It was somewhere between my stint in 2nd grade and my stint in 5th. The rest of my TrapperKeeper memories, however, are extremely vivid: They came on the scene during the middle of a school year. They began to catch my eye more and more often. Eventually, I began to beg my parents to buy me one. They refused to do so, as I was already set up with a large three-ring binder and a spiral notebook for the year (the mere fact that they thought that some binder and some notebook and a brand-named Mead TrapperKeeper were the same thing is, of course, laughable). Being Keeper-less, I developed strong feelings of jealousy towards my classmates and feelings of inadequacy as a scholar. When the back-to-school-shopping for the next year commenced, I again begged for a TrapperKeeper and, this time, was allowed to get one! I opted for the cover with a red automobile that was probably based on, but was not exactly, a Lamborghini Testarossa, with some palm trees in the background and possibly some neon lines scribed over the front of the scene. I’m pretty sure that owning something with that image on it is the reason that I am the full-grown, virile American male I am today. (Just as the Sparkly Lisa Frank Unicorn counterpart could very well be responsible for many of today’s virtuous, God-fearing women.) Being on time for a trend for once, I came to school with a TrapperKeeper during what was the Year of the TrapperKeeper. We all spent a ridiculous amount of time on our TrapperKeepers. Who had what design? Who had what pocket folder? Whose cheap plastic notepad clip or push-rod binder rings had already broken? Kids came up with what I guess they’d now call TrapperKeeper “hacks.” These included hole-punching and adding an extra folder. And storing pencils by weaving them through the weird flexible mesh storage flap. And giving their sportscar or unicorn sunglasses and a mustache with a ballpoint pen. Was it worth sacrificing the integrity of the TrapperKeeper for such pimpery? Such decisions! God, what a time to be alive!

Then came the inevitable crack-down. They were such attention-diverters that they made a rule that ’Keepers had to be stowed in our lift-top desks, or at the very least, on the metal cross-brace under our chairs when teaching was occurring. We could handle them just long enough to remove a worksheet or piece of paper at the beginning of the lesson.

I suppose the whole reason I am thinking about TrapperKeepers is, this semester, I went back to school!

Sort of.

Ok, what I’ve really done is finally taken advantage of the tuition waiver I get as a university employee and enrolled in one undergraduate-level class, outside of my normal work hours, as a non-degree student. Still: back to school!

As I was getting ready for the first day of class, and trying to determine what to retrieve from my bag for note-taking, appearing prepared and studious, etc. all I could imagine producing was a brand-named Mead TrapperKeeper. The reasons for this are many and varied:

1. The Mead TrapperKeeper is the last specific school supply I remember using. (I must have gotten by by scribbling things on pre-used notebooks and the backs of matchbooks for the last six years of my academic career.)

2. I have completely forgotten what the lecture environment is like and what it requires of the pupil. (The last time I was in a proper classroom was in 2001, when I took the last of my general-ed requirements for picture-making school).

3. Given that it’s been a while since I’ve been one, I have no idea what today’s student is packing. (I hear something called a “lapped-top” is big right now.)

The class I’m taking is Introduction to Permaculture. Permaculture is an ecologically-minded design-discipline. It is aimed, among other things, at getting humans to reduce the amount of non-renewable and manufactured materials we use. So, even though my friend Megan informs me that TrapperKeepers are still/once-again alive and kicking, I’m doing my best to resist the cheap, plastic temptation.

The last time he came to visit us as at our house was a little under a year ago. I had just raked and their was a large mound of leaves in the corner of our yard. Like any exuberant lad, he ran over and started playing in the pile. He would jump as high as he could, hurl himself in, and them drag himself out, laughing hysterically the whole time.

I was standing nearby, watching him do this and somehow, maybe from playing with grown-ups in a pool, he got the idea that if I were holding him, he could spring, from there, into the leaves and that this would be even more fun and hilarious. He wasn’t much on talking at this point, but one way or another he got his idea across to me.

Now I realize, at this age, most kids are tougher and more resilient than you’d think. (This is why I’m a fan of toddlers. You can grab them, shake them up, hold them upside down, etc. and they’re fine. Newborns on the other hand, you have to treat like glass cylinders of plutonium.) Still, I wasn’t sure about this proposal. I didn’t know the kid that well. Even though he was acting like he wanted me to pick him up, he could get weirded out. And there was a chance he could get hurt. Something in eyes seemed to tell me he could handle it though…and I am a champion raker. I mean this was a thick, fluffy pile. You have could dropped a Volkswagen off a five-story building into that leaf pile and it would have landed with a soft bounce, completely intact.

So cut to half-an-hour later, and I am swinging him back and forth by one leg, whirling him around in circles, twisting him around in the air, then letting go at the exact moment that maximized his altitude. And he is making crash landings and immediately coming back for more. And he is laughing harder every time. And I am laughing harder than him. And Steph and his mom are watching us and shaking their heads and rolling their eyes, as women are required to do when boys are having their rough and tumble fun. All was right with the world.

Steph’s sister Jaime and Bishop were stopping in to see all their family on the east coast during this trip. They went up to Virginia the next day, and we followed that weekend. There was some downtime the first full day we were there, so I thought “I’ll make a giant leaf pile. Bishop needs to get some energy out and I know it’s something he likes to do.”

I spent a good two hours working in the yard, sweating and straining, moving leaves from all sectors and amassing them. It was going to be worth it of course.

When I was done, I went back inside and showed Bishop what I had made out the window. He seemed sort of indifferent to it, but I thought maybe it was just because he couldn’t tell exactly what it was yet. Steph backed me up in assuring everyone that he was going to enjoy this and that this was something they might want to see. They got Bishop in his play clothes and put on his jacket, everyone put their shoes on, we all went outside, and Bishop just stood there staring at the big amorphous blob I’d created as if to say “What am I supposed to do with this, exactly?”

