Autobiography

Rei Non Publicae: An Autobiographical Narrative                      05-13-07

I don’t pretend to know everything
because I don’t,
and I don’t pretend I’m perfect
because I’m not.
But I won’t pretend that I have everything
because to have everything would make this life boring
And I won’t pretend to have nothing
because my memories have to be worth something.

And with that, we’ll fly into the first of many
make them all short and sweet so I don’t forget any.

Snap back to the days of the big wheel,
when 5 dollars could have bought the world
and the summer days never seemed to be long enough.
Those hot South Carolina summer days
never could have gotten the best of me
and my friends and I would play Super Nintendo
or basketball at the park
or wiffleball in the front yard,
and we all lived without a care.
We had no car to drive
no love on our minds
no job to go to,
no money to spend.
Those were the days when we would
just ask our parents for money,
or ask for things for our birthdays
and we didn’t live in a material world
because all we needed was an imagination.

I used to love to ride my bike.
I’d ride my bike pretty much every day.
I even rode my new mountain bike on Christmas,
the day I got it.
And I’d have the greatest adventures on that bike,
slaying dragons and saving princesses,
or riding with Hell’s angels down the long, lonesome highway.
And I lived on a circular street, so I could ride around and around
and never run out of real estate.
One of those adventures, I rode down the hill on my street
and lost control of the handlebars,
and I slammed into a sawgrass bush.
And I thought I was going to die,
because when I got up I couldn’t breathe.
But it turned out I just got the breath
knocked out of me,
and eventually I rode home
with a few scratches
and some tear-stained cheeks,
but nothing serious.

And in South Carolina,
there were no snowstorms
only thunderstorms.
And there was one hurricane while I was there.
I remember it was headed straight for where we lived
and they canceled school for Thursday and Friday,
And the announcement came on over the elementary school PA system
and everyone in my class cheered, because
we would have no school.
We were cheering because we had no school,
because we had no idea what a hurricane was,
because we were just kids.
And my dad went to Lowe’s to buy plywood
to put over the windows
and he taped gigantic X’s on them
so they didn’t shatter,
so the winds and the rain wouldn’t come inside
and it was like night, only in the daytime.
And the hurricane went north and we only got rain.
The creek flooded behind my house,
and the water was brown from the dirt.
But we still only got rain
and no one got hurt.
And we cheered because we had no school
because we were just kids.

And my parents got divorced in 1997.
I don’t remember what exactly happened,
but I remember them fighting and
screaming at each other a lot more
and I cried at night sometimes, because I thought it was my fault.
And I didn’t understand why Dad had to leave
and find an apartment in North Charleston
while we had to stay in our house.
And I remember that I asked for Ma and Dad
to get back together for Christmas that year
but they didn’t
And my mom found another guy that she liked
and I hated him
because he didn’t care about me or my sister.

And then we moved,
and there was no more familiarity.
No more two-week long Christmas breaks,
no more friends to play with after school,
no more circular street to ride my bike on all day.
and that man came with us
and I still didn’t like him.
And he broke his arm on some ice,
and he got more bitter.
He would lock my sister and I out of our own house
and my mom never knew about it.
And finally he left,
and she found out about how he mistreated us.
And she blamed herself for what happened,
but it wasn’t her fault.
It wasn’t anyone’s fault but his.

And there was baseball.
Baseball was the most fun thing in my life
when there were still no girlfriends or paychecks to worry about.
And we won the league title twice in a row.
And I made the all-star team two years in a row
and a traveling team after that.
And I loved the game,
I loved playing third base,
and I loved playing first base,
and I never complained about playing anywhere else.
Because it was all just a game.
And I only hit one home run ever,
in a 3rd place consolation game that we won 20-2.
And I still have the baseball that I hit
240 feet, over the makeshift fence in left-center field.
And I actually thought it was a ground-rule double,
and I stopped at second base,
and I didn’t understand why everyone was crowded
around the plate, as if it were some monumental double.
And the umpire shouted “home run” at me, and I finally
continued around the bases to home plate.

And finally we got to middle school
and I started to know more people
and middle school was a breeze.
The classes were easy, the homework was minimal
and I didn’t care that the couples walked down the halls
holding hands and talking,
with teachers and administrators telling them to let go,
when, at 12 and 13, all we wanted to do was to hold on.
And all I wanted to do was to hold on to someone like they did.
But I suppose that, at the end, it wouldn’t have mattered
so I focused instead on the things more important to me.

