I think back this last year and know that things have to get better in life somehow. At the same time I am trying so so hard to stay up beat and active. More often then not I slip back into this emotional hole and each time I claw my way out of it. Its just finally starting to take less time to get back to neutral. Is neutral better then depression? IDK In Maui was the first time I felt alive in a long time. Still just my Mom and I, but it was different and felt like a nice restart. So I have that to look forward to when the eventual happens. I know my mother and uncle will not live forever. My biggest fear in this life is being the last survivor of the family and not have anyone in my life anymore. Its the reality I know will happen all too soon. And the fear is I will fall apart alone. Delve into my darkness, and just fester in life.
That's my depression talking. I know that. Still its a harsh reality. IDK how people do it. Live. I have never had a relationship with anyone, but I know its something that my heart longs for. At times get close to someone and it always ends up that I am some kind of brother role. never the guy they want, but always the guy they use when they are hurting or in need of something. Its made my own self worth very low, and my trust of women in general very poor. Ultimately this feeling ended up costing me not only the friendship of a family I have know since I was born, but also the last and closest friend I had in real life.
Now I walk the world knowing I am friendless in my real life. While in ways that's liberating, its so very lonely. I look at others so happy in life, walking hand in hand with their loved ones. Knowing that is not a reality I may ever have. I bow my head look away and move on my heart all the more heavy. There is life which I feel most in this world have. Wife, Friends, children... and then there is existence, which is what I feel I have. Thankfully its a comfortable existence. I mean I don't live in a cave or a tent. I know it could be worse. It does not change the abnormality of my existence. And the lack of the feelings I long to have within me.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
The slope years.
After getting out of Retail I decided I needed to go back to college and get my degree. All be it I was essentially starting over but I just got had to do something to get better work. Luckily that came fast.
I was doing my GERs at the university and working from home doing small contract IT work for extra money. in 2003 I officially opened my own business. And did things legally. My big break was when I was doing work for a native organization that frequently sent me up to the north slope for services, and maintenance of their aging computer network. 2 weeks on 2 weeks off during the summer months and occasional 4 day weeks when I was in college. Not too bad. This did mean I cut classes back to part time student status. But as a result I also saw my grade improve with the added time for studies AND having money coming in.
Working both the Pipeline and pump stations was a real education in the real world dangers of arctic living. With a few hundred miles between pump stations and the remote location, it was all about survivability. Lots of training on what to do if you go off road, if you sink on the ice road, if your rig breaks down and no traffic for assistance. Basically you wait for something to come or you die. Lets face it up there if something goes wrong your done for.
Personally things were never better. I had my family I had a close group of friends that were as close as family and I was able to provide nice things to them cause I was working and doing well for the first time in my life. The activity was good for me, as was the companionship of friends both at work and at home. At this point I was convinced things were going to continue, and my bosses gave me every indication that they would for some time.
A few years go by like this. Mom is actually able to get surgery from inheritance for her gastric bypass, and she was doing better at long last, and was even able to travel, which was something she rarely did when she was heavy. For the most part I was doing well all around, I could come and go as I pleased traveling with mom back east. And I finally did get my degree in 2004. Which was a fight in and of itself because it was all of 1 class that they had not offered for 3 semesters that was keeping many of us from graduating. After going to the Dean with this complaint and even offering to teach the class myself if I had too, we got the last credits we needed. Officially I'm class of 2005 but I didnt walk cause I got degree in Dec 2004.
I thought things were going great, till the market for IT services really started to CRASH... And I don't just mean because everyone hated Vista and wanted to just stay with what they had (XP) rather then do expensive system wide upgrades throughout the business.
Right around here is when everything started catching up with us. Property taxes on 4 properties in 3 states. Expenditures that kept hitting us on an aging array of vehicles we own as a family. My uncles bad investments and expenses catching up to him in retirement. And my mother new lifestyle to which she had become accustomed too. One part time self employed IT tech and a quickly ending annuity payout was depleting fast. And Jobs were not coming as easily as they once did. partially because I did tell many people to just stay with what they had professionally, and made that work as good as it was going to get. So much so in many ways I became redundant.
By 2008 I needed to find full time work. I finally did join a team in Anchorage that was similar to what I did already, but had more people to depend on and a larger client list then I had. I didn't like some of the practices they employed but went into the job knowing I could do 80% of what they were asking of me, and that I would be quick to learn the rest. Time became a thing of the past. indeed that year and a half went by SO SO fast. and my personal life disappeared. Friends and family mostly dropped away in favor of lots and lots of overtime.
I think that's where I will leave this. Yes I am omitting the some stuff but I hope to expand on that next time when I talk about the reoccurance of the depression I fell into when my Uncle and grandparents died. Also I kinda skipped over my Fathers death as well, cause... well its complicated and I'll talk about it more then..
I was doing my GERs at the university and working from home doing small contract IT work for extra money. in 2003 I officially opened my own business. And did things legally. My big break was when I was doing work for a native organization that frequently sent me up to the north slope for services, and maintenance of their aging computer network. 2 weeks on 2 weeks off during the summer months and occasional 4 day weeks when I was in college. Not too bad. This did mean I cut classes back to part time student status. But as a result I also saw my grade improve with the added time for studies AND having money coming in.
Working both the Pipeline and pump stations was a real education in the real world dangers of arctic living. With a few hundred miles between pump stations and the remote location, it was all about survivability. Lots of training on what to do if you go off road, if you sink on the ice road, if your rig breaks down and no traffic for assistance. Basically you wait for something to come or you die. Lets face it up there if something goes wrong your done for.
Personally things were never better. I had my family I had a close group of friends that were as close as family and I was able to provide nice things to them cause I was working and doing well for the first time in my life. The activity was good for me, as was the companionship of friends both at work and at home. At this point I was convinced things were going to continue, and my bosses gave me every indication that they would for some time.
A few years go by like this. Mom is actually able to get surgery from inheritance for her gastric bypass, and she was doing better at long last, and was even able to travel, which was something she rarely did when she was heavy. For the most part I was doing well all around, I could come and go as I pleased traveling with mom back east. And I finally did get my degree in 2004. Which was a fight in and of itself because it was all of 1 class that they had not offered for 3 semesters that was keeping many of us from graduating. After going to the Dean with this complaint and even offering to teach the class myself if I had too, we got the last credits we needed. Officially I'm class of 2005 but I didnt walk cause I got degree in Dec 2004.
I thought things were going great, till the market for IT services really started to CRASH... And I don't just mean because everyone hated Vista and wanted to just stay with what they had (XP) rather then do expensive system wide upgrades throughout the business.
Right around here is when everything started catching up with us. Property taxes on 4 properties in 3 states. Expenditures that kept hitting us on an aging array of vehicles we own as a family. My uncles bad investments and expenses catching up to him in retirement. And my mother new lifestyle to which she had become accustomed too. One part time self employed IT tech and a quickly ending annuity payout was depleting fast. And Jobs were not coming as easily as they once did. partially because I did tell many people to just stay with what they had professionally, and made that work as good as it was going to get. So much so in many ways I became redundant.
By 2008 I needed to find full time work. I finally did join a team in Anchorage that was similar to what I did already, but had more people to depend on and a larger client list then I had. I didn't like some of the practices they employed but went into the job knowing I could do 80% of what they were asking of me, and that I would be quick to learn the rest. Time became a thing of the past. indeed that year and a half went by SO SO fast. and my personal life disappeared. Friends and family mostly dropped away in favor of lots and lots of overtime.
I think that's where I will leave this. Yes I am omitting the some stuff but I hope to expand on that next time when I talk about the reoccurance of the depression I fell into when my Uncle and grandparents died. Also I kinda skipped over my Fathers death as well, cause... well its complicated and I'll talk about it more then..
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Paparazzi Initiative.
A concept to legitimize and regulate Celebrity Photos for resale and publication both in print and online.
Photographers will be licensed to be allowed to sale photos to be published. Unlicensed photos being published will result in a fine to the publisher for every printing of the publication or every view of the website of a maximum of $40 per printing or view. And that fee will be drawn towards funding of the licensing program and reimbursement to the celebrity whose image is wrongfully exploited.
Licensed Events will include red carpet affairs, promotional junkets, set authorized behind the scenes footage, and production parties. Such photos will be available to publications for print and online for profit.
Any photos that are procured from trespassing, invasion of privacy, and or candid shots that are in any way obstructing the subject of the photo or film or can be seen as harassment will not be authorized for publication for profit in any way. Publication of such photos will result in a fine to the publisher, and the license being pulled from the photographer for a period of 3 months.
If said licensee is found to have caused any damage to private or public property, OR caused physical harm to the subject or by standards, said Paparazzi will face a fine of up to $300,000 per victim, and a term of up to 5 years in prison; or permanent relinquishment of license to sell photos for publication.
Photographs and film procured by private individuals cannot be used in any publication, print or online, for profit in any way. However such photos that are placed online as a nonprofit private album is permitted. As long as said production is not available to the general public and said production is not allowed to be accessed for a set fee or subscription of any kind.
Publication of private photos from collections for profit will result in a fine of up to $100,000 per unlicensed image.
The purpose of this initiative is to limit the harassment and endangerment of celebrities in private life due to the constant and unending existence of the paparazzi trying to achieve an unauthorized and unnecessary "MONEY" shot for the sake of personal profit from the exploitation of a private citizen.
Photographers will be licensed to be allowed to sale photos to be published. Unlicensed photos being published will result in a fine to the publisher for every printing of the publication or every view of the website of a maximum of $40 per printing or view. And that fee will be drawn towards funding of the licensing program and reimbursement to the celebrity whose image is wrongfully exploited.
Licensed Events will include red carpet affairs, promotional junkets, set authorized behind the scenes footage, and production parties. Such photos will be available to publications for print and online for profit.
Any photos that are procured from trespassing, invasion of privacy, and or candid shots that are in any way obstructing the subject of the photo or film or can be seen as harassment will not be authorized for publication for profit in any way. Publication of such photos will result in a fine to the publisher, and the license being pulled from the photographer for a period of 3 months.
If said licensee is found to have caused any damage to private or public property, OR caused physical harm to the subject or by standards, said Paparazzi will face a fine of up to $300,000 per victim, and a term of up to 5 years in prison; or permanent relinquishment of license to sell photos for publication.
Photographs and film procured by private individuals cannot be used in any publication, print or online, for profit in any way. However such photos that are placed online as a nonprofit private album is permitted. As long as said production is not available to the general public and said production is not allowed to be accessed for a set fee or subscription of any kind.
Publication of private photos from collections for profit will result in a fine of up to $100,000 per unlicensed image.
The purpose of this initiative is to limit the harassment and endangerment of celebrities in private life due to the constant and unending existence of the paparazzi trying to achieve an unauthorized and unnecessary "MONEY" shot for the sake of personal profit from the exploitation of a private citizen.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Story of my Life part 3
Coming Back to Alaska for me was very painful, but going in at least I knew my way around and would not have to start from complete scratch. Unfortunately most of my friends were long gone. Turns out after I left a lot of them fell apart, others left school, and others still just disappeared and even today we have not figured out where they went. Seeing the aftermath of their lives was tragic to me. Knowing that even though I had a hard time in California, the good far outweighed the bad down there for me, I still returned of my own free will.