In retrospect, what I should have done was maybe introduce him to the pile slowly, sort of let him discover it on his own, and then make the associations with how much fun we had a few days ago, in his own time. I don’t know, I’m no child psychologist. What I do know is I abruptly snatch him off of the ground, like a sack of potatoes, and sent him somersaulting into the cushioning with a “Wheeeeeeeee!”

He plopped down, then picked up his head and shot me a look that I will never forget. It was shock, confusion, hurt, and anger all rolled into one. Then he started crying. So everyone had to come together to comfort him. And then it was “Well, thanks for raking the yard at least, Bob” and it was time to go back inside.

I stood outside a bit longer, alone and bewildered in the autumn silence. A slight breeze came through and carried a few leaves away from the top of the heap.

The moral of the story here is: you can’t go back again. Don’t force circumstances to try to make them like good times you’ve had before. There’s nothing but disappointment down that road.

That, and before you go violently throwing the youngest member of your better half’s family to the ground in front of all her relatives, make sure you’re good and married in.

I have a strained relationship with French though, as it made a hearty contribution to the most picked-on-iest (absolutely a word) school year of my life.

I was in sixth grade and about halfway through the year we started a unit on France in Social Studies. Our teacher somehow found an actual, real-life French person that was in the area and was willing to come in and talk to us about her country.

So the Frenchwoman gave us her pretty standard presentation, which took up most of a class period. There was a little time for Q&A at the end and, of course, rather than ask about the place’s history and culture, all anyone wanted to know was what everyday objects were called in a different language. We learned that “chemise” was shirt and “crayon” was pencil. Then someone got us onto names. So many people were so excited about hearing theirs, that she elected to just go up and down the rows and do a translation for everyone.

When she got to me and I told her my name was “Bobby” and she said “Bobby?” to make sure it she heard correctly. It came out: “Booby.”

Yes, she actually said “booby,” quite loudly, in front of a group of 30 middle school students. I have no doubt that the soundwaves from the eruption of laughter were visible from space.

Our teacher half-heartedly tried to get the bedlam under control, while clearly fighting back the giggles herself. For the rest of that day’s class, and every day after for the rest of the year, I was hounded relentlessly.

What can you do in a situation like that? I was one of quietest, scrawniest, least-threatening kids at my school. Getting mad would have done nothing but egg people on. And who would I have gotten mad at? Every single other person in the world, all of whom obviously found my predicament hilarious? So I just rolled my eyes to indicate to all these people who were now focused on me that I understood that I was being joked about, and then laughed along a little bit and acted like I didn’t really mind being teased.

Of course I did mind being teased.

The callous, unreserved way in which everyone (even the one or two people that I sort of considered friends) in that room poked fun at me made it obvious just what little regard they had for me. Looking back though, I sort of subconsciously understood that we were even. I didn’t have much regard for them either. To this day, I can’t think of a single middle school teacher or classmate I liked.

When they poked fun at me for the “Booby” thing they were basically indicating that, in their eyes, I looked stupid, but bullies had already informed me that I looked stupid for a myriad of other reasons. I was used to it.

I honestly think what bothered me the most is that it was just so lazy. When everyone was still riotously entertained by this incident five or ten minutes later, I remember saying to myself: “Ok come on, that only sounded that way because this lady has a foreign accent because she is from somewhere other than the five-mile radius where all of us live and, it would appear, don’t travel outside very much.” To make matters worse, I never got anything more interesting than “Hey Booby!” followed by the heckler cackling incessantly. For like four months. No one ever built on it. It was as if these people were our earliest prehistoric ancestors, and they’d been delivered the gift of fire on a silver platter, and all they’d done was stare at it blankly from 50 feet away until the flames died out. Even the f-ing cavemen knew when it was time to jump on an opportunity and make something more of it. Ya know, maybe try roasting some of that mammoth meat. At least those cracks about my Kmart shoes and my lack of athletic ability and the fact that I had a big head showed some interest in word choice and powers of observation.

Yes, at the tender age of 11, I had to admit to myself that there is a large segment of the human population that would be perfectly happy if every humorous experience they ever witnessed involved, say, a loud fart or a fat person falling down.

Incidentally, years later I found out that the way you would say my actual name in French is “Ro-bear.”

I’m sorry but that’s pretty lame.

I laughed for the reason we most often laugh at movies. (Well, other than because a guy gets punched in the crotch by a child and goes cross-eyed and says “Mommy” in a falsetto voice before falling to the ground, of course!) I laughed because the cast and crew captured an unusual event that, I know, really happens in real life. And they played it out, pitch-perfectly, to the way it goes down in real life.

At about 1:05:00 a stuffy white guy is coerced into watching an artsy girl’s table at a craft fair while she goes off to get something to eat. It’s taken a step further when some women approach and begin looking at the various pieces of beaded jewelry before him and, obviously unsure of what to do, the man just begins looking at the objects too. After a few seconds he says quietly, to no one in particular, “It’s all handmade.”

Steph has been peddling her sewn items and cards at semi-annual events like “The Handmade Market” and “The Rock & Shop” for many years now and, in that time, I have, on occasion, been that guy. And I’ve seen male friends who’ve been grabbed and stuck behind tables and have become that guy. Across crowded aisles, I’ve seen the bewildered expressions on the faces of guys I’ve never even met and therefore shouldn’t know well enough to know if they have become that guy or not and known that they have become that guy as well and we’ve looked into each other’s blank eyes for but a second and we’ve both known that we were the hollow men, we were the stuffed men, leaning together, headpiece filled with straw. Alas…!

