A Stitch in Time - WordPress.com

Dana Walkerthese philosophies is that the best way you can screw your kid is to make life too easy for them. If you make lifetoo easy for them they don’t have the appropriate tools with which to deal with major shit when it happens. Thereare exceptions to this rule. Except for one incident when she was in her mid-twenties Vivian has never had to dealwith any highly unusual shit happening and she was the closest thing to a saint that I ever met. Most of the time,though, people who are meant for some sort of greatness — as opposed to the usual myriad paths available leadingto mediocre oblivion — need some sort of major kick-to-the-ass to set them upon the path they need to follow.In my case this kick-to-the-ass was administered by a drunk-driver who drove his car through my mother’s carand killed her when I was eleven years old.Beaver never had to deal with this.This meant that my entire destiny was shaped by a drunk driver. Where the hell else would I end up?My father married my mother’s sister three months later. Since I was a kid at the time I didn’t think anythingof this but after I grew up I realized that marrying your dead wife’s sister three months later was a pretty weirdthing to do and that marrying your dead sister’s husband three months later was a very weird thing to do. Playingthe armchair psychologist here it helps to understand that my mother was always much prettier much smarter andmuch more popular than my aunt. In addition to living in my mother’s shadow my aunt also had to contend with twoyounger identical-twin brothers. In further addition, both of the twins were Mensas, or in the top 1% of the worldin IQ. Since boys were given much more attention than girls and since this was especially the case when the boysare cute twins my aunt had a lot of competition for attention. Whether this competition for attention justified myaunt taking out her anger and frustration upon me my brother and her own two children is open for debate; the onlycommunication I had with her for several years consisted of her hysterically yelling at me for something; consideringmy extreme reaction to the death of my mother having my aunt/step-mother exacerbating the living hell thatmy teenage-hood had already become did not help matters in the least.(As an interesting side note, one of these twins later became one of the world’s leading experts in computersecurity whilst the other spent most of his life in prison for killing cops…(As another interesting side note, one of my aunt’s two sons went to prison for shooting someone’s eye outduring a drug deal whilst the other became a cop…(As another interesting side note, I became a slightly homophobic wandering adventurer while my brotherbecame an accomplished stage actor and a militant in-your-face homosexual…)Thus I spent my teenage years in a condition of insanity which I kept at bay with massive doses of a largevariety of drugs. My home was an alien feeling place where I had no desire to be. My school was an alien feelingplace where I had no desire to be. My head was an alien feeling place where I had no desire to be.The only place I desired to be was under the influence of drugs.Any drugs. All drugs. Whatever drugs I could get my hands on in any amount I could get my hands on. I atesnorted shot and smoked powders pills plants and capsules of every size shape configuration and colour. I smokedbanana peels I ate the seeds of a plant that drove cows insane and I consumed a drug meant to tranquilizeelephants. We had a lot of fun and since we were the bad kids we were free to do as we pleased. Once at 3 AMabout fifteen of us left a party en-masse. We wandered the streets of Ridgecrest, California until we saw a copand we knew that he had seen us, whereupon we began running as fast as we could in fifteen different directions.Running from any predator is an invitation for them to chase you and the police are no exception.An hour later those of us who had not been caught by the police gathered together again back at the party. Weengaged in raucous laughter and told stories of our adventures running from the cops.John Dancy had been caught hiding in a dumpster. He never lived this down. Since we hadn’t actually doneanything there was not really anything the police could do even when they did catch us. (Remember, this was backin the days when the police actually had to obey the law for the most part — especially when dealing with middleclasswhite kids.) It was also during this period that I experienced an event that was to help shape the future ofmy life: When I was fourteen years old the prettiest girl in school let me kiss her. Her name was Betsy. It wasthe most magical and mystical experience of my young life thus far and I later named my Guild 12-string for her.Yes, there was a lot of fun and a lot of laughs and a lot of excitement adventure and danger involved. This was alife fully lived in a spirit-killing culture located in a boring small town that was a dull cultural cul-de-sac located inthe middle of a literal desert. My hometown, Ridgecrest, California, was about was far from anywhere as was26