Thursday, July 30, 2009

New Medium

Moved to http://reflectionsonanafterthought.wordpress.com/ after very little thought or deliberation. Enjoy.

Memory #10

Who were these crazy people? Lunatics all of them. One in a purple jumpsuit and a giant beard talking to an imaginary friend on the other end of a rum bottle, another holding a giant dinosaur toy screaming something about the end of the world, an apparent gymnast flipping himself off a tall balcony and climbing back up again and again, a black lesbian telling me about the crazies as she circled me and spoke like a broken robot, a short bald man with a bottle of whiskey singing in a scratchy voice what sounded like an old sailor tune, . I wasn't really sure how I got here and I sure as hell didn't know how I would leave. It seemed to me that there had been a conspiracy to put these psychopaths all in one room as the rest of the world silently self-destructed around us, leaving only this untamed box of madmen to drift endlessly in the empty vacuum of space.

Of course, I was one of them. I didn't know it then because it was all so normal but I was part of the insanity, the dirty captain standing on a chair in the middle of the spacecraft searching for the signs of sanity that were nowhere to be found. It makes sense now; these people and their craziness. We had all gone normal and the rest of the world had always been crazy. Where the hell am I and who the hell are these crazy people?

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Memory #9

I remember the Oklahoma City bombing. I was in 4th grade at the time. Everyone was sitting in class. Whatever was going on in class has now turned fuzzy in my mind but I remember the moment when the bomb went off in downtown Oklahoma City. I felt it. Not in a spiritual sense but physically. My elementary school was about 10 miles along straight suburban roads from the actual bombing but I felt it. So did the rest of the class.

I was sitting in my chair at my desk. There was a pencil on the desk. A muffled but deep noise rumbled and shook the class like a tiny earthquake. My pencil shook and rolled off my desk as I caught it. It was only a second and none of us knew what it was, our teacher was just as confused. Everyone threw their ideas about what the phenomenon could be around. I'm sure that, being 4th graders, there were lots of ridiculous explanations but the one that we all agreed seemed the most plausible was one kids declaration that the strange occurence must have been a sonic boom caused by a jet. I didn't know what the hell that meant but I had heard the word sonic boom before and I knew jets were really fast so maybe this kid was on to something. I don't think anyone really knew what that meant but I guess that only made it more believable. We all nodded our heads in agreement that it must have been a sonic boom.

Later that day I found out that it was a bomb. Of course, I didn't at all understand the importance or the implications, I still FELT the raw weight of the tragedy that comes with such destruction, and ever since then the memory of my pencil rolling off my desk has been etched into my memory.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Memory #8

"What do you guys wanna do tonight?"
"Let's try to buy beer."

I was in the backseat nervous and excited as we pulled up to the window of the drive-through convenient store. It was a run-down place owned by an old Vietnamese man that was famous among high-schoolers in the area as the place they could buy alchohol. This was our first time.

I looked out the back window into the darkness of the night, glancing quickly at the store with only my eyes hoping not to look suspicious. I looked the youngest of the 3 of us so I sat in the back seat sitting as tall as possible straining to look calm and natural. I didn't want it to be my fault if the conspiracy failed.

"ID please."
It looked like our conspiracy had been discovered. If we showed him ID he would take one look at the date and see that we were 6 years too young, prompting him to keep the ID and call the police. We hadn't talked about this happening.

The driver took his wallet out and handed his ID to the Vietnamese man. He looked at it and handed it back to the driver. "What you want?"

The driver looked at the passenger. We all half-expected our experiment to be over with the ID debacle so we froze in shock for a moment. Each new question spiked our senses and pushed us at once closer to the abyss and closer to the promised land. My eyes darted from my window to the old Vietnamese man in the store.

The passenger said in a rushed whisper "uhh, tell him Heineken. Tell him heineken"
"Heineken"
"Okay"

It worked! My head rushed with adreneline as we passed another unseen roadblock.

"How much you want"

Oh God, I thought. Another question. He's onto us now. Stay calm. I looked at the driver. He looked around. The passenger rushed another answer, "a 6 pack. 6 pack."

"6"

Good. It's over. That was easy.

"A 6 pack of Heinekin?" The Vietnamese man said in a disbelieving tone. My eyes grew wide as I concluded that he was joking with us to build up our hopes just before smashing all our hard work. What a bastard. My heart pounded.

"Yeah, a 6-pack"

"Okay. That 8 dollar"

My hands gripped each other. It was working. He fell for it. Excitement shot through me as I tried to keep myself from letting out a nervous laugh.

The driver handed him the money. The beer was passed back to me in the backseat and we drove around the corner to put our stash in the trunk.

We did it! I was stunned that he actually believed we were 21 (of course, he actually didn't) and sold us beer. 6 Heinekin...this was revolutionary. The next night we went back and bought over a hundred cans and bottles of different kinds of beer without worry. The 6 beer revolution had changed everything and there was no going back.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Memory #7

I was accused of cheating after my freshman year of university. It marked the beginning of the lowest point of my life but there isn't much to remember from those 6 months. The accusation came after I had just finished a stellar semester of writing programs for my classes. School was out for the summer so I planned on working on several ambitious personal programming projects. I was at the peak of my excitement for the field when I got a letter from the university informing me that I was being accused of cheating in one of my classes. I was completely sure that this was some kind of mistake and I tried contacting people to get it sorted out. I had the knowledge of my innocence on my side so I figured it would be simple. It wasn't.

Throughout the summer I tried to convince my accusers of my innocence but nothing worked. The accusing teacher believed that the fact that I always made near perfect scores when most people scored average to be proof that I was doing something wrong rather than proof that I was doing everything right. When another student and I had almost the same perfect program we were accused of conspiring together.

I was helpless. Everything I though proved my innocence only pointed to my guilt. I wondered how it could be possible that I was being punished for being too good at what I do. I spent hours defending each line of what I had written but it was useless. I had put all my faith in the truth but the truth wasn't working for me. The irony is I spent my entire high school career cheating on every possible assignment and everything worked fine. It was only when I stopped cheating and started excelling that I was accused and almost kicked out of school.

At the end of the summer the charges were suddenly dropped. Not because I had shown them my truth but because the teacher had moved to California and wasn't physically present to pursue the charges. Things could go back to normal but they didn't. My passion for programming died with the false accusation and my life took a different path afterwards. Towards freedom.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Memory #6

The cold rain soaked into the tiny, flimsy tent. My small blanket was already soaked through and I covered myself in my jacket as I curled into a ball. It was a mild Oklahoma winter by most accounts, not even cold enough to turn the rain into snow, but it was miserable at that moment. I was camping and not at all prepared and the endless patter of rain had no sympathy. I almost said the endless patter of rain outside but that gives the wrong impression. Outside the tent and inside the tent was pretty much the same. The thin layer of the tent had stopped being a shelter several hours earlier and was now simply an extra blanket.

I slept a few times. Each time I would fall asleep I would wake up feeling disoriented, weary and tired but unable to sleep. It felt like I was asleep for several hours but when I checked my watch it was usually only 10 minutes at a time. I never felt farther from anything good than then. Sleeping in cold rain does that I guess.

The next day I left the tent and saw my friend in the same state as myself. We had planned to camp another day or two but that morning there were no illusions about our limits. We never had a conversation about going back, we just did. Soggy boots and bags in tow we marched back through the forest like we were coming out of the trenches, exhausted mentally and physically, with each step feeling like a step backwards, away from comfort.

We got back to civilization to find that everyone had conspired in our abscence to make life much more comfortable, sleep much more easy, and food much more invigorating than it ever was before. That was nice of them.