My best friend Ryan had become a drug addict, and his father a convicted sex offender. WTF? It was like I came back to a strange F’ed up world that was just a resemblance of my childhood world. And everything, I mean EVERYTHING seemed smaller to me. My adventurous area in California stretched from Long Beach to the Mohave Desert; A few hundred sqr miles really. Anchorage is a small city. Nowhere near the size of L.A.Metro area. From one end to the other is only a 15 min ride. Lol So yea. Big adjustment for me coming back.
Mom still had not found a place to live and our furniture still had not made it to Alaska yet. It was summer, so as tradition, I was being sent up to my grandparents place again. I was 22 and needed work. So I started working at the local lodge / bar doing painting, cleaning, general maintenance, whatever odd jobs needed done. The other major thing that happened during this time is we found out my Grandfather had Cancer. Starting in the Prostrate and moving to the liver and pancreas. So every week I drove him and my Grandmother to Fairbanks for Chemotherapy. I was slowly watching the man die more every day. It was extremely hard. My grandmother was in denial. She felt her faith would never take him from her. And that all this would pay off and he would beat this. Aug rolled around and the summer job was over in Cantwell. My uncle Jim who was also living with my Grandparents in Cantwell and was the postmaster was going to take over taking his father to treatments and I was to go back to Anchorage. Mom got us a nice 2 bedroom apartment and I started unpacking settling in. I applied at University of Alaska Anchorage, and tried to transfer credits… (again I want to cover that later cause it was a huge mess) Needless to say I didn’t get much from the California system to follow me. So I had to take GERs over again. I took the basics the first semester figuring I would test out of some of them once I got an advisor. Sept 1994, My birthday was on the 11th and we went up to Cantwell with all my family to celebrate. My grandfather was really bad. Just the month away he got so much worse. Being away made it even clearer than when I was there with him watching it happen slowly. But he kept fighting. Unfortunately the last conversation I had with him was rather prophetic. He really didn’t like that I was going into a computer science career path. In retrospect I have to agree it was the biggest mistake, but I didn’t know much else. The aurgument was basically me yeling at him for trying to tell me something about a life he knows nothing about. And that I am not my uncle Ron and I am not cut out to be an engineer. It would be the last words I would say to the man face to face. We returned to Anchorage and the next week we got a call that we should come back up. I told mom to go with Ron and I would get up after my test. My grandfather got on the phone and told me to stay here and do my test at the protest of my Uncle Jim. Well my mother and Ron said they would wait too, if it was ok with Pap. On the 21st we headed up early morning to get up there asap. When we arrived 4 hours later in Cantwell we see Jim out walking on the road. Ron asked him something I didn’t hear what, and we headed into the house. My grandfather was in so much pain the night before they called the local doctor down from Healy another 45 mins north. And in the end he said there was nothing they could do for him. We were going. He would never make it to Fairbanks to a hospital even with a helicopter. He laid there while my mother Ron and I were driving up to him. And they gave him a lethal dose of pain medication. By the time we got there they had called the morgue to come get him and they were half way there. As we were carrying him out to the vehicle for transport up to Fairbanks Jim bangs Paps head on the cornor of the dresser. I kept expecting pap to wake up and smack him across the face. But of course it didn’t. at that moment it was not anything we just gave a look at my uncle and kept on with what was going on. Mom and my grandmother sat in the kitchen crying. He was off. As we sat around in that cold house the rest of the morning. I suddenly let out a belly laugh like my grandfather used to do when I think about the strange events of getting him out there. Everyone looks at me in the oddest way. And I explain about Jim hitting Pap’s head and how I was half expecting him to hit him and was just imagining the look on Pap’s face as a ghost upon witnessing that event. Then my grandmother lets out a laugh and my uncle Ron and my mother. Cause as we look over at Jim all of us had been thinking that EXACT same thing at that moment even Jim, and it was just so strange it was funny. Again we all expected to see Paps ghost appear Just roaring in laughter at Jims expense. Poor Uncle Jim. In the end he got the last laugh. The normal stuff continued. My grandma opted for cremation as my grandfather’s final wishes were to be spread on his hunting grounds. It was something we were going to do the next summer. Always the next summer and the next summer… it just didn’t happen. More on that later.
I did one semester at UAA and was utterly failing. I lost all my credits from the cal state system, I was absent a lot because of stuff with my grandfather, and I had no luck getting an advisor. So I quit. Instead I got a job at a local OfficeMax on the retail floor. It was not much but it was a job that was close by my home and one I could do through the winter and summer. So that was a plus. I moved up to working the electronics section, but still had to do the furniture cause I was one of the few guys at the place that could do the heavy lifting at night. Keep in mind I’m all of 5’8” and around 250lbs at that time. I was not a strong man by any means. Lol I just happened to be the GUY that was there and so it became the guy who was asked to do it. Retail is not the most rewarding of jobs, but its good money and its something one can do and not really have to THINK a whole lot. It’s a matter of giving someone what they already want or they would not be there in the first place. Not too hard a concept. After trying to work and go to school was ending up badly I eventually left college altogether and just started doing more and more shifts. Much to my own disgust, because I was still living with my mother in a very small 2 bedroom apartment.
I got through a full year at OfficeMAX and the manager and I came to blows. I want to tell myself it was not because he was a black ignorant bastard, just an ignorant bastard. But I know part of it was that he was black. It’s a notion I TRY very hard not to give into. Racism is not a fair thing, but I know it’s in me to some extent cause when I get REALLY mad it comes out. Be it native, or black, or Foreign in general. It hits. Now I know MANY mixed race peoples and have loved one native woman as close as family myself, but I still sit on these feelings about many of them I have a hard time defeating within myself. Ultimately I was fired from Officemax or rather I was given the choice to quit or be fired. I quit.
At this point I didn’t know what to do. I started looking again and also started back at college for another semester. Some time goes by and I get contacted by my direct manager from Officemax and she tells me her and several others are going to be opening a new CompUSA in anchorage and asked if I would be interested in working with them. I jumped on the chance to work from the ground up, and was doubly reassured because the store manager that fired me was NOT going to be a part of the operation. SO that continued my Retail life once more.
CompUSA. Lol Well it was a great place to work for a while. Grand opening was spectacular in Alaska. We were a community with a lot of money to spend and not much technology yet in the hands of the public. So it was a growing field. I was quick and knowledgeable on the retail floor and had a knack with the people coming in showing them what they really wanted not just what they think they wanted. I had several local people that just would not talk to anyone but me, and that carried with it a certain amount of pride for me. Over time I progressed through the store ranks from floor, to software, to upgrades, to the tech shop, to inventory control, and finally tech administrator. All in all I was there a little over a year and a half. Trained about a dozen people and repaired hundreds of machines. It came to a point I realized I could be doing so much more if I did not have to deal with the retail part of the business so much. And I left CompUSA for bigger and better things. I went to work for myself. First doing small jobs at locations like where my uncle and mother worked. Then later doing full contract jobs on the north slope and on the Alyeska pipeline. Fantastic money. Life changing money really…
Mom really wanted a house, so we started looking with my uncle and grandmother around every weekend, and finally we found just the right place. It was a fixer upper yes, but it was a home. A real true home. It turned out the one we loved the most was one that my uncle Ron had known them and they were just needing to sell it asap as they were leaving the state. So we got a really good deal. (better than our realtor wanted cause it cut his commission) in the end we got the place for $180,000. My uncle put down $30k and I put down $10, and my mother another $10. In the end we got a great house (2 levels) {4 bedrooms 2 living rooms, 2 bath, 1 laundry room, 1 kitchen, and a large front and back yard.} I basically laid claim to the downstairs as it was almost like an apartment in itself. And that has been my home ever since. Still with my mother yes, but we really do not see each other much. Plus the added benefit we are not bumping into each other all the time as we were in the apartment. Was I disappointed that I was going to be with my mother yet again? YES. But at the same time when I looked at what we were paying in rent for nothing, now we had a mortgage at the same price and we owned something. SO I relented to the will of my family.
Eventually life got pretty good again. Work was steady, people in my life, doing things for my Uncle when he is out of town. Going up during free time to spend with my other uncle and grandmother in Cantwell. Things were what I would call normal. Possibly for the first time in a long time. It was also soon to be the last time in a long time.
2000 The turn of the millennia came and went, and with it my naive sense of live. My Grandmothers brother got deathly sick. He had been ill off and on for years but he was the last of her direct family and she wanted to be with him, so she was getting ready to head down to PA while he was on his deathbed from cancer. On her way she stopped overnight in Anchorage as she was traveling with my Uncle Ron and he had 1 more day of work. Plus its 4 hours from where she lives driving time, so yea I drove up and got her and my uncle Ron was taking her down to PA. That night Uncle Clair died, and my grandmothers light defused I guess is how you would put it. She was so looking forward to seeing him. And in an instant I watched her face change into terror. Griving she handed my mother the phone walked into a cornor of the room, and sat crying. The next day I take her and my uncle Ron to the airport, give her a hug and tell her I will see her when she gets home. She nodded and walked off. That would be the last day I would see her.
Upon reaching PA and getting settled in at the hotel, she had a massive stroke and was unable to move. My uncle finally got hotel security to let him into her room and they found her and took her to the hospital. She kept showing signs she may get better over the next month or so, while my uncle Ron took care of things for Clairs funeral. She saw most of the family down there, and we are told she will come home soon, so no need to come down. Her mind was going, she kept saying to people my mother or I was there that we just were around the corner or something. The doctor said it was things firing in her mind, that she was remembering things and thinking we were there. But ultimately the day before she was to return back to Alaska, she had a massive stroke again, and died this time.
My uncle Ron returned with her cremated remains to spread with my grandfathers. (Again more on that later because that too did not happen again for a while) So it was my mother, her two brothers and I. The lawyers get involved to figure things out and I basically tell them I want nothing to do with any of it. Make it simple and leave it to the 3 siblings inherit. I lost a lot of my ambition to do well in life. So much had been happening and it was feeling like ok family dying, they had a good long life it was their time, life is normal, I’m just grieving I’ll get over it. I return to college again, trying to find my direction in life. Trying to make sence of things. 2000 ends with the first Christmas without my grandmother being here. A very strange feeling because life was just not as sweet.
Prior to this a family friend’s child, Amie, was on her own and had a newborn. I looked at her as a new beginning. I wanted so bad to be her husband, but not really for her. Mostly because she had a child, Tyler, that needed someone to provide for him, and I felt needed a father. And though I thought I loved Amie, I don’t think it was really a love that would have lasted. Because I didn’t know what love was. I may still not know to be truthful. Eventually She meet someone and they got close and married. While I was still close to her, it was never quite the same between us. That is until the end of march 2001.
