’s 129 words more than I would have had for this entry.
I always knew Cindy existed, through Tracy, but I didn’t really become friends with her until my senior year, when she was a freshman. I think it might have been through our mutual friendship with Carla G., but I’m not entirely sure. I’m not entirely sure why Cindy is sitting in the back seat of my car in my driveway in the photo to the right (that was extracted from the videotape master of the “CRC: The Movie” project that Shay and Kurt and I worked on for over two years). I’m also really not sure why, at my high school graduation, that the only photo taken of me immediately after the ceremony outside of Brock Auditorium is with Cindy, as seen in the image to the left (also, that evening in 1987 was pretty much the last time I ever saw or talked to her in person).
I’m really not sure about a lot of things in my friendship with Cindy for that one year. The one thing that I recall quite distinctly is sitting together on That Bench Outside the Band Room almost every single day after school just talking about stuff and watching the people go by. That … I am pretty sure about.
Related posts: The FAD Project: Introduction
The freshman year in high school is a time of turnover. The transition from eighth to ninth grade is always a traumatic and tumultuous time, as exemplified by my class at Model Lab School in the fall semester of 1983. We lost seven students (most of whom opted to transfer to Madison Central) and subsequently gained eleven new faces (recent graduates of local middle schools, namely St. Marks). Interestingly, nine out of the eleven new freshman that came in that year stayed for the next four years and graduated, so apparently they integrated themselves quite well into our close-knit little private school group.
I have referenced this great Freshman Explosion of 1983 in a number of postings in my FAD Project 2010 series as I did graduate with these students and have even managed to maintain friendships with them. But how well did we know these eleven newbies back then? At the time, our primary introduction was through the school newspaper’s annual “Welcome New Students” article that ran in the first issue of the school year. In this year’s article, published on September 16, 1983 (a significant date, of course), and written by one Jeff Holland, we learn a number of amazing and interesting facts, such as Edie W. talks constantly, Tracy G. apparently enjoys playing tennis (shocking, I kn0w), Erin M. is a freshman (actually a sophomore, an error that was never corrected because no one really noticed the mistake at the time, nor cared), Aaron F. enjoys playing his guitar (again, a major shock) and Kathy A. and her twin sister both want to nuke Russia (wow, er, uhm, hmm).
Here is the article itself. Click on the image below to open up a new window with an enlarged version of the article.
(It’s been awhile since I’ve posted in this category … for first-timers and casual readers, click on the “Model Memories” category link at the top of the screen; Facebook readers, click here)
Melinda, it is rather unfortunate that the only photo that I have of you in my collection is a photo that I did not originally take (I do not know the identity of the original photographer), and not a particularly good photo at that. Ah, well. Someday I will have to do something about that.
You are probably the most calm person that I know. There was always an air of serenity around you that always made it fun to hang around with you, whether it was at the record store or at the house that you shared for some time with our mutual friend, which is how we first met (although, if I recall correctly, you first heard me on the radio on WRFL one afternoon at Bear’s Wax. Terribly sorry about that as well).
Plus, as evidenced by the image to the right, you could rock. I am a little embarrassed to admit that I never actually saw you or any of your bands perform live; the only time I ever saw you play was through the window outside your house one summer evening when you ladies were rehearsing and I was waiting for our mutual friend to get his ass in gear.
I don’t think I have actually seen you in almost 15 years, not since that record store closed and you got married, and then, two years later, I moved away. How odd that people can lose track of each other even though they live in the same city. At least through Facebook we can maintain some sort of tenuous link to each other. I keep intending to look you up during my annual visits to the Bluegrass State, but never can quite find the time. Like a lot of things, someday, I’ll have to do something about that …
Related posts: The FAD Project: Introduction
Neal! Man, you were weird.
And not weird in that good way that made us all laugh, like William H., and not weird in that running-down-the-hallway-flapping-arms way like me. It was more of a weird-in-a-cool-and-quiet-guy-but-that’s-okay-we’re-not-messing-with-you sort of way. You were just a little unusual, but not so much that you got to hang out with the other cool kids, and just enough that no one was going to mess with you.
