underexposed

random musings of a neurotic

*.msg

I was born the son of a poor black sharecropper in the small town of Gourock, Scotland. Alright, so I’m not black, but I wanted to be when I was in 5th grade so I could break dance. My Mom’s Scottish and my Dad’s Mexican. I know, sounds like that combo’d make for some pretty funky dining, but despite what you might think, we ate pretty normal meals. Except for when we ordered pizza; my Mom always made corn on the cob to go along with it. I do not know why. No haggis on tortillas or anything like that, though.

For only being 5 years old before we moved next, I have rather vivid memories of the place. Some of the things I remember about Scotland were the mild summers, a flying bird somehow managing to crap on my hand as my friends and I were running around in the backyard playin’, and ice-lollies and getting my picture in the paper while I cruised around town picking up chicks in my orange dune buggy. So it was a peddle car. And my Mom pulled me with a rope. That’s me there, the wee Scottish celebrity.

This other time, some of the older kids in the neighborhood ganged up on me while I was out pedaling up and down the sidewalk with a helium balloon tied to the chrome roll bar on the back. They stopped me, and one of them lifted up the front of my car so I couldn’t pedal away, though I continued to pedal, furiously at first, before realizing it was no use, my wheels spinning in the air. Then another one held down the balloon with his foot on the string and threw a rock and burst it to bits. So there I was, my little legs pumping slowly, pedaling home, dragging behind me what was left of my happy little balloon. I was a broken man.

[I still like being out in the rain, but my raincoat's lost a bit of its lustre, I'm afraid. that's a Sailors Have More Fun bumper sticker]

In the snow filled winters my friends and I’d slide down an icy walk (that my mom told me not to) on an aluminum kitchen tray, careening right out into the middle of the road before grinding to a halt. Look both ways for cars? Yeah. We did. Then, when summer came around again, I crashed my bike into a parked car; another incident involving a steep hill I wasn’t supposed to be on. Turns out it wouldn’t be the last I’d crash into something stationary and inanimate. I repeated that stunt with a fence. A fence. And another parked car a different time. Both times I was riding with my eyes closed. I do not know why.

Then I used to think I was Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man. Out walking with my Mom one day, I almost ran out into the middle of traffic, but she caught my hand before I got far. She said, “You can’t just run out into the road like that; you’ll get run over!” I said, “No I won’t. I’ll just jump over the car.” Another time a lady said to me “Oh, you’re a nice wee boy, what’s your name?” “Steve Austin,” I said.

So, we left Scotland when my Dad got orders to Spain. Somebody said “alien” along with my name as they checked our passports in the airport. That was a huge mistake. I ran around for the next hour shouting, “I’M AN ALIEN, I’M AN ALIEN!!” They couldn’t shut me up.

So, Spain. That place was the coolest. Living overseas for 3 years was great. We didn’t lay around watching TV very often. We were always out playing or exploring or something, many times up to no good. When we lived on the base, there were so many kids, we could play baseball with full teams. Someone always ended up fighting or getting hit with a bat, but we never ran out of people to play with. Playing marbles was the best though. We’d play for hours. Still got ‘em in the paper towel lined Sucrets box I had as a kid in Spain. The paper towels were to stop the marbles from rattling against the tin if you had to run or something.

Only had 2 childhood accidents there that I can remember, one of ‘em pretty major. The first time was when my friends, Keith Foster and Michael Fuzz-buzz, and I got the wise idea to wax up the slide on the school playground the with the wax paper their moms wrapped their sandwiches in. It was the big tall kinda slide, with the curvy bit in the middle. Gravity. That stuff works consistently. I rocketed down the slide on a piece of that paper and launched right off the end, landing on my tailbone. Knocked the wind out of me for a good 4 minutes or so. Everyone gathered around pointing and laughing as I writhed around and then staggered off gasping for air. My first experience as a comedian. I’ll do anything for a laugh.

While in Spain, my younger brother inhaled too much camel dung that floated over the Mediterranean Sea from Morocco and got really sick and started dressing up in a bunch of different costumes all the time. Must have been hallucinating. Little flamer. He wouldn’t go anywhere with out being dressed up as a Cowboy or an Army Man or somethin’, or wearing these red rubber galoshes, so I was always trying to ditch him. He’s a lot cooler now, though.

A lot of kids got sick there for that same reason. I went semi-deaf for a little while, or so my Mom says. I think it was just an excuse to pretend like I couldn’t hear her.

The other accident ended in the hospital with me getting twenty-one stitches to the left side of my chin after I jumped over a twenty-three foot!! ramp over 12 crushed cars!! and fell off of my Schwinn. Actually, it was onto it. The handlebars. And okay, so the ramp was more like 15 inches and there were no cars involved this time. Anyway, it seems handlebars have a tendency to do more damage when the grips slip down, exposing jagged, rusty steel tube ends. The worst part was that I ruined my favorite superman t-shirt that day with all the blood.

Which reminds me. Don’t save anything for special occasions, because my other favorite shirt at the time - a Steelers football jersey that I never wore because I wanted to “keep it nice” - didn’t fit me one day when I went to go put it on. I probably only wore it like 5 times because I didn’t want to mess it up.

Didn’t matter much though, the Steelers sucked and I didn’t really like ‘em much anyway. What am I talking about? I didn’t even like football. Besides, it just about ripped off my ears every time I took that shirt off. My mom had to use a shoehorn a couple of times. I had a big head. Don’t laugh. It would put me off balance sometimes so I could only run in circles.

I fell on another rusty bike after doing a Bart Connor on my friend Jesse’s trampoline, but that doesn’t count for Spain’s stunts. That happened here in Virginia Beach. His brother, Pete, was the captain of the gymnastics team at William & Mary.

Best part about Spain, besides playing in the bamboo woods and sneaking off the base to hang out with the Spanish La Guardia, was seeing all the Spanish culture. Little cobbled streets all over the place and there was a central town square where we’d go some nights and sit and drink Cokes out of those tall glass bottles and eat this hard crusted pizza and listen to music and watch the Flamenco Dancers. Coke tasted way better back then. Seemed that way anyway.

Anyways, I just turned 9, I think, when we moved to Virginia Beach, shot a girl in the chin with a BB gun in 5th grade at the major league baseball field at the Aragona Rec Center, and blah, blah, blah, the next thing I knew, I’d finished high school. There’s more to it than that of course, but most of the years in between were spent trying really hard not to be so shy, but none of that changed until about my senior year. Maybe I’ll get around to updating it later or even write a book about nothing at all.

So after high school, I spent a few years with Uncle Sam, breaking and fixing planes in the Air Force, but mostly just playin’ jokes on the new guys. I now work for a structural engineering firm, running all the network & communications stuff, still playing jokes on the new guys, while still trying to find the time to workout, shoot photos, keep up my old Mazda 626 Turbo and Toyota 4WD (never-ending battles - anyone know how to properly jet a Weber carburetor?), always trying to learn new stuff and occasionally get out in the water every once with a couple of friends whenever a decent swell makes it worthwhile.

the mees working on the truck while I take a photo

Brett, Marcos & me at Keagan’s

Brett, Marcos, Me