I may have written about this before, but it’s been lost in the missing archives if I did! [color=red]WARNING[/color]: This one is a bit graphic!!

This one only goes back to May, 1994. I had traveled back up to Massachusetts from New Jersey to see friends and hang out. I had driven with my friends and old roommates, Chris and Toni (hopefully, they won’t mind me using real names here!). On Saturday of that weekend, my friends, Chris and his father, Brian, George and and I had gone to see “The Crow”. It was a cool movie and we had taken a few cars to the theatre for whatever reason.

After the movie, Chris, Brian and I decided to go to a friend’s house to meet with Pete. We had a few beers and hung out for a bit. Then we decided to go out since it was Saturday night and we were free of any “womanly influence”. We ended up at the Leitrim Pub on Park Avenue in Worcester. The place was packed and since three of us were single, we were looking for women. I saw a couple of people I knew from Worcester State College. It was getting late, we decided to leave, but only after meeting several of Brian’s friends from high school. They invited us back to hang out at a party at a house that one of the guys -Ron – was house-sitting. Pete and I took my car and Chris and Brian followed in Brian’s. The house turned out to be the home of one of our old high school guidance councilors! It was odd, but he was away on vacation or something. There were quite a few people there – all of whom I knew from school. Unfortunately, we were stuck outside since Ron’s wife and kid were asleep inside.

At this point, it was about 2AM and the party was just beginning – these guys had a keg! It was a great night, but a little odd hanging out with these guys from high school. Brian just kept going “My boys!” in his drunkenness while Pete, Chris and I talked with some of the guys we knew a little better. Due to the cold May night, our ability to “hold” our beer was rather limited. So, after a few, we decided to leave and get some food as the eastern sky began to brighten. Off to Denny’s – the Mecca of all drunks!!

We arrived safely (the only time I have driven while my BAC was questionable) and ordered our food. Soon, Brian, who had drunk far more than the rest of us, began to look a little pale and I suggested that he go to the Men’s room. He did. As a matter of fact, he was still gone when our meals arrived. I was tempted to go in and check on Brian, but decided to wait. He emerged smiling and seemingly victorious over his nausea. He ate his greasy eggs, bacon, sausage and toast as we finished our meals ( I love Moons over My Hammy!). I was finishing up and talking with Chris and Pete who were also almost done. Brian told us to shut up.

We looked over as he turned green again. Waving off the suggestion that he go to the into bathroom, he began to make some weird, guttural swallowing noises. His cheeks puffed out like a squirrel in November and he looked around for something to be used as a puke-receptacle. Spotting Pete’s empty french fry basket, Brian reached for it. Pete quickly pulled the remaining fries out and handed it over to our desperate friend. We all leaned away from the oncoming geyser.

I grabbed one of Pete’s fries and chomped on it as Bri spewed out thick, pancake-like vomit into the empty fry basket. It was a really amazing amount of the stuff. And he was totally silent until the very end – then he just gave a little “gack!”

Looking up from his…handiwork, Brian smiled and said “Boy, is she gonna have a surprise.” referring to the unsuspecting waitress. The amazing thing is this – he continued to eat his French Toast!!!

The whole event at the restaurant took mere seconds, but it is forever engraved in my memory as yet another classic [url=http://www.p7a77.net/dennys/]Denny’s[/url] moment.

Every male American child plays army at some time in his life. I am not sure how my version of playing army got so real. From about the age of 11 or so until I was about 17, I hung out with my cousin Scott just about every weekend. At first, we would just hang out at each other’s houses while our moms were out doing whatever moms do. Scott and I had much in common, we both were into sci-fi and military-stuff, we also each came from single parent families. We would play Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs (role playing games – yeah we were geeks!) and watch movies and eat junk food. As we got older and more adventurous, we started to go out and play “war” with our toy guns and some camouflage fatigues (fatigues were popular then [this was during the cold war, after all], but these were the green and brown woodland camos, not those weird, useless urban camo patterns they have today).

We would stay around my house and maybe venture as far as the neighbor’s yard in our “battles”. Soon, we were picking up any army surplus items that we could find at yard sales and surplus shops. I had a helmet, web belt, knife, a full set of fatigues, cantines, etc. We were still using toy Star Wars guns at the time, but we got really adept at tactics and strategy. We would “shoot” at each other and we always “died” if we though that we were hit. We got good at using cover and camouflage and in moving stealthily through the woods. I think we learned the value of patience while we were waiting for the “enemy” to come walking by so we could ambush him. Our adventures often began to take us far away from my house. There was one time when we walked through the woods all the way to the next town! It must have been 5 or 6 miles through the woods, across streams, through mud bogs and eventually to the KMart in Webster, Massachusetts!