My mother was going on a trip to Florida for a conference, and my Uncle Ron had been fighting some bug for a while and we had not seen him. She had called to tell him she was going to be gone for a while and that Mom and I were going to be going out to dinner and to a few shows that weekend, and that he was welcome to join us if he wanted to see her before she went. Well he called her and was very sick. He had a scratchy throat sound to his voice and he said he had this before it was something he had to go to the doctors to take care of and would when his doctor came home. I jokingly said something like well I don’t want to come over and find you dead or something you idiot you need to go to the doctor, and he said Well I just said I was going to go I just need to wait a bit. OK well, that’s fine. So we have our weekend together and before mom leaves she calls over to check on him. No answer… we didn’t think much of it at the time, he could have been out, or with other friends whatever… I told mom last thing that I would go over and check on him to see whats up. She was happy with that. So off mom goes to Florida. On my way home I stop off at my uncles place that afternoon.
As I pull up his car is outside, which was not too much a surprise cause he had 2 vehicles and the truck was normally in the garage. So I walk up and ring the doorbell first. As I was unlocking the door I poke my head in and hear the TV, and I yell in Its me… Just dropping by to see how things are. No answer. I look in the garage the blazer is there. As I walk up the stairs to the 2nd floor I see his bedroom light on and the TV on in there I start walking towards it and look forward. In the shadows of the bathroom I see a shape on the floor and within a second I see it’s my uncle Ron. I stop in my tracks and say that’s not god dam funny Ron! After all the last thing I said to him was I didn’t want to find him dead, and knowing my family I thought he was pulling a practical joke on me. You would just have had to know my uncles… But as I approached him something wasn’t right. I touched him and he was cold. I tried to move him from a seated position and he was stiff as a board. He was long dead. I sat there for probably 5 mins with his body on my lap staring down into his dead eyes, begging god to just let him be ok. Please go wake up Ron, please wake up. PLEASE. Crying I push him back, and walk up to the phone on the 3rd level. I call 911, and they ask me what the emergency is. I can hardly speak. I apologize to the lady asking I didn’t know what else to do. That I found my uncle dead and I didn’t know who to call. She said some other things, but I couldn’t hardly even tell her where I was. They had to trace the call. I was completely shutting down. Physically, emotionally, everything. I was shutting down.
I was able to walk downstairs and let the police in and then I got off the phone. They took it from there as I stood in the dining room looking down at the paramedics come in. the Police asked me a few questions and I answered almost automatically and unknowing.. I hear them break my Uncles bones in order to get him on the stretcher. I see him in the light of th room as they reposition him and for the first time see the discoloration of his face and hands. He had been dead for several days. As the police was talking to me I walked over to the answer machine and press play. I hear the message from my mom and I a few days prior. Knowing that was around when he probably died. I looked up at the police officer and was gone. I don’t remember why, but they would not leave me there alone. I handed them my mother’s Itinerary and said she is gone. They asked if I had anyone else in the state and they called up to my Uncle Jim. Thus informing him of his brothers death and my state upon finding him. They would not leave me alone. And all I wanted to do was go home. The only person I could call was Amie and her mother. Amie got there after Ron was gone, but she had never seen me like this. I don’t even remember much more but she said upon seeing me I was as white as a ghost myself. She got me home and her mother came home with me. My Uncle Jim had not arrived many many hours later. After 8 hours went by I know something was wrong there too. My mother had not yet arrived in Florida yet and I had yet to talk to Jim myself. I called and called and called. Back then we didn’t have cell phones on every person. They were still more a business expense, so the only two that had em were myself and my Uncle Ron. My Uncle Jim and My mother had yet to embrace this convenience.
Finally Terisa (Amies Mother) called the police again to find out if there was anything on my uncle Jim. As by this time it was 10 hours after finding my Uncle Ron and its only a 4 hour drive. A few more mins go by and we get a call back that my uncle Jim had hit the train coming down and was being helicoptered to the Hospital. Terisa was totally in shock not knowing how to tell me. It only took a look. And I knew. I remember a vision of my grandmother telling me it was not over yet, to be strong and you will get through this. IDK if it was real or just my imagination. I’m sure it was all in my mind. Once we got word of my uncles arrival at the hospital we drove down to there and he was pretty banged up, but was alive. I sat there near comatose, but my uncle Jim was alive. Broken ribs, very scared up arms and face from the broken glass. But he was alive. Once I was able to talk to him they sedated him and told us to go home. That he would be much better once they did some stiches and got him checked into the hospital.
When we got home Mom called to say she got to Florida and was settled in at the hotel. Terisa answered the phone and mom asked what happened that she was there? The Story of the night was told to her from Terisa and my mothers screams I could hear from across the room from the phone. Insisting on talking to me I answered her questions 1 by 1 and she reassured me she was coming home as soon as she could. Upon hearing my mother’s voice I was gone. I collapsed. All I remember is the screams of my mother from the phone and the voices of Amie and Terisa as they reassure her I was ok just asleep. The next day we went to pickup mom at the airport just 24hrs after I dropped her off and the beginning of this nightmare. It was April 1st 2001. Any other year had someone told me this would be what was happening now I would have been all HA HA HA April fools!! But this day was all too real. Too real.
As my Uncle Jim slowly got better I had to get him a new car to go home with. He didn’t want either of my uncle Rons vehicles. Which would have made things easier? So I took my uncles vehicles and got him a station wagon that was similar to the one he had. It was the 90s style Ford Taurus design, but the Mercury model that I got him. A little interior work needed done but all in all he was happy with it.
In turn I got rid of my car and my mother’s clunker and we kept my uncle Rons vehicles. Both we still drive today. Ron died with no will, so we just played it by year. Since he chose to have Grandma cremated we figured it was good enough for him as well. So now we had 3 of our relatives cremated and whose ashes were to be spread. My mother was named the executor by the court because my uncle Jim was incapacitated in the hospital at the time. Over the next several months we got rid of all the belongings in Rons condo, and took some of it and put it in our retrospective homes in Cantwell and Anchorage. Making the house Mom and I bought all the more crowded with THINGS!
The rest was donated or trashed. And so very quickly his condo was gone from our lives, almost as fast as it seemed we lost him.
During this period a young girl came into my life. A young women that was magical In all our lives really. She was the teenage daughter of one of our closest friends from work, and quickly she became like a little sister to me. She was a wonderful kid that was always eger to help out or interested in what was going on with everyone. Something about her reminded me of myself at that age. Very smart yet still very shy around people she didn’t know. But she loved games and cards, and anything that we could do for family nights. Anything that made our families closer, she was often behind it. Krystal was a very sweet girl in a world of turmoil to me; Quickly becoming my center if you will. Because when Things got bad I just needed to think of something for her or whatever and things would get better. Sister, daughter, Friend, whatever. It was a source of a good feeling that I treasured. At this point in my life I needed to be someone good for someone else. I needed to allow what I felt for my uncle Ron to live in myself with another. She became that focus of attention.
Sept 11th 2001 My birthday. A year in turmoil capped with a birthday surprise. The deaths of thousands on a day that forever will be seen as a day of mourning from this time forth. I watch on TV as I witness a horror that makes my own grief pale in comparison. I sat there unbelieving, alone. My mother was working, My uncle in Cantwell, and Krystal in school. Thankfully she was. For on that day I lost what was left of my faith in god. I opened my eyes to the cruelty of the world. I knew for the first time in my life, that THIS is all we have, and I witness the death of countless thousands as those buildings fell to the ground. What seemed to be tears falling like rain from a strangling cloud? I sat glued to the TV, knowing that like myself, we are all alone in existence. All of us powerless to stop anything. All of us, weak pathetic beings that prey to a god that is as indifferent to us as we to the atoms that make up our existence. Sept 11th 2001 was the day the man that Bill Wheeler once was, died. No religion, no friendship, no faith, no law, no authority, nothing… Nothing was going to change this last year. Nothing. All that was left in me that day was rage and anger. The full force of my destructive nature as man released in a rage that near nothing was going to stop. That was until I saw Krystal crying coming home from school. It was at that point I knew I need to be strong and not allow her to see me like that. That I had to be the big brother she needed me to be and let her know that life would continue for all of us. That we would get through this. And we all did. Together.
Sorry that’s a long chapter for a short period of my life. It took a long time to write as it was very emotional for me to relive a lot of that. But at the same time to write it down also seems to feel better. Just to make a record of it. Even though only a few people will ever see it. Its something. In the coming years things seemed to get better and I’ll touch on some of that in the next part. As well as more recent periods that have again thrown my life in disarray. And new friendships that Today I know will never be as close as I once had with people, but none the less just as important to me now as the others once were then…
My best friend Ryan had become a drug addict, and his father a convicted sex offender. WTF? It was like I came back to a strange F’ed up world that was just a resemblance of my childhood world. And everything, I mean EVERYTHING seemed smaller to me. My adventurous area in California stretched from Long Beach to the Mohave Desert; A few hundred sqr miles really. Anchorage is a small city. Nowhere near the size of L.A.Metro area. From one end to the other is only a 15 min ride. Lol So yea. Big adjustment for me coming back.
Mom still had not found a place to live and our furniture still had not made it to Alaska yet. It was summer, so as tradition, I was being sent up to my grandparents place again. I was 22 and needed work. So I started working at the local lodge / bar doing painting, cleaning, general maintenance, whatever odd jobs needed done. The other major thing that happened during this time is we found out my Grandfather had Cancer. Starting in the Prostrate and moving to the liver and pancreas. So every week I drove him and my Grandmother to Fairbanks for Chemotherapy. I was slowly watching the man die more every day. It was extremely hard. My grandmother was in denial. She felt her faith would never take him from her. And that all this would pay off and he would beat this. Aug rolled around and the summer job was over in Cantwell. My uncle Jim who was also living with my Grandparents in Cantwell and was the postmaster was going to take over taking his father to treatments and I was to go back to Anchorage. Mom got us a nice 2 bedroom apartment and I started unpacking settling in. I applied at University of Alaska Anchorage, and tried to transfer credits… (again I want to cover that later cause it was a huge mess) Needless to say I didn’t get much from the California system to follow me. So I had to take GERs over again. I took the basics the first semester figuring I would test out of some of them once I got an advisor. Sept 1994, My birthday was on the 11th and we went up to Cantwell with all my family to celebrate. My grandfather was really bad. Just the month away he got so much worse. Being away made it even clearer than when I was there with him watching it happen slowly. But he kept fighting. Unfortunately the last conversation I had with him was rather prophetic. He really didn’t like that I was going into a computer science career path. In retrospect I have to agree it was the biggest mistake, but I didn’t know much else. The aurgument was basically me yeling at him for trying to tell me something about a life he knows nothing about. And that I am not my uncle Ron and I am not cut out to be an engineer. It would be the last words I would say to the man face to face. We returned to Anchorage and the next week we got a call that we should come back up. I told mom to go with Ron and I would get up after my test. My grandfather got on the phone and told me to stay here and do my test at the protest of my Uncle Jim. Well my mother and Ron said they would wait too, if it was ok with Pap. On the 21st we headed up early morning to get up there asap. When we arrived 4 hours later in Cantwell we see Jim out walking on the road. Ron asked him something I didn’t hear what, and we headed into the house. My grandfather was in so much pain the night before they called the local doctor down from Healy another 45 mins north. And in the end he said there was nothing they could do for him. We were going. He would never make it to Fairbanks to a hospital even with a helicopter. He laid there while my mother Ron and I were driving up to him. And they gave him a lethal dose of pain medication. By the time we got there they had called the morgue to come get him and they were half way there. As we were carrying him out to the vehicle for transport up to Fairbanks Jim bangs Paps head on the cornor of the dresser. I kept expecting pap to wake up and smack him across the face. But of course it didn’t. at that moment it was not anything we just gave a look at my uncle and kept on with what was going on. Mom and my grandmother sat in the kitchen crying. He was off. As we sat around in that cold house the rest of the morning. I suddenly let out a belly laugh like my grandfather used to do when I think about the strange events of getting him out there. Everyone looks at me in the oddest way. And I explain about Jim hitting Pap’s head and how I was half expecting him to hit him and was just imagining the look on Pap’s face as a ghost upon witnessing that event. Then my grandmother lets out a laugh and my uncle Ron and my mother. Cause as we look over at Jim all of us had been thinking that EXACT same thing at that moment even Jim, and it was just so strange it was funny. Again we all expected to see Paps ghost appear Just roaring in laughter at Jims expense. Poor Uncle Jim. In the end he got the last laugh. The normal stuff continued. My grandma opted for cremation as my grandfather’s final wishes were to be spread on his hunting grounds. It was something we were going to do the next summer. Always the next summer and the next summer… it just didn’t happen. More on that later.
