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Yesterday was the Heroes Foundation Gala and Beth and I attended. We were invited by the Bose McKinney crew and had a great time. I ate most of the cake on the table and the steak and salmon were top of the pops. Had many weird conversations with slurring people about things that they will not remember today. I like that stuff. It makes me laugh…it MADE me laugh last night. I had a lot of fun seeing a lot of bike people outside of the shop. I needed that. I’m hopefully at the tail end of a rough couple months. Happens every year. No need to talk about that shit, though. Suffice to say that I know I have a great group of pals that are very supportive of me and the shop. And that is what is most important at times like this.
I guess I’ve always been a bit high-strung. My nerves are jumpy and I usually live a month or two in the future. That part is difficult. An atom will only materialize if you look at it. And I look at them a lot. Probably a thousand times a day. But it does not matter because when I look away, the atoms disappear again until I look back at them. But then they are in a different place. And that is frustrating because all my plans were based on the previous locations of those goddam atoms. My nerves quickly realize this fact and start jumping around like demonic slinkys and then I cannot sleep and my eyes start twitching and darting and my feet move around and I end up in the state in which I am at present…which is to say—I am Nutter Butters. Ask my wife. Or my dogs. Or especially the guys who work for me. “Who is this guy?” I am silent today…I jabber incessantly and inconsistently about who knows what tomorrow. I may build a few bikes and get my hands dirty one day or sit and stare at my computer the next. it all depends on the atoms and where they are when I observe them.
Maybe there is some force that attached itself to me back on Wainwright Boulevard when I was 8 years old that times my observations just right so that I always find myself in this thick cloud of uncertainty and holy shit I’m tired of talking about it.
You know what was fun back then (in the eighties)? Riding bikes around Sunblest and racing each other on our homemade BMX tracks. We all had BMX bikes and we all could ride. It was always sunny and 85 degrees. The neighborhood was not yet complete and there were loads of construction sites on which we could build our tracks. Ride, ride, ride all day long and maybe go to the pool. The old Sunblest pool with the clubhouse with the awesome lollipops and Payday bars. The locker rooms with the super hot showers. The chain-link fence that ran around the pool and the wooden privacy fence at the deep end. The foot-deep kiddie pool…the shallow end for the moms and littl’uns and the Deep End for us. No one came to the deep end but us. That was our domain. We played Sharks and Minnows and Josh Petty pioneered the splash-dive off the diving board at the South end of the pool. Wooden benches lined the edges and when we were tired of thrashing ourselves in sharks and minnows we just laid out and turned brown. No sunscreen back then. Only sun and chlorine and bleached hair and that radio that always played 99 and a half, WZPL (I think it was called The Apple back then). Always blasting out 80’s hits from Huey Lewis, Michael Jackson, Depeche Mode, the Bangles, Phil Collins, hot damn that was a good time. I forgot my pool tag man! Pass me yours through the fence so I can get in! No worries…John Miner knows me and it’s all good. If he called you a Stud you knew you were cool and you knew everyone else in the world knew you were cool. And we were there for a good portion of our grade school and middle school years and we grew and got stronger and before long I could jump almost to the other side of the deep end when we played sharks and minnows and it wasn’t any fun any more. We all learned to do a Full Gainer off the diving board and sometimes we hit our heads on the thing but who cares? Because it’s sunny and the temps are always hot and I don’t ever want to leave this place. Can we just take a good long look at all of these atoms and force them to stay where they are? Everyone do it right now! Just concentrate and look at them and maybe we can all stay young and tan and have chlorine-bleached hair forever and ride our bikes around the neighborhood and have BB gun wars and…damn…we all liked each other! How many girls did you kiss last summer? Who is “going with” who? So funny.
I got the Honda 50 back then also. Chad had a Garelli and Petro had a Tomos. Our first experiences with motorized vehicles. Mine was a dirt bike so I could jump things a bit batter than them. But we all lived pretty close to each other and I built trails right behind our house in the open field with the peacocks and coyotes. That field is now a shitload of retail with a Marsh supermarket at 116th and Allisonville. But back then it was nothing. I could ride my bike down 116th to Shell to fill up my gas tank and sometimes I wouldn’t even see a car. And maybe I would stop at Hooks to get some Chewy Sweet Tarts and some Laffy Taffy. I’m 12 and I make $100 a week mowing lawns in the neighborhood and I buy a lot of candy. And I ride my bike. I ride my bike a lot…for hours sometimes. And it’s always hot and sunny and I think we must have had about a ten year drought back then because I don’t remember any rain…just hot, sunny days and skateboards and bikes and pavement and homemade quarter-pipes and I destroyed my ankles so many times on the launch ramp trying to be Christian Hosoi. Bon Jovi did Slippery When Wet and I had that cassette tape and my jambox (that’s what we white suburban kids called our boom boxes). Play it loud while we skate on the quarter-pipe and SHIT…I need more batteries. About six D batteries. The damn things are huge and I need them every other day. And please make sure you take a good long look at the atoms so we don’t ever have to leave this place!