Sometimes my other friends would get into it, too. One “game” sticks out in my mind. It was Scott, Pete, Chris, Eddie and his brother Albert and myself on one gloomy October afternoon. We had been planning on playing army all week, so we weren’t about to let a few sprinkles stop us. We suited up and headed out into the weather and walked to the “battlefield” that was really a huge stretch of untouched woods about a 1/2 mile behind my house. We started playing, three per team. The name of the game was stealth and cover that day. I remember sticking grass and sticks into my helmet cover to help conceal my presence as I knelt at the foot of a tree and covered Chris as he moved slow and low down the trail to look for our enemies. I looked away for a second and then heard someone off to my left make a loud explosion noise. I glanced over at Chris as he looked around in a confused manner. Scott popped up from behind some bushes and started “firing” at Chris and I. Scott had set up a booby-trap made of a disarmed hand grenade (available from any surplus store) tied to a stake with a trip wire laid across the path. What ingenuity!

Anyway, right after that it began to pour. We didn’t let the deluge stop us though. We played right through for another hour. We headed back to my house, soaking wet and emerged from the woods, we saw that Pete’s mother had already arrived to pick him up. I remember the look on her face as she saw us come out of the treeline dripping wet. It was a while before Pete was allowed to come back over my house…

Anyway, those were the good ol’ days. Eventually, Chris and I got into playing paintball on the weekends and Scott made good on his life long ambition to join the army. I think paintball was more fun!

So, last month I talked about my friend Steve who was my best buddy for a lot of years. One of the things that Steve and I were really into was a comic book (I prefer “illustrated epic”, myself!) that was known as ElfQuest (ElfQuest) by Wendy and Richard Pini. This was a story that had a tremendous impact on my life. The values and traits that were revealed in these stories were a large part of what makes up my personality today. It’s sort of an interesting story about how I got into this series.

One day, when I was about 11 years old, I was looking through the Budd Plant catalog of comic books and saw a listing for ElfQuest. Although the picture was in black and white and there was only a two sentence description of the story, I decided that I wanted Book 1 and Book 2, which (unbeknownst to me at the time) were compilations of the first 10 issues of the comic book. I had no idea what the story was like, but I just ordered these two books – or should I say, my mom ordered them for me. Anyway, the books arrived a few weeks later and I devoured the two books. The art was incredible and the story was great. At the time, I was just getting into playing Dungeons & Dragons (yeah, I was a little geek in the making!) so the story went well with everything else that I was into at the time. But there was more to this story than just action and elves and wolves and trolls. There was a sensitivity to the characters and a great underlying message.

About a year later, I introduced the series of books (ElfQuest Book 3 had just been released) to Steve and he liked them as much as I had. We began reading and re-reading the books over and over. I had to know every last detail of these characters and the story. Luckily, I found that there was an ElfQuest Fan club that had produced a lot of additional material about the stories. There was a group of folks out there who were as into this series as we were! One day, my other best friend at the time, Allen took time out of his busy schedule of reading all of Stephen King’s novels to read the stories and loved them as well. At this point, we were in 7th grade and were smuggling (“comics” were not considered to be fine reading material in middle school!) the books into school and a couple of other folks got wind of the series and wanted to read them as well. Now, you have to remember, we (Steve, Al and me) were 12 year old boys so we started to fantasize, thinking that each bore a particular resemblence (in demeanor – certainly not in looks) to the characters in the story. I was Cutter (chief of the Wolfriders), Steve was Skywise (Cutter’s best friend and a constant stargazer) and Al was Redlance (a gentle, nature loving elf). When others in my class caught wind of this, they actually wanted to “be” a character as well. We actually held some kind of a vote as to who would be some of the more popular characters – Leetah, Cutter’s “soulmate” was a coveted prize! That was probably the first and last time I had girls fighting over being my “girlfriend”.

By this time, we had found a comic book store that carried the ElfQuest comics so we were able to follow along with the story as each new issue was released. Everyone in our class wanted to see issue #17 – the infamous “orgy” issue.

We stopped just short of asking our teachers to refer to us by our elven names! Can you say obsessed?

Anyway, this was a fad for some and only lasted about a month before most of the class went back to being into whatever it was that they were into before ElfQuest. Al moved away that summer and Steve and mine’s friendship faded. I followed ElfQuest until it “ended” the following summer with issue #21 of the original series. If you are a fan, you know that that was not the end of the series though.

I have had this habit in my life of just falling into the things that have really had a big impact on my life and molded me into the person I am today. This probably explains why I believe so strongly in fate and that each of these encounters must have some meaning. I firmly believe that if I had not chanced upon ElfQuest, I would not have the appreciation that I do for nature, the respect for life and diversity that I do today.

I encourage you to look for the ElfQuest series at your local bookstore or go to the website and order directly from Warp Graphics. There are a lot more than 21 issues of the comic today, but, in my opinion, those first issues are the best.

