WARNING: What follows is exceedingly general and perhaps a bit non-PC. I don't care, and neither should you. Au contraire, you should laud me for admitting my ignorance rather than disguising it. Consider this a list of what I don't know about the world (and hope to learn someday).
DISCLAIMER: You'll notice that I said a Californian like me. You can no more judge all Californians to be the same than you can judge all Dubliners or all Tokyoites to be the same. We're a mixed lot. But even among them, I am an outlier. I was born in Northern California, for one thing. I've lived in the capital, the Midwest, the American South, and the Great Plains, so I know a bit more about the rest of America than the average Californian does. My political views don't exactly match up with a lot of other Californians', either. I'm a white middle-class twenty-something, and proud of it.
Ready? Then let's begin:
THE REST OF AMERICA:
OREGON: Best known for portraying that forested planet in The Return of the Jedi. And being mispronounced by Midwesterners and foreigners alike.
WASHINGTON STATE: Coffee. Rain. Pine trees. Killer whales. Reggie Watts. Legal marijuana. Sententious living.
IDAHO: Potatoes.
MONTANA: Looks really good on a postcard.
NEVADA: Vegas, baby. And machine guns. The rest of it's desert. And Reno.
UTAH: Mormons! Who doesn't like Mormons? And saltwater?
ARIZONA: Simply marvelous gun laws. Cacti which are the envy of the civilized world. Gila monsters. Fatuous Nicolas Cage movies. Mountains that look like Indians.
NEW MEXICO: Are the rocks supposed to be red like that?
WYOMING: Fewer people than a single suburb of Los Angeles. Seriously, the antelopes outnumber the humans. Scary thought.
NORTH DAKOTA: I felt like a celebrity there.
SOUTH DAKOTA:Big stone heads. The Black Hills (yeah, baby). Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane.
NEBRASKA: What the guy who thought of the phrase "middle of nowhere" was thinking of.
KANSAS: You're not there anymore, Toto.
OKLAHOMA: Bombs. Musicals. The Dust Bowl. Tornadoes.
TEXAS: If it weren't for them, Mexico would have invaded long ago.
MINNESOTA: So, like, let's go to the lake, eh?
IOWA: The Minnesotans are right. The best thing coming out of Iowa is I-29.
MISSOURI: My dad went to college there. Considers himself more Missourian than Ohioan. They've got an arch. That's the limit of my knowledge.
ARKANSAS: Most direct route between Tennessee and Oklahoma.
LOUISIANA: Bayous, swamps, Cajun food, levies, Mardi Gras, and hurricanes. Especially hurricanes.
WISCONSIN: Cheese.
ILLINOIS: Abraham Lincoln.
INDIANA: No friggin' idea. Maybe basketball?
KENTUCKY: Is the grass really blue, or is that just a figure of speech?
TENNESSEE: Too many mullets for my taste.
MISSISSIPPI: Hard to spell.
ALABAMA: Probably has the most likeable/least unpleasant Southern accent, depending on where you stand on Southern accents.
GEORGIA: Good peaches.
FLORIDA: Can't think of it without thinking of the auto-tuning rapper. Thanks a bunch. Before Flo Rida was a thing, I associated Florida with Scarface, my grandmother's house with the orange trees in the backyard, the one billion percent humidity, and the white-sand beaches.
MICHIGAN: They make cars there, don't they? And awesome music?
OHIO: Hot in summer, rainy in spring, miserable in winter, the most beautiful place on the planet in autumn.
WEST VIRGINIA: Coal. The Civil War. Trout fishing. Caves. Chuck Yeager.
VIRGINIA: This may sound weird, but I can't help but think of Virginia in terms of the famous people who were born there: Ella Fitzgerald, George C. Scott, Sam Houston, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (yes, that Lewis & Clark), Patrick Henry, Robert E. Lee, Tom Wolfe, Booker T. Washington, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, and, like, twenty U.S. presidents.
NORTH/SOUTH CAROLINA: What's the difference?
WASHINGTON, D.C.: Crazy homeless people in the streets, crazy people in the government.
MARYLAND: You need to put on some weight, you're too skinny.
DELAWARE: Sounds like a seldom-used word you'd find in a dictionary.
NEW JERSEY: Just as all myths have some basis in fact, the moniker "Armpit of America" must on some level be well-deserved.
CONNECTICUT: Pretty. And filthy rich.
PENNSYLVANIA: The birthplace of liberty and independence. Looks nice in autumn, too.
