1994.

Puberty.

Junior High.  Girls.  Bully Upperclassmen.  Trouble.  Algebra.  Rebellion.  Nirvana, Green Day, Foo Fighters.  Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine middle-class hypocrisy.  Being naive.  Falling in and out of love and into hate.  The Smashing Punpkins.  The death of Kurt Kobain.

Junior high changed me and Everts.  We were straight-A students but now making girls laugh with mischief was the name of the game.  We got bad report cards for the first time ever.  My parent's bought some tape series from some salesmen about "children not living up to their potential."  But I was a self-righteous teenager and so was my one older brother.

There was real tragedy.  First Tommy Arjes from my brother's class committed suicide.  A year later my brother's best friend almost like a brother to me, Nate Bertram, died in car crash.  My brother was a popular leader in high school but I still marvel at all that he has had to go through.  Their class valedictorian died with his wife outside Minneapolis not far after he got out of college and had gotten a great job.  Besides that my mom and my brother were always fighting over him and his friend's partying.  My parents were still partying hard and it always made my mom argue with my dad, so when I got into high school I was very anti-alcohol.


We all wanted to be moot Beavis and Buttheads and Joel Hodgsons and Trace Beaulieus.  We were all snarky Clerks and destructive Bart Simpsons.  Funny, back when you were young it made sense to be so self-righteous and anti-social under some guise of "being deep and grunge and rebellious."  I watched Clerks the other day as a 30 year old and I never felt more self-loathing.  Not at all for not choosing to make money, but for just being so damn rude.

Jim and I would write philosophy.  We were gonna be "fake-Confuciusts" back when we didn't know a goddam thing about Confucius.  We called it "the book of crap."  We'd draw funny stuff in there and write down one-liners and "make-up" wise philosophical quotes.  I wouldn't mind seeing it again with Jim someday but one day I burnt it with trash in the backyard as part of an effort of "growing up."  You know there was probably a lot penises and vaginas in there from being 14, but I remember some funny moments and confessions of clarity in there too, just like Pulp Fiction, man you had to be just like Pulp Fiction.  And there's nothing wrong with that I'm just trying to admit how much I lean on it if anything, I watch that movie at least 5 times a year...

But there you go, a kind of dark chapter that is disturbing me by writing it...  In another way I consider these some of the funnest times of my life - we were from a little school that had to consolidate with another little school and thus Dike-New Hartford schools was created.  And because of this I met all sorts of new friends including the reincarnation of the bodhisatva Kasyapa - Jay Johnson.

I'll never forget it the day we became friends at school I was doing my regular routine of clowning during lunch and Jay just blurted out, "you know what I like, I like Fritos!"  And my other friends looked at each other and just started laughing, Jay was in after that.  And in another way Jay didn't need to be in either, because he was already in with Beau Gibbs and Derek Weber - the big kids - getting detentions and being cool and crashing Derek's dad's car out in the country with no license.  Jay would grow to be one of my most closest and trusted friends and you will run into him much more later in the story.

Mike Amling moved out to the New Hartford countryside from Waterloo, Iowa and taught funny stories of the being in the "big city" of Waterloo with the "scary black kids" from the east-side which you were taught you weren't supposed to have anything to do with much like Springsteen's "My Hometown."  Amling joined me and Everts' rat-pack and we'd recited Snoop Doggy Dogg lyrics all the time and try to impress the girls from our class with other "goofing-off."

Speaking of the girls I fell in love way too hard with all of them.  I just had so much emotion and was so in love with the idea and feeling of being in love.  And thus naturally I ended up being the one dumped more than the one dumping followed by long periods of bitterness and regret.  This would continue into high school where I began to identify with Billy Cogan's "Love is Suicide" song to a dangerously depressive level.  Looking back I forgive all those girls for all those failed relationships, 9 times out of 10 it really was my problem.

Not to say I didn't end up having the dumb little relationships where you learn about sex and everything but that kind of leads into college....  So I'll stop here for now.  "You know like whatever, something nevermind."