Fuck, I lost them. I tried to concentrate but I have to blink sometimes and I must have blinked too often because now I am almost 42 and it is never quite that hot or sunny and the pool has been demolished and they are building a Primrose school there and I took a piece of concrete from the demolished pool. They can’t have it all. I took a piece of that place and it will always be hot from that sun and there are still some molecules of chlorine in that chunk of concrete and maybe even a couple cells of our skin from when we walked around the deep end to get to the diving board. I’m sure this piece of concrete is from the deep end. That’s the area from which I got the chunk. I’m sure of it. And if anyone wants to see it or touch it…it’s in my truck. I may have been away from that place for a few years but I will always remember. I know I suffer from a severe case of nostalgia-induced melancholy but what the hell happened to Fishers? It just is not Our Fishers anymore. Too many people decided they wanted that sunshine and they took all the fields and trees and hills and made them into giant neighborhoods made of vinyl and baby Bradford Pear trees. They even re-routed some of the roads. I hardly can remember some of the views we used to have. I have to concentrate very hard to remember the school and my locker and how to get to the wrestling room.
Do the kids at HSE now see the things we did back then? Do some of the atoms rearrange themselves, spontaneously, into me talking to Petro to distract him while he was backing up in his Escort until he bumped into the school bus? That one was one of my favorites. Left a little dent in the rear bumper that stayed there until that car was sold. Mark was furious. I laughed my ass completely off and jumped into my Camaro and sped off with my Bazooka tubes booming some Mix-A-Lot…back to my house for some one on one with Wirtz and those were some good times. But those atoms whirled around and turned into something else…probably a “device” or something. It’s okay. …They tell me it’s okay. I should concentrate on being present in this moment. I should not over think things. I should not be so reactive. I know. I realize that the atoms are subject to EVERYONE looking at them, not just me. And sometimes I am okay with that. Sometimes I am not. And those are the times in which I find myself right now. I just….lament…progress.
I put in a basketball goad at the house a couple weeks ago. Most of my friends live pretty far away now and I know that I will have to shoot around by myself most of the time. But I can still shoot. And I can still jump pretty high. McCauley would still make fun of me if we were playing 21 because I would still be easily baited by a fake shot. I would still jump up to block it and he would still laugh and just dart around me for an easy layup. I would still say “shit” and be pissy for a few minutes but I would start laughing also because Scott is the best in the business at the art of the sarcastic mimic. And I can’t help it. I want to punch him but I’m laughing too hard and the game goes on and I love my friends and maybe someday we can play again for real. Someday before we are too old to run and jump. But even that is okay because Scott could make fun of that also and I would helpless laugh at us and maybe growing up isn’t so bad. Maybe it’s not so bad. Maybe it’s not so bad. Sometimes it’s not so bad. Just focus on today. Keep that piece of concrete but don’t touch it too often. Call the two Marks more. Text Scott and laugh when he tries to mimic Don Fischer’s voice via text.
My wife indulges me quite a bit. She loves me and I know it. Last night i told her a lot of what i just wrote and she listened and encouraged me to be more active in my friendships. I isolate myself so much. I will attempt to do better. I know a lot of people need me to be more present in my affairs. As I mentioned before…it’s all about the arrangement of atoms. They will manifest when you observe them. And to do that you must be present in the moment. You cannot be in the future…which is where I am most of the time. I just have to grab my eyes and stick them back in my head and look just in front of me instead of way the hell off over the horizon. I know it can be done. I’ve seen other people do it. My wife does it. She is pretty happy most of the time. It seems to me that most people who focus on the here and now are a lot calmer than me.
Not really sure how to wrap this up. I was just trying to think of a transition and some clever little anecdote to end the thing but nothing is coming to mind. So…uh…goodbye.
-C