NEW YORK: California's biggest competitor in terms of culture and coolness. They've got some pretty country, too; and heck, they even have their own version of the San Andreas Fault. We'll get you yet, you buggers.
RHODE ISLAND: Too small for my Californian mind to encapsulate.
MASSACHUSETTS: Baseball. Football. Clam chowder. Cod. Moby-Dick. Cheers (the TV show).
NEW HAMPSHIRE: The last stop before Maine.
VERMONT: The second-to-last stop before Maine.
MAINE: The last stop before New Brunswick. Also, Stephen King is from there; I do know that much. A lot of his books are set around those parts.
ALASKA: I know as much as everyone else does. Grizzly bears, gold, the Inuit, glaciers, the tallest mountain in North America, savage cold, bush pilots, hunting, cruises, trains, oil, fishing, formerly Russian, real men and real women. Oh, and I'd give my right arm and two or three toes to live there.
HAWAII: Palm trees. White-sand beaches. Turquoise water. Tropical fish. Sunshine. Ukeleles, luaus and leis. Volcanoes. Surfing. Pearl Harbor. The U.S.S. Arizona. Paradise on Earth. California's biggest competitor in terms of fun in the sun and water sports. Not bad if we can take on New York and Hawaii and still compete, eh?
THE REST OF THE WORLD:
MEXICO: Lovely beaches, great food, incredible culture, marvelous natural beauty, and good booze...but a corrupt government and a few too many all-powerful drug cartels. Oh wait, that's California.
CANADA: A dichotomy. On the one hand: nigh-socialism, a Governor General, and a certain amount of cultural snobbery (though that might just be the folks from Toronto). On the other hand: maple syrup, the Yukon, Nova Scotia, the Northwest Territories, British Columbia, Alberta, the Canadian Rockies, ice hockey, Shania Twain, William Shatner, Dan Aykroyd, Kim Cattrall, Stana Katic, Nathan Fillion (whom I hear is from Edmonton), Rick Moranis, Leslie Nielsen, Donald Sutherland, Alexander Graham Bell, Elijah McCoy (the real McCoy), James Howlett (better known as Wolverine), Anne Shirley (a.k.a. Anne of Green Gables), Chris Hadfield (the astronaut), Rush, Barenaked Ladies, Great Big Sea, dinosaurs, Black Velvet whisky, the Devil's Brigade, lentils, Swedish Fish, and some of the friendliest, politest people on the face of the Earth.
BRAZIL: Great barbecue, oddly-named mountains, and the best jungles and parties (and jungle parties) anywhere.
BOLIVIA: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid got zonked down there, didn't they?
URUGUAY: It's all about the tango.
KENYA: I know Tanzania, Mozambique, and some of the other countries have amazing biodiversity, natural beauty and safaris, but whenever I think "East Africa," my mind just leaps to Kenya. Craters, rhinoceroses, the Serengeti, poaching problems, and now some election brouhaha. And a spectacularJohn Wayne movie.
SOUTH AFRICA: Let's move past the bit with the apartheid and get into Sharlto Copley, J.R.R. Tolkien, Basil Rathbone, Manfred Mann, Candice Swanepoel, and that sweet movie Zulu with Michael Caine. Just please don't mention Dave Mathews. We don't mention Dave Mathews on this blog.
LESOTHO: See RHODE ISLAND above.
EGYPT: Revolutions. Pyramids. Rivers. Desert. Camels. Political turmoil. And they have their own version of The Daily Show.
MOROCCO: I only know where it is 'cause I watch Bogart films.
CROATIA: It gave the world Serious Sam, so it can't be all bad, can it?
RUSSIA: I was born five years before the Berlin Wall fell, but I'd venture to guess that my generation's the first one that doesn't think "Commie bastards" whenever we hear the word "Russia." That doesn't mean I trust Putin or the KGB, but I sure would like to visit the country, ride their trains, drink their vodka, walk over their bridges, and so forth. Oh, and see St. Petersburg in the wintertime.
FRANCE: The other place an aspiring artist or writer might go besides California.
ICELAND: All of the wintry fun of Canada or Alaska with none of the urban sprawl.
ENGLAND: Sorry, did I say Canada was guilty of cultural snobbery?! Though that could just be Londoners. Seriously, some of my best friends are from England. I wouldn't mind retiring to Newcastle someday, having fish and chips down by the quayside, a pint in the Turk's Head, then a walk 'round the priory and a pipe-smoke on the point. Geordies rock.
