Someone Else Wrote This - It Wasn't Me

I'm a goober at heart. That's the sad fact I've had to come to grips with over my life. I'm not sure whether God laughs or cries when He sees just what each of us go through to become what we are. It's weird that we (or maybe I should just stick with "I") have this exterior, and it's not necessarily untrue, but then there's this inside part that most others know nothing of, and the few who know part of it sure don't know it all. Like for instance, in junior high (we didn't have middle schools where we were) and high school, on the outside I'm fairly sure I was looked at as a jock, a football player, and I was fairly popular (which for some reason was a requirement for my mom) although as I grew older into my high school years, I started to rebel against that stigma. And none of that was hypocritical I don't think. I genuinely liked my friends/girlfriends, I loved sports, especially football (was a huge Dolphin fan since conception and that hasn't changed), and I didn't have to "act" or be a phoney to be liked. I just tried to be who I was - at school.

Versus: At home - there I was drawing comic books, writing BAD, BAD song lyrics with my brother and pretending we had a band that we played in... (we had several names and logos that I'd draw on different school notebooks), and writing all kinds of stories (even some trashy crap that I'd die if anyone saw now. That's right. Die). I had one pal that drew comics with my brother and me. Other than he, my parents, and my little sister, no one else knew. And I'd have run away forever in shame if people ever saw my brother and I dancing around and singing our "Bill and Ted-like" songs. And the writing, although my family knew that I did it, was basically for me alone. Sometimes they, mostly my brother though, read some of my writings, but for the most part they were just mine. None of my other friends knew about this stuff. Kill me quickly if one of my girlfriends ever found out. And the two worlds didn't conflict because there never was a reason for them to.

Really, there's not a reason for any of it to ever come to light except that what would have been so life-endangering to me then seems hilarious to me in retrospect. When I was six or seven, my mom bought me my first comic book, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Lizard Lives (I forget the number), and I fell in love. For the next three or four years, whenever I got to tag along to the grocery or drug store, I was getting a comic. Something happened when I hit junior high, though. All of a sudden, I was hiding out when I was perusing them, and I was making darn sure no one around knew me before I quickly bought and bagged the thing. If someone would have caught me, I'd have been ashamed. Now, I'm at the point where I don't mind people knowing I read them again. I've come full circle, and it's funny that I was ever scared.

Anyway, the ol' writing expression, "All it takes to write is just cut a vein and let it bleed,"well, here, it's cut. I figured I'd bleed off some of the tortuous items first. So here's a few of the things people didn't know about me that you might find funny (the ha-ha type rather than the peculiar) now:

1) For a good while as a boy, Debbie Boone's "You Light Up My Life" was my favorite song. Not only that, but I thought Debbie Boone was hot. Yeah, Debbie Boone. I know. Musical taste is certainly one thing that REALLY, REALLY changed over the years.

2) The words to a chorus of one of my song-writing "classics":

I'm rockin', rockin'
Don't feel like stoppin'
I'm burnin' tonight,
But I'll be alright.
I'm in the air.
I'm everywhere.
I don't really care.
Don't stop me now.
Cuz I'm rockin'.

Now imagine a couple boys singing this to a Quiet Riot type of noise and jumping around smashing our air guitars and drums like we were in The Who. I'll wait until you stop laughing.

3) Names of the superheroes and supervillians (among others) we wrote and drew: Son of Strength, Dynamite, Giant Robot Fighter, Xaxxon, Ultimato, King Fanar, White Knight, Typhoon, Lightningbolt, Princess of Power; our team names were - Cosmos, The Protectors of Earth, Comets. And all these came together after a while under the colossal The Galactic War series. Oh, and there were more. Oh were there ever more. We were going to drive Marvel and DC right out of business.

4) I read most of the Gor books when I was probably thirteen. Pretty inappropriate reading for a boy of thirteen. What the heck was I thinking?

5) I wanted to be Jim Street (Robert Urich) from SWAT when I grew up. A couple years later, I must have changed into a Christmas elf for a bit, because I wanted to be a dentist. I finally settled on being a tight end for the Miami Dolphins.

6) Would have paid $100 dollars for a poster of Jacklyn Smith when Charlie's Angels first came out.

7) After seeing the D-movie Thief in the Night at church about the Rapture and the Mark of the Beast and all that, for about six months to a year afterward, I would sneak out of bed and check to make sure my brother or parents were still here - that I hadn't been "left behind" - in the middle of the night while everyone else was still sleeping. [Sidenote: One night I caught my mother in the kitchen drinking straight from a two-liter bottle of coke, and I worried that she was a drunk for a while after that.]

I'll shut it down now. Hopefully, it's not the height of arrogance to put this stuff out there as if people who really don't know me should care. I just figure some might find it funny, others may identify (and I always feel connected when I hear of someone else having similar "dorkisms" as me), and others can just pass on it, which is fine. For my part, I hope you enjoy reading this just like I hope you enjoy reading anything else on the blog. As always, you're welcome to share your own gooberness with the world. Well, the world or the half dozens and half dozens of people that read this blog.

Dorks