This tale comes from my kindergarten days of being a wee lad. So we were doing something with beans and macaroni, something or other about making pictures, and sometime later I kept complaining to my mom that I had trouble breathing. She checked my head out but couldn’t find anything wrong. My complaints continued and before we went to the hospital one day she noticed something white poking out of one of my nostrils. Apparently at school I had shoved one of the beans up my nose and then forgot about it so with all the moisture up in my nostril it had started to take root and grow. My mom pulled it out and voila! I could breath and learned that beans are more than just an art medium.

In seventh grade I was on the chess team and we somehow made it to the state games which were being held in Tucson that year. We sucked so we had a lot of downtime and what else was there to do for a group of prepubescent boys but to fuck around in the hotel. We were running up and down the stairways, pressing all the elevator buttons then getting out, tripping each other in the fitness room, basically causing a ruckus and acting like we had no home training. Anyways, mid-tomfoolery we stopped by one of the vending machines for a drink and everybody goes and gets whatever. I go last and all I wanted was a cola of some sort and I press the button and a Mr. Pibb dispenses, followed by the ‘sold out’ display. Forever shall I rue that day and moreso, Mr. Pibb.

A few years ago I was volunteering with the Flagstaff Special Olympics floor hockey team and I thought I was just going to either help them scrimmage or be a score keeper. By some twist of confusion, the coordinators handed me a whistle, a black and white shirt, and a crash course in floor hockey rules. An hour later I was a referee. I didn’t get yelled at too much. But oh my good golly gosh was that a lot of fun.

I was leaving the grocery store when I was in junior high school on my way to the truck and a pigeon crapped on my shoulder just as I left the building. Wretched creatures.

I was in Downtown Flagstaff, minding my own business, reading in Heritage Square, when this elderly couple came up to me and told me it was such a huge relief to see such a “pious young man, unashamed of his faith.” I had my earphones in and I didn’t really notice them at first, so I asked them what they meant. “Oh, you’re reading a Bible in public, it’s so good to see that.” I stifled a laugh because I was reading The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy omnibus (which criticizes the existence of God in the first book) and it really does look like a black, hardbound bible. And add the fact that Douglas Adams was an atheist and I had to politely tell them what I was reading. They walked away indignant-like afterwards, as if I had planned to deceive them that summer day.

Coming from a tiny, rural, middle of nowhere town there wasn’t much to do to keep us busy growing up. As such, my sister and I had to make due with what we had. And this usually involved playing with dirt, mud, sticks, weeds, and any other arboreal combinations. I remember this one time we were playing with dirt clods and throwing them back and forth at each other pretending that they were bombs. You know how you start play fighting and that degenerates to actual fighting? That’s what happened. Only, she got in the first hit and a dirt clod hit me in the chest. She saw and then hopped on her bike and pedaled off. I retaliated and threw my own dirt clod, assuming with my failed attempts at trying out for softball that I would fall short of my target. The accuracy gods were smiling upon me that day because I hit her smack dab in the head. And she consequently crashed into the road and got scraped up. Needless to say, I got my ass beat by my parents when they came home from work later.

When I was 4-ish, my family went to Phoenix and while there my parents took me to a playground. I was playing and this Asian kid came up to me, assumed I was Asian as well then started speaking what I thought was gibberish to me. Consequently, I freaked out because I was a shy child and the gibberish scared me. So, I started crying, ran away in fear and hugged my mom for dear life.

There’s this down to earth, seedy kind of bar here in Flag called The Green Room and I was there hanging out for something and I went to the bathroom and whilst drying my hands some guy at the sink offered me two lines of cocaine for free. I thanked him and politely declined.

Coming from a rural community it was common for households to not have washers and dryers at home. My family was one such household. So every Saturday, my mother—and later, my sisters—and I would go into town to the Silver Coin laudromat and do laundry. I would try to heckle quarters out of the money makers for the arcade games, but I also loved watching the clothes in the spin cycle, the kaleidoscopic colors whirring about and each revolution different from the last.

I cried on my first day of 1st Grade after my mom dropped me off. I was afraid to be alone, not knowing anyone.