SCOTLAND: It gave us Scotch whisky, haggis, Robert Burns, Ian Anderson, and some of the world's finest and hardiest soldiers. I think a good many wars would have been lost without a few good Scotsmen.
IRELAND: The setting of another rather good John Wayne movie. If you don't think about the Troubles, you can get lost in the whiskey, the beer, the corned beef and cabbage, the stew, the River Liffey, James Joyce and the wild Irish countryside. Gotta love Chloë Agnew and Liam Neeson, too.
GERMANY: Efficiency. And cake. And philosophy. And awe-inspiring classical music.
SPAIN: Sunshine. And beautiful horses. Architecture to die for. Paella. Soccer. Bulls, and a lot of sports that shouldn't be combined with bulls. And tomato-chucking.
SWITZERLAND: Americans voted it the best place to go if you're trying to escape from a German prison camp. I've heard they make pretty good watches and toys, too.
INDIA: Outsourcing. Overpopulation. Sacred cows. Fascinating religions. Fantastic architecture. Pollution. Garbage in the streets. People pooping in public. The Ganges River, which I wouldn't dunk my worst enemy in.
VIETNAM: The site of a rather nasty and unconventional war. Now home to gorgeous waterfalls, delectable cuisine, a generation of suspiciously blond-haired Vietnamese, and tons of unexploded ordnance.
CHINA: Big. Really big. Filled with people. Controlled by a Communist government. Mao's noggin is everywhere. Still, even though fat guys go topless in public and toddlers poop in the streets, the trains run on time and the countryside is undeniably gorgeous.
JAPAN: My knowledge beforehand was mostly limited to World War II, anime and manga. Now I see the country through the Korean lens, and that colors my perception a bit. It's definitely one of Asia's bright stars, a broad, clean, polite and user-friendly country. But its foreign-relations record is a black mark in its ledger.
SOUTH KOREA: Before I came to live here, I knew the name of the capital and that the country got snow in winter. That's it. Now I know that, despite the bali bali culture that grinds students and salarymen into the ground, Korea has elevated itself from a smoking crater to one of the most prosperous, bright, advanced and innovative nations on the planet. The people, though bound by millennia of tradition and rigid societal and behavioral mores, are some of the most friendly and unconditionally kind folks I've ever encountered.
NORTH KOREA: If you're ever in need of a good laugh, just look up some of their propaganda.
AUSTRALIA: Deserts, mountains, jungles, forests, beaches, great music, good actors, some fantastic sports (and sports players), architectural wonders, storied history, a charming accent and some of the weirdest animals to be found.
NEW ZEALAND: Like some weird mix of England, Iceland, and Hawaii. But it did give us Peter Jackson, Lucy Lawless, Karl Urban and Bruce Spence, and some lovely glaciers.
ANTARCTICA: Snow. Ice. More snow. More ice. Mountains. Volcanoes. Rocks. More snow. More ice. Frigid seas. Storms. Penguins. Blubber. Jules Verne, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, and every other adventure or horror writer who ever needed a remote, bleak, barren, ice-blasted place to set a secret base or an eldritch abomination.
So, says the storyteller, sitting in a chair by the fireside, a gin and tonic in his hand, did I ever tell you about the time I broke my arm?
It was 1998. I was eleven years old, and a reluctant Boy Scout. My troop and I were camped just off the road running past Norris Dam, on the Clinch River in eastern Tennessee.
It was just an inch away from car camping, really. The vehicles were parked a few hundred yards from the tents. This would prove to be fortunate.
My memories of being a Boy Scout are not fond ones. I wasn't in the best of troops. I was a pretty wimpy kid, and the other guys were far from supportive or brotherly. I'd been on several outings with them already, and none were the kind I'd remember wistfully. But during this trip, I thought things were really going to turn around. The weather was beautiful (unlike Big Hump, which was negative temperatures coupled with 30 mile-an-hour winds; it was snowing sideways). Dad and my brother Harlan were along, meaning yours truly, Mommy's boy, wouldn't be left all alone (unlike Savage Gulf, where I was crying and moping and smelly all week because I'd forgotten to pack soap).
Camp Jim was a marvelous place, too. It was a big, wide clearing in the woods, floored with dry brown soil, packed hard. It sloped gently upward to meet the wooded flank of a ridge. The trees surrounding and dotting the clearing seemed impossibly tall to me back then. The sunlight trickled down through the canopy and dappled the forest floor with those dancing bits of sunlight which I found (and still do find) so dazzlingly wonderful. All in all, it was a picturesque spot.