Not that it’s all that bad.

I am happy to help out and be supportive. And the collage-based stuff Steph creates is wonderful. She slices into some pretty fabric here and hacks apart some found materials there and massacres something brightly-colored over there and then takes a needle and thread and puts it back together, and then splays it all out, complete with tasteful ornamentation, on a frilly table cloth which completes a set-up that a fairly standard guy with interests that don’t stray far from the fairly-standard-guy-interest collection — such as myself — feels totally out of place in front of. After I’ve relieved Steph so she can take a well-deserved break, all I can do is try to smile in a way that invites the all-female clientele to stop and make purchases, yet ask me absolutely no questions about how certain things were made, or in some cases, what, precisely, they are. I can hope that they saw the woman’s name on the front of the table or that they simply get that I’m just watching the table, or, if they are misunderstanding the situation and they believe that I composed these chainsaw-orgies of whimsical patterns, that they don’t think the fact that I’m a guy is creepy and weird. I can also say quietly, to no one in particular, “It’s all handmade.”

These gender-based feelings of awkwardness are nowhere near as bad as, say, stepping into a Victoria Secret retail store, which I believe can cause the aforementioned fairly standard guy’s body to become so tense that he could swallow a lump of coal and, minutes later, excrete a diamond that would then magically teleport itself far, far away from that Victoria Secret retail store.

I’d say these gender-based feelings of awkwardness are more on par with going to a fabric store and purchasing the supplies needed to make a dress. I actually did this a few years ago. I decided I’d like to know how a clothing pattern worked and how to use a sewing machine, and the best way to acquire this information seemed to be to make Steph a dress as a Christmas present. (Incidentally, Steph still has and wears the dress that I gave her…which was actually my second attempt at dressmaking as I bungled the first one pretty badly…which means I had to go to the fabric store twice…which means my views on fabric stores are based on more than just one occurrence.) I walked in to the purveyor of clothes-making goods’ and did what any novice in any field must do: I slowly and clumsily gathered each item on a carefully-written list. Many times I had to consult cat-centricly-sweatered employees, with my shaky garment-related vocabulary, to find a proper zipper or needle. Something about most of the answers I got made me completely understand women’s complaints about going to hardware stores and auto repair places.

Perhaps another, more universal example of something that could cause similar gender-based feelings of awkwardness would be accompanying a female companion while they do some serious clothes shopping. I can’t really remember. It’s been a long time since Steph suggested that I go with her while she is clothes shopping, because my absolute favorite thing to do while clothes shopping is to whine about how much I hate clothes shopping. It might just be worth tagging along and assisting with the selection of a few outfits though. Someday your other option might be standing uncomfortably behind a table and saying quietly, to no one in particular, “It’s all handmade.”

Excluding bodily functions, I’ve always found the subjects that the fam chooses to settle on during meals to be interesting. Sometimes it’s family history. Other times it’s engineering processes. Other times it’s politics. And just as interesting is the means by which conversations travel from topic to topic. A couple of nights ago, my family took the stream of conciousness and diverted it into the rapids of my repressed memories, reminding me of a particularly embarrasing detail from my past.

It started with a comment about our dog’s weird eyes. (Lilly’s right iris wanders off to the side of her head. I’m not sure if canines can have lazy eyes, but if so, she probably does.) Kate made a joke about how we needed to get her a pair of those thick, plastic glasses with a patch over one lens, the type they have very young children wear to try to correct their vision early on. Steph chimed in about how her sister had to wear them, and that, in a lame attempt to make something really bizarre and uncomfortable seem “exciting” and “not horrible and freakish” for all involved, the patch had Mickey Mouse on it.

Now, even though I do wear glasses now, there was never anything wrong with my eyes while I was growing up. Like a woman in the beginning stages of labor for a second child though, sitting through this was slowly reminding me of something I’d gone through before — something bad. The whole “lame attempt to make something really bizarre and uncomfortable seem ‘exciting’ and ‘not horrible and freakish’ for all involved.” Seemed familiar….

Then it came back to me.

No, there was never anything wrong with my eyes while I was growing up, but my mouth was a disaster area. Not only did my amply-sized permanent teeth decide to come in well before my head was even close to full-grown, they all decided to come in on the same day — my 10th birthday I believe it was — resulting in a 12-tooth pile-up growing out of my gums. To fix it all, not only did I have to have braces (two rounds of them) but for almost the entire year of 1992, I had to wear the large and very unnatural jaw-aligning device known as headgear.

I managed to make it through this ordeal without ever being seen in the face-hugging plastic contraption at school. (My orthodontist — perhaps privy to stories of patients who were forced to wear headgear to middle school and eventually gave in to post-traumatic stress and climbed clocktowers with machine guns, their perfect teeth making their maniacal smiles extra chilling — told me to wait until the second I left for the busstop and then to take it off, and conversly to put it back on the second I got home. For the “no school” plan to work I had to sleep with it on too, which meant I couldn’t really roll over on to my stomach or even on to my side. This was a small price to play for flying under the bully-radar.) So it could have been worse, but the fact that I had to don headgear at all had me convinced I was a dweeb.

It actually feels good to get this out there. Back when I had to wear this get-up, the fact that I did was a level-10 family secret. Such information was not to extend beyond the walls of the house. At this point, it’s just one of the things that made me who I am. I probably would have told more people about it along the way, but I honestly think that I buried it in my subconscious. Until now, Mom, Dad, Kate, Kevin, and Steph (who I revealed this to when I briefly remembered it years ago) were the only people who knew about my sordid “oral history.”