My notions of your weirdness were further reinforced when I ran into you at the University of Kentucky, when you had that enormous Galileo-esque beard, long and thick and scraggly with little bits of food sticking out of it and small animals nesting in the undergrowth. Underneath, you were still that quiet and well-spoken fellow, but there was still that spark of weirdness. Of course you were in the Physics department. Oh, we always knew you were smart. Like genius smart. Like way-too-advanced-for-our-species smart. I was quite surprised that you weren’t running that darn Physics department. I would run into you in the Chem-Phys building, before my Physics lab, talk to you for a few minutes, and then my classmates who had been standing off to the side, mouths agape, would ask, “Who was that weird grad student?” Because they could tell. It was pretty obvious.
It was quite odd seeing you in 2006 at the Band Reunion because you appeared to be so normal. Oh, I could still sense the weirdness, but it was somewhat suppressed. Is this what happens when one gets older? Does the weirdness mature into something a little more subtle? Or are you better at concealing it these days? Based on your FB postings, it’s still there. Thankfully. I need more weirdness in order to balance out everything else.
Related posts: The FAD Project: Introduction
Hey, it’s Nick, a guy I can really look up to.
Yeah, OK, I know I used that joke already, but seriously, most of my photos of Nick are up-the-nose shots, because the boy is just WAY TOO TALL. Always has been. I think he grew at least another six inches after college.
And now for the quiz part of today’s episode. Which of the following events and situations involving Nick and my shared experienced with him in my shared experiences with Nick are TRUE, and which ones are FALSE?
- Nick came to Model High School in 1984, his sophomore year, and was an avid swimmer and coin collector.
- Nick would often entertain me in Mrs. Shuttleworth’s classes by doing a dead-on impersonation of a fish.
- During science class in high school, I would always swipe Nick’s scientific calculator because I never quite got around to obtaining one for myself.
- I had no idea that Nick was going to UK until one day when we ran into each other in Chemistry 105 in the fall of 1988.
- During the last few days of finals week in our sophomore year at UK, Nick came over to my dorm floor and we flooded the shower room to make an impromptu swimming pool.
- I first saw R.E.M. perform live at Rupp Arena in 1989 with Nick.
- Nick would come over to my dorm room to study but would ultimately end up on my phone, for hours, talking to some girl named Andrea (I wonder whatever happened to her) …
- Nick, his wife, and me and my wife all graduated from UK in the 20th century
Made your selections yet? Then here are the answers. NO CHEATING! I’d better insert some spoiler space, just to be sure …
S
P
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E
1. TRUE. From the September 14, 1984 edition of The Observer, “Meet the New Students” article penned by Anne Deck.
2. TRUE. But he never allowed me to photograph him in the act of doing this, he will no longer do it on request, and he will probably deny that he even did it in the first place. You’ll just have to look at this photo of him from that time period and use your imagination …
3. TRUE. Man, I was an annoying guy.
4. TRUE. We were both in Dr. Krause’s class. It was because of Nick’s influence that I started sitting in the front row. And began learning. I had my own scientific calculator by then, so I didn’t have to borrow Nick’s.
5. TRUE. Me, Nick, my roommate, and this other guy came up with the brilliant idea of covering the drains and then turning on all of the showers and filling the entire room with four inches of water (the maximum level before it would start to spill over into the rest of the bathroom). Never mind that this was your average college men’s dorm room shower room and all of the disgusting connotations that come with that. Photographic evidence:
6. TRUE. It was one of the last stops on the Green World Tour, November 5, 1989. Decent seats. Great show.
7. TRUE …
8. FALSE. While it is true that we all attended UK at about the same time with some overlap, I actually graduated from UK in the 21st century, in 2006.
Out of all of my friends in high school, Nick is the only one with whom I continued being friends with in college after my freshman year. Those were some fun times. He helped bridge the gap between high school and college and enabled me to seek out new friendships and new life and new civilizations in the limitless realm of higher education. And then we both moved out of the dorms and got involved in our studies (well, one of us did) and we lost track of each other.
I did not see Nick again until our class reunion in 2007, where he had a wife and two kids. Egads! Where did the time go? I did not get to spend nearly as much time with him and his family during the reunion. I hope one day I can rectify that. At the very least, I hope I can get him to do his fish impersonation for his kids …
Related posts: The FAD Project: Introduction