But most importantly, it seemed the other guys in the troop were beginning to warm up to me.
Near the center of the clearing was a particularly gigantic tree. I'm afraid I can't remember its exact dimensions. And I was so short back then that it must've been a lot smaller than it seemed. In my memory, it was gigantic, the next thing to the California redwoods. It was a towering oak, gray-barked and rough, no branches less than 30 above the ground, the trunk so wide that six of us would've had to link arms to encircle it.
An enormous tree in the camp would've been awesome enough for us. But no, this one just happened to have thick brown vines hanging from it.
And what's more, one of them was swingable.
I was wandering around camp one golden afternoon not long after we'd arrived, a bit bored and a bit tired. (Two owls had chosen the wee hours of the morning to start having a conversation, and one of them happened to be perched in the tree right above our tent. And these owls didn't hoot, either. They screamed. Nobody in the camp got much sleep that night.)
I look over and I see the guys swinging on this vine.
And I think, cool.
Here's the setup: the massive tree is just at the foot of the slope of the ridge. In front of it, the ground slopes gently down for a few yards, then suddenly drops fast—a steep embankment, the wall of a shallow gully running through the camp from north to south. This makes the vine-swing that much more thrilling. The guys, grabbing the vine and pushing off the trunk of the tree, swing out over the gentle slope, and then over the embankment. At the farthest outward point in their swing, they are about 15 feet above the ground or so.
I make up my mind to try that swing or die in the attempt. The guys make room in the line for me, something I wasn't expecting. Surprised and gratified, I take my place and wait eagerly for my turn. I watch my predecessors take theirs, trying to pick up tips. Push off from the tree as hard as you can. Grasp the vine and climb up the side of the trunk a little to give yourself some extra height and oomph. Push to the side, making your swing wider, longer, more circular and less ovoid.
I'm not the only one watching the proceedings. One of the older boys—I think his name was Lee or something—is also perusing, standing on the gentle slope below the tree. The guys are swinging directly over his head. Lee's extremely tall—mustbe nearing six feet. He's also quite thin and gangly, like most boys his age.
My turn comes. My heart in my mouth, I grab hold of the vine, bend my knees as far as they'll go, and push with all my might.
It's wonderful. I go swinging out, clutching the rough bark of the vine for all I'm worth, the sudden breeze blowing back my hair, the sunlight sparkling through the leaves high above, the ground dropping suddenly away until it seems I'm as high as a bird, I can see the whole camp and practically everybody in it, I can even see through the trees and over the hill to the road and the Clinch River beyond—and then suddenly I'm swinging back, and I pivot and kick out my legs to stop myself smashing into the other side of the tree. Breathless, I hand the vine to the next lucky bugger, and get in line again.
No way one swing is enough.
It seems to take ages, but eventually I'm back at the front of the line again. I grasp the vine (I'm probably grinning like a punch-drunk monkey), climb even higher up the trunk, and push off even harder. I start my outward swing—
And suddenly it feels like someone clamped a ball-and-chain around my ankles.
I can barely hold on. My grip is slipping, the rough bark of the vine skinning my hands. I glance down.
Lee, the older boy, is hanging onto my shoes. He's swinging along with me. I look up.
We're over the embankment.
My head empties. My only thought now is to hold on. The ride is forgotten, except inasmuch as I really, really want to get off now.
I try to hold on. If I lose it now, we're falling a long way.
But I can't do it. Lee is just too heavy. Just as we reach the peak of the swing and begin to head back, I lose my grip.
Those few split-seconds that I fall 15 feet and land on the slope of the embankment are a terrifying, toxic blur.
WHAM.
Lee rolls away, unhurt. I land on my hands and knees on the steepest part of the embankment, facing uphill.
I know I'm hurt. But I've never broken a bone before, and I don't know the signs. My arm doesn't hurt yet, but there's that numb sort of feeling which precedes pain. It's in both of my arms and both my knees. How I managed to avoid planting my face in the dirt, I'll never know. Maybe it was the slope that saved me, who knows. But it does a number on my right wrist. Even after I've been picked up, dusted off and set to rights, it keeps throbbing.
And in a few minutes, it starts to hurt.
It starts to hurt like hell.