I did one semester at UAA and was utterly failing. I lost all my credits from the cal state system, I was absent a lot because of stuff with my grandfather, and I had no luck getting an advisor. So I quit. Instead I got a job at a local OfficeMax on the retail floor. It was not much but it was a job that was close by my home and one I could do through the winter and summer. So that was a plus. I moved up to working the electronics section, but still had to do the furniture cause I was one of the few guys at the place that could do the heavy lifting at night. Keep in mind I’m all of 5’8” and around 250lbs at that time. I was not a strong man by any means. Lol I just happened to be the GUY that was there and so it became the guy who was asked to do it. Retail is not the most rewarding of jobs, but its good money and its something one can do and not really have to THINK a whole lot. It’s a matter of giving someone what they already want or they would not be there in the first place. Not too hard a concept. After trying to work and go to school was ending up badly I eventually left college altogether and just started doing more and more shifts. Much to my own disgust, because I was still living with my mother in a very small 2 bedroom apartment.
I got through a full year at OfficeMAX and the manager and I came to blows. I want to tell myself it was not because he was a black ignorant bastard, just an ignorant bastard. But I know part of it was that he was black. It’s a notion I TRY very hard not to give into. Racism is not a fair thing, but I know it’s in me to some extent cause when I get REALLY mad it comes out. Be it native, or black, or Foreign in general. It hits. Now I know MANY mixed race peoples and have loved one native woman as close as family myself, but I still sit on these feelings about many of them I have a hard time defeating within myself. Ultimately I was fired from Officemax or rather I was given the choice to quit or be fired. I quit.
At this point I didn’t know what to do. I started looking again and also started back at college for another semester. Some time goes by and I get contacted by my direct manager from Officemax and she tells me her and several others are going to be opening a new CompUSA in anchorage and asked if I would be interested in working with them. I jumped on the chance to work from the ground up, and was doubly reassured because the store manager that fired me was NOT going to be a part of the operation. SO that continued my Retail life once more.
CompUSA. Lol Well it was a great place to work for a while. Grand opening was spectacular in Alaska. We were a community with a lot of money to spend and not much technology yet in the hands of the public. So it was a growing field. I was quick and knowledgeable on the retail floor and had a knack with the people coming in showing them what they really wanted not just what they think they wanted. I had several local people that just would not talk to anyone but me, and that carried with it a certain amount of pride for me. Over time I progressed through the store ranks from floor, to software, to upgrades, to the tech shop, to inventory control, and finally tech administrator. All in all I was there a little over a year and a half. Trained about a dozen people and repaired hundreds of machines. It came to a point I realized I could be doing so much more if I did not have to deal with the retail part of the business so much. And I left CompUSA for bigger and better things. I went to work for myself. First doing small jobs at locations like where my uncle and mother worked. Then later doing full contract jobs on the north slope and on the Alyeska pipeline. Fantastic money. Life changing money really…
Mom really wanted a house, so we started looking with my uncle and grandmother around every weekend, and finally we found just the right place. It was a fixer upper yes, but it was a home. A real true home. It turned out the one we loved the most was one that my uncle Ron had known them and they were just needing to sell it asap as they were leaving the state. So we got a really good deal. (better than our realtor wanted cause it cut his commission) in the end we got the place for $180,000. My uncle put down $30k and I put down $10, and my mother another $10. In the end we got a great house (2 levels) {4 bedrooms 2 living rooms, 2 bath, 1 laundry room, 1 kitchen, and a large front and back yard.} I basically laid claim to the downstairs as it was almost like an apartment in itself. And that has been my home ever since. Still with my mother yes, but we really do not see each other much. Plus the added benefit we are not bumping into each other all the time as we were in the apartment. Was I disappointed that I was going to be with my mother yet again? YES. But at the same time when I looked at what we were paying in rent for nothing, now we had a mortgage at the same price and we owned something. SO I relented to the will of my family.
Eventually life got pretty good again. Work was steady, people in my life, doing things for my Uncle when he is out of town. Going up during free time to spend with my other uncle and grandmother in Cantwell. Things were what I would call normal. Possibly for the first time in a long time. It was also soon to be the last time in a long time.
2000 The turn of the millennia came and went, and with it my naive sense of live. My Grandmothers brother got deathly sick. He had been ill off and on for years but he was the last of her direct family and she wanted to be with him, so she was getting ready to head down to PA while he was on his deathbed from cancer. On her way she stopped overnight in Anchorage as she was traveling with my Uncle Ron and he had 1 more day of work. Plus its 4 hours from where she lives driving time, so yea I drove up and got her and my uncle Ron was taking her down to PA. That night Uncle Clair died, and my grandmothers light defused I guess is how you would put it. She was so looking forward to seeing him. And in an instant I watched her face change into terror. Griving she handed my mother the phone walked into a cornor of the room, and sat crying. The next day I take her and my uncle Ron to the airport, give her a hug and tell her I will see her when she gets home. She nodded and walked off. That would be the last day I would see her.
Upon reaching PA and getting settled in at the hotel, she had a massive stroke and was unable to move. My uncle finally got hotel security to let him into her room and they found her and took her to the hospital. She kept showing signs she may get better over the next month or so, while my uncle Ron took care of things for Clairs funeral. She saw most of the family down there, and we are told she will come home soon, so no need to come down. Her mind was going, she kept saying to people my mother or I was there that we just were around the corner or something. The doctor said it was things firing in her mind, that she was remembering things and thinking we were there. But ultimately the day before she was to return back to Alaska, she had a massive stroke again, and died this time.
My uncle Ron returned with her cremated remains to spread with my grandfathers. (Again more on that later because that too did not happen again for a while) So it was my mother, her two brothers and I. The lawyers get involved to figure things out and I basically tell them I want nothing to do with any of it. Make it simple and leave it to the 3 siblings inherit. I lost a lot of my ambition to do well in life. So much had been happening and it was feeling like ok family dying, they had a good long life it was their time, life is normal, I’m just grieving I’ll get over it. I return to college again, trying to find my direction in life. Trying to make sence of things. 2000 ends with the first Christmas without my grandmother being here. A very strange feeling because life was just not as sweet.
Prior to this a family friend’s child, Amie, was on her own and had a newborn. I looked at her as a new beginning. I wanted so bad to be her husband, but not really for her. Mostly because she had a child, Tyler, that needed someone to provide for him, and I felt needed a father. And though I thought I loved Amie, I don’t think it was really a love that would have lasted. Because I didn’t know what love was. I may still not know to be truthful. Eventually She meet someone and they got close and married. While I was still close to her, it was never quite the same between us. That is until the end of march 2001.
My mother was going on a trip to Florida for a conference, and my Uncle Ron had been fighting some bug for a while and we had not seen him. She had called to tell him she was going to be gone for a while and that Mom and I were going to be going out to dinner and to a few shows that weekend, and that he was welcome to join us if he wanted to see her before she went. Well he called her and was very sick. He had a scratchy throat sound to his voice and he said he had this before it was something he had to go to the doctors to take care of and would when his doctor came home. I jokingly said something like well I don’t want to come over and find you dead or something you idiot you need to go to the doctor, and he said Well I just said I was going to go I just need to wait a bit. OK well, that’s fine. So we have our weekend together and before mom leaves she calls over to check on him. No answer… we didn’t think much of it at the time, he could have been out, or with other friends whatever… I told mom last thing that I would go over and check on him to see whats up. She was happy with that. So off mom goes to Florida. On my way home I stop off at my uncles place that afternoon.
As I pull up his car is outside, which was not too much a surprise cause he had 2 vehicles and the truck was normally in the garage. So I walk up and ring the doorbell first. As I was unlocking the door I poke my head in and hear the TV, and I yell in Its me… Just dropping by to see how things are. No answer. I look in the garage the blazer is there. As I walk up the stairs to the 2nd floor I see his bedroom light on and the TV on in there I start walking towards it and look forward. In the shadows of the bathroom I see a shape on the floor and within a second I see it’s my uncle Ron. I stop in my tracks and say that’s not god dam funny Ron! After all the last thing I said to him was I didn’t want to find him dead, and knowing my family I thought he was pulling a practical joke on me. You would just have had to know my uncles… But as I approached him something wasn’t right. I touched him and he was cold. I tried to move him from a seated position and he was stiff as a board. He was long dead. I sat there for probably 5 mins with his body on my lap staring down into his dead eyes, begging god to just let him be ok. Please go wake up Ron, please wake up. PLEASE. Crying I push him back, and walk up to the phone on the 3rd level. I call 911, and they ask me what the emergency is. I can hardly speak. I apologize to the lady asking I didn’t know what else to do. That I found my uncle dead and I didn’t know who to call. She said some other things, but I couldn’t hardly even tell her where I was. They had to trace the call. I was completely shutting down. Physically, emotionally, everything. I was shutting down.
I was able to walk downstairs and let the police in and then I got off the phone. They took it from there as I stood in the dining room looking down at the paramedics come in. the Police asked me a few questions and I answered almost automatically and unknowing.. I hear them break my Uncles bones in order to get him on the stretcher. I see him in the light of th room as they reposition him and for the first time see the discoloration of his face and hands. He had been dead for several days. As the police was talking to me I walked over to the answer machine and press play. I hear the message from my mom and I a few days prior. Knowing that was around when he probably died. I looked up at the police officer and was gone. I don’t remember why, but they would not leave me there alone. I handed them my mother’s Itinerary and said she is gone. They asked if I had anyone else in the state and they called up to my Uncle Jim. Thus informing him of his brothers death and my state upon finding him. They would not leave me alone. And all I wanted to do was go home. The only person I could call was Amie and her mother. Amie got there after Ron was gone, but she had never seen me like this. I don’t even remember much more but she said upon seeing me I was as white as a ghost myself. She got me home and her mother came home with me. My Uncle Jim had not arrived many many hours later. After 8 hours went by I know something was wrong there too. My mother had not yet arrived in Florida yet and I had yet to talk to Jim myself. I called and called and called. Back then we didn’t have cell phones on every person. They were still more a business expense, so the only two that had em were myself and my Uncle Ron. My Uncle Jim and My mother had yet to embrace this convenience.