There was one winter when I was in high school when we were not supposed to have a February vacation. They cancelled it in favor of letting us out for the summer a week earlier. Sounded like a good plan. So, come the Monday when February vacation normally came, we got hit with a serious ice storm. Everything looked like it was covered in glass. Needless to say, we did not have school that day – or the next, or on Wednesday, or Thursday. The freezing rain just continued until Thursday night and by then the powers that be decided that we should have February vacation and they gave us Friday off as well. I remember this time really well because my buddy Christian and I were really into ninjutsu (this was before I actually started training in the Bujinkan). I had been waiting a couple of weeks for a particular book about ninjutsu (Andy Adams’ book, for those who care!)and I spent all week reading it. I remember slipping and sliding up the road from Christian’s house and seeing the UPS truck in front of my house.

As the week went on and the crust of ice grew thicker and thicker on top of the snow, Christian and I would go out in my back yard and do hundred of rolls in the snow. We actually did this until our backs were bleeding from the ice pricking through our coats and shirts. These are the kinds of sick memories I cherish….

Here’s a fond memory though. Every year, my sisters and I would walk down into the woods behind our house to collect “Princess Pine”. I am not sure what the name of this plant is – but we called it “Princess Pine.” It was like a little pine tree kind of plant that grew really close to the ground and was usually ready in early winter. We would pick this so that my sisters could make holiday wreaths. We would collect garbage bags full of this stuff and then they would wire it to a coat-hanger frame bent into a circle, add some pine cones, maybe some Christmas balls and a ribbon and voil

Winter in my house growing up was always really cold. Our house was originally a one bedroom place that my mom owned on her own. After the house was built, someone added an addition onto one end of the house – sort of a nice porch in which to view the sunset – since it faced west and always got the late afternoon sun. Anyway, after my mom met and married my dad, the house had to be home to the five kids and two adults. The “porch” became a makeshift two bedroom area. My sisters shared a room and my two brothers shared the other half of the “porch.” They were seperated by a thin “wall” of fiberboard. After my brothers moved out on their own, I got to stay in the end part of the “porch.” Since this space was designed to be a summer place, neither the walls nor the windows were insulated against cold or heat. In the cold New England winters, the wind would often blow through those rooms unchecked. We stapled plastic sheets across the windows and installed thick curtains, but it was never a great solution.

I can remember many a night spent huddled under my pile of warm blankets listening to the wind blow outside. Feeling the wind against my cheeks and sometimes being able to see my breath in the cold. We had heat in those rooms, but sometimes, it was not enough to overcome the cold. Lest you think that I am complaining, these are fond memories. I would usually leave one of the windows uncovered and the curtain open so I could see outdoors. I loved the way that the crisp bright moon shone down on the snow, creating a color so sharp and cold – like frozen steel. The sparkles dancing as powdery snow whisked across the frozen surface.

As a young kid, I used to love playing in the snow, as do all children. I would suit up in my many layers of warm clothes and trudge outside into the weather. Since we lived on a big hill in a pretty deserted area, my sisters and I used to hop on our plastic sleds and slide right down the snow covered road. Traffic was rarely a problem so we were pretty safe. We would start right at the top of the hill in front of our house. If the road was in perfect unplowed condition, we could go all the way down the hill and half way up the next one – about half a mile! What a blast that was. When we were frozen or soaked to the bone we would come back inside and go straight to the bathroom where we would pull of our wet, snow covered clothes and hang them over the bathtub to dry. Then, my mom would make us hot chocolate and I would get my pajamas and get under the covers of my bed to read. When I think back on those days, I can almost feel the warmth and the happy feelings of those cold winter days.

My father died when I was 5 years old. I often wonder how my life would be different if he was still alive. I am sure I would be quite a different person. I grew up rather shy and I depended a lot on my mother. I was one of those annoying clingy kids that would just stare up at you as you talked with my mom in the grocery store or something. At least this is they way I remember it. Although I was really little, I remember going into my first day of kindergarten with the feeling that I needed to make some friends. I had a plan to do just that.

As I met every new kid in my class or on the playground, I would hold out my hand and say “Hi. My name is Donald, but you can call me Donnie. Would you be my friend?” I actually said this. My girlfriend laughs at this story everytime she hears it and says how cute it is, but I think it shows my total lack of social skills. 🙂 I guess this lack of skills continues to this day. I always feel a little uncomfortable with new people and I usually feel that whatever I have to say will not be found at all interesting by the listener. I don’t know if this is true or not, but that’s how I feel.

I seem to remember kindergarten pretty well – much more than I remember 2nd grade for some reason. Maybe 2nd grade was just boring? I can remember one kindergarten incident particularly well. I was sitting next to one of my friends (no doubt taken in by my friend campaign!) at one of the tables that we used. We were doing some sort of individual excercise I guess because we had these folded cardboard shutters around each of our work areas to keep us from looking at our neighbors. Well, I felt the need to talk to Dave next to me. Unfortunately, the teacher (an older lady who had probably been teaching for 40 years) saw me. She came over, grabbed my face in her hand and told me not to talk. I remember feeling her boney fingers squishing my tender young cheeks against my teeth. It hurt a little, but the shame of getting caught was much worse. I don’t know if I cried at all, but I do know that I never spoke in class unless spoken to first.