Selected Entries: September, 2003

In September of 2003 I was fifteen years old and at the start of my Sophomore Year of high school. The entries displayed here are not wholly pleasant, but nor was the time in which they were written. As I aim to make my blog an accurate reflection of my current life, so should the Selected Entries Sections provide a fair and full view into the eras from which they are pulled. In this month I dealt with indignities at home and relished the arrival of Hurricane Isabel, which got me out of school.

September 1, 2003

Something terrible happened on the night of the thirteenth of August. It all began after we had finished eating our crabs.

We were beginning to pick them up, and Dad told me to get the remaining bag of crabs out of the refrigerator. I adhered to this request and retrieved the crabs. My hands still slippery with the crabs that I had that night previously eaten, I was unable to untie the knot that bound the bag of crabs. I asked my father to please open the knot while I cleaned up the table.

I hadn’t spoken to him at all (or, barely at all) but his response came, “No, I won’t. You’re so pathetic, you can’t even open a bag of crabs.”

To which I responded, “My hands are slippery and I can’t get the stupid knot, so that makes me pathetic, right?”

“Yes, it does,” my father answered.

I opened the knot with some difficulty, but first, in anger, I threw the bag of crabs down on the table before my father and said, “No, you do it.”

My father said, “No, you do it!” and I screamed even louder, “No, you do it!”

At this he gritted his teeth, his face reddened, and he said imposingly (or so he thought), “No, you fucking do it!”

“Why are you grunting?” I questioned aloofly and apathetically, although with an undeniable (and deliberate) trace of angered, annoyed impatience in my voice. My father turned, but did not answer, and after I finally undid the knot, he complemented once more on the pathetic nature of my personality.

I was, after several moments of this undaunted idiocy, moved to say, “Oh, I’m going to fail at life because I couldn’t open a bag of crabs, right?”

“Yes,” my father said. “Because it shows a failing attitude.”

To my annoyance, and to my growing anger, he continued.

“If you can’t do something right away you give up and walk away.”

Finally, my anger could no longer be abated, and I said austerely, “Like you walked away from college, right?”

That didn’t go over too well with him. He called me an asshole and began advancing on me. I don’t remember much of what he said, but he shoved me quite hard. In an instant I had lost myself in a fury that overtook me. I was screaming at my father. I threw my hands up into the air and shouted, “I do not need to be shoved!”

My father said something stupid like, “Yeah, big guy, then maybe you need to go to bed.”

And he continued to push me, forcing me back into the hallway as I yelled at him, even saying, “I said get off me!”

He turned me, pushed me forward toward the stairs, and told me to get to bed. I had barely gotten up there and I was pondering over my own rage when I heard the adults talking downstairs.

One of my grandparents (my grandparents Hick Family were spending the night on this particular evening) saying that they would clean up the mess in my absence, but my father said, “No, I’ll make BB do that.”

Then, “BB, get your ass down here!”


September 2, 2003

So, I was forced through the humiliation of then cleaning the floor.

As I did this, my father was continually instigating things to provoke me. He said, for example, “And you can get that grand (thousand dollars) from someone else; I’m done.”

I was sure.

“The closest that you’ll ever get to Russia is a book.”

Finally having had enough, I exclaimed, “Are you done trying to provoke me?”

He laughed and said, “Oh, are you gonna do something, big guy? You wanna go?”

I was horrified in my revulsion and disgust.

He is so appallingly absorbed with being the alpha male that he was attempting to provoke his fifteen-year-old son into a fight! The primitive animal! He partly redeemed himself later that evening when he allowed me out of my room to see Mars. We made up later that night.

I really need God to help me.


September 18, 2003

School was spectacular today. I wish that we could be dismissed at 11:25 every day.

I had one of the most relaxing Biology lessons I’ve ever sat through, the thirty-six minutes whirling by in no time at all, despite the unadulterated bore of a photosynthesis computer presentation.

Second-period Business Law went by similarly fast, the mod including a relaxed trip to the computer writing lab. I have two projects due, one on the War of 1812, the other on the Supreme Court, but I have sufficient time to complete both.

Third mod was the largest at just under an hour, which bothered me not too much at all, as third mod today happened to be Chorus. Given that I had been expecting a full day of school, today was quite a pleasant surprise. Chorus was soul-filled and cleansing, beautiful and empoweringly joyful.

We sang for the overwhelming majority of the class, performing early on with my favorite Chorus song, “There’s a New Song Down in Bethlehem” and concluding with the same song later in the mod. I love to sing it, and today, with an air of festivity spreading like wildfire, the Chorus was soulful, passionate, and strong. I relaxed. I finally relaxed. I had fun.

Fourth-mod Geometry was a fun drawing activity.

September 19, 2003

The day was over, seemingly before it began.

On the bus home, Lacrosse Boy and some other football player sat in one seat, while Military Boy and I sat in another. This other boy sits with me on the days that Military Boy and I eat lunch together. Walking home with him accompanying us was surreal. It was as if the school world and home world had merged.

Lacrosse Boy came to my house after school, and he talked about how Military Boy had just been walking through Andrea.

I laughed and said, “Yeah, does Military Boy even know about that?”

“No,” Lacrosse Boy said. “I never told him.”

Lacrosse Boy laughed once more and we both agreed that we would be socially humiliated (if not socially ruined) should anyone ever know that we were both citizens and rulers of the Aria. Lacrosse Boy was not only a noble, but also King of Atricia and Czar of the entire country.

We played Risk on the computer upstairs and then decided to go outside and play in the hurricane. It was so much fun. First Twin was so wet that he looked like he’d just gotten out of the pool. He kept making us all laugh by acting like he was a shaggy dog. He would shake his hair and make it fly everywhere.

It was in the midst of Hurricane Isabel that the Umbrella Game was created. One of us would go out about thirty feet in front of the others and release a small purple umbrella for the others to chase and catch. We would race around after it, and several times it took a while to catch it.

First Twin rode down a hill using a towel and a skateboard. First Twin was also briefly lifted off of his feet. Lacrosse Boy was there to bear witness. I fell on the wet ground, was blown across the grass, and was blown into a fence. It was fun. The hurricane was so fun.