Chapter 52
The Complete Anthology

So I found some of my old “work”. Actually I knew where it was, but I wanted to throw something out so I started there, except that I haven’t thrown anything away. Mostly I think I was going to try to consolidate notebooks. Take two writing notebooks and put them together, which still hasn’t happened. As I skimmed through the starts and sometimes just the ends of stories that I have thought up over the years I found some poetry that was misplaced in the short story notebook. So I lugged out the old poetry notebook and learned a few things about myself from re-reading some of the old stuff. One, I wrote, a lot, and mostly it was crap, but there are some good ones and sometimes only some good lines that I would like to transplant into a better poem if poetry was still what I did. Secondly, good news, I have always been a cynic; at least I have it recorded back to the time that I was 15. I was worried that cynicism was a relatively new characteristic that I had picked up sometime between 19 and now but what do you know…I’ve been this way for a while. I don’t know if it was one of my very early poems about killing someone because they gave me AIDS (P.S. I don’t have AIDS and I think maybe I was already watching too much Law and Order by the young age of 15). Or it could have been the poem I wrote in eleventh grade for a contest about being able to become anything you wanted (the topic they gave us), which I thought at the time that I had a nice twist about how the adults tell you what you need to do to be better, to be more like them, but who would want that? I mean seriously, I was totally meant to be a Sociology major; I was all about the down with the man attitude and how they were polluting our minds before I even knew what ‘the man’ was. I think when I wrote the poem I was pissed at one of the authority figures at work who wouldn’t just make me a damn cashier. I did all the basic requirements; I became a freaking “certified” bagger (which involved quite a bit of memorization; I used to carry a card around with me while I took people’s orders to their car and memorize the store motto…seriously). After round one, this authority figure told me that maybe it would be best if I didn’t talk to the other employees so much, pardon me for trying to raise morale. Anyway, it was one excuse after the other and so therefore returning to this poem, I was mad and wanted to ‘stick it to the man’. Of course, that phrase was beyond me when I was 16 years old and I think it’s a good thing, otherwise that phrase may have actually made it into the poem and it would have been worse than it already is.
I was such a drama queen, I mean, I’m laughing at myself. Some of the poems are about boys, big surprise there. But I didn’t even have a relationship with any of these guys and yet I was acting like I did. Goodness, I really was a stalker back in the day…hmm. Why in the world did I think I knew what it felt like to get my heart broken when I was sixteen years old? And why, for the love, did I think that I could make all the bad moments in my life rhyme? Oh, let me find one. You know what, I don’t know if I am ready to share the really bad ones, I mean, I don’t mind telling myself like it is, but I’m still afraid to let others see how much I suck. Man I am so glad that “past me” never met “future me”, because I don’t think that as fragile as I was I could take my own criticism like this! I’d probably write a rhyming poem about it and cry myself to sleep about what I jerk I turned out to be.
Moving on, there are some poems really early on about friendships. I know exactly who they are about and I just sound bitter (this is where the cynical part of me really showed). I think it explains a lot about me though. As young as 15 my friends in the past (particularly the one who had driven me to my pen and paper so many times) had shown me that friendships don’t last forever. There is no such thing as BFF (Best Friends Forever for those of you who are not literate in the speaking in letters deal). This could be the foundation to why I am so consigned that when you say goodbye to someone who lives on the other side of the country that that is it. You say goodbye and the reality of the situation is that life goes on, they want to stay your friend, and you both work at it for a while, but in the end life proceeds in its normal velocity and both forget about the other. Even with my past though I feel the need to insert here that I think that Sweet Pea has a chance. Besides, the internet and cell phones have come around since I was 15 and they seem to be helping bridge the geographical gap. What’s more, we have our reunion trip with Oreo that hopefully both are still planning on.
Moving on…The creepy thing is, as I read some of these poems, I can remember why I started to write them, and I can also remember enough about the situation that I was writing about that I know I was embellishing the truth. Like one I wrote when I was fifteen because my dad was telling me to do the dishes, oh poor me, my dad was going to make me do the dishes, I said it was a bother because of all the other things I had to do, but honestly, I was probably just trying to catch an episode of Law and Order. It was a tough time for me, I mean; I spent four hours a day on the phone with my best friend watching MTV’s Total Request Live upside down. Of course, I only got away with this because during this tumultuous time in my life my mother worked at night…it always comes back to the mother doesn’t it?