Finally Terisa (Amies Mother) called the police again to find out if there was anything on my uncle Jim. As by this time it was 10 hours after finding my Uncle Ron and its only a 4 hour drive. A few more mins go by and we get a call back that my uncle Jim had hit the train coming down and was being helicoptered to the Hospital. Terisa was totally in shock not knowing how to tell me. It only took a look. And I knew. I remember a vision of my grandmother telling me it was not over yet, to be strong and you will get through this. IDK if it was real or just my imagination. I’m sure it was all in my mind. Once we got word of my uncles arrival at the hospital we drove down to there and he was pretty banged up, but was alive. I sat there near comatose, but my uncle Jim was alive. Broken ribs, very scared up arms and face from the broken glass. But he was alive. Once I was able to talk to him they sedated him and told us to go home. That he would be much better once they did some stiches and got him checked into the hospital.
When we got home Mom called to say she got to Florida and was settled in at the hotel. Terisa answered the phone and mom asked what happened that she was there? The Story of the night was told to her from Terisa and my mothers screams I could hear from across the room from the phone. Insisting on talking to me I answered her questions 1 by 1 and she reassured me she was coming home as soon as she could. Upon hearing my mother’s voice I was gone. I collapsed. All I remember is the screams of my mother from the phone and the voices of Amie and Terisa as they reassure her I was ok just asleep. The next day we went to pickup mom at the airport just 24hrs after I dropped her off and the beginning of this nightmare. It was April 1st 2001. Any other year had someone told me this would be what was happening now I would have been all HA HA HA April fools!! But this day was all too real. Too real.
As my Uncle Jim slowly got better I had to get him a new car to go home with. He didn’t want either of my uncle Rons vehicles. Which would have made things easier? So I took my uncles vehicles and got him a station wagon that was similar to the one he had. It was the 90s style Ford Taurus design, but the Mercury model that I got him. A little interior work needed done but all in all he was happy with it.
In turn I got rid of my car and my mother’s clunker and we kept my uncle Rons vehicles. Both we still drive today. Ron died with no will, so we just played it by year. Since he chose to have Grandma cremated we figured it was good enough for him as well. So now we had 3 of our relatives cremated and whose ashes were to be spread. My mother was named the executor by the court because my uncle Jim was incapacitated in the hospital at the time. Over the next several months we got rid of all the belongings in Rons condo, and took some of it and put it in our retrospective homes in Cantwell and Anchorage. Making the house Mom and I bought all the more crowded with THINGS!
The rest was donated or trashed. And so very quickly his condo was gone from our lives, almost as fast as it seemed we lost him.
During this period a young girl came into my life. A young women that was magical In all our lives really. She was the teenage daughter of one of our closest friends from work, and quickly she became like a little sister to me. She was a wonderful kid that was always eger to help out or interested in what was going on with everyone. Something about her reminded me of myself at that age. Very smart yet still very shy around people she didn’t know. But she loved games and cards, and anything that we could do for family nights. Anything that made our families closer, she was often behind it. Krystal was a very sweet girl in a world of turmoil to me; Quickly becoming my center if you will. Because when Things got bad I just needed to think of something for her or whatever and things would get better. Sister, daughter, Friend, whatever. It was a source of a good feeling that I treasured. At this point in my life I needed to be someone good for someone else. I needed to allow what I felt for my uncle Ron to live in myself with another. She became that focus of attention.
Sept 11th 2001 My birthday. A year in turmoil capped with a birthday surprise. The deaths of thousands on a day that forever will be seen as a day of mourning from this time forth. I watch on TV as I witness a horror that makes my own grief pale in comparison. I sat there unbelieving, alone. My mother was working, My uncle in Cantwell, and Krystal in school. Thankfully she was. For on that day I lost what was left of my faith in god. I opened my eyes to the cruelty of the world. I knew for the first time in my life, that THIS is all we have, and I witness the death of countless thousands as those buildings fell to the ground. What seemed to be tears falling like rain from a strangling cloud? I sat glued to the TV, knowing that like myself, we are all alone in existence. All of us powerless to stop anything. All of us, weak pathetic beings that prey to a god that is as indifferent to us as we to the atoms that make up our existence. Sept 11th 2001 was the day the man that Bill Wheeler once was, died. No religion, no friendship, no faith, no law, no authority, nothing… Nothing was going to change this last year. Nothing. All that was left in me that day was rage and anger. The full force of my destructive nature as man released in a rage that near nothing was going to stop. That was until I saw Krystal crying coming home from school. It was at that point I knew I need to be strong and not allow her to see me like that. That I had to be the big brother she needed me to be and let her know that life would continue for all of us. That we would get through this. And we all did. Together.
Sorry that’s a long chapter for a short period of my life. It took a long time to write as it was very emotional for me to relive a lot of that. But at the same time to write it down also seems to feel better. Just to make a record of it. Even though only a few people will ever see it. Its something. In the coming years things seemed to get better and I’ll touch on some of that in the next part. As well as more recent periods that have again thrown my life in disarray. And new friendships that Today I know will never be as close as I once had with people, but none the less just as important to me now as the others once were then…
Friday, April 16, 2010
losing it all, the pain of being ignored and rejected.
I don't wanna talk,
About the things we've gone through.
Though it's hurting me,
Now it's history.
I've played all my cards.
And that's what you've done too.
Nothing more to say,
No more ace to play.
The winner takes it all.
The loser standing small.
Beside the victory,
That's my destiny.
I had you in my heart
Thinking you belonged there
I figured it made sense
Building that a fence
Building that a home
Thinking I'd be strong there.
But I was a fool.
Playing by the rules.
The gods may throw a dice.
Their minds as cold as ice.
And someone way down here,
Loses someone dear.
The winner takes it all
The loser has to fall.
It's simple and it's plain.
Why should I complain.
But tell me does he kiss
Like I used to kiss you?
Does it feel the same
When he calls your name?
Somewhere deep inside.
You must know I miss you.
But what can I say?
Rules must be obeyed.
The judges will decide.
The likes of me abide.
Spectators of the show,
Always staying low.
The game is on again.
A lover or a friend?
A big thing or a small?
The winner takes it all.
I don't wanna talk
Cause it makes me feel sad
And I understand,
You've come to shake my hand.
I apologize,
If it makes you feel bad.
Seeing me so tense,
With no self-confidence.
But you see
The winner takes it all!
The winner takes it all!
The game is on again.
A lover or a friend?
A big thing or a small?
The winner takes it ALLLLLLLLLLL!
The winner takes it alllllllll........
About the things we've gone through.
Though it's hurting me,
Now it's history.
I've played all my cards.
And that's what you've done too.
Nothing more to say,
No more ace to play.
The winner takes it all.
The loser standing small.
Beside the victory,
That's my destiny.
I had you in my heart
Thinking you belonged there
I figured it made sense
Building that a fence
Building that a home
Thinking I'd be strong there.
But I was a fool.
Playing by the rules.
The gods may throw a dice.
Their minds as cold as ice.
And someone way down here,
Loses someone dear.
The winner takes it all
The loser has to fall.
It's simple and it's plain.
Why should I complain.
But tell me does he kiss
Like I used to kiss you?
Does it feel the same
When he calls your name?
Somewhere deep inside.
You must know I miss you.
But what can I say?
Rules must be obeyed.
The judges will decide.
The likes of me abide.
Spectators of the show,
Always staying low.
The game is on again.
A lover or a friend?
A big thing or a small?
The winner takes it all.
I don't wanna talk
Cause it makes me feel sad
And I understand,
You've come to shake my hand.
I apologize,
If it makes you feel bad.
Seeing me so tense,
With no self-confidence.
But you see
The winner takes it all!
The winner takes it all!
The game is on again.
A lover or a friend?
A big thing or a small?
The winner takes it ALLLLLLLLLLL!
The winner takes it alllllllll........
Monday, April 12, 2010
Story of my life Part 2
So lets see. 1991 Graduation, California…
The rest of 1991 I played. I got a job at Universal Studios in California. It was not for long, just one season, but it was fun to be an insider there. The only days I hated were Carnival days. Lol Something I still kinda cringe at when I go to any state fair. Bad flashbacks lol Besides that however it was really cool to be backlot, and being in the eating areas for employees and never know who was going to sit down around you. Lol Trust me when the Beatle Juice Rock and Roll review was taken down at Universal a few years ago I was practically bawling cause those guys were FANTASTIC to be around. You have no idea the unedited versions of their shows the staff saw. Lmao. Anyway, from there I got a job out in the desert working at a video rental shop. Yea one of those guys like from Jay and Silent Bob movies. Lol But we had our fun all the same; like getting the only 18yr old kid to help people in the adult movie section. Lol As I think on that now I would never have done it to him, but back then it didn’t seem we had the same kind of weirdoes we had today. Or at least we didn’t know about it. We would just get a kick out of seeing him coming out of the section totatlly red faced…
I was wanting to get back to college and had saved up some money to do so, but hardly enough for CSUN (Cal State university Northridge), so I opped for community college. First starting at Antelope Valley College for Cal State GERs (General Education Requirements). GERS were like an extension of highschool for me. I picked up almost right were I left off. General ed stuff, photography, computer science, and academic life in general. Lol I excelled in computer science and started testing security with the administrator of the mainframe system. As we found faults we reported them and closed up what we found. A nice little hacking club emerged from this activity. Using the powerful VAX mainframe system to bang around in anything we had a fancy to mess with. Back then it was powerful, but now its hardly even a the power of a high end calculator. I continued working at the video store at night but went to college during the day. And in the computer lap all my free time. I met a young women there that I really liked and was tutoring. But it was very hard to get close to her because. Well her father was essentially the undertaker of the town. And that was a bit intimidating. Considering he had access to a cremation oven. Lol needless to say I was quite the gentlemen with her. Deedee was gorgeous. Blond, brown eyes, a little short. And loved to dress up.. very stylish. She had a giggle that was infectious, and a smile that would make anyone happy. I tutored her in Computer Science, but never really got the opportunity to become more than a friend with her. She had a bit of a jerk for a boyfriend, and I often was the shoulder to cry on. The big brother role again… But Allas that friendship was not one to last as that class ended we never saw each other on campus after.
The next year Mom and I decided we would move in to a better area closer to the valley. Santa Clarita Just north of the Valley and east of Valencia where six flags magic mountain is. I was lucky to be able to transfer my credits over to College of the Canyons in Valencia and continued school there. Valencia however I played. And played heavy. With six flags right outside my campus it was like OMG screw school… I also was swimming a lot, and was taking care of the apartment complex swimming pool. Our apartment was literally right over the pool, very nice. I made arrangements with the apt complex office to let me stay down there late at night if we agreed to keep noise levels down. So that started the midnight Hot tub group. Lol Which was just funny to me because no one ever asked if we could before, but the maintenance people closed the pool cause no one was there to lock it up after. So that became me once I got permission. In return I made sure the area was clean and properly PH balanced and secured at night. It was something fun to do. And then they didn’t need to have one of the maintenance people cleaning the pool because I did it for them.