As for how the medical professionals tried to make the steel wires making giant curves out of my mouth and attaching tightly to mounting brackets wrapped around the side of my face via a support piece behind my neck “fun?” Well, there were college-team-themed slip covers for the fabric portion of the support.

And this is how my dental check-ups during this phase typically went:

Dental hygentist (after fitting me with the contraption and adjusting it to the proper tension, speaking with that special kind of enthusiasm that is obviously inversly proportionate to what your foreseeable future is going to be like): “Ok bud, check out these wraps we have for your ’gear!!! Do you like State or Carolina!!?!!”

Me: “I vill dethroy you.” (It is very difficult to talk properly with headgear on.)

Dental hygenist: “Oh, you’re a Duke fan!!?!! We’ve got some super-cool Duke wraps!!! Goooo Blue Devils!!!”

Me: “You vill svend the west of your rife in ak-gony.”

Dental hygentist: “Can’t really understand you there, sport!!! Just to review we’ve got Duke, State, and Carolina!!!”

Me “….”

Dental hygentist: “….”

Me: “Caw-wolina.”

You all better not have big spooky plans because we moved the Halloween Party at our house to tomorrow night to accommodate all the “really important” and “serious” and “non-celebratory” things everyone claimed they had up, like “working” and “visiting an ailing relative.” Who’s ever heard of a Halloween Party the day after Halloween? The costumes will seem ridiculous! The jack-o-lanterns will be wilting into abstraction! The candy will be on sale for like 80% of…. Nevermind. You all are geniuses.

Tonight Steph and I will probably be cleaning up in preparation for tomorrow, and…handing out candy to trick-or-treaters? Do kids still trick-or-treat? On one hand, I hope so, because this is the first Halloween that I’ve had a front door that faces a neighborhood street with a small porch in front of it with a light I can leave on, letting dressed-up children know it is cool for them to come up and ask for candy and that I will make a big deal about their costumes and let them take a handful of fun-size Snickers (not just one) as 90% of the adults in my childhood did. Oh yes, I will pay it forward. On the other hand, I kind of hope kids don’t trick-or-treat anymore ’cause: more candy for me.

October 31 is an important date in Steph-and-I lore, as on this day in 1999 we made the transition from two people who constantly hung around in each other’s dorm rooms and walked each other to class and ate virtually every meal together, to two people who constantly hung around in each other’s dorm rooms and walked each other to class and ate virtually every meal together and kissed on the mouth. So much to say about those days, but I’ll save it for another time. All I’ll tell you is that Halloween was on a Sunday that particular year and that we went to a costume party on Friday night — Steph as a 1920s flapper, me as a straightjacketed mental patient — and that we walked home from the party together, both sort of knowing this thing we had was going somewhere, and that it was pretty chilly out and that I took off my straightjacket and wrapped it around her! I’m sorry, but that kind of quirky, endearing shit is only supposed to happen in movies. This is the one moment we have that is like this, so I never miss an opportunity to share it. Steph and I used to mark our “dating anniversary” with presents and fancy dinners (Applebee’s), but now that we have a “for real anniversary” two weeks before, we’ve whittled it down to making sworn statements that we comprehend the significance of this particular day while we are on our way to various Halloween festivities. I’m grateful for this, because Steph’s birthday is two weeks later in November and then we’ve got Christmas right after. A guy could injure his brain trying to come up with all those gift ideas in a row.

Overshadowing all the candy and costumes and acquisitions of true love, however, is my unbearable curiosity about how the beer is going to turn out. If you’ve been keeping up with Witchger Projects you know that my neighbor Jerry and I made a batch of Pumpkin Spice Ale, and our plan is to serve it at the day-after-Halloween party.

I was completely clueless as to what was going on throughout the entire brewing process, but Jerry seemed to understand it, plus he was already in possession of all the necessary tools and equipment, so I have reason to be optimistic about it.

Homebrewing requires a lot of patient waiting, as you let the yeast do its job and just sort of keep an eye on it and not let the container get too gunky or hot, and it’s killing me. I want to know how my beer is going to taste. Now.

After spending several evenings in my kitchen, pacing the floor in front of my fermenting container, I decided that just because our very first beer wasn’t even ready to drink yet, that didn’t mean it wasn’t time to take things to the next level.

We call our fake brewery “Sheffield Brewing Company” because we live on Sheffield Road. I sat down with pen and paper and Adobe Illustrator and made us some graphics. The one thing that kept coming up when I looked “Sheffield” up online was the English town by that name, and its mention in Canterbury Tales. Something vaguely medieval seemed appropriate for a brewing company, so here’s what I came up with:

The logotype.

The (probably too illustrative) mark.

The combination of the logotype and mark.

The logo with a (playing-it-safe) slogan.

A layout for the Pumpkin Spice Ale, which can be turned into signage for the keg and labels for the bottles.

Ironically, I spent far more time designing this stuff than I did actually brewing beer, but I figure an elaborate visual identity can only improve our beverages. (“Geez, this stuff is bitter! I can’t stand it. Wait, look at all those boxes with words in them. These people clearly know how to make good beer. I will keep drinking ’til I acquire a taste for it.” “There are large chunks of malt floating in my glass! Wait, does this packaging make use of the classical typeface Janson? Ok, this stuff is actually pretty good.” “Dear God, this has the exact same odor and consistency as motor oil! Wait, is that a 3-point stroke around that logo? Bob and Jerry: please accept the key to the city.”)

Of course I hope our ale doesn’t need the aesthetic enhancement. 24 hours from now, we’ll find out! I’m clinging to the edge of my seat. Most suspenseful Halloween ever.

