I Remember Bob Hansen on ExtraCriticum

Yesterday the BF and I went to see the documentary WAITING FOR SUPERMAN and, after being reminded just how good my small town education was compared to the dizzying statistics the movie puts forth about just how illiterate the vast majority of up and coming students are, I received a text from my best childhood friend Kristen that our music/drama/band teacher from our days at Mosinee High School had passed away that morning.
Now the man, Bob Hansen, was not a saint. There will be no statue erected in his honor. No marching band. But there should be.

CONTINUED ON EXTRA CRITICUM

Thinking of Mosinee Paper Towels

A friend sent this to me (because all my friends have heard about the paper mill in Mosinee) recently and made me miss the hometown. What I really wish I could find is a paper towel dispenser that just says Mosinee Paper Towels. They exist, I've seen them. Wish I had one.

The Miracle of the Internet

Over the past couple years I’ve indulged in time traveling, dipping into my past, reliving certain times and eras and Googleing people and catching up with them. It’s been a great time. I never assume that anyone remembers me especially if it’s someone that I dated a few times back 20 years ago. They may have made an impression on me (no double entendre intended) but I can’t just take for granted that it works both ways.

When Facebook re-appeared so did a collection of friends and acquaintances from years past and there seems to be no end to the excavation. Just when I think I’ve exhausted everyone I’ve ever met, along comes a friend request for someone ‘new’. And that’s just been pretty damn amazing. There are a couple people in particular that sent my heart into paroxysm of joy when I saw their name on the friend request and a couple that I simply went “oh, you’re kidding, right?” (these would be people who made my life difficult who now want to be ‘friends’… you’re kidding, right? I know it’s been mumblty mumble years but honestly, really? Friends? No way. Ignore!)

But this morning the unthinkable happened: I got an email from a woman all enthusiastic about reconnecting mentioning a reunion and other friends. She was so excited to be in touch with me and I momentarily got wrapped up in it until I realized: I have no earthly idea who this woman is.

Now, I can name pretty much everyone in my kindergarten class picture (me with the clip on tie and bright sunny smile) and I know the name of my first grade teacher (Miss Trinka) and I remember vividly all the people I worked with at Tarkington, O’Connor, O’Neill (it’s funny that I don’t have dreams about that place to be honest considering I was there when the SF earthquake happened) and I even remember a few names and faces from my couple summers as a drama camp counselor and definitely remember all the counselors I worked with the four summers I was at Lutheran Association of Southwest Camping. I can tell you various people that I temped with at Burson Marsteller both in Chicago and here in New York and I even remember the name of the delightful neighbor I had across the hall in my second favorite apartment of all time in Chicago for whom I helped pass a class in children’s literature (she also brought me Thanksgiving dinner one year when I was sick as dog). I could tell you the names of the people that I worked with at Disney when I temped there a few days every month for two years ….
But this woman, I have no idea.

So I wrote and explained that she might have the wrong Andrew Altenburg and her reply was “If there is another one of you, he is the exact same age & looks just like you and is from the same area!” to which I am left with more “who the hell is this woman?” thoughts. I also noticed that she addressed the first letter “Dear Andy”… and no one who has known me more than ten minutes knows that I never have gone by “Andy”. (UGH)

Maybe the other Andrew Altenburg, the one who goes by ‘Andy’ is straight and got married, got a job just out of college and has two kids (a boy and a girl naturally) and currently is worrying about his 401k plan and what his mid-life crisis will look like (I’m thinking blonde and stacked).

My advice to you if you time trip back through your life via the internet is this: Identify yourself and assume the other person won’t remember you. It is not self deprecating to take this position as through our work and social life, we all go through the world meeting hundreds and hundreds (perhaps thousands depending on your line of work, how much you like to travel and how long you live). Sending a picture isn’t the worst idea either.

As for my new friend, she sounds fun and perky and perhaps she can introduce me to that other Andy Altenburg at some point. Wonder if he’ll remember me?

Amazing What You Find When You Throw Shit Out

So, Life happens.

For better or worse, it happens to all of us whether we want it to or not.

Along the way it's easy for things to get pushed off to 'tomorrow' but somehow 'tomorrow' becomes six or more months later.

Over the weekend my roommate and I threw a party and as is usually the case with parties, I tend to pack stuff up with the intention of unpacking it later. Whooops... well, as I was unspooling afterwards, I discovered a bunch of papers that I had put away after the last party in December only to discover things like the Con Ed and Time Warner bills that I wondered about (so THAT'S how they got so high so 'quickly', I didn't pay for a couple months.. whoops!) as well as a small check for a job I had done some weeks ago (it wasn't enough to miss but it'll be enough to go out to dinner on.. at least by myself) as well as a bunch of magazines.