Even sitting perfectly still, it hurts as though it's going to fall off. And if I try to move it, or even touch it, however slightly, fresh waves of raw agony shoot through my whole arm.
Dad doesn't believe I've done anything serious to myself. He observes me on the floor of our tent, cradling my arm to my chest, whimpering, tears in my eyes, and says "Oh, come on. You're all right."
Later, I felt rather sorry for him. Mom really tore him a new one for not believing I was hurt.
In Dad's defense, I didn't fall that far, nor land that hard. It was inconceivable that I should've broken something. Pop probably just thought I was scraped up a little, and was trying to get me to toughen up. I'm glad he tried, at least.
Dad and the troop leaders try various things on my arm: wrapping it in bandages; ice packs; warm water; immobilization. Nothing works. Eventually, the call is made. I'll have to be taken to the hospital. Dad calls up Mom and she comes A.S.A.P, driving our huge Ford B-Wagon van. That thing was amazingly capacious. With two seats up front and two benches in back, plus a vast amount of cargo space, it was the Post family's workhorse for nearly ten years. It chauffeured a family of four (and two dogs) on numerous picnics, transported entire soccer teams, supplied car campers with a week's rations, and was the best thing for a relaxing after-lunch nap while driving home from the restaurant.
My memory blanks out here. I don't remember the ride from camp to the hospital at all. Such is my curse. I have an awful memory, and it's photographic to boot. This means that conversations, sounds, sights, and sensations are often utterly lost, and all I'm left with are images. I'm fortunate to remember as much of this incident as I have. I don't remember what explanation Lee gave for leaping up and grabbing my feet. I don't remember how the other guys reacted to our fall. I don't remember much of anything apart from what I've told you here, unfortunately. My apologies.
The X-rays come back and the tall, dark-haired doctor puts it up for us to see. I have a spidery crack halfway through my radius. Nothing that needs to be set or splinted, fortunately, but enough to technically qualify as a "break." It also qualifies for a cast.
Now that I've had some anesthetics put into my system and can actually move my arm without wanting to scream, I'm rather pleased. That's the way I recall feeling, anyway. I got to go home early from the Boy Scout trip and had a broken bone into the bargain. I didn't want to break a bone, mind you, but I felt it was something I needed to do at some point in my life. And have a cast. Then I could hold my eleven-year-old head up and proclaim, "I am a man of the world. I have broken a bone, and worn a cast. In your face, Herman."
I don't know who Herman is. He just stands for all those bullies at recess who called me a girl or a wuss or a homo.
For some unexplained reason, I picked the color orange for my cast. I don't know why. It didn't have anything to do with football. The colors of the University of Tennessee (with whom Peyton Manning was playing at the time) were orange and white, and all of Knoxville lit up with those colors every game day. But I was too young (or too wussy) to like football yet. I just liked the color orange.
So they put it on. It went from my wrist up to my elbow, extending between my thumb and index finger. This made it impossible to hold a fork or a pencil, but I grinned and bore it for six long weeks. And I got all my classmates at middle school to sign it. I felt good and proud and accomplished for the first time in my life.
I look back on the whole affair now with mingled amusement and shame. I'm ashamed that I couldn't have been stronger and held on to the vine as long as it took to return to the tree safely, even if I skinned my hands raw. That would've been the brave, selfless, manly thing to have done. Maybe that's what Lee was trying to teach me, I don't know. I'm just glad he didn't get hurt.
I'm ashamed that I spent the rest of the afternoon moaning and groaning and writhing in the tent. That wasn't very manly, either.
I'm amused at how the whole thing must've looked, though. Tiny Little Me, swinging on a vine. Tall Skinny Guy grabs my shoes. Suddenly TLM is swinging from the vine, and TSG is swinging from me. That must've been a sight. Then suddenly TLM lets go and the whole shebang plunges to earth.
TLM spends the rest of the afternoon crying and whining on the floor of the tent.
There was a lesson to be learned here, but it's temporarily escaped the author's mind.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is the first of the fireside chats that I mentioned earlier. Well, not really the first. I've already told a few stories on this blog. There's the one about how I fell into a pond in fall in Ohio when I was a kid; another concerning a certain all-night party in Korea that nearly resulted in a lost watch; and a third—oh yeah, did you know that I once saved a rabbit's life? Ever wonder what living in a Buddhist temple is like? Check 'em out. There's much more to come.P.S. I've decided to postpone that award-ceremony thingy until tomorrow, and combine it with the news report I've been compiling. I've got some rather juicy tidbits for you. We have a new dog, for starters. The garbage truck got stuck in the sand up the road a couple days ago, too. HALLELUJAH, I passed the big scary test on shots yesterday! This morning I had my first flight lesson in a month and a half; I went "under the hood" for the second time. Dad has tapped me to play bartender for the dinner party he's hosting tonight. And did I mention how nice the weather's been down here lately?
