Life was perfect until I was 7. My dear friend conrad says the same thing. My favorite author Kurt Vonnegut does as well. Conrad claims that after 6 or 7 years the burden of time bears down on you. Vonnegut blames the great depression and the hardships involved there for his post-training-wheel slump. Life was perfect until the age of 7. My memories of that time are for me very blurred, so maybe I'm just turning them into nicer memories than they were, but mostly what I remember from that time is very good.
Climbing. I would climb all the time. I remember climbing to the top of my swing set and perching there. It must have been one of my favorite things to do because I did it all the time. I remember sword fighting and building things with my brother noah. What a good friend he is. I remember the toys I got for my 6th birthday. I remember how mom decorated the house for my 5th birthday.
I love birthdays. Not all of them have been great. I was grounded on my thirteenth birthday and had to wash dishes while my family ate my birthday meal. I'm all for discipline, but that was a bit cruel. I was actually grounded for a few years straight. My parents decided once a passed "spanking age" that making me wash everyone's dishes (family of 8) would be an effective form of discipline.
[Note in the previous paragraph where I stated that I was "all for discipline". That may or may not be the case. I simply said that to grant credence to the second half of the sentence, the true message I wanted to convey: "That was a bit cruel". You see, people don't listen to anything you say unless they feel like you are 1. A generally balanced person and 2. A person who shares some of the same ideas or beliefs as them. This is why the hippie dude with dread-locks will never win the attention of the politician he's protesting. Hippie-boy isn't exploiting the few common threads he shares with politician-man. Maybe he has none, I don't know. The point is, I just said, "I'm all for discipline" because most people are, and I knew that would grant my case favor with you, the reader.]
My crime, for the most part, was a bad attitude. That, and not doing my school. Somewhere around the age of 12 I had informed my mom I wasn't going to do school anymore. I felt that I'd leared what I needed to know and was an able person. As far as the dish situation goes, mostly I just wouldn't wash them. But then I wasn't allowed to eat or go to bed without the dishes done. I stayed up all night a lot of nights. I didn't eat a lot of days. Did it work? Did it make me a better person? I don't really know. I do know my parents gave up after a couple years and I was free to do as I pleased. Life was a lot better then. I never ended up getting into trouble. I'd just did what I wanted, when I wanted. I am a different breed than some.
Oh yeah, I love birthdays. I just had one. I'm 24 now. 24. The number as an age doesn't really mean a lot to me. It did until I was here, but I can't really relate my 24 to other people's 24 for some reason right now. For that matter, I have trouble drawing comparisons between my life and anyone else's at any age.
Having been homeschooled, I don't really have many common experiences with many people during the gradeschool years. I quit school when I was 12-ish and started working and teaching myself to play instruments while others were being mocked by the local jock. At the age when most people are in college, I was trying to get a band off the ground and working third shifts at a cafe. When most people get married I was in a mini-van somewhere on the other side of the country trying to sell my band's record so we could eat and buy enough gas to get to the next show. Just when people are settling into the habits they will hold onto for the next thirty years until they retire I was playing shows for 4000 people a night and getting indigestion in a 15-passenger van every day.
All in all, I feel like I've had the most incredible 24 years anyone could dream of. Life for me is generally whacky stuff and there's always some weird twist or turn. I feel like although my experiences have been varied, they are all the result of one thing that I do. I don't really know exactly what the thing is, but I kinda feel like I'm basically an updated version of the same thing I was when I was a child. I've just been doing this one thing my whole life. That one thing...I'll c all it Enoch-ing sure provides some crazy and interesting experiences.
I will say, sometimes I wish to be a more static and secure person who reads books about this guy named Enoch. I feel like it'd be even better reading than it is living. Maybe the author could better define what's going on with this character's life. Maybe he or she could sum it up in some kind of moral, or weave it together in some coincidental way that would just seem really nice and concise. ...but we all know shit's not like that.
-Enoch
P.S.
I'm currently have trouble posting pictures to my blog. I'm not sure what that's all about, but hopefully I'll have that taken care of very soon. Maybe Blogger is just temporarily messed up.