Another event in my life was Green Dragon BBS. Lol remember this was 1993, the internet was hardly a glimmer yet, and the best we had was the UUNET with Archie and Veronica search engines… Compuserve or AOL was the two big web dial up companies and they were both paid for access. Green Dragon BBS was a Bulletin Board System, that had forums for discussion threads, downloads sections for pictures and games, and the ever popular Chat room. And it was all free to use. Lol Saying that now feels like I was in the dark ages or something. But in a way we were. The GDBBS was one of the biggest and best in the Valley at the time, and I got a moderator position, which was really cool for a geek like me. Using my Programing knowledge from College was a large plus for all the multiplayer TEXT games we played online back then. Lol thus was born Ingram. A handle more people in the world know me as then my real name.
Ingram, the Norse god of peace and fertility. In ancient Viking it was Ing Raham which literally means defender of the warrior’s daughter or virtue. In all reality I was me. A lonely guy looking for friends online; something that now is not too uncommon, but back then, extremely absurd. A lot of people I talked to back then were into games like gamma world or bards tale, whatever. Mostly mid evil games and role playing. So we did that online. With all this my education was quickly becoming secondary importance in my life. Though I kept passing, my grades did slip a good bit. My game plan at the time was to graduate with my 2 year degree and move to CSUN to finish my 4 year and I would crack down then… that was the plan at least… I loved College of the Canyons. Turns out it’s a popular place to film as well, cause I have seen it through the years in any number of TV shows as a set. With its Hills and natural atriums. Its Olympic pool that I was in DAILY doing laps. And the fantastic Rooftops that were absolutely the BEST place to be at night to see the stars. Needless to say outside of late at night I was not at the apartment complex much. I was really active. I was also in the best shape I ever was in my life.
Lastly something I forgot to mention from my Highschool days. I had my piece of shit Toyota Corolla. Thing was, back in highschool I had a little something added to it, that made it not so much a piece of shit as it became a rocket on wheels. Well for me at least… I always had a helmet in the car and shoulder straps installed. Why? Well we added a blower to the engine. A little switch that popped the RPMs up to about 10,000 without blowing it to pieces, and in turn made the 150MPH gauge click like crazy at the bottom of the speedometer. Meaning it was going faster than it could measure. So while it looked like a total piece of shit car, it sounded like a Cessna engine and was faster than anyone would believe. Especially with the window spoilers pushed out for high speed stability. Basically.. To keep it on the ground. Anyway I digress. My last little piece of rebellion was car racing out in the Mohave Desert. I didn’t make much, but I did have fun. Others were there for the dollars I was there for something to do. Reckless? Oh yea. More than one time I was scared out of my mind I was going to blow myself up or something. Especially when we were playing around with Gasinol. Basically a propane gasoline mix in a pressurized fuel tank. Yea. Risky shit. But the dust cloud that sucker threw up behind it was unbelievable… you know the opening of the old Knight Rider going through the desert? Well that was done with a timelapse. I actually did it and the dust. AHHHHHH… anyways… so that was 1992 and 1993. Then came 1994. I was starting my last semester and would have only 3 credits to makeup over summer for my degree. I was trying to get it in extra classes added to my schedule but didn’t have much success at that cause the workload was pretty heavy with 19 credits that semester. Especially considering what happened in January. The Northridge quake.
January 17th around 4:30am 1994. The world came crashing down around us. The hwy 14 fell on top of the Interstate 5 freeway cutting everything north off from the valley for months and months. And even when restored it was an hours long detour that used to take just a few mins. Buildings collapsed all around, roads cracking and opening, fires, looting. Total bedlam. Phenomenal damage, No water, no power, no gas for cooking not much of anything but each other. I collected empty 10 gal water bottles and had them filled with pool water for use by our apt complex for cleaning or bathing , flushing tolets with at their apartments, cause we had no water to spare for that. Any sealed bottles we had were for drinking water; and pretty much we made sure everyone had some. Even those that didn’t get it regularly. Luckily we had all JUST got our drinking water delivered for January. There was no credit or checks allowed in this. It was all cash in hand. I knew that would happen so it was one of the first things I did the second the power was back 3 days later. Part of the problem that happened during this was everyone only had Credit cards no cash and could buy nothing. In the end a lot of people resorted to looting.
Earthquakes rattled everyone for some time after the main quake but eventually things were rebuilding. Power came back first. Then water. There were a lot of fires everyday. Either from looting or more damage from aftershocks. Life became pretty hard to have any regularity to it. I found myself torn between wanting to tough it out and rebuild, and going north with my mother back to Alaska. Truth was my mother played the guilt trip on me. So ultimately I agreed to go. She left first and I packed up the apartment and was going to come up after my semester was over. This was going to leave me 3 credits shy of a degree. Surely that would not be too bad to transfer… (More on that later)
By mid-March I was alone in California and packing everyday and sending stuff up to Alaska. My mother was living with her brother in Anchorage. My uncle Ron. While she looked for work and a place to live. I don’t remember exactly when it was May I think, but the movers came for the rest of the stuff and at last the apt was empty, except for me, a small bag of clothes and a portable TV. Having said my goodbyes on GDBBS long before all that stuff was taken. And said bye to most of my friends at the college and at the apt complex.
The day before I am to leave California I get a call from my mother saying are you ready, did you get a ride to the airport? Bla bla bla. Right. Then she says something that in my stupidity I COMPLETELY forgot about. My car. HOLY SHIT! WTH am I going to do with my car? I leave California in like 30 hours!!! SO I hang up from her and I go down to the Hottub for an all nighter thinking. Lol LUCKILY a friend and her daughter dropped by that night. She was getting her drivers license and was talking about getting a car with her mom. She didn’t care what it was she just wanted a car. BINGO!!! THANK YOU HOT TUB GODS!!! I mention I have to leave and that I will sign over the pinkslip to her for like $100. Her mom was really surprised. But she knew the car well because, most in the apt complex knew the car was fast. Lol And she knew I took care of it. But privately she asked me to disconnect the blower so she would not kill herself with it. Which I agreed and disconnected the switch. So that took care of that I signed over the car to her and gave her mom the keys. They took it for a ride and were happy with it. And hey I figured WTH it was never worth all that much anyway, except to me…
So off I was the next day to return to Alaska with a last trip out to LAX. I looked behind me as I take off looking down at all the area I had lived in that short period. Moving almost every year I was there, but having a lot of fun all over. I cried most of the way to Seattle. It just felt like I failed and was running home. I suppose in some ways I was. In others I wasn’t. I’ll tell you why next time. I think for now I have typed more than enough.
Part 3 will be my return to Alaska, My frustration with college credits, and a few events that changed my life. This is the really hard part I mentioned in part one for me. I kinda decided I would write about the easier stuff now. Lets just say the quake emotionally was nothing compared to the next few years.
The rest of 1991 I played. I got a job at Universal Studios in California. It was not for long, just one season, but it was fun to be an insider there. The only days I hated were Carnival days. Lol Something I still kinda cringe at when I go to any state fair. Bad flashbacks lol Besides that however it was really cool to be backlot, and being in the eating areas for employees and never know who was going to sit down around you. Lol Trust me when the Beatle Juice Rock and Roll review was taken down at Universal a few years ago I was practically bawling cause those guys were FANTASTIC to be around. You have no idea the unedited versions of their shows the staff saw. Lmao. Anyway, from there I got a job out in the desert working at a video rental shop. Yea one of those guys like from Jay and Silent Bob movies. Lol But we had our fun all the same; like getting the only 18yr old kid to help people in the adult movie section. Lol As I think on that now I would never have done it to him, but back then it didn’t seem we had the same kind of weirdoes we had today. Or at least we didn’t know about it. We would just get a kick out of seeing him coming out of the section totatlly red faced…
I was wanting to get back to college and had saved up some money to do so, but hardly enough for CSUN (Cal State university Northridge), so I opped for community college. First starting at Antelope Valley College for Cal State GERs (General Education Requirements). GERS were like an extension of highschool for me. I picked up almost right were I left off. General ed stuff, photography, computer science, and academic life in general. Lol I excelled in computer science and started testing security with the administrator of the mainframe system. As we found faults we reported them and closed up what we found. A nice little hacking club emerged from this activity. Using the powerful VAX mainframe system to bang around in anything we had a fancy to mess with. Back then it was powerful, but now its hardly even a the power of a high end calculator. I continued working at the video store at night but went to college during the day. And in the computer lap all my free time. I met a young women there that I really liked and was tutoring. But it was very hard to get close to her because. Well her father was essentially the undertaker of the town. And that was a bit intimidating. Considering he had access to a cremation oven. Lol needless to say I was quite the gentlemen with her. Deedee was gorgeous. Blond, brown eyes, a little short. And loved to dress up.. very stylish. She had a giggle that was infectious, and a smile that would make anyone happy. I tutored her in Computer Science, but never really got the opportunity to become more than a friend with her. She had a bit of a jerk for a boyfriend, and I often was the shoulder to cry on. The big brother role again… But Allas that friendship was not one to last as that class ended we never saw each other on campus after.
The next year Mom and I decided we would move in to a better area closer to the valley. Santa Clarita Just north of the Valley and east of Valencia where six flags magic mountain is. I was lucky to be able to transfer my credits over to College of the Canyons in Valencia and continued school there. Valencia however I played. And played heavy. With six flags right outside my campus it was like OMG screw school… I also was swimming a lot, and was taking care of the apartment complex swimming pool. Our apartment was literally right over the pool, very nice. I made arrangements with the apt complex office to let me stay down there late at night if we agreed to keep noise levels down. So that started the midnight Hot tub group. Lol Which was just funny to me because no one ever asked if we could before, but the maintenance people closed the pool cause no one was there to lock it up after. So that became me once I got permission. In return I made sure the area was clean and properly PH balanced and secured at night. It was something fun to do. And then they didn’t need to have one of the maintenance people cleaning the pool because I did it for them.
Another event in my life was Green Dragon BBS. Lol remember this was 1993, the internet was hardly a glimmer yet, and the best we had was the UUNET with Archie and Veronica search engines… Compuserve or AOL was the two big web dial up companies and they were both paid for access. Green Dragon BBS was a Bulletin Board System, that had forums for discussion threads, downloads sections for pictures and games, and the ever popular Chat room. And it was all free to use. Lol Saying that now feels like I was in the dark ages or something. But in a way we were. The GDBBS was one of the biggest and best in the Valley at the time, and I got a moderator position, which was really cool for a geek like me. Using my Programing knowledge from College was a large plus for all the multiplayer TEXT games we played online back then. Lol thus was born Ingram. A handle more people in the world know me as then my real name.