Now I know that everyone has The Stack of magazines in their home/apartment that they always intend on 'getting to'.. but I actually for the most part, tend to get to my Entertainment Weeklys and New Yorkers (and uh Soap Opera Digests) pretty quickly. I'm a little less likely to read my Dramatist Guild magazine (which might be tied into my lack of motivation to write lately) and yikes, there's like a half years Smithsonians and Harpers sitting there eyeing me, waiting for me to lovingly take them in hand and open their immortal pages and read their sage wisdom.

So I dug. I dug into New Yorkers around the Inauguration, just around the time that I spent every waking moment watching Battlestar Galactica (well, no wonder I didn't notice that I'd gotten behind on my magazines) and some Entertainment Weeklies especially one with cover model Robert Pattinson from Twilight who, swear to God, looks like he's stone off his gourd (not that I'd know anything about THAT, mind you).

I get into these grooves every so often.. playing catch up with old papers and magazines and papers and wonder what it would be like to be caught up all the time. Does anyone actually live like that? I fantacize about what it would be like not to have a stack of "things to do" on my desk and one day I'll achieve that goal.

In the meantime, I found the note I wrote to myself about a dental appointment six weeks ago (I went without the reminder and had a great checkup) as well as the phone number from a childhood friend who lives in New Jersey whom I didn't call when she was in town in the autumn (it was hard for me to think of anything else at the time other than a couple of family crisises.. one with the New York family and one with the Mosinee one). But I digress. It's time to call her back (if she'll still speak to me!).

The last time I did this I ended up with a pretty big trash bag full of stuff, and my apartment isn't even overrun with piles of papers, I'm not entirely sure where it all came from but I was glad for all of it to leave.

The worrisome part is of course the thought, is there another pile in the closet from the November party we threw that I still haven't found (where ARE those w-2s anyway??)

While I panic about that, here's a couple thoughts pulled from a couple different magazines that I had circled at some point indicating my desire to share them on this blog.. enjoy!

"OLTL is layered and smart and it makes sense. You don't feel like asucker for spending years of your life in Llanview and then having themilestones you've invested in not matter" - Carolyn Hinsey, Soap OperaDigest

"Well, you know, ever since I stopped sending him my holiday card he'sbeen ticked off. I don't know what to think about it. Do you know whatI'm thinking about? I'm going to finally get to see my kids after amonth. So that's all I give a fuck about" - Rahm Emanuel on Castro. NewYorker, March 2nd, 2009

PASTRAMI

My mother wants me to mail her a pastrami sandwich. No kidding.

A tall two and a half inch thick pastrami sandwich on rye bread, preferably with French fries wrapped up with it. The kind of sandwich that you have to open real wide to wrap your lips around and the kind of sandwich that stays with you for a long time afterwards.

But I don’t think I can do it.

You see, back in October she was rushed to the hospital and diagnosed with COPD/emphysema which is pretty much what happens after you’ve spent 55 years as a regular cigarette smoker. She’ll be on oxygen for the rest of her life. But if she can stop from smoking and eats right and takes her medicine she could still have quite a few years left.

To describe my relationship with my mom is probably as complicated as trying to describe the taste of pastrami. If you try to liken it to other things, you never really get quite the right flavor. To swallow it, you have to open wide and digest slowly.

But suffice to say, she encouraged me to be independent which I was then criticized for by the rest of my family when my independence didn’t coincide with the agendas that they had lined up for themselves. Free to be you and me my family are not.

In 2000 following some demoralizing comments made by my sister and my mom (just the latest in a long line really) I had decided that perhaps the indifference and out right cruelty that plagued the relationships with my family (I should stress: my biological family, I don’t put up with that kind of crap in my acquired family) was better left behind.

I vowed that since I could not end the abuse entirely (try as hard as I could to seek peace and understanding), I could end the communication and at least start the healing of the debilitating paralysis that had plagued me up until then.

And to some degree it worked although occasionally the last 8 years were filled with angry one-sided arguments in the shower in the morning and the occasional bad dreams at night.

Still, when the email arrived from my sister that mom was ill, none of that mattered much and I immediately planned for a trip back to Mosinee to visit her.

The BF joined me in what was his heroic act of bravery. Neither of us knew what kind of movie of the week scene we were going to walk into and both of us prepared for what felt less like a family reunion and more like preparing for war.

But all things considered, my brother and sister gave me and my mom a present by staying away and giving us space and peace. At least I didn’t have to deal with the barrage of their abuse on top of everything else.