Risking accusations of narcissism, I think it behooves me to tell you something more about myself. That sarcastic blurb on this webpage is not sufficient for you to truly understand your author. If, perhaps, you are the type of person who prefers to understand your author before reading him, I present you with this treatise on my favorite subject, myself.
I was born in Auburn, California, in 1986. We lived there only about a year; then we moved around Northern California a bit, then to Southern California. After a year or so there (during which my brother, Harlan, was born), we moved across country to a small, out-of-the-way burg named Piketon, an hour from Columbus, Ohio. Some of my earliest memories come from there; our simple house, the creek out back where I used to catch crayfish, the enormous noise the katydids and crickets used to make on summer nights...and our hick neighbors, whose kids I used to play with.
After a while in Columbus (during which I attended public school, which I remember very little of), we moved down to East Tennessee: Oak Ridge, to be exact, once home to an installation of the Manhattan Project. I believe the uranium ore was refined there. The enormous complex still loomed like a gray set of epaulets over the city itself. We lived (as we usually did, disliking cities and suburbs) way out in the boonies, closer to Clinton, Tennessee. That was a wild place. We had a two-story house, a pond out back, and acre upon acre of woods. When it snowed in winter (if it snowed) we had a splendid sledding hill, too, with thorn bushes at the bottom and everything, which once my brother and I aimed for and plowed at least eight feet into. Fortunately we were protected from injury by our thick parkas. We fished for bluegill and sunfish in the pond, mowed what seemed like a twenty-acre lawn every summer and promptly collapsed into our in-ground pool (where Dad taught us to swim), played in the upstairs hallway (where once we put our pet gerbils into a Tonka truck and ran it down the hall, seriously injuring them and necessitating a tear-laden, anguished trip to the animal hospital), and swung on the swing suspended from the gigantic black oak tree in our front yard, where every fall we'd rake the leaves into a pile beneath and catapult into it. Those were the days. We lived in Tennessee the longest we'd lived anywhere: five years, including the year-long stint we had in a townhouse after we'd sold the big house while we were preparing to move back out west.
In 1999 we went back to the California desert: Apple Valley, the same place my brother was born. Dad actually got his old job back, ten years after he'd left it. We lived in a wonderful adobe hacienda way out in the boonies once again, in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. The place was beautiful. We had two acres of paddock out back, where we kept wild mustangs purchased from the Bureau of Land Management and trained them; a dirt road running across the north and east borders of our property, which horse trailers and dirt bikes rattled or roared along more often than we liked; a fresh desert breeze blowing through the windows; a porch and a semi-green lawn out back great for playing touch football or grilling; the scenic juniper-laden slopes of the San Gabriels behind, and the valley spread out in front, and across from us the rocky, sun-blasted Granite Mountains, which looked like they could've been dropped from the planet Mars. To the northwest was the tri-city area: Apple Valley, Victorville and Hesperia, visible to us nearly in its entirety, glimmering like a mirage by day, twinkling like a starlit sky by night.
It was here that I, home schooled since Tennessee and third grade, went to high school: AVHS, Apple Valley Senior High, class of 2004. These were the halcyon days of my youth, I think. I joined clubs and spent many a hot desert afternoon planning History Club outings, playing chess or computer games, debating (I founded the debate club myself), or just chilling at the library. I grew to love that school, despite how unfamiliar and unfriendly it had seemed to me as a newcomer to the state and the public school system. In my sophomore year, however, I found some great friends, who are still with me today: John, Lee, Virginia, Megan, and more. I came to be the class clown and was voted "Most Unique" in my senior yearbook (if that makes any grammatical sense at all).