Ingram, the Norse god of peace and fertility. In ancient Viking it was Ing Raham which literally means defender of the warrior’s daughter or virtue. In all reality I was me. A lonely guy looking for friends online; something that now is not too uncommon, but back then, extremely absurd. A lot of people I talked to back then were into games like gamma world or bards tale, whatever. Mostly mid evil games and role playing. So we did that online. With all this my education was quickly becoming secondary importance in my life. Though I kept passing, my grades did slip a good bit. My game plan at the time was to graduate with my 2 year degree and move to CSUN to finish my 4 year and I would crack down then… that was the plan at least… I loved College of the Canyons. Turns out it’s a popular place to film as well, cause I have seen it through the years in any number of TV shows as a set. With its Hills and natural atriums. Its Olympic pool that I was in DAILY doing laps. And the fantastic Rooftops that were absolutely the BEST place to be at night to see the stars. Needless to say outside of late at night I was not at the apartment complex much. I was really active. I was also in the best shape I ever was in my life.
Lastly something I forgot to mention from my Highschool days. I had my piece of shit Toyota Corolla. Thing was, back in highschool I had a little something added to it, that made it not so much a piece of shit as it became a rocket on wheels. Well for me at least… I always had a helmet in the car and shoulder straps installed. Why? Well we added a blower to the engine. A little switch that popped the RPMs up to about 10,000 without blowing it to pieces, and in turn made the 150MPH gauge click like crazy at the bottom of the speedometer. Meaning it was going faster than it could measure. So while it looked like a total piece of shit car, it sounded like a Cessna engine and was faster than anyone would believe. Especially with the window spoilers pushed out for high speed stability. Basically.. To keep it on the ground. Anyway I digress. My last little piece of rebellion was car racing out in the Mohave Desert. I didn’t make much, but I did have fun. Others were there for the dollars I was there for something to do. Reckless? Oh yea. More than one time I was scared out of my mind I was going to blow myself up or something. Especially when we were playing around with Gasinol. Basically a propane gasoline mix in a pressurized fuel tank. Yea. Risky shit. But the dust cloud that sucker threw up behind it was unbelievable… you know the opening of the old Knight Rider going through the desert? Well that was done with a timelapse. I actually did it and the dust. AHHHHHH… anyways… so that was 1992 and 1993. Then came 1994. I was starting my last semester and would have only 3 credits to makeup over summer for my degree. I was trying to get it in extra classes added to my schedule but didn’t have much success at that cause the workload was pretty heavy with 19 credits that semester. Especially considering what happened in January. The Northridge quake.
January 17th around 4:30am 1994. The world came crashing down around us. The hwy 14 fell on top of the Interstate 5 freeway cutting everything north off from the valley for months and months. And even when restored it was an hours long detour that used to take just a few mins. Buildings collapsed all around, roads cracking and opening, fires, looting. Total bedlam. Phenomenal damage, No water, no power, no gas for cooking not much of anything but each other. I collected empty 10 gal water bottles and had them filled with pool water for use by our apt complex for cleaning or bathing , flushing tolets with at their apartments, cause we had no water to spare for that. Any sealed bottles we had were for drinking water; and pretty much we made sure everyone had some. Even those that didn’t get it regularly. Luckily we had all JUST got our drinking water delivered for January. There was no credit or checks allowed in this. It was all cash in hand. I knew that would happen so it was one of the first things I did the second the power was back 3 days later. Part of the problem that happened during this was everyone only had Credit cards no cash and could buy nothing. In the end a lot of people resorted to looting.
Earthquakes rattled everyone for some time after the main quake but eventually things were rebuilding. Power came back first. Then water. There were a lot of fires everyday. Either from looting or more damage from aftershocks. Life became pretty hard to have any regularity to it. I found myself torn between wanting to tough it out and rebuild, and going north with my mother back to Alaska. Truth was my mother played the guilt trip on me. So ultimately I agreed to go. She left first and I packed up the apartment and was going to come up after my semester was over. This was going to leave me 3 credits shy of a degree. Surely that would not be too bad to transfer… (More on that later)
By mid-March I was alone in California and packing everyday and sending stuff up to Alaska. My mother was living with her brother in Anchorage. My uncle Ron. While she looked for work and a place to live. I don’t remember exactly when it was May I think, but the movers came for the rest of the stuff and at last the apt was empty, except for me, a small bag of clothes and a portable TV. Having said my goodbyes on GDBBS long before all that stuff was taken. And said bye to most of my friends at the college and at the apt complex.
The day before I am to leave California I get a call from my mother saying are you ready, did you get a ride to the airport? Bla bla bla. Right. Then she says something that in my stupidity I COMPLETELY forgot about. My car. HOLY SHIT! WTH am I going to do with my car? I leave California in like 30 hours!!! SO I hang up from her and I go down to the Hottub for an all nighter thinking. Lol LUCKILY a friend and her daughter dropped by that night. She was getting her drivers license and was talking about getting a car with her mom. She didn’t care what it was she just wanted a car. BINGO!!! THANK YOU HOT TUB GODS!!! I mention I have to leave and that I will sign over the pinkslip to her for like $100. Her mom was really surprised. But she knew the car well because, most in the apt complex knew the car was fast. Lol And she knew I took care of it. But privately she asked me to disconnect the blower so she would not kill herself with it. Which I agreed and disconnected the switch. So that took care of that I signed over the car to her and gave her mom the keys. They took it for a ride and were happy with it. And hey I figured WTH it was never worth all that much anyway, except to me…
So off I was the next day to return to Alaska with a last trip out to LAX. I looked behind me as I take off looking down at all the area I had lived in that short period. Moving almost every year I was there, but having a lot of fun all over. I cried most of the way to Seattle. It just felt like I failed and was running home. I suppose in some ways I was. In others I wasn’t. I’ll tell you why next time. I think for now I have typed more than enough.
Part 3 will be my return to Alaska, My frustration with college credits, and a few events that changed my life. This is the really hard part I mentioned in part one for me. I kinda decided I would write about the easier stuff now. Lets just say the quake emotionally was nothing compared to the next few years.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Story of my life Part 1.
Well I suppose I start this by writing about myself. so here we go.
I was born William Roger Wheeler in Indiana Pennsylvania September the 11th 1972.
My Mother Georgianna, My Father William Earl Wheeler.
My early childhood I don't remember much of, though others tell me they remember things from then I think must be impossible. The few memories I have of my early childhood is of my best friend. Heather and her family. Our parents were close friends and we became as siblings with each other. A friendship that remains the same now as it did then. And unfortunately a status I fall into all too often. The big brother role. Part of the reason I do not remember much of this time is because around the age of 7 my Fathers abusive nature towards my mother became more damaging, and she could not live with him anymore. Fleeing first to his mothers place for help, then her friends, and ultimately taking me to Alaska to her Mother and fathers home, till she could get settled in a new life.
My mother securing job and making a new home for us in Anchorage, sent for me again the next year from my Grandparents. This seems to begin the memories of my childhood. I was mostly happy. Mom worked very hard as a single mother to provide for us. I had so many problems with anger and was not the best of kids. I would hurt others when I didnt get my way, and was prone to hurting myself when I got angry. Mostly I was a very lonely child. I had some friends, but not as I have come to learn others having friends today. generally I was the kid that was picked on, or shoved, or not really liked unless they could get something from me. Generally I was alone most of the time after school, and I played alone. Up until about 6th grade. I got my first real friend. Mikey. he lived within eyesight of my home but it was a few blocks away. That area became my playground on our bicycles. We tore through the apartment complexes, we played Atari, lol we got into all kinds of trouble together. the first real friend I had in Alaska. However come jr High We went to different schools, and I was back to being alone again.
My summers were spent up north at my grandparents place and there were not many people my age there. so I had a huge vista to play in. An entire Valley ride bikes, make forts, rope climb, swim, and just have imaginary adventures. At that time there was no TV in Cantwell. just the collection of movies my Uncle had on beta and Laserdisc. Which that library of films became my staple of programing every summer. i grew to know it well. Classic movies from RKO, and MGM. Adventure stories on beta like Rocket men of the Moon, or Tom Corbett Space cadet, Space Patrol. All classics from the 40s, & 50s. A interesting conversation starter with many from my elder generation even today. "your too young to know that!" often the beginning of a conversation. lol I also grew to love the old radio shows like Abbott and Costello, and Jack Benny, The Great Gildersleave... this all kinds of things from my uncles childhood. That became staples of my youth.
When I would go back to school that did more to divide me from my peers. while others talked about MTV or whatever they did over the summer. I talked about adventures running from Cave to fort to cliffs, and swinging from ropes over canyons, and swimming in rivers. But mostly I was picked on and teased again and again. I fought back, and in the end became the monster that my Father was. Its something I hold back even today, for at times the Rage within me burns, and I have to walk off the anger or frustration. cool down. A practice I had to learn early in life out of survivability. I came to a point that as punishment the principal put me to work under adult supervision in the school. first in the admin office, then in the Library. And again I am separated from peers. So instead I got skilled with equipment. Anything electronic I was good with. And thus the beginning of a hobby that I had hoped at one time in my life would be a career.
By the time I was in my last year in Jr Highschool I had a few close friends, but in reality they were also some of my worst influences. Indeed Ryan the one I was closest too started off being one of the guys that used to beat me up a lot and used to run from. Till I finally stood up to him. then after we became friends. And some more added our group together. 5 of us going to the our Freshman year in a new school, made things easier. I remember that year as being rather good. the Group started becoming a KIND of gang, though not a gang by todays standards. our friends, their girlfriends, and our parents... But every summer I was returned to my grandparents to be watched after. that always hurt some because I would loose my friends every year and I would not know if I would come back to the same thing every school year.
The Beginning of 10th grade I found out I would be moving because my mother was being transferred to California. Both excited and sad, I let my friends know, and that last few weeks were wonderful. lost of late night game playing and other trouble... 1 qtr I had to move to my grandparents place to go to school while my mother moved to CA. that was the worst exp. I hated it there. but thankfully it was short. At least it was a small school and I was the oldest there. So I didnt have to deal with anything from them. I just kept to myself. They tried to include me in things. Even did a school play with them. But I knew I was leaving so I didnt care that much.
California. L.A. Hollywood. lol Dream right? no... by this time I was 16 and was driving in Alaska, but in California I could not even get a permit yet. So I stayed on my Alaska Drivers License for 2 years while down there to be able to get around. My mom and I were living in San Pedro, real close to Ports of Call. At the time I thought that was the coolest place ever. But there was a very odd feeling there. I didn't go out much. I was mostly inside or at school. Or off on some adventure driving around. Going to the VERY old San Pedro highschool was different. I absolutely went into a shell there. the cultural difference was crazy to me. I didn't know how to deal with it. And I felt I was defiantly from teh wrong side of the tracks. Especially when I would go up to palos verdes and see the kids my age all having a blast in their fantastic cars and nice hangouts and fabulous girlfriends. Places if I dared to show my face around I was told to leave cause I was not welcome there cause I lived in San Pedro. So I would mostly hang out after school over in Redondo Beach where my mother worked. A sanctuary if you will. But all too quick, just months after gettting settled in, it was all over. my mother lost her job.