We arrived at the nursing home where she recovered and although frailer and older than last I’d seen her, she was still my mom with all the mom charm she’d perfected over a lifetime. The BF was won over and I think so was she by him, and the three of us spent time together acquainting each other with who we are now.

She has since gone home and is on her own to decide whether she will eat healthy or not, or smoke or not with only the threat of a return to the nursing home (or worse) to keep her healthy.

Whatever the problems and trials that we’ve had we’ve tacitly decided not to talk about, and maybe it’s just simply better that way isn’t it?

I mean, at some age, I guess that some stuff just has to become unimportant. The childish mind wants everything to be solved neatly and tidily (the really childish mind wants everything to be solved in their favor) but I think the grown up mind realizes that not all can be solved and the one sided arguments and bad dreams can be put away and one just has to live with what one has rather than continue to wish otherwise. It’s messier than one thinks it’s supposed to be.

So we stay in touch by phone. It’s been a beautiful time filled with stories of the past and keeping up with what’s happening now. I even called her from the street in front of the capitol when I went down to DC for the Inauguration festivities. She asked for a t shirt which I have here on my desk packaged up and ready to mail. It was fitting somehow. She could be there with me but be in the comfort of her home and by sending her something from there, she felt as though she was there with me.

The question still remains whether or not I’ll send her the sandwich. It might simply be unhealthy or unhygienic to send such a long distance but if something as simple as a pastrami sandwich will make my mother happy, who am I to say no?

Where You Dance, I Will Dance

To me, gay weddings don’t seem to me to be that much different than every other wedding I've ever been to: a long fun filled day with a combination of schmoozing with people you have had some disagreements with, hewing close to the few friends you have there and trying not to say something stupid, offensive or brutal to your social whirl to those you don’t know at all.

Weddings across the board are filled with boozy relatives both biological and created spouting embarrassing but heartfelt testimonials on the nature of love and commitment. Nothing really changes with the gender or orientation and at least at a gay wedding, you're assured of disco music being played at some point.

I'll admit I've had visions of what my own wedding would be like since I was pretty young. Would it be a big lavish affair or something small and intimate? Having little to base it on, I took my cues from soap opera weddings. My mom, housekeeper and sister and I watched the ABC soaps growing up and there’s always the interruption of vows – the presumed dead spouses turning just at the last minute or a bomb going off. You know, true to life occurances. And for characters like the ten (or is it eleven?) times married Erica Kane on All My Children, having a wedding was as common as going to the market for bread. “Well, my goodness, a loaf of wheat and a husband in a brown paper bag please as I toss my hair to one side”

Will my own be like Norman and Guy's ceremony? A large, rambunctious extravaganza featuring traditional Biblical text mixed in with other ancient readings, highlighted by many musical performances while we wept as a group, held hands as a group, and admired the longevity of how long everyone had been friends with the grooms?

Would it be more like Brad and Chris’s wedding in PTown overlooking a beautiful vista, the bay into Provincetown? A more intimate event where the grooms wrote their own vows and incorporated each others traditions into the ceremony (like breaking the glass and standing under the huppa)??

Lynn and Terry’s wedding too was a traditional service held at a tiny church, the room filled with close friends. Knowing my sister as I do, I knew her stress level was pretty high so I did my best to ‘beam’ good thoughts to her throughout the ceremony. I hope that on my wedding day someone is kind enough transmit good thoughts into my head because I think I’ll need it. Would my reception be more like Lynn and Terry’s ten years ago? They opted to hold a big sprawling party in our mother’s backyard complete with pig roast and neighborhood kids that I hadn’t seen in over 15 years.

Both Brad and Chris’s and Norman and Guys’ receptions were loud, long and filled with riotous dancing, conga lines and lots of alcohol much into the pitch of night, the echoes of which are still bouncing off the atmosphere I’m sure.

But the options of what to do to seal a commitment are only as limited as our imaginations (and, well, I guess our budget).

One old friend of the BF’s who got ‘married’ to his longtime partner many years ago held a public ceremony at the local Quaker house and had members of the community sign an actual document that held the wedding vows. The ‘contract’ is framed in their bedroom, a constant reminder of the commitment that they made to each other, and the commitment that their friends and family made to them.

For me, this is what’s really at the heart of a wedding. For two people to agree to commit to each other for the rest of their life, a wedding isn’t simply a big party but a moment to declare publicly that commitment as well as an opportunity for those around them to pledge their support of that commitment.

And although I fantasize about a big splashy event, in some ways I wouldn’t care if it took place in a cardboard box, as long as the people that I care about and, more importantly, the man I love are there with me.

(But psst, I’d kind of like a big splashy event. What can I say? I’ve been known to toss my hair aside on more than one occasion and more importantly, it will have been a long time in coming and I'll want to dance all night long to celebrate).