I think I started my comedy career unofficially,
and inadvertently,
in 7th grade, in Mr. Kaiser’s room.
The period was just starting
and I walked into the room with my books in my hand,
toward my desk at the far left of the room.
And I turned back to the door
because I thought someone had called me
and I sat down without looking at the chair,
and I missed the chair.
And I sat on the ground, not realizing what happened,
while the class laughed at me.
And I kinda just laughed along with them,
because my own stupidity was pretty funny to me.

I wrote my first poem in November of 2001.
And it was about the World Trade Center collapse.
And how 5,000 people died for nothing,
and how we had to start a war
because the terrorists thought we weren’t living correctly in America,
because our beliefs weren’t accepted in their eyes,
because we had technology and they didn’t,
because we had money and they didn’t,
because we had freedom and they didn’t,
and I wrote about all of those things,
and how we wouldn’t be dormant in responding
how we wouldn’t let them do it again.

And then, that year, I qualified for the state finals
in the Coca-Cola state junior bowling tournament.
And I bowled 8 games with my emotions on my sleeve
and a pounding heart in my chest.
And when it was all said and done, I won the tournament.
And I was going to go to Florida for the national tournament.
And I was on top of the world, at 12 years old,
and nothing could have brought me down.
And then I broke my arm in a scrimmage game for baseball
and suddenly there was no National tournament in Florida
because I couldn’t bowl.
And the pain in my arm only exemplified the irony
in how one passion in my life killed another one.

And then the roller coaster that we call high school finally arrived.
And freshman year I felt alone.
There was a small tragedy at the end of 8th grade,
when I had given a love poem to a girl as a way to ask her out
and it was read aloud on her bus.
And the embarrassment seeped into my veins,
and never let go of my heart.
Nothing really good happened that year,
and I felt like nothing was important anymore.
It seemed like my friends weren’t there,
and I had nobody to help me.
It was the first time that I really felt that my friends weren’t there
that maybe I didn’t have any real friends,
that maybe I had no one to help me through this troubled time.
That maybe living wasn’t worth it.
And baseball was no longer fun
and bowling was the only thing that really kept me going.
The poetry sank, like I did, into a dark hole of sadness.
And love started to infect my heart,
just like it would in any adult’s heart
except I was only 14, and I didn’t know what was happening.

And then I found out what love really was, presented to me
in the form of a girl I had known from middle school.
And I didn’t understand why she was always on my mind,
why I felt dizzy when I was around her,
why she seemed to take my breath away,
and why she was always in my dreams.
And she was always there in my mind,
throughout the other misguided passions I felt
in this high school life.
And she was always a good friend to me,
never hesitated to give advice when I needed it
even though I really only wanted her there with me.

And these poems finally found a starting point in ninth grade.
I finally understood the amount of feelings
it took to write these masterpieces out on paper,
and I practiced and practiced until I perfected it.

And high school was a series of trials and tribulations.
There was homecoming in sophomore year,
and I didn’t have any fun at it,
and I vowed never to go back to another school dance again
(which was a lie)
and there was the loads and loads of homework
that came with every class it seemed.

And there was the Red Sox winning the World Series in 2004
against all odds, the statistical anomaly of the baseball world.
And there was the High School varsity team winning the
state championship in 2005, against all odds, starting the season
1-6, and finishing the season with a 1-0 victory against Walpole,
the statistical anomaly of the high school baseball world.

And there was winning the state championship
in bowling last year by one pin.
And there was bowling two 700 series
within hours of each other
at the city tournament,
when it had been impossible,
for 12 years,
to get just one.

And there was the trip to Disney World,
and the cruise to the Bahamas,
when it was too damn hot to be outside for so long.
And there was the vacation in Virginia Beach this year
and the Baseball game in Baltimore
and driving for about 19 hours total.

And I take all of those memories and ball them up,
and I call them my high school life.
And I’d safely say that high school
really wasn’t all that bad in the end.

And these memories shaped me into who I am today,
and, despite all the ups and downs that this life has brought to me,
I wouldn’t trade them for the world.