I want to be a bum when I grow up part II

Age 16 many things happened by this time in my life. Many odd things that do not happen to your average person. I had attended over 19 schools, fished for food because there was nothing in the fridge and spent my summers introducing 30-dollar plates of squid into my gullet. I was so poor and so rich at the same time. It was great. In all the chaos of being raised by a hippie and evangelical Christian I had some normal cliché events take place.

My father denied me a request to join the Drama class. Finally he bent and allowed me this one treasure, if I agreed to join sports. My father was Mr. Popular in school; Captain of the football team, Track star and all around cool hunk type. He was not an overbearing Dad, you know “ you will join the football team and like it dammit!” I think he just wanted me to be cool like him and get some 16-year cheerleader pregnant like him.

I had one dream at age 16; give Orson Wells a run for his money. I mean this guy fooled the nation with his radio broadcast. This opened my eyes. I want to do that!

“Sure, sure you can join the drama club. If you try out for a sport first” my dad said. I spent that week looking at sports. This was not my first time delving into the world of sports. I tried Baseball in elementary. I played right field on a team that won only one game. That game was my favorite game of the whole season. The other team never showed up. Victory! We win.

I later tried football. I loved the Raiders. All the other football teams hated those guys and they didn’t play by the rules. This is why I liked them. They had those cool badass black uniforms or jerseys too. Yes cool black uniforms. Black, that is the color I saw just before I searched among the mountains of concerned Varsity players asking” are you ok little guy”. I was searching for my breath. I was sure it had to be around there somewhere. Finally I realized this is how I was going to die. I remember telling the coach after that incident that I know longer wanted any position on his team that included touching the football. It was simple logic. The football equaled Pain and or Death. Not for me, no thank you. So here I’m 16 desperate enough to be in the drama club as to join one of these teams, then I found it. I joined the sport and I was good, I was not good I was a demi God. People feared me. I was so good I was the first sophomore to ever make varsity at this school. I played JV and Varsity and kicked ASS. I was the unstoppable Michael Jordan of this sport, swimming.

Needless to say my Dad never showed to any of the meets and reluctantly let me join Drama. Swimming was not what he had in his mind when he asked me to join a sport. It didn’t matter I fulfilled my end of the deal. Drama was a dream. I wrote, directed, and did some acting. I wrote, produced and directed 3 radio plays it was a blast. It didn’t last long though I eventually moved out at age 17.

Then I moved out with some friends and stopped writing for about a year or two. I picked up my pen again when I was 19 and filled a journal in the course of 2 months I then bought another journal and began filling this out as well with poems and short stories. I also took to writing songs to sing with my good old guitar. If my grandmother read any of my journals or heard any of my songs she would have said. “Matthew this is Garbage.” She would have been right. I threw my journals away to get rid of the evidence. Unfortunatly I continued singing and writing songs for the next 6 to 7 years. Some were even recorded and many were played in front of an audience. So there you go. Real evidence of my writing out there for the world to hear. One of my favorite songs was called Rosaries. It was an emo art rock song with lines like. “I’m a broken down carnival you are a marvel.” Rosaries was liked by some but most preferred this up beat travesty I wrote called big wheel chair.

Writing music was a great exercise in getting a lot of bad poetry out and eventually finding some good lines. “More hollow then a heart whittled by the cold blade of winter pumping ice thru the chest of a dead dead dead man, is the heart that resides in me, but I’m happy to be here with you” I love run on sentences. I still enjoy poetry but I don’t write much of it any more. Maybe I should write a follow up to my 1^st poem worm.

While in the band I also worked as a Dental Assistant and evenutally got a job with the man. This was because writing is just for bums or its a nice hobbie. Dont want to be a bum.