Strangers on a Plane or Airport: 88

Last night I had an early evening committment and so I ran late for the second Debate.

I think I turned it on at about the moment when they were tusseling about the economy. It didn't take me long to get disgusted by both sides' verbal wrangling although when McCain pulled out his 'nailing Jello to the wall' comment I had a choice: throw the tv out the window or turn the channel. I love my tv so I simply turned on one of the many things that I've DVRed recently.

In the last election the GOP railroaded Kerry with their Swift Boat lies and before that they attacked Gore by slamming him with Clinton's infidelities (which, sadly, were not lies at all although it had nothing to do with Gore).

When some people don't get their way, rather than accepting it, their answer is simply punch the other person out. Those people are called bullys .. and I know very well how they operate because I grew up related to a master bully. They rule through fear of being punched or teased and one's only way of dealing with it is to run and hide, stand up and be knocked down, or, as I did, destroy yourself from within believing that what the bully says is true and that you deserve to be beaten on a daily basis.

So, I know bullys.

If McCain/Palin thought they could win on their own merits, there would be no need to put Obama/Biden down. Simple as that. Bullys know their own inadequacy makes them inferior to the one they're bullying and they seek to goad the other person into being as 'little' as they are.

It's sad enough when children do it to each other, sadder still when adults do it.

Thankfully, this morning I tripped over this story that gave me the simple lift that I needed:

http://leishacamden.blogspot.com/2008/10/not-that-it-matters.html

You can call it sappy or ridiculous but I don't care, it resonated with me and some of that verbal vomit that spewed forth from my tv is now washed away. At least a little bit.

My Belle

It was very sad but leaving home at 18 years old to go to college in Minneapolis was inevitable.

Given that my hometown felt like it was closing in around me what with my father's death, my best friend moving away to Madison to go to college and, well, there being nothing much available to a young man who wants, if not to conquer the world, at least see it before any more time passes.

Minneapolis was a fresh start and the city lay before me all shiny and bright, blue, metallic and glass. I ended up at Augsburg College, a private Lutheran school just across the Mississippi River from the U of M where my friend from high school, Mary, was going. An older classmate, Sharon was already there and, later, my friend Barbara would follow.

But I arrived alone without family or friends and for the first time in my life I was truly on my own. Given my propensity towards celebrating television, it was also inevitable that I'd cast myself as a Mary Richards for the mid 80's declaring that "I was gonna make it after all" .. and I would.

Within days I had an assortment of friends made up mostly of a collective of women from the 9th floor. There was Tonda, the would be singer who cursed like a sailor, there was Le Ann, boadacious and outspoken, there was Anna who smoked like crazy and carried around with her groupie energy and then there was Michele whom I bonded with instantly and developed a fast if not terribly long lasting friendship. We traded family stories and each found some perspective from a virtual stranger who had no history with the people in question and endured the rigors of college life which included dorm drama with the above mentioned friends ("she said this and she said that") which taught us both how to be a good friend and how to discern who is and is not trustworthy. (This was probably the best lesson that we could both have learned in our post small town formative years).

Being just a year after my dad had died, I needed not only a sympathetic ear but also a breath of fresh air and much laughter. The group provided much of that, but Michele bore the weight of much of it, and enjoyed also the laughter I could give to her. Among other things, given that we both could tend towards self pity, it was a triumph when we could make fun of ourselves by exaggerating our whining by mimiking an SNL skit, The Whiners.


The jocks on my floor, the 6th floor, (how DID I end up on that floor anyway?) gave her no end of grief and I never quite figured out why although I suspect that they saw a guy (even as nerdy as I was) having the time of his life with this girl (she was no glamour model but was definitely attractive) and perhaps they just felt jealous. As with all the bullies in my life, I've found that to be a pretty common denominator (and I mean 'common' in all it's context). Anyway, they terrorized Michele calling her "penguin" because, they claimed, she waddled like a penguin. I didn't really see it myself and encouraged her to apply the lessons that I had learned growing up around bullies - in that you just don't participate because it just fuels them on.


Michele was also friends with Marcus who was a kind of part of the group we had going on. He was on the 4th floor where they placed all the actors, musicians and artist types. The guys here tended to be either stoned or gay (although strangely, not both). I didn't really know this at the time and so when I met Marcus (who was not stoned by the way so he was, you know) well, I didn't know what to make of the feelings that I was having. This is best saved for another time but suffice to say that Michele was responsible for introducing me to who unintentionally dragged me out of the closet.


