Thank you MYT.

My past blogs may have given the impression that I was something of a social outcast while growing up. I put up walls to keep most everyone away. Most of the few friends I had were either social outcasts too or had grown away from me.
In the fall of 1982 I auditioned and got a part in a local youth theatre production. The difference in my life was obvious to me even at that time. One thing I did was have a new start with a new crowd. Another thing was that even if these kids knew what a horrible baseball player I was, it was okay because they were theatre kids and a lot of them may have sucked at sports too. Kids may have joined the theatre for a number of reasons. But I think that anyone joins anything because they want to belong. I fit into this new crowd and I thought to myself at the time that it was one of the best things that ever happened to me.
A lot of the kids who were in that first production with me are on Facebook now. If they’re reading this…thanks.

and now there are two

My son, Benjamin is 13 years old today. Sometimes I think that parents of one child are more clueless than parents with no children. Sorry, that’s no very nice and not very true either. But I didn’t really learn about kids until we had our second because Naomi was very different from Harrison.
Sometimes I shudder to think what Naomi might have been like as a teenager. She was already a very over-the-top drama queen. But now I don’t know. Harrison had a difficult childhood in his school-age years. Then as a teen he somewhat mellowed out.
Benjamin has been a very amiable and helpful kid all the time. Now as he becomes a teenager he’s starting to bristle a little bit. And here am I who thinks himself an experienced parent having to think on his feet again. Well good. I has getting too comfortable anyway.

in sickness...

Prajna is ill today and has been for a few days already. I get frustrated when she’s sick because I get sick so rarely. I had perfect attendance my second grade year then 6th through 9th grade I missed no days. I think I must have a strong immune system. The most I ever got sick was when I was a pack-a-day smoker from 1987 to 1992. I had recurring tonsillitis when I was 18. Over the years I’ve had my tummy bugs and flu bugs and other ailments. I usually have less severe symptoms.
My kids seem to have inherited my iron constitution. Even Naomi would bounce back quicker than expected when she had no white blood cells. But Prajna tends to pick up bugs probably as much as most people. So I try to have sympathy for her but end up getting frustrated because, hey, I would be better by now.
When I go come down with something I act like a big baby anyway. But for the most part my poor diet and lack of exercise tend to give me mood swings rather than headaches. It seems we all have to pay for it somehow.

planetary conflicts

I had a couple of friends in the fourth and fifth grade and in the sixth grade I had more than a couple. It was the first time since the second grade that I had friends like that. My friends accepted my claims to be an alien as some game and one even told me about his home planet where rhinoceroses were sentient.
In the eighth grade my speech class had to give a brief life story. I went in with all seriousness and told how I was from another planet. Three years previous it had been amusing. But in the eighth grade it was no longer cool. Popular kids, surfers and skaters, brains, locals, pretty much everyone expressed their distain for me and my beliefs.
Things grew worse in the ninth grade. I had abandoned most weirdness except that I wore a jacket to school every day without exception. (I think I believed my home planet was warmer than Hawaii.)
Then in tenth grade I joined up with a community youth theatre and everything changed forever.

Imagination triumphs over logic

When I was in the fifth grade a classmate asked me if I was an alien. He reported observing that I never sweat, (I was one of the only causations and it may not have shown), and that he never saw me go to the restroom (I held it all day).
I think his main reason for thinking so was that I was decidedly different from everyone else. I had given up trying to fit in and concentrated on being as different as possible. If I had no friends, at least being the weird kid put that in my control.
I loved the notion of being an alien. So I began to act even more abnormally. I wore two wristwatches. (This was half a decade before it was stylish.) I mixed my cafeteria food together in my milk carton and then ate it with a little bit of the carton too.
Most of all I made it no secret that I was an alien from another planet. I made up a history picked out Alpha Centauri as my real home and did my best to convince everyone. If I only convinced one person on the planet, it was me. Now I had a great reason that I didn’t fit in. I wasn’t even supposed to be there. I longed for the day that they would come and take me home.
If they came today I would have to tell them never mind. I have a place now.

still spinning

I didn’t blog yesterday. I woke up later than usual and then spent the morning shopping. Thank God for Costco when you’ve got a big family. After Costco I went to a natural foods store to get bulk cereal. We usually have hot cereal for breakfast even through the summer. Benjamin makes oatmeal or Harrison cooks farina to make cream of wheat or corn meal to make a porridge that the kids call corn meal mush or muck. That’s the one hot cereal I don’t care for and I don’t think the kids like it either but sometimes it’s necessary for a little variety.

I also bought a multi-pack of Spam. The kids and I all love Spam and hopefully we can have it with eggs and rice some morning soon. Prajna can’t stand the stuff so I don’t open a can when she’s home. I also home to make some musubi with it on a day I can take it to work to share.

When I got home from everything the house was empty. Prajna and the kids had gone to see Toy Story III. It was about noon. I ate for the first time that day and went to Starbucks to real for about an hour before work.

So I didn’t brew a pot of coffee yesterday and I didn’t blog. The world kept turning anyway.

good work, stagehands

After I survived almost being dragged by a car and killed I wondered if perhaps I had just sustained some bizarre head injury and was in a coma dreaming everything. For years after I thought that maybe everything was a dream and if this was so I was pretty creative to dream Star Wars and stuff. I thought that the world would be entertained if they could tap into my dreams and watch them daily like a TV show or like the Talosians watched Captain Pike’s thoughts and dreams in classic Star Trek.
Speaking of paranoid delusions I also considered that when I was riding in an airplane that I was not actually traveling anywhere. The plane was sitting somewhere with people working outside to rearrange the scenery. Why else would opening the door be forbidden? And the planes that flew over me were other people who were in on the conspiracy.
I don’t know how normal it is for a school age kid to be half convinced that most of the world is in on something cover-up and it is all against him. Anyone who knows me now might think I’m a little paranoid still but not nearly as much as before. All of this, however is very small compared to the strangest thing that I believed in some of my young years.