I haven’t played guitar before an audience in almost 10 years. My skills have improved a lot since then, just by virtue of the fact that I still spend a lot of my downtime around the house picking and strumming songs I know and/or learning new ones. My old guitar however, hasn’t gotten any better with age. This is unfortunate, given that it was not a very nice guitar when I bought it, brand new, 12 years ago. Its main flaw, I believe, is that it is comprised almost entirely of plastic. Armed with that fact, my fellow guitar players have wagered a guess as to what kind of guitar I have, and they are cringing. They are assuming that I own an Ovation — the strange, bowl-backed instruments that appeared on the scene in the mid-70s, were embraced by a few singer-songwriters, were subsequently discovered to be not-so-great and sort of disappeared, and then, somehow, experienced a short-lived resurgence in the mid-90s at the precise moment when I was in the market for my first ax.

My fellow guitar players would be half-right. I couldn’t afford a real Ovation, so I ended up with an Applause. And now my fellow guitar players are double-cringing, because they know that an Applause is a product built to Ovation’s already undesirable specs, but in Mexico or Japan, with parts similar to, but not as nice as, those Ovation puts in their line of terrible guitars.

So, we start with that, then add me lugging it to every different place I’ve lived from 1996 ’til now, being an irresponsible youth and accidentally banging it on every waist-high surface in each of these places along the way, and never taking the time to clean it, have any adjustments made to it, or change the strings on it more than once every four years, and, well, for how much I still like to play, a new guitar has been on my list of purchases to make for a while now.

Things fell into place this month when Kevin discovered Taylor’s “Big Baby” at a guitar shop in Raleigh. Taylors are beautiful feeling, beautiful sounding acoustic guitars and they simply don’t make a full-size model that retails for under $800. Money I don’t have. The “Big Baby” is a 15/16 scale (a size difference I didn’t even notice) and, thanks to Taylor skimping on some of their typical frills like elaborate inlays and super-glossy finish, they sell it for $450. (Kevin decided this was the “Toyota of Taylors”: no fancy bells or whistles, but reliable, high-performing, and reasonably affordable.) Since I needed a better guitar I could play at this wedding, and we were paid generously for the gig, I went for it.

And I am one proud papa. Now that I own a Big Baby, I don’t see myself buying another guitar in my lifetime.

My Taylor — which Kevin explained to me is a “real” guitar made out of various “woods” — must be put back in its case every time I am done playing it to protect it from changes in humidity and temperature and my tendency to send beverages cascading onto surfaces they shouldn’t be on. And with my banjo and uke cases already taking up valuable real estate in our incredible shrinking house, there’s just no place for my old guitar and its case in our floor plan.

For a split second, I considered putting my Applause on Craigslist. Perhaps there’s someone out there who doesn’t care about tone or resonation, and would shell out $50 for an old beater they could learn on? I quickly realized I’d feel bad sticking a beginning player with this thing though, even if it is what I started on. (Actually 12 years with this guitar is probably why I’m not better than I am today.)

Also, awful or not, I once practiced sets of songs for hours and hours on this thing. I took it up onstage at open mic nights in college. My roommate was the singer in our act, and we enjoyed some moderate popularity at the bar we played at. A year later, when that roommate and I had a falling out of divorce-like proportions, that saw us dividing up friends and un-mingling our stuff from every shelf and container so I could move out, that guitar was one of the first things I took out of the room. And in the aftermath, when my grades were suffering and I didn’t feel like anyone was there for me anymore, I’d go back to my one-person dorm room and play it and somehow start to feel like maybe all wasn’t lost. And as I continued to go through good times and bad ones, that guitar was always there.

I believe, as a society, we are are too obsessed with material things and that we should all embrace Buddhist philosophy and discover the freedom of limiting our possessions, but when you’re a sentimental fool, this is quite difficult to put into practice.

Recently, the REI messenger bag that was handed down (or technically, up) to me by my sister my junior year of college, that I carried around for the remaining two-and-a-half years there, into all the jobs I’ve had since, and on almost every trip I’ve taken over that entire time, suffered it’s third zipper-malfunction and received a large tear in its main pocket. REI stands behind their products for all eternity and this was stuff that could be fixed. I’ve sent it back for similar repairs before though, and found that the mending never returns the bag to its original integrity and that being bagless for six weeks while it gets shipped around is pretty inconvenient. Thus I took the store’s offer to pick out a new bag and get the full cost of my old bag credited towards the new one. What I didn’t realize, as we finished the transaction, was that they needed to tag, re-enter into their system, and, ultimately, keep my old bag. I guess as hard evidence for the store manager when he has to appear in front of the REI tribunal for letting me buy an $80 messenger bag for $20?

Just after I realized what was happening, the cashier turned to take my worn, ratty old satchel that no one else would ever want away forever and the weight of all the places I’d ever gone with that thing on my back and all the different projects and love notes and life-altering documents I’ve ever hauled around in it hit me all at once. “Can you just give me a moment alone with the bag?” I blurted out. Ok, I didn’t say that, but that was what I meant when I said “Let me make sure I’ve gotten everything out of there!” I had carefully emptied it out at home before I ran my errands; there was no need to check it again.

I’m glad I didn’t have to trade in my old guitar to get the new one. It could have gotten ugly. Instead I packed it up yet again and, this time, moved it into the attic. After everything I’ve put it through, it’s probably thankful for the chance to rest.

I never went to a summer camp. During summer vacation, Kate, Kevin, and I were pretty good about getting up, eating breakfast, and immediately vacating the house for the backyard or the neighborhood pool, giving my mom with some peace and quiet for at least a few hours a day. There was probably no real motivation for my parents to send us.