I spent the summer after my freshman year in Mosinee walking about in spaces well worn by familiarity but now hollow and strange, already a ghost in my life. I couldn't make out the feeling but pegged it at the time as a yearning to continue on with missing my college friends and yet now looking back at it, I think it was probably more a realization of a discomfort that I had had for some time that there was some way in which I didn't fit in there. I was living a child's life of simply hanging around the house for the summer but I was raring and ready to go, to make the most of whatever time I had. Certainly life had shown me that life is not to be wasted.



My thoughts turned towards Michele a lot and I wondered if our friendship was only just that and at one point I was determined to go back to Augsburg and sweep her off of her feet and turn it into the romantic relationship that i had been searching for all my life.


Except... that once I got back to school (after facing a multitude of car problems on the way there and, subsequently a bizarre rash that left me sleepless for days, weeks) I found that as much as I liked Michele, I didn't Like her in That way. I think when you're close enough friends with someone that you get intimate details about their period, it just sort of kills that romance. I mean, of course I didn't realize til much later that I had no idea what I was looking for (but boy did I know it when I found it!).


We stayed friends for some of that Sophomore year but our friendship devolved into stock phrases like "we really need to find some time to get together again" but between her stuff and my stuff (the chorus, plays, a job with the food service, classes and my fabulously fun roommates) that just never happened.


I guess it was inevitable that first friends from college would wear away replaced by more, longer lasting enduring friends, but every once in awhile I think of Michele and remember her voice and her hugs and ...yes, her (slight) waddle.


And I give a laugh because in the end, that's what most endures.

Some More Things That I Know I Know Summer of 2008

20. Re-designing a website is not easy and comments on blogs get lost when the format is changed such that said author of said blog can't tell the difference between family and friend comments and spam. (This is an apology specifically to my sister who wrote a comment asking where my 'cute kindergarten picture' is... I thought it was approved so I deleted it ... aggggghhhhhh)


It also took the new blog design to show me that there are horrible, icky little scribbles and extra letters dotting my blog entries. Apparently, if I write them in Word, paste them in Notepad and then post them here, that won't happen. Apparently. This entry I'm writing right on the site.. so we'll see what happens.


21. Back pain vanishes when stress is reduced and one sees a chiropractor twice a week for three weeks (thank you company health insurance).


22. Back pain is also noticeably reduced when one has a very attractive chiropractor.


23. Blog authors should know when to shut up about cute doctors when said authors' boyfriends are among readers of said blog.


24. This year, June and July became the New August and August has become the New September. This is fine since last winter was really the New Autumn and we barely got snow at all (I think there were flurries once). Maybe this winter will make a return with you know actual snow.


25. Yesterday would have been my grandma Thelma's birthday. She would have been 104. It was also my friend Kerry's birthday. We don't discuss his age.


26. I spent last weekend riding my bike around Manhattan.. got up at 8, checked mail, grabbed my bike, carried it four flights down to the street, rode from my apartment on W. 102nd, over to Central Park, down the roadway (closed to auto traffic on the weekends) to Columbus Circle where I enjoyed OJ and a chocolate muffin, then back down around the bottom of the Park and up to E. 72nd where I cut to the Bethesda Fountain (what is going on there by the way.. there are all sorts of plants growing in there... ugh!), then over to the roadway again and back down to Columbus Circle, then over to the West Side Highway bike path and rode from about W. 68th up to W. 96th, cut into a wider path and rode up to W. 119th, doublebacked to W. 96th, rode up to the George Washington Bridge at W. 181, took a picture of a couple tourists at the lighthouse, rode back down to W. 96th, bought a chicken empanada with the last two dollars I had on me and then cruised back home, carried my bike up four flights and jumped into the shower. Total ride time: four hours. Total distance covered: not sure. 102nd to 66th = 36 blocks, 66th to 72nd and back to 66th = 18 blocks (up, down and over), 66th to 68th and up to 96th = 37 blocks (three avenues equals nine blocks), 96th to 119th and back = 26 blocks, 96th to 181st and back = 170 blocks. Total: 287 blocks. I've been told that ten blocks equal a mile so that would be nearly 29 miles if true. But it was a long ride nonetheless.


Most surreal moment of the ride: riding up the path in the mid 100s and noticing train tracks to my right. I suddenly felt as though I was back in Mosinee riding down River Road from Linda or Sandy's place.. granted for most of the ride the tracks aren't that close to the road, but it definitely had that 'feel' and I thought, am I really just imagining this and I'm actually on my banana bike back at home?


27. There are movies for adults out there. I saw one: It's called Elegy and stars Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz. It's wonderful. But it is not cheery.


28. Every movie I see has to be wonderful now because it literally costs $50 for two people to see anything. Each ticket is $12 plus small popcorn and a couple small drinks.