Through a series of circumstances a friend of hers also came down to California and started working at the Universal Sharaton with her daughter Tami. So for a few weeks we lived with them there. And they conspired to get a house together someplace in the Valley. Which we did. The Girls took the house. I lived in the garage. And I started my 11th year of highschool at my last highschool. James Monroe in Sepulveda. This time I came in not wanting to be the bottom of the barrel again. but because it was a fresh year, we were all kind of starting out fresh. That first semester was bad. lol I was arrogant, mean, I was the bully. someone tried to get next to me I either ignored them or worse shoved them out of my way. I was determined I was not taking shit from anyone again. Thank God my teacher Mrs Graiser who straightened my ass out. She told me that I think i am hot shit, well she didn't care she was going to fail my ass anyway and I would be stuck there forever or drop out and be a bum. that was that... the next semester I cleaned up my act. I got involved with the computer lab and help setup the lab with a grant we received. That year I also found my other private passion. Photography. Tom Kwock. lol Truely a mentor and a friend. And in that class I met the friends I became close too in my 11th year. but the unfortunate thing was they were seniors, I was not. so eventually I started over again.
Senior year. I came in with a job at the school in the computer lab, College credits at Cal State northridge for Student teaching, And had the last 2 hour of the day in advanced photography. It was the best year. but very lonely. I had never had a girlfriend. seems I was never anyplace long enough to have one. there were many I was interested in. But I was never much to look at. so it was hard to attract their attention. One I had a secret infatuation with. she never knew it. But in the last few months I found her again. It was quite nice to catch up with her and know she was happy. She was beautiful, Smart, very camera shy, kinda tough in her own way. And the funny thing she was on Yearbook committee. I always knew she was unattainable, but anything she wanted I was sure to jump at the chance to work with her. lol but come my last 3 months of my senior year I was given a news that was very very hard on me. I was happy for the 1st time in a very long time. And i wanted to graduate with the friends I made my senior year. But My moms friends had to leave California with her daughter, and we could not afford the house rent ourselves. we ended up moving out to Antelope Valley. I told 1 person. Mr Kwock. Who said to me. Bill whos to say unless you tell them? its just a few months. If you want to stay, Stay. So I commuted every day to the valley to go to school and then turn around and drove back. After school activities became a thing of the past, and girlfriends. lol well I doubt they were ever an option anyway. but that was not happening. Homecoming came and went, and I kept it a secret why I never asked anyone. Prom, senior events, football games. no sign of me. I focused on my work. and by the time my last few weeks of school came around I was mostly alone again. I just kept to myself, with occasional happy moments with people I grew to care about.
Graduation. My family from Alaska came down for the event. it was a long day. the drive in, the hubbaloo getting ready, all my friends wishing each other goodbye. A lot of crying, a lot of excitement. And then it was done. The charade was over. Diploma in hand. Class of 1991. the end of one life, the beginning of another.
Thats a not so brief overview, of course there were other things and events, but essentially that was who I was through that time. Part 2 will be from this time till the northridge quake, and back to Alaska. This begins a lot of painful memories and may take a while to write. but I will. Hopefully by the end you will know why I wanted this somewhere in cyberspace. it may never bee seen. Others may not care. I just wanted something to say I was. And this is what I felt.
I was born William Roger Wheeler in Indiana Pennsylvania September the 11th 1972.
My Mother Georgianna, My Father William Earl Wheeler.
My early childhood I don't remember much of, though others tell me they remember things from then I think must be impossible. The few memories I have of my early childhood is of my best friend. Heather and her family. Our parents were close friends and we became as siblings with each other. A friendship that remains the same now as it did then. And unfortunately a status I fall into all too often. The big brother role. Part of the reason I do not remember much of this time is because around the age of 7 my Fathers abusive nature towards my mother became more damaging, and she could not live with him anymore. Fleeing first to his mothers place for help, then her friends, and ultimately taking me to Alaska to her Mother and fathers home, till she could get settled in a new life.
My mother securing job and making a new home for us in Anchorage, sent for me again the next year from my Grandparents. This seems to begin the memories of my childhood. I was mostly happy. Mom worked very hard as a single mother to provide for us. I had so many problems with anger and was not the best of kids. I would hurt others when I didnt get my way, and was prone to hurting myself when I got angry. Mostly I was a very lonely child. I had some friends, but not as I have come to learn others having friends today. generally I was the kid that was picked on, or shoved, or not really liked unless they could get something from me. Generally I was alone most of the time after school, and I played alone. Up until about 6th grade. I got my first real friend. Mikey. he lived within eyesight of my home but it was a few blocks away. That area became my playground on our bicycles. We tore through the apartment complexes, we played Atari, lol we got into all kinds of trouble together. the first real friend I had in Alaska. However come jr High We went to different schools, and I was back to being alone again.
My summers were spent up north at my grandparents place and there were not many people my age there. so I had a huge vista to play in. An entire Valley ride bikes, make forts, rope climb, swim, and just have imaginary adventures. At that time there was no TV in Cantwell. just the collection of movies my Uncle had on beta and Laserdisc. Which that library of films became my staple of programing every summer. i grew to know it well. Classic movies from RKO, and MGM. Adventure stories on beta like Rocket men of the Moon, or Tom Corbett Space cadet, Space Patrol. All classics from the 40s, & 50s. A interesting conversation starter with many from my elder generation even today. "your too young to know that!" often the beginning of a conversation. lol I also grew to love the old radio shows like Abbott and Costello, and Jack Benny, The Great Gildersleave... this all kinds of things from my uncles childhood. That became staples of my youth.
When I would go back to school that did more to divide me from my peers. while others talked about MTV or whatever they did over the summer. I talked about adventures running from Cave to fort to cliffs, and swinging from ropes over canyons, and swimming in rivers. But mostly I was picked on and teased again and again. I fought back, and in the end became the monster that my Father was. Its something I hold back even today, for at times the Rage within me burns, and I have to walk off the anger or frustration. cool down. A practice I had to learn early in life out of survivability. I came to a point that as punishment the principal put me to work under adult supervision in the school. first in the admin office, then in the Library. And again I am separated from peers. So instead I got skilled with equipment. Anything electronic I was good with. And thus the beginning of a hobby that I had hoped at one time in my life would be a career.
By the time I was in my last year in Jr Highschool I had a few close friends, but in reality they were also some of my worst influences. Indeed Ryan the one I was closest too started off being one of the guys that used to beat me up a lot and used to run from. Till I finally stood up to him. then after we became friends. And some more added our group together. 5 of us going to the our Freshman year in a new school, made things easier. I remember that year as being rather good. the Group started becoming a KIND of gang, though not a gang by todays standards. our friends, their girlfriends, and our parents... But every summer I was returned to my grandparents to be watched after. that always hurt some because I would loose my friends every year and I would not know if I would come back to the same thing every school year.
The Beginning of 10th grade I found out I would be moving because my mother was being transferred to California. Both excited and sad, I let my friends know, and that last few weeks were wonderful. lost of late night game playing and other trouble... 1 qtr I had to move to my grandparents place to go to school while my mother moved to CA. that was the worst exp. I hated it there. but thankfully it was short. At least it was a small school and I was the oldest there. So I didnt have to deal with anything from them. I just kept to myself. They tried to include me in things. Even did a school play with them. But I knew I was leaving so I didnt care that much.
California. L.A. Hollywood. lol Dream right? no... by this time I was 16 and was driving in Alaska, but in California I could not even get a permit yet. So I stayed on my Alaska Drivers License for 2 years while down there to be able to get around. My mom and I were living in San Pedro, real close to Ports of Call. At the time I thought that was the coolest place ever. But there was a very odd feeling there. I didn't go out much. I was mostly inside or at school. Or off on some adventure driving around. Going to the VERY old San Pedro highschool was different. I absolutely went into a shell there. the cultural difference was crazy to me. I didn't know how to deal with it. And I felt I was defiantly from teh wrong side of the tracks. Especially when I would go up to palos verdes and see the kids my age all having a blast in their fantastic cars and nice hangouts and fabulous girlfriends. Places if I dared to show my face around I was told to leave cause I was not welcome there cause I lived in San Pedro. So I would mostly hang out after school over in Redondo Beach where my mother worked. A sanctuary if you will. But all too quick, just months after gettting settled in, it was all over. my mother lost her job.
Through a series of circumstances a friend of hers also came down to California and started working at the Universal Sharaton with her daughter Tami. So for a few weeks we lived with them there. And they conspired to get a house together someplace in the Valley. Which we did. The Girls took the house. I lived in the garage. And I started my 11th year of highschool at my last highschool. James Monroe in Sepulveda. This time I came in not wanting to be the bottom of the barrel again. but because it was a fresh year, we were all kind of starting out fresh. That first semester was bad. lol I was arrogant, mean, I was the bully. someone tried to get next to me I either ignored them or worse shoved them out of my way. I was determined I was not taking shit from anyone again. Thank God my teacher Mrs Graiser who straightened my ass out. She told me that I think i am hot shit, well she didn't care she was going to fail my ass anyway and I would be stuck there forever or drop out and be a bum. that was that... the next semester I cleaned up my act. I got involved with the computer lab and help setup the lab with a grant we received. That year I also found my other private passion. Photography. Tom Kwock. lol Truely a mentor and a friend. And in that class I met the friends I became close too in my 11th year. but the unfortunate thing was they were seniors, I was not. so eventually I started over again.
Senior year. I came in with a job at the school in the computer lab, College credits at Cal State northridge for Student teaching, And had the last 2 hour of the day in advanced photography. It was the best year. but very lonely. I had never had a girlfriend. seems I was never anyplace long enough to have one. there were many I was interested in. But I was never much to look at. so it was hard to attract their attention. One I had a secret infatuation with. she never knew it. But in the last few months I found her again. It was quite nice to catch up with her and know she was happy. She was beautiful, Smart, very camera shy, kinda tough in her own way. And the funny thing she was on Yearbook committee. I always knew she was unattainable, but anything she wanted I was sure to jump at the chance to work with her. lol but come my last 3 months of my senior year I was given a news that was very very hard on me. I was happy for the 1st time in a very long time. And i wanted to graduate with the friends I made my senior year. But My moms friends had to leave California with her daughter, and we could not afford the house rent ourselves. we ended up moving out to Antelope Valley. I told 1 person. Mr Kwock. Who said to me. Bill whos to say unless you tell them? its just a few months. If you want to stay, Stay. So I commuted every day to the valley to go to school and then turn around and drove back. After school activities became a thing of the past, and girlfriends. lol well I doubt they were ever an option anyway. but that was not happening. Homecoming came and went, and I kept it a secret why I never asked anyone. Prom, senior events, football games. no sign of me. I focused on my work. and by the time my last few weeks of school came around I was mostly alone again. I just kept to myself, with occasional happy moments with people I grew to care about.
Graduation. My family from Alaska came down for the event. it was a long day. the drive in, the hubbaloo getting ready, all my friends wishing each other goodbye. A lot of crying, a lot of excitement. And then it was done. The charade was over. Diploma in hand. Class of 1991. the end of one life, the beginning of another.
Thats a not so brief overview, of course there were other things and events, but essentially that was who I was through that time. Part 2 will be from this time till the northridge quake, and back to Alaska. This begins a lot of painful memories and may take a while to write. but I will. Hopefully by the end you will know why I wanted this somewhere in cyberspace. it may never bee seen. Others may not care. I just wanted something to say I was. And this is what I felt.
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