I never played little league baseball. I had no interest and my parents had no interest in forcing me to develop an interest. Growing up, neither myself nor my siblings were particularly athletic. There was a good chance we’d get hurt out there! No, we were much better off spending our time under a car being held up by jackstands braced at their tallest setting, helping Dad lower a 500-lb. transmission on a hydraulic jack with a home-made holder fashioned out of 2x4s attached to the top of it.

And…I never got a proper haircut. In other words I never ventured into a place whose business model is based around cutting hair and remitted currency to have this stuff growing out of my head trimmed, shaped, or (God forbid) styled.

Until recently, every haircut I’ve ever received was given at home by my mother. By her own admission, Mom only knows how to do your run-of-the-mill, basic haircuts. But she’s good at your run-of-the-mill, basic haircuts and I’ve never felt I needed anything other than your run-of-the-mill, basic haircuts. Therefore, I’m sure this seems ridiculous to you, dear reader, but, I have no idea how one conducts oneself in a barbershop or salon. I’ve never been inside one. Is it advisable to bring in a photo-montage of the look you want for the person doing the scissoring? Should you bring alternates, in case what you want won’t work with your hair? How many? As the scissoree, do you make conversation with the scissorer, or is it understood that they need to fully concentrate on the task at hand? There’s tipping involved, right? How much? When?

I thought these mysteries would be revealed to me when I went away to college, but, once there, I found that an unruly mop was something of an art school badge of honor. It showed that you preferred to spend the time when you should have been grooming working on your art, and that you were committed to being countercultural and unemployable. There was no need for me to get a haircut any more than once a semester. And I went home at least once a semester.

Thus for my four years at ECU, I looked like this:

These days I cut my own hair with an electric trimmer set just above the notch marked “First Day of Boot Camp.” The reason I do this is the same reason the “S.S. Setting Foot in a Supercuts” has set sail: things are looking pretty sparse on my frontal and crownal regions.

“What!?! Nah, man! I mean, I can’t even tell! It looks fine! Coulda fooled me!”

Folks are quick to reassure when I mention this fact in casual conversation. I’m fairly certain the thinning is noticeable and they’re just trying to comfort me ’cause they assume I’m bummed out about the whole descent into baldness. Or perhaps they really are unaware of my problem areas, as my relative height keeps them out of view for many. Wait, shorter people, ’til you see me crouched down changing an electrical outlet. There is significantly less coverage up there than there should be. No denying it.

I have the luxury of saying this now I suppose, because there is still something holding on, but I’m not that distressed about this development. Honestly I’m just thankful that my follicles waited — stuck around until I got a full-time job and a house and moved to grown-up-land where everyone’s physical appearance is taking some kind of abuse. If they want to wither and die at this point, can I really complain?

And there is a silver lining here. The last time I had my hair as tightly-cropped as I do now it was sprouting out of my head for the very first time (which, according to my mom, was when I was about six), so I’m just now discovering the world of the zero-maintenence-’do. It is awesome. I have not had to bother with finding the comb or wetting my hands for months now. And with my curbed shampoo use and shorter showers, we’re saving valuable cents per day.

And what am I giving up? My hair’s coloring is not dark and mysterious, but also not light and fun-loving. It’s just medium-brown. Nondescript. Middle-of-the-road. The longer it gets, the more I feel like it’s drawing attention to the fact that I have a really large forehead, and texture-wise, it’s an unfortunate blend of frizzy and poofy on the top, wavy in the back, and extremely curly on the sides. It’s always been impossible to corral into a non-doofy-looking, even-remotely-fashionable hairdo, as can be seen in every school picture of me from kindergarten through my senior year.

Yeah, I don’t think my hair has ever been much of an asset for me, anyway. Possibly because I never got a proper haircut.

Of course I honestly believed that they wouldn’t get to me, as I haven’t kept up with anyone, least of all the “right people” for this sort of thing.

Only I knew that they’d get to me, because of Facebook and MySpace — tools that I just know allowed the reunion committee to locate (based on the relatively small number of “MIA” alumni listed) 90% of my graduating class. This was no small feat considering the high school I went to was massive. Not only was it impossible to be acquainted with everyone in the senior class, but there were people in caps and gowns at my graduation that I didn’t recognize at all from the previous four years. It was the perfect place if you wanted to be as close to nonexistent as possible. Which I basically did.

Nonetheless I received a very enthusiastic, nostalgia-envoking invitation to my 10-year high school reunion from two people I’ve never met who were, apparently, classmates of mine. Thus, I was forced to think about who I was back then.

The “jock?” Far from it, as I didn’t play a single sport. The “nerd?” Nope. I did well enough in my classes not catch hell from any teachers, but didn’t do well enough to stand out. The “criminal?” Again, no way did I want the sheer level of recognition one gets as a “problem kid.” The “basketcase?” Within the confines of my own brain: pretty much. But not on the surface. The “queen?” (Hold on, The Breakfast Club! Allow me to amend your stereotypes for my own purposes.) The “king?” Not a chance. I did not appear in any school plays, do anything with student government, or, despite a burgeoning interest in music, play in the marching, concert, or jazz bands. I wasn’t in the “public eye” nearly enough for that role. I was as friendly as I needed to be to not have to eat lunch by myself, and that was it. I stayed away from everything because I felt like I didn’t fit in…and I felt like I didn’t fit in because I stayed away from everything. This dilemma was not beyond my grasp, but I could barely absorb the random ridicule I received as a wallflower. And all I could see was that being recognized for something only meant a potential increase in the amount I was picked on.