29. It's a (I think) uniquely New York thing to be sitting watching a movie at the Angelika movie theatre and hear the subway roar below the floor. For movies that take place in New York City I think it's a total bonus. Filmmakers should pay to have their New York based films shown in that theatre for the aural ambience alone.


30. This weekend's trip to Fire Island can't come fast enough. Last weekend the bf and I barely got off this Island but we did. We took a free ferry trip to Governor's Island in the middle of the harbour. Beautiful and quiet, we had a picnic, took a long walk, sat and watched a dance festival for a few minutes and then returned to Manhattan. I may be trading islands when we go to the Pines this weekend and everyone there are people that are here.. but it is necessary to leave the city for even a couple days.


31. The view of the city from the ferry coming back from Governor's Island is breathtaking. I live here and have been in and out of the city since 1991 and the sight of the city still makes me well up. I can only imagine how it affects tourists or people who are just discovering it for the first time. More, I can only imagine how the city looked to immigrants arriving 100 years ago who looked to this land for their future (and found it).


32. ... but the rising rents of the city are getting out of hand. A friend just lost their bar because the landlord wanted to raise their rent up $13k a month to $21k a month which apparently the landlord feels is "market value" for where the bar is. So because the street has been 'hot' for the past few years, and despite the fact that every indication is that we are in the middle of what will probably be the worst economic depression ever, this guy is getting rid of a friendly neighborhood bar in hopes that someone will afford to make the outrageous rent in a small space that can be repurposed for very few things. Soon the city will have gotten rid of not just the lower class but the increasingly misnamed middle class too. Prediction for 2050: Manhatttan is resort for the ultra wealthy. Of course my question is: uhm who do these people think can afford to be their waiters at their restaurants? or their dry cleaners, or their actors, dancers, singers in the clubs, bars, etc? Short sighted!


33. And finally, I know that I might be entitled to two more vacation days after having spent a weekend in a photoshop class for work. A co-worker today mentioned that since I was in the class for work, that I might be able to get a couple extra days off. Well, wouldn't THAT be nice?


And that's all I know today.

Report from the Trenches

Last night, I got a package in the mail that was about 40 years in the making. It was a thin cardboard envelope from Walgreens promoting “quality photos" on the outside. It came from a Mosinee address. So as I dropped my weekend and work bags and sat down sweating from the heat of a gorgeous but humid summer day, I ripped it open to discover my past, my present and maybe even my future.


Two weekends ago, my graduating class, the Class of 1982 had a “25 plus 1" reunion. It had been planned for the past year or so and I went through the typical stages that anyone who goes to high school experiences when confronted with the opportunity to reconnect with people they grew up with.


The first stage was excitement. As I'd been exploring my past since last summer on this blog and in the scanning of countless photos back from growing up for the Chronology pages of this site, I wondered what had become of the 179 people that I grew up and graduated high school with. I became a magnet of sorts and suddenly a variety of friends and acquaintances dropped into my life from that time and I got some of my answers. This one lived in Florida, that one stayed in Mosinee, this one drove trucks and this one was starting a new business.


But as the new year arrived, I found myself confronting old scars of the past. Did I really want to schlep myself and the BF all the way to Mosinee? The excitement gave way to stage two: fear. I'd been bullied quite a bit over the years and had never quite fit in with my own class being an artsy fag nerd type. Oh, I had a few friends my age but I mostly escaped the horrors of daily living by paling up with others younger or older than me with similar interests and diving head first into the choir, the band and plays. Naturally, that which saved me also gave others more ammunition with which to pick on me.


So it was with some fear that I approached the reunion; not really that I was going to be at the mercy of that same foulness (one would hope that everyone would have grown up) but that I wouldn't have led a life that would measure up to my own expectations from that time. To escape, I had to dream big and in some very real ways I had to claw my way out of there but I haven't exactly landed on a marquee somewhere. So the question arose inside my head, what would I say that I have done with my life?


The third stage arrived unexpectedly as I fretted about all of this. A work thing I had to be here in New York for that same weekend made the trip to Mosinee impossible. I found myself unable to go and unexpectedly disappointed.



You see, I grew up with these people. We went to kindergarten together and maneuvered growing up together and whether or not we really spent much time together outside of class or not, we led our lives together. We had fights, romances, inside jokes and common enemies. But by the time senior year arrived, I at least was ready to find out what I was going to do next.


Maybe it's a touch of craziness disguised as hope that allowed me to fantasize that going to a class reunion wouldn't be more than a lot of stress and anxiety, trying to prove that the scars of the past weren't with me still. But who would I be trying to prove that to, them, or me?