Upon graduating in 2004, I began making the three-day commute to my chosen college, North Dakota State University, every summer and Christmas. Struck hard by senioritis, I suppose I was your typical lazy college student: drinking on weekends, playing video games or walking in the park by day (or playing Ultimate Frisbee, or just cruising around town, or going to see movies at the dollar theater, or chilling at the library, or riding my classic Schwinn Beach Cruiser around campus). I wrote papers and essays the night before they were due, alternately scrambling and relaxing, panicking and unwinding, being diligent and procrastinating. I lived in the dorms the entire time. As charming a city as Fargo was (cool breezes and flowers in spring, beautiful fall foliage, not-too-hot summers and Christmas-card winters with a blizzard or two, and all sweetened by a veneer of Northern hospitality) I knew I wouldn't be staying after I graduated, so I didn't bother with an apartment. I wouldn't have traded the dorm experience, anyway. It was like living in a house with a few dozen brothers. We were always wandering the halls, peeking into each other's rooms, jumping up to go get pizza or see a movie or play a game out on the fields around campus, starting up impromptu video game tournaments or movie marathons, or just generally having fun of some kind. We bunked our beds and turned our dorm rooms into personalized man-caves: posters ribald with college humor on the walls, Christmas lights, comfy furniture, carpeting, refrigerators filled with snacks, and what-have-you.
It was my first taste of true independence, and there was magic in the air. College was like a big commune, really. I tasted alcohol for the first time, first considered the mysteries of the opposite sex, exposed myself to opposing viewpoints on all subjects, and ventured into states of mind of which I had not dreamt. I even had a girlfriend in college, my first and (thus far) only: Elizabeth. She was just what I needed, a wonderful, kind, sensible woman who could always cut me off before I reached the limits of stupidity or boorishness. We had some wonderful talks and spent many an hour in conversation, circumnavigating the campus or reviewing one another's movie collection. She and I remain friends to this day.
Alas, all good things must come to an end. I graduated college in December, 2007 and spent the next six months in fruitless job-hunting in Cheyenne, Wyoming. My parents had moved there in '06, putting their Apple Valley house in the market in the meantime, which still hasn't sold. Besides looking for work, I took to strolling around beautiful Sloans Lake, taking flying lessons at Cheyenne Regional Airport, working at Sierra Trading Post (the wholesale version of REI) and cruising around town in my '96 Ford Taurus, blasting classic rock on the radio.
Then I found this Korean job and took it. And here I am. The rest you know.
If you want to know about me, personally, I can tell you a little of whatever comes to mind.
I am six feet tall, with blue eyes and dark brown hair. I have a round, somewhat chubby face. I played soccer (and later, reffed it) in Apple Valley, but I've been overweight ever since graduating high school. The Freshman 15 didn't miss me in college. It is only here, taking walks every day and doing exercises, that I've lately begun to get my figure back.
I am an outgoing guy, not much of a conversationalist but willing to attempt it. I used to be quite shy; I gradually trained myself out of it. I love to be the jokester, the class clown. Puns are my cup of tea. I'll spout bad puns whenever the occasion even thinks of arising. I'm always looking for a way to turn casual sentences into plays on words or jokes. That's annoying to some people and hilarious for others. I am a relentless optimist, usually. I try never to be down in the dumps, 'cause that shortens one's lifespan, y'know. I'm desperately afraid of death but am going to have a risky lifestyle anyway, just for the fun of it. I like to write and have been told I'm good at it, just as I was once good at drawing.
I am very uptight about the sanctity of language: I detest all emoticons (those annoying smiley-faces people put into their e-mails and text messages) and trite abbreviations like LOL, TTYL, LMAO, ROTFLOL, and so on. I correct other people's grammar unmercifully (as the Meticulous Grammarshal, which sounds better than Grammar Nazi; I've included the Grammar Nazi flag above).
Traveling, flying and writing are the three things I hold most dear, but I also love reading, eating, drinking, sleeping, walking, imagining, gaming, dancing (if I knew how), and learning. In fact, I want to learn three more languages (after finishing Korean and Spanish), and there's a lot of history I don't know yet.
As you know from my writing updates, I'm writing a book and am going to turn it into a comic book. Any book ideas that I have later I'll duly report on. I'm sarcastic, selfish, mean-spirited and whiny sometimes, but most of the time I'm happy-go-lucky, cheerful, and intelligent.
I'm half action hero and half cartoon character, or so I hope. I want to live a full life so I can die without regrets (preferably in a heroic fashion). I hope someday to be a published author; an accomplished pilot; a seasoned traveler; and a loving husband and father (if I could but find the woman). I value the brain above all other human possessions, the book above all other art forms, airplanes above all other inventions, democracy above all other governments, liberty above all other abstract nouns, and whiskey above all other liquors.
And that's me.
