The People I Used to Be - Part II
A sketch - Circa 1992
I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.
Joan Didion, On Keeping a Notebook
12 Years Old
I can't remember when I became a minor delinquent, but by 12 years old, it was firmly rooted in me. The weird, gross-out kid culture of the late 80's and early 90's sang to my heart in a way few things could. Think Garbage Pail Kids, Madballs, and The Ren and Stimpy Show. I also discovered The Evil Dead movies at around this age. Boys were encouraged to be offensive, wild little deviants because it sold action figures. Fortunately for me I was already on that trajectory.
I slowly began to see authority figures not as a source of order, but as the main cogs of a machine intent on imposing their shared will on the populace. It was a pretty wild thing, feeling that first spark of anarchy when I was still watching Ninja Turtles and drinking Cocoa Puffs milk out of my cereal bowl before school, but looking back I'm proud of being capable of that level of fringe thinking in my preteen years. I actively began questioning everything that we did in school. Why did we have to write everything in cursive? Why did we have to line up in alphabetical order for the lunch line? George Washington didn't really cut down that cherry tree, did he?
So many hours in detention.
My friends were all weird, a trend that would continue all the way through high school. I always gravitated towards misfits. We mostly huffed cinnamon Binaca during recess and chopped it up about comic books and video games on the basketball courts during lunch. After school we'd break into abandoned warehouses, or explore haunted drainage ditch tunnels. I told Heather Dunn that she had "big ol' titties" in 6th grade and deserved the fierce ass whooping that I received in return. Many lessons were learned during those years. I was constantly testing my boundaries everywhere. We were slaves to routine without reason. An oppressive sense of inauthenticity pervaded everything.
I was also really good at video games. I took home first place in my area's 1992 Blockbuster Video Game Championships. That Sonic the Hedgehog 3 run is still sitting upstairs, permanently etched into some neural pathway of mine. Pure muscle memory and honed instinct. It would be my first taste of the Thug Life.