In the years since, I kept Mosinee and those years at a safe distance as best as I could. When, five and a half years later, I heard from my mother that there had been a five year reunion that she had neglected to forward the invite for, I was strangely unmoved. Then, in 1992, I got a call from my long time friend Kristin asking if I was going to the ten year I vaguely reluctantly explained that I was on the road heading to a theatre conference in Seattle.


I was sort of disappointed but quickly forgot about it.


So last night, another 16 years later, when I saw that the picture of my classmates had arrived in the mail, I had great fun trying to see who was there but, sadly, I couldn't identify who was who for the most part. I can name virtually everyone in the kindergarten class picture that I still have but, after 26 years, I find it difficult to figure out who was who now.


And maybe that's a good thing.


Maybe I've let go of that hurt more than I thought I had and maybe all I was holding on to was some vague fear that doesn’t have anything to do with who they are, or, even more importantly, who they are now.


(I do have to say, as an aside, that it was a nice extra bonus to see two of my high school crushes there, looking mighty fine. To save them and me embarrassment, I'll l decline to name them but you shouldn't assume that both of them were male because they weren't).



But in any event, I could see myself making the trip for the 30th just for the fun of it and I guess if that's not progress, I don't know what is.

Kafkaesque

A long time ago, way back in the late 70s, way back before the Earth was cooled, I was in junior high school. It was back in the day when Star Wars movies were good and so was Saturday Night Live and life in Mosinee ran along as it should for a 12 year old: simple, exciting, new, the promise of great things just up ahead if only you can get through gym class knowing how to put a jock strap on the right way and work up the nerve to ask girls to dance with you at school mixers (Thank God for Mary Pratt who was my 'default' dance partner, and I, hers.. we saved each other from many depressing dances!).


The most exciting thing about being in 6th grade was working with the then new 8th grade English teacher Mr. Kafka on drama productions. Kafka was cool because he was irreverant and funny, his hair was always a little crazy and his moustache frazzled and for a 6th grader, having someone teach you how to do something that you always considered goofing off (ie. drama) and instilling within us that somehow you could not only make a living at this playing around but that this wasn't about being good in drama, but it was as important as sports was in building teamwork, community and fostering imagination.


Pretty heady stuff for a teacher putting us through our paces getting us to improv the entire script of Treasure Island in one afternoon. Naturally it was also cool to see a teacher let his shirt tail hang out and sweat - even the phys ed guys never seemed as physical... the thing that is dismissed about the theatre is how much energy, effort and work it is. You sweat when you create, you use your brain, sure, but you also use your body to create the character, to react, and to embody that character.


Probably no other teacher in my life gave me more of a self confidence boost that Kafka did... especially in 7th grade as we did a scripted show (Hole in the Wall Cafe) and another improv show (Snow White) where I was trusted with lead roles. Here's how great this guy was- the drama program got so popular in 1976/77 that there were too many people for one show that spring. We talked about doing the same show with two casts but I remember kids not liking that very much. But due to the freedom of ideas that flowed within the group, we came upon a new idea - a two part show, the first half would be traditional Snow White and the second half would be Snow Pinky - a fractured fairy tale with Happy Days overtones. Since I was Doc in the Snow White show I don't remember much about the Snow Pinky show but I can't imagine how Kafka pulled off creating two shows simultaneously.


In 8th grade it was a real weird sensation for a bunch of us to be in his English class. We'd already known him for a couple of years and it was a re-mapping of a relationship between us and him. Naturally it was a writing class and he gave us lots of things to think about and I learned a three hard lessons along the way.


The first was early in the year. Elvis had just died and we were busy at work on some assignment. Kafka was a fan and would often put music on while we wrote; it created a mood and while I've not since tried to write to Elvis music, I felt oddly comforted when LILO AND STITCH came out a few years ago, the entire movie is laced with his songs. I didn't know why at the time but I suddenly had this passion to write. It actually was a moment while I was temping at Disney and saw the flick in their screening room that helped me start to get back on track with my writing after a long hiatus.


Anyway, this one day we were all working on something, the Elvis music played and Kafka ran around the room helping those that needed questions answered. We were all feeling in a pretty good mood, you could feel the crackle of creativity snap pop and zing through the room and I for one was getting drunk off of it. Well, Kafka happened to be helping someone at a desk across the aisle from me and as the room was small and the desks close together, when he leaned over to help that other person, his butt was just right there a few inches away. My best friend Tim (who had also been in a lot of Kafka's dramas - he played Dopey to my Doc) sat in front of me and I motioned to him about this sort of friend but very much our teacher's butt. Hey, we were 13. I mean really. So I jokingly held my hand hovering over him as though I was going to spank him and just smiled and laughed at Tim with a "Do you dare me to actually do it?" look when Tim reached out and knocked my hand down causing me to actually smack Kafka on the ass.
I. Was. Horrified.


Kafka just sort of stood up with this vaguely menacing look in his eye and just when he'd stood up tall and turned towards me, lip synched in time from the Elvis song "Be kind to me!" Tim and I erupted with embarassed, silly laughter and it just went to show me, teachers have a sense of humor too. (But don't press your luck)


But my second lesson from Kafka that year was a little more serious. We had been asked to throw out sports terms one day in class and as we called them out, Kafka wrote what we said on the board. After a few minutes, there was maybe a hundred words. The assignment was then: write a sports story but don't use any of those words. The whole room went silent. I remember I made an audible gasp at the impossibility of it. I probably said more because suddenly Kafka turned to me and said something like "would you like a more traditional English class? I can DO that!" and ran to the bookshelves and started passing out textbooks on writing, ones we hadn't ever used. Naturally I felt horrible for doubting his methods and I, of anyone in the class, should have known better. All was forgiven as he saw my/our ashen faces (everyone else I think had thought it impossible too but I was the one who actually audibly said something although I hadn't really intended to) drop with the realization that we were really hurting his feelings and also not appreciating this amazing gift to learn things in a unique way.


The third lesson was something that was more meaningful to me than probably Terry ever knew and probably it's not even something that I have yet to fully understand, even this many years later. We had done a fall show, A Tale of Two Gangs, it was a sort of extension of the Snow Pinky show but it was less of a satire and more of it's own story. After the leads were cast my pal Kristin and I were given the task of creating our own characters and inserting them into the show. There were the two gangs and we were on opposite sides and along the way we decided that we (naturally) were the comedic relief. I was Weird Willy (who played with a sock - don't ask. I'm not sure I knew what it meant either) and Kristin was Isabelle or Izzy. Izzy wore cat eye glasses and was dorky and over the course of rehearsals we just tacitly decided to out-weird each other irrespective of whatever else was going on in the show.


The culmination of our 'cross gang' love affair happened during the talent show portion of the show. Izzy sang "I'm a little white duck sitting in the water, a little white duck, doin what I oughter.." at which point everyone in the cast boos her and Willy comes out to save her from humiliation. There's a strobe, we run to each other and knock heads and then go off for the rest of the show in (I suppose) romantic bliss (or what passed for it in our imaginations as 8th graders in 1977 Wisconsin).


The last show of the year and my last show in junior high was a drama called "Unforgotten Scars" and, well, it's been a long time and I forget the plot of it but I think it had something to do with a haunted house and an old woman who lived there who had buried her daughter.. I don't know because I was given the role of a monster in the lead characters' nightmare. I had to dress like him and put on green makeup. Granted, it was cool that I got to run onstage and bounce off of a springboard so that it looked like I was a flying monster.. but I was a monster on for a minute nonetheless. And I was pissed.


And the lesson was hard. There are no small roles, only small actors Kafka said. And I had to learn it the hard way. But Kafka didn't just stop there, when I complained to him that I had nothing to do in the shows during my 8th grade year, he said to me, and I'll never forget it, he said that he wanted to give me the opportunity to create my own roles within the show and that he trusted and believed in me so much that he knew I could do it.


I. Was. Gasping for air.


In my own way I thought that I had been discarded after having been found to be not talented by him.. and it was just the opposite.


These lessons were hard, wonderful, sacred to learn and I thank Kafka for teaching them to me regardless of how long it took me to learn in particular that final one (and who says I've learned it?)


I didn't see Terry much in high school, I was busy with new friends and the Hansons and the continuing drama of life and I left home and went to school and made my way in the world. But things have a way of coming full circle.


Back in 6th grade when I was in Treasure Island, Terry's co-director Barb Munson and I got to be friendly and it was years later that she asked me to do a library show with her, a puppet production of the story, the Big Orange Splot. It was then ten years more when I would do the story as part of a storytelling class in graduate school. And it would be a couple years after that that I would write the libretto for the musical version of it that was performed at a children's theatre conservatory in Long Beach, CA.


And it was in 1996 that the Wausau Community Children's Theatre would produce the show and perform it at the Grand Theatre, a childhood landmark of mine if there ever was one. And it was after the show that I was embarassingly asked to sit at a table and sign the Splot program for a long long line of childhood neighbors ...and there was Terry again. The hair, slightly lighter, grey with age, the moustache still frazzled, those specs still firmly in place. He smiled and said "I don't imagine you remember me"..


And I gasped again.


"How could I forget you?" I said, "you're the reason I'm here right now!".


And that was no feint statement. The confidence that I developed in junior high, the improv and storytelling skills that Terry taught us all