If I could travel back in time and tell myself the things that would have made the high school experience more fulfilling for me, just before I started, this is what I’d tell shy, scrawny ninth-grade me:

“Don’t be afraid to give things a try, even if you think you won’t be good at them. You’ll probably do better than you thought. Even if you do just ended up looking stupid: every time you make yourself jump into something that’s scary and unknown, you gain a little courage and it gets easier to try the next new thing that comes along. People admire those that ‘put themselves out there.’ Even the people that will make fun of you will probably respect you more than you think.”

Except that’s not what I’d tell shy, scrawny ninth-grade me at all. Everyone tries to impart this conventional wisdom on you as you start high school, but it’s impossible to understand until you discover it yourself. Instead I’d probably just say:

“Look, this going to suck. Keep your head down. Get through it. Before you know it this place will be a speck in the rear view mirror. And you won’t ever have to go back. Oh, and go to ECU to study fine art, even though everyone will tell you there’s no way to benefit from it financially. Four-and-a-half years from now, things are going to start looking up.”

Were there a reunion for the “Class of ‘02” from ECU’s School of Art, I’d be the one organizing the raffle and collecting and enlarging the pictures of the really popular kids and placing them at the main entrance. It turns out, in art school, socially-awkward outcasts can develop the ability to form, indeed cherish, relationships with other human beings (who were most likely socially-awkward outcasts themselves). They might even become keystones in a social arch or two. I did. Between my wife and I there are the photographs of groups of jovial young people — with yours truly, front-and-center — to prove it! Yes, those were the days.

Only maybe they weren’t. I recently read somewhere¹ that every time we remember something our brain actually reconstructs that place or event as if it is taking it in for the first time. And with each reconstruction the chance that our brain is jumbling or deleting information is exponentially increased. Combine that with the mind-bending circumstances that serve as the setting for most college memories in the first place, and, well, I think I may be recalling “those days” through some seriously Vaseline-smeared lenses.

There is no more damning evidence for this than the candid video footage we own of “those days.” On a whim, Steph and I recently decided to watch the home movie, which was shot by our friend Ashley and features a 12–15 person cast, most of whom were major players on the set of “those days.” It was the first time Steph and I had viewed this since shortly after it was made. It was early fall and the beginning of my last semester of college, and we are having a cookout at my roommate Kymia and I’s apartment. And starting at about 00:00:30, long-forgotten and highly unsavory layers to every person and combination of persons documented — layers our still cameras did not detected, much less preserve — practically leap out of the QuickTime window. Someone is clearly jealous of someone else. Or desperately attracted to them. Or completely disinterested in them. Or really angry at them. We all seem tired. Malnourished. Tense. It was difficult for Steph and I to watch.

So, looking at the inverse, maybe high school wasn’t as bad as I describe? Maybe I wasn’t such a pathetic nobody? Now I almost feel that I need to find out. Imagine what I could learn about my memory, about how I’ll look back on what I’m experiencing now and what I’ll experience in years to come! Imagine what I could learn about myself!! Yep, I think I’m actually going to go to my 10-year high school reunion!!!

Except there’s no way I am going to my 10-year high school reunion. I kept my head down. I got through it. I don’t ever have to go back.

–

¹ Issue of Women’s Health that was accidentally delivered to us and I ended up reading from cover-to-cover.

I’ve spent the past few days helping a new band come up with a name, and all the deliberation and detailed analysis had me thinking about my musical history and the band names in my past. As I was already running through it in my head, I thought I’d put it down and share it with you.

1. “The Neighborhood”

My first band. This is the musical equivalent of naked-tub photos for me. I was ten and just learning to play drums so I basically bullied all the younger kids who lived near me into forming this group so I could get better. Our set list consisted of whatever everyone was learning in their piano lessons. Still, I kept us on a rigorous practice schedule during the summers, ensuring we devoted several hours a day to rehearsal, in between riding our bikes up to the pool and catching lightning bugs in jars (nostalgia!). Three years in a row, our hard work culminated with a performance for the adults in the area, in my parent’s carport, just before it was time to go back to school.

Origin of Name: It was made up of kids who lived in our neighborhood. Eh? Eeehhh?

Name Pros: Had a “New Kids on the Block” feel.

Name Cons: Has a “New Kids on the Block” feel.

2. “Mosmaiorum”

Mosmaiorum was a high school garage band that started off covering CCR, Tom Petty, and Steve Miller exclusively. Eventually we started writing our own music, which sounded a lot like what that band Live (who was big at the time) was writing. Our singer then superimposed her bad high-school-girl-poetry lyrics over what we’d written…so, yeah, it was exactly like what that band Live was writing (snap!). After playing in a battle of the bands, we had an article written about us and some band photos taken for The Cary News, so, um…we were a pretty big deal.

Origin of Name: When we were strictly a cover band we went by the name “Retroactive.” Once we started writing our own music we figured that name didn’t make sense anymore, so our guitar player, who was taking Latin at the time, found out from his teacher that “mosmaiorum” is how one would say “retroactive” in Latin. No one else had any better ideas.

Name Pros: Absolutely none.

Name Cons: Damn near impossible to read aloud and pronounce correctly. Several of the people who had to announce us before we took the stage spent the next few months with their tongues in a splint.

3. “Solid State”

This was a wedding/party band-for-hire that friends of my parents had. After seeing my brother and I play with Mosmaiorum, they put us on call to stand in for their bassist and drummer when the two of them weren’t available. Laugh if you must, but I really cut my teeth as a player learning to consistently nail the drum parts to “The Electric Slide” and “Shout!” Also earning $100 a gig was pretty sweet.

Origin of Name: I’m guessing it was because the 40-and-50-something computer-programmer-by-day band members were big on solid state sound technology.

Name Pros: Sounds reliable and consistent, which is, above all, what you want from your wedding band. Was easy to spell when making the check out to us.

Name Cons: The term “solid state” will cause younger guitar players — who like their amps loud and pure of tone — to projectile vomit.

