Category: self

Introspective thought on my own behavior or actions.

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not old enough

The best babysitter.
Even though work is, for me, probably more busy now than it’s been in… well… in forever, I’m taking today and Friday off. My sister-in-law and her husband are in town and we’ll be doing the standard Northern California tourist jaunt. Today is San Francisco, this weekend is Tahoe. Tromping around the state is a sure-fire way to not get my work done… and although I have some level of guilt, I’m gonna do it anyway. But before that, I wanted to try and at least get an entry done.

There’s a certain CD that plays every single night in Henry’s Bar, Taipei. It’s a solo piano album; nice, quiet, uppity-sounding background music for an up-scale bar. I know this CD by heart. I can whistle every refrain of every track. I’ve heard the songs so many times, drinking Taiwan Beer while talking to the staff, drinking Taiwan Beer while talking to friends, and sometimes just drinking Taiwan Beer. Today, I was making travel reservations for my upcoming trip to Denver, and a very similar sounding piano number came on as the on-hold music. My brain was immediately taken back to Henry’s Bar. I got that familiar lonely-cold feeling in my gut, knowing I’m a world away from home but somewhat comfortable in a place I’m very familiar with. I could almost feel the just-a-little-too-cold air conditioning on my skin, and here the glasses clinking over shouts of “Hello! Good evening!” in stilted English. I even missed my wife and felt a little homesick. It’s amazing what music can conjure up in terms of vivid memories. I’ve heard that smell is the number one memory-associated sense, but hearing must be a close second.

When my family first moved to Florida, I was in the 6th grade and my brother was in the 3rd. During that first summer vacation, I guess our folks didn’t feel we were quite old enough to fend for ourselves all day while they were at work. So, we had a babysitter. Every day, we had a babysitter. Over the summer I think we went through two: both in their 20s. The first one was short with red hair cropped to her head like a boy’s, and I can’t remember exactly what the other on looked like, other than she very much not boyish. Me being in the 6th grade, it wasn’t very long before I had developed a crush on the second. She would lay out in the backyard in a tiny swimsuit, and I would sit safely behind our tinted sliding-glass doors and watch. She used to tote along her stuff in a largish beach-bag, and she’d leave her changed-out-of clothes in it when she went outside. I can remember ever so carefully peeling apart the top of that bag to glimpse the stringy white underwear inside.

Over her time babysitting us (which was considerably less than the time the redhead did), she began to talk to me more and more. Alas, when summer ended, she was gone. Then, one evening, maybe a week after I’d last seen her – the phone rang and I answered it. It was the babysitter, calling to talk to me. She wanted to tell me that she’d been in Miami the night before, and caught a 2 Live Crew concert (a band we’d talked about together before). I remember her calling me by my name: “David, blah blah 2 Live Crew blah blah…” How odd… a 20-something babysitter calling a 12-something kid to talk about 2 Live Crew. The conversation lasted less than a minute, but at the time, was a huge deal to me. All that, and I don’t even remember her name.

Not much, but I think what there is is OK.

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good people are everywhere

I did a GIS for "big hands" and this came up, look at those dang hands!
Man. Nothing like a trip across the world to breathe some life back into these near-dead typing fingers. I’ve been working on a blog surplus this entire week, constantly shifting content from one entry to a buffered rough of the next day’s because they are too long. It’s good for me because it gives me some confidence in my writing again, and I guess it’s good for anyone (there are people, right?) who reads this because you have more junk to waste your time on.

Sharaun left the US this morning, and last night before she left she was IMing me at work every 10 seconds to ask a question about what she should bring. Yes, Sharaun, they have shampoo in Taiwan, and it’s not even made out of nuts or berries. And yes, they have shaving cream, the island is not overrun with unshorn sasquatches (sasquai?). Oh, and yes, they have irons here – I mean it’s true that, up until last year, they would simply make a weekly pilgrimage to the dragon’s cave and leave their clothes overnight so his fiery breath would smooth out all the wrinkles (which, incidentally, are caused by small evil clothes-wrinkling spirits and can be warded off with a concoction of mud, grass, and dung applied to the scrotum each evening). After this discussion had tailspun out of control, I decided to spice it up a bit:

Sharaun says:
I don’t need a bathing suit do I?
Double-D in Taiweezy says:
not unless you wanna swim.
Double-D in Taiweezy says:
oh, and bring a space suit if you wanna go into space.

Good one, right?

Last night I met some guy in the bar. He was from New York, and he spoke fluent, and excellent, Mandarin. I was impressed at the way he conversed with the bar staff. He was a large, Andre-the-Giant-ish looking man, with a goofy face and out-of-place looking black moustache that matched his curly and tousled black hair. He had a deep voice which I pegged as tobacco-induced. He was talking to Tracy and she was all smiles, but when she turned her back to him she screwed up her face in disgust as a signal to me that she wasn’t that pleased with Mr. New York-can-speak-Mandarin. Later on the topic turned, as if often does here for some reason, to that of “fun” in Taipei. Of course, being like 90% of the Westerners here, Mr. NYCSM treats this city as his own sexual playground. He actually said to me, without so much as a flinch or hint of hesitation, that he considers these Taiwanese women to be, “… nothing but shit, but great for a fuck.” Yeah.

If you know me, you know I can take just about anything with a smile… staying polite above all, while keeping my opinions to myself. I’m generally agreeable, and would rather listen to your crap and politely excuse myself in hopes of never seeing you again than invite drama and uncomfortable situations by openly disagreeing or challenging you. It’s much easier for me to write you off as a buffoon who I’ll never have the displeasure of meeting again than try and engage you with how my views differ from yours. But… all I could do in reaction to that was sit there stone-faced and say, “Damn, Mr. NYCSM. That’s a little rough.” He laughed. Having already noticed his wedding ring, shamelessly displayed, I got a bit confrontational (for me) and said, “So, you got a family back home in New York?” Mr. NYCSM replied, “Who knows. I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to call my wife and wish her a happy Mother’s Day.” Now, I guess that could mean a lot of things, but I took it to mean that he’s forsaken his family to the point where he doesn’t know if they’ll be there when he gets back, or perhaps their relationship is bad enough that saying they’re “waiting for him” is just an unknown.

Ten minutes of conversation and I hated this man. He’s been coming to Asia for twenty-five years and “… knows where to find trouble in every city you can think of.” I could almost see the slime oozing from his skin, smell the foul scent of rotten. The guy was so deplorable to me, I nearly left. But in the end, I held my own and stayed at the bar. Mr. NYCSM seemed extremely jealous of the way I seemed to be friends with the bar staff, and talked about going out with them later on during the week. I mean, here he is, he can speak Chinese, he can talk to them, he’s been coming here for a quarter-century, and this fat be-sideburned young whippersnapper is having better luck making friends with the staff than he is. It was my small victory over his disgustingness.

As he finished his last flute of champagne (no kidding), he stood up and walked over to me. “What are you doing tonight,” he asked. “Oh, tonight? I actually have plans with some friends.” “I hope they’re good plans,” he said, insinuating. “Yeah, yeah they are,” I replied. He went on, “I was thinking you and I could go find some trouble tonight.” “Sorry, can’t make it,” I said, trying to sound as uninterested as possible. “Later this week then,” he continued, “We’ll do something special; go halvsies.” “I’ll let you know,” I say, “What room are you in? I’ll try and give you a call,” anything to get him to just leave. Mr. NYCSM slips me his room number, and leaves me with a meaty handshake from his huge paw. As soon as he leaves, Tracy comes to me and says, “He is your friend?” “No,” I reply, “I hate him.” “Good,” she says, “He is very dirty.” And so, we agree.

Good people are everywhere I suppose, and so are bad people… it just helps to have an eye for the good ones. I couldn’t live like that… it’s just not me. I’m just a big pussy through and through.

Time’s up. See ya.

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three our fathers

I call shenanigans.
I don’t know how I didn’t manage to post on Wednesday, I’ve been writing more than enough for a post-a-day – I’m just royally confused by the timezone thing and set Thursday’s entry up to post that day instead of Wednesday. Whatever.

This morning I woke up feeling incrementally crappier than the past couple post-cigarette-binge days (for a weakling like me, five smokes constitutes a “binge”). My throat was sore and I had so much crap in my head and chest. So, before I hopped a cab into work I stopped in the 7-11 to look for some cold medicine. I was hoping for some Theraflu or Cold-Eze – but it seems they don’t really sell medicines in the convenience stores here. I didn’t even see Tylenol or Rolaids or anything with active ingredients. I did, however, see this:

Smoke all you want, you can just bean-jelly yourself back to health.

It may be hard to see in that small picture, but it’s a yellow box with a lot of Chinese writing. What caught my eye, however, were the little pictures in the bottom-right. The first one shows a man who has his hands up to his face, like he’s tired or maybe even holding his sore throat. The second one actually shows a cigarette. Now, to me, this looked like a Chinese miracle cure for cigarette-sickness. On the bottom of the box they show two little pill capsules containing what looks like a brown powder. The price, 75NT, and the thought of being able to write about the stuff, made me buy it. So, when I got to work, I asked my Mandarin-speaking buddies what I had just bought. They said, “If you are working all day and tired, or weak from smoking, you take this for health.” Bingo! It really is the Chinese miracle cure for cigarettes! I asked if they could tell exactly what the stuff in the pills was, to which they replied, “bean jelly.” Great. The miracle cure for cigarettes is bean jelly. The Taiwanese people love them some beans. So, I think I wasted 75NT on some powdered bean junk that won’t make me feel a lick better. I popped one anyway though, y’know, just in case.

I am unbearably tired, to the point of having a little dull ache somewhere behind my eyes – my mind’s way of telling me to get some rest I guess. I don’t know about other guys, but for some reason when I’m in one of these hopelessly sleepy states, where my eyes are heavy and I’m barely able to focus, I tend to get an erection. Yeah, you heard me – I get my plump on when I’m nodding off. This is particularly unfortunate if I happen to be having a hard time staying awake during a customer meeting – and it’s doubly bad if I’m dozing in the time before I have to get up and speak. It’s like a flashback to the middle-school days of uninvited boners during class and being asked to come do something on the chalkboard (I never actually experienced that, but if TV sitcoms are accurate depictions of pubescent teenage life I’m probably the only one). Once again, though, the internet has come to my rescue by making me feel less a freak than I initially thought. Doing some research, I found this: “A man’s penis becomes erect (“hard”) in response to… deep relaxation….” Well I’ll be damned, I’m normal

I often experience changing emotions when traveling, especially when I’m away from Sharaun for extended periods of time. There’s always that initial excitement from traveling and being somewhere different, with different things to do and see. And while I’ve always got a general “awareness” that I’m away from my wife, I sometimes feel it more acutely at random times while away. Like today, riding in a warm van to one of the customer visits, I just started feeling guilty for being away. Guilty for going out and doing things without her, and guilty for going out and doing those things with girls that aren’t her. That’s the crux of it really… spending time with the girls that I’ve befriended over here. If I do a little role reversal, and imagine her away on business in some foreign country and going out with some guyfriend I’d never met, I think it would indeed get under my skin. Not that there’s a lack of trust, and not that there’s a reason for there to be one, but love and jealousy are funny things. I don’t know quite where I’m going with this. I think I maybe just wanted to put down in writing my realization that one’s consideration for one’s significant other’s feelings should increase proportionally to one’s removal from that significant other’s presence. If you’re far away and free to do what you will, imagination is all that’s left for the one you left behind…

Wow. I did a really poor job trying to say what I was trying to say. But that’s OK, because I’m done with confessional and feel no better for it; I’ll just be glad when my wife gets here.

I’m telling you right now, you will hate this new album that I love. You really will. Oh man, I can just imagine everyone who hears this going, “Dude, what the hell is this?” But I gotta tell you, I really like it. I’ve enjoyed A Silver Mt. Zion’s records before… they put a unique twist on the standard style of music I for some reason call “post apocalyptic.” I really, really, don’t know where that term came from – maybe Ben, maybe Pitchfork, but it fits well for the kind of music. Anyway, this is discord and minimalism at it’s greatest, simply wonderful. Evil sounding at times, and just creepy at others… but also with a softer side. The songs are all just a bit uncomfortably too long, but in a good way. I can’t explain it, but it’s got a grating quality that makes it fun to listen to. Shut up. I know what I’m talking about. Shut up.

Off to enjoy my 1st weekend in Taiwan. Because I’m a day ahead of you. Jealous?

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exit strategy

GIS for frantic?
Too tired last night to write. Didn’t feel like it either. This month looks pretty sorry in that little calendar over on the right, so many non-blue days… nothing written. But look below, I’m proud of it again. That means that I was happy with every entry I wrote this week – nothing too crappy. That’s good, because that means I’m getting back into the swing of things. I hope this upcoming Taiwan trip doesn’t wreck me. Charge!

Got a brief e-mail from my mom today, saying simply that my brother had finally got his orders to Iraq. They told him he’ll leave for the sands December 15th, and will probably be deployed for about 18 months. To me, it seems awfully early to be informing troops they’ll be leaving in December. Not because of logistics, I can certainly understand a military deployment being planned 6 months in advance. I just guess it seems like a lot can happen within 6 months, but I understand that the military minds most likely have this planned long-term. I mean, we’re talking pretty long-term I guess, if my brother ends up going he won’t be coming home until sometime in 2007 – which tells me we’re planning to maintain a presence there at least that long. I guess only a simpleton would believe that we could realistically get out of the country much sooner. I read the other day that Rumsfeld said we’d be cutting our troops throughout 2006 – which tells me that it’s likely that my bro’s unit will be replacing more soldiers than they themselves number… kind of an unsettling thought. I think the whole thing really gets to my mom. For my part, I actually don’t worry that much. Perhaps it’s naive, but if I were in my brother’s position I’d be more pissed about having to go into the desert for more than a year without my wife than I’d be worried about being blown up by insurgents. Then again, it’s easy to say that from my comfortable couch in my comfortable house.

I can remember when I was younger, this would probably somewhere around 5th or 6th grade, I would do a lot of thinking before I dozed off to sleep. Mostly I thought of strange stuff… like trying to figure out how to pronounce words if they were read backwards. Yeah I really can remember doing that. I’d also imagine all sorts of things. That my bunkbed was a cave I was stranded in. Sometimes, for whatever reason, I’d try and see if I could force myself to genuinely cry. Not fake tears, which can be conjured up quite easily, but real tears for real sadness. I don’t know why. It will sound morbid and perhaps a bit askew, but I had this “exercise” I’d go through to make it happen. I’d clear my mind, and try my best to imagine the real emotions I’d feel if someone had told me one or both of my parents had died. Sure, your brain knows it’s not real, so it doesn’t have much effect. But if you give into the thoughts, and really try and put yourself in that place… the tears will come. And so, just to see if I could cry, I’d imagine what it would be like to learn of my parents’ demise. Now, as a semi-adult (am I one yet?), I know one day I’ll really have to deal with that emotion. Hey moms and pops, stick around a while, will ya? I’ve got stuff yet to show you.

In gradeschool, we had a trash incinerator near the edge of the playground, at least, that’s what I always thought it was. It was a squat, square brick building with a rusted brown-red roof angled in towards a small metal chimney thing. There was large metal door facing the street, where I guess you put the garbage in and burned it or something. I used to fantasize about taking girls behind it.

Goodnight.

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D is for dreamer, A is for actor…

Down the rabbit hole.
Welcome to 11:30pm on my Monday night. ‘Twas a busy Monday at work, where I win my bread. It seemed I was no sooner in the office than I was on the phone or on the computer or on the tiles, meeting and working and walking and talking and thinking. I have to go do it all again tomorrow, and I wish I didn’t… have to, I mean. Enough with the exposition though; shall we?

I’ve been listening to the new NIN album the past couple days, and I really like it. In particular, there’s a part in the song “Right Where It Belongs” that’s really rad. From the beginning of the song, the vocals have a muted, in-the-background presence which is slightly off-center to the right in the stereo image. Then, about 3/4 of the way through, they totally morph, taking on a much warmer, foreground presence that’s dead-center in the image. At the same time, a crowd noise sound effect is ramped up in the background, and the “wetness” that’s added to the vocals also gets layered on the instrumentation… along with the addition of a little bassy synthesizer. Very cool effect, almost like the song “comes alive” just then. You can listen to it if you want. Just take the URL of this page, and change the root by: adding 18, subtracting 8, subtracting 2, adding 9, and finally appending ’12.mp3’. Neato.

When I was in high school, I used to like to write things down without actually writing them out. Meaning, I liked to write little cryptic things. I think my inspiration came from the back pages of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, where Carroll closed the book with a poem, which, when read every-first-letter acrostic style, spelled out Alice’s real name: Alice Pleasance Liddell. I adopted this, and variations of it, to write down secret things in my journal. So, what seemed like a semi-poignant limerick about some thoughts or feelings was, to me, really an admission of infidelity or something more exciting. My favorite, and most challenging, was to write a small poem where the lines’ first letters read forward spelled half of what was really being said, and the lines’ last letters read backward finished the hidden message. Care had to be taken: to manipulate the shrouded thought to contain an even number of letters, to split it in half and write the opening and closing letters of each line, and finally to fill in the gaps with a cohesive thought. I masked things like that all the time, but only the most super-secret – the stuff that should only be thought, not recorded. When reading back over my journal, I can spot these instantly. In fact, they stand out to me as only the intended text, the contrived filler only there to protect what shouldn’t be put down on paper. Useful, if you’re into that kinda stuff.

Saturday night was a party at Ben’s house, in honor of Ben now having the house where the party was. We went there. It was good. After the crowd dwindled, and all that was left was what partygoers sometimes call the “hardcore crew,” we set a fire in Ben’s backyard. Not on the grass, but in a pre-fab firepit that came in a cardboard box from a warehouse store. Ben had gotten it as a gift, and he and I had spent some time earlier that day assembling it. Anyway, the box of Hot Wood purchased at the grocery store up the street was set alight, and six or seven people huddled in chairs around the fire. It was a chilly night, so the pre-warmth period of the fire was somewhat of an endurance – but the few powered through for the sake of conversation. Something about sitting around a fire brings out the best conversation. Staring into the stuff. Pat said it was because that’s all there was to do at night for ten-thousand years. Maybe. Maybe it’s something primal, pre-conditioned into our consciousness at birth. Although huddling around the sub-$100, assembly-line, terra-cotta and metal firepit, burning our purchased-at-Albertsons, came-in-a-cardboard-box firewood (with kindling) wasn’t exactly recalling caveman days. Anyway, it was one of those moments for me where I was just…. complacent. Good friends were around, and the planets aligned around a little firepit in Ben’s backyard. I’m a sucka for flames.

Did you see that paragraph about the firepit? That’s writing. That’s what I used to do. That’s what was gone. That’s what I feel slowly creeping back into my hands as they click the keys. Keep the faith, it may be back… it just may be back. Also, today at lunch we went on an adventure to the 150 year old abandoned Chinese mines. I’ll write about that tomorrow OK?

Goodnight.

Posted on

catharsis

And now, the undercard you've all been waiting for.
Up late on Thursday night slash Friday morning. Working on getting acclimated for Taiweezy. By the time you read this, I should be airborne and hopefully asleep (or at least engrossed in a sweet game of Zelda64 on my laptop). If the urge hits you, you can track my progress across the peaceful sea. And I’m off traveling again, St. Christopher be with me. And now it gets personal.

Let me tell you something. As a man, I unequivocally believe that women sometimes desire to argue. I don’t know if this is a subconscious desire, or something that is premeditated, but I am 100% convinced, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that women will on occasion not rest until they’ve engaged in an argument. Common indicators that one of these destined-arguments is about to take place include irrational criticism, blatant button-pushing, and the raising of recurring-theme fight topics. Recurring-theme fight topics are flashpoints, words or ideas that have been so well previously established as argument fodder that the mere mention of them can ratchet an argument up a full two notches. I have also found that there is little in the way of escape when a fight is a woman’s goal. Short of up and leaving the general area, you better be ready to argue. Oh, you can try to ignore it – but you will be sucked in. Before you know it, you’ll be arguing.

If you can’t tell, Sharaun and I had a fight tonight. No, we didn’t come to blows, I’m just using the word “fight” to denote something bigger than your garden-variety disagreement. Let me expand on that a bit. I’ve been married for almost five years now, and over that time I’ve been through a lot of spats, disagreements, and tiffs. Fights though, those are rarer. I think all couples will at some time bicker and argue, but true fighting is different. Arguments and disagreements can be settled, can be “won.” No one wins a fight, a fight sucks for both people; trying to “win” a fight is futile. I don’t know how it is with other couples, but for Sharaun and I, if you break it down, we really only have a limited amount of things we actually “fight” over. For instance, Sharaun’s short-list of things that she uses against me in fights goes something like this:

1. You don’t pay me enough attention.
2. You don’t do anything you don’t want to do.

Likewise, mine for her would go something like this:

1. You don’t contribute enough domestically.
2. You talk down to me.

Oh sure, they rarely take on the boiled-down form I’ve presented them in here – but if you strip away the situational stuff those are at the heart nearly every time. I could go into paragraph after paragraph on the various incarnations the above short lists can take… things like, “You spend too much time on the computer,” or, “Why are your underwear in the middle of the living room?” And, I’ve come to realize that these are sure-fire fight-starters for one reason: they are truths. The reason that they are the cornerstones to all our arguments is because they are inescapable aspects of our personalties. More than just a difference of opinion, they are the 180 degree out-of-phase destructive waves created when two unique individuals operate together as one couple. If a fight is desired, they will always be there to incite one.

And that’s what it’s all about folks, making it work. Sure there will be arguments, disagreements, even fights – but they damn well better be insignificant when compared to the otherwise bonding elements of a relationship. Relationships work when each person can: work to minimize the aspects of their personality that are their mate’s short-list, as well as work to be less bothered by the things on the short list they’ve created for their mate. Or, in layman’s terms: Work harder on your faults and be more accepting of your mate’s.

Fights suck, but they end.

My mom wrote me Wednesday to say that she liked my blog that day, and that it was sad. Yeah, I liked it too… and it was sad.

Goodnight.

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a bush and a peek

It's wordplay.
Sometimes I wonder when you actually become an “adult.” I still look in the mirror and insist that the face staring back isn’t really all that different than the one I knew in high school. But it most certainly is different. I’m a year and a half away from thirty, earn my own keep, and own things like a house and car. I’m losing hair and gaining weight. Now, maybe I don’t see that face in the mirror because I don’t feel like that face in the mirror. While I’m not quite at the point where I worry about falling off the toilet and breaking a hip, I guess I am older than that kid from high school… perhaps even an “adult.” I’ve walked through the mall before and wondered, as I pass the other people, which of them look at me and think “kid,” and which think “grown-up.” Surely older folks recognize me for the relatively spry young’n I am, but just as surely the teenagers in baggy pants peg me as old and out of touch. I mean, a collared shirt tucked into denim shorts… with a belt?

When we used to live in L.A., there was a girl who lived across the street from us. I’m not sure who she lived with, but it was a woman – stepmother, mother, I don’t know. I was young, couldn’t have been more than five years old because that’s when we moved. This girl, Naomi, wasn’t treated well by the woman she lived with. Frequently, Naomi was not allowed in the house. In fact, my most vivid memories of her are freeze-frame scenes of her sitting out on the stoop… doing nothing, just sitting. Because she was so often not allowed in the house, she would sometimes come over to our place at odd hours to ask if my brother or I could play. Early-early in the morning, late-late at night; I didn’t really understand it until later on when I figured she was just locked out and probably bored or scared or both. I don’t think I really understood any of it at the time, I just played with her like she was any other kid on the block. Kids are beautiful that way. Class, station, economics, you’re blind to them all at five years old. In fact, overhearing my parents expressing sympathy for the girl was my only indication that anything was different than my situation.

I don’t think I’ve ever talked about this to anyone before, so it makes its debut right here on the blog, direct from wherever it’s been locked away in my head for all these years. One day I remember Naomi asking me if she could use the bathroom at our house. I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure this little girl actually spent more than a few nights sleeping on that porch stoop outside… barred from entering the house. Considering that, what other option did she have? She had to use the bathroom somewhere. So, we struck a deal. Naomi could use the large bush in our backyard as her personal bathroom, provided she let my brother and I watch. I know people, I can feel you all recoiling in disgust, I know. Remember, I’m five years old. I’m not thinking about how exploited this little girl already is, or how humiliating of a situation we were putting her in, I’m just thinking I’d like to see how a girl poops and pees. So, we watched. She pooped, she peed, and we watched, fascinated. I don’t remember, but I’m pretty sure this didn’t happen more than a couple times total. Thinking about it today, I don’t feel much else but sad. I don’t feel guilty, too young to hold myself very accountable… just sad. Sad for that girl having to poop under a bush in a neighbor’s backyard while curious little boys watched from the wings, heads pressed to the ground to get a better view.

We moved away from that area when I was five years old, and it didn’t take me long to forget about Naomi. Years later, I remember being back in town with my parents, driving down our old street. I couldn’t have been more then ten or eleven at the time, and I can remember my folks commenting on how the place had changed. Then we saw her. A girl about my age, sitting on a porch. It took a minute before it hit us, but eventually someone, I think my mom, said, “Oh my God, that’s Naomi.” Five+ years later and still out on the porch. Sometimes I wonder whatever happened to that girl. Back when I was a kid, I can actually remember going in her house once. No details, just a still-frame image of a messy rug and coffee table. Can you imagine growing up on a porch? Just feet from where you should be – inside with your parents. Hey Naomi, if you’re out there, I just wanted to say “I’m sorry” for watching you poop. I’m pretty sure that at least my mom had an idea about what was going on. I can remember her being suspicious. Had I been able to understand…

Next paragraph. Goodnight.