4. “She Has Her Reasons”

She Has Her Reasons (or “SHHR,” as we speculated our fans would shorten it to) spanned from my senior year of high school to my freshman year of college, and was a three-piece consisting of drums, bass, and vocals only. Despite the fact that we recorded a full album of songs and held intense practices when we all got together on breaks, our stuff could barely be considered music.

Origin of Name: Once I was in college, I asked a girl that I had a crush on what our band name should be. She rattled this off immediately like she’d been storing the phrase away for just such an occassion. Done and done.

Name Pros: Sort of clever and memorable.

Name Cons: We weren’t an emo band.

5. “Drake/Cowan/Witchger”

This band only existed for a month in late 1999, but it’s an important one for me. My desire to “make it big” with a band had been growing in intensity for years and it was a full-blown obsession when the three of us got together. The creative differences we quickly started having were so bitter and volatile however, that, since then, the idea hasn’t entered my mind again. We formed when the three of us wrote some decent songs together and, soon after, decided to record them and make an EP of them. I played guitar (the only time I’ve played something other than drums in an aspiring band), my college roommate sang, and then a friend of ours took what were basically folk songs, recorded them in his dorm room, and layered synths and sampled beats over them. Sort of like the Postal Service…only way before them…and a lot more difficult to actually listen to. We played one show, but, by the time the recording process was over, we could barely stand speaking to each other anymore.

Origin of Name: There was no way the three of us could have found something more original that we all agreed on.

Name Pros: None that I can see.

Name Cons: Way too long and completely unspellable. Two of the three names are gibberish that don’t create any visual or word associations that could have made us memorable. Also, look at the other bands that have gone the “member’s last names” route: Emerson, Lake, & Palmer; Loggins & Messina; Hall & Oates; Crosby, Stills, & Nash; Wilson Phillips. Ugh.

6. “Goddesses By Default”

This was a girl-centric, completely fictional band (a la Jem, or Barbie & The Rockers, or Hole) that Steph and two of her college roommates made up in the dining hall one night. Refusing to allow the fact that none of them played an instrument hold them back, they made big plans for this band for the next semester and a half. Steph spent many, many hours designing t-shirts and album art for them. Supposedly I was their drummer.

Origin of Name: Pablo Picasso once said “There are only two types of women: goddesses and doormats.” One of the girls had just learned of this quote and repeated it to us at dinner. Steph reflected on this, saying “Well, I’m not sure I’m a goddess, but I’m definitely not a doormat.” I replied with “So you’re a goddess by default.” Done and done.

Name Pros: The name seemed to resonate with other girls who, I was often informed, were their target audience.

Name Cons: Doesn’t really roll of the tongue.

7. “Tomorrow the World”

My brother and I learned how to record by writing pop-rock and tracking all the vocals and instruments ourselves in his bedroom. (Fountains of Wayne were our heroes.) “Tomorrow the World” was just the name for this project. We did it from 1999–2002 and finished around 40 songs of varying quality.

Origin of Name: When this first got going, I was in college, surrounded by artrockers in bands with vaguely literary names that had nice rings to them (“Sorry About Dresden,” “Exercises in Breathing,” “The Red Palms”), so I guess I was just following suit.

Name Pros: Vaguely literary with a nice ring to it.

Name Cons: Even though none of them “hit it big,” it has been brought to my attention that several other people formed bands with this same name around this same time.

8. “Giddey”

Giddey met in the art department at ECU and stayed together for only three months in 2001, but we played six shows. We were a harder alternative rock band, but had two front-women with decided singer/songwriter aspirations. Another way to put it would be we were three dudes who learned to play their instruments by memorizing Led Zeppelin’s entire catalog, thrown into a practice space with The Indigo Girls. Another way to put it would be there couldn’t have been a more incompatible combination.

Origin of Name: The name was chosen by our front-women the night before our first show. An internet seach revealed there was already a band out there called “Giddy,” so they created an alternate spelling to differentiate us.

Name Pros: Inoffensive and easy to remember.

Name Cons: The intentional misspelling seemed to make our potential followers think the word was pronouced differently. People would always ask me, “So how do you say the name? ‘Gid-DAY…?’ Or ‘Gid-Ya…?’” Also, this is the only band I’ve ever been in that was connected enough to play at larger venues that had marquees, and every time I saw our name in lights, the sign person had, despite specific instructions, left out the “e.”

9. “Sorry, Kevin”

My most-current former band. Sorry, Kevin existed from 2001–2006, starting as three guys in a room, improvising for hours and hours — mostly riffing on the power-pop and harder indie we all listened to — with the tape rolling. We later decided to turn some of our raw material into organized songs. We played approximately one live show a year.

Origin of Name: My sister and her friend once played a joke on my brother by going to grocery store where he worked and going through his friends’ checkout line with homemade iron-on-letter t-shirts — Kate’s reading “I LOVE MY BABY BROTHER KEVIN” and her friend’s reading “SORRY, KEVIN.” The “SORRY, KEVIN” t-shirt went on to become a mainstay at my parents’ house, and seemed to end up in a different family member’s wardrobe each time it went through the laundry. While we were there recording one day, Kevin had it in his room and we started talking about how it was pretty funny seeing that on a shirt completely out of context. It was cemented with a half-joking “Ok that’s it! That’s our band name!”

Name Pros: Easy to spell, say, and remember.

Name Cons: A band name involving a comma is a terrible idea. It consistently gets dropped on the signs and flyers (just ask Jump, Little Children), so instead of being an apology to Kevin, it ended up stating that Kevin possessed the quality of sorry-ness. Which he doesn’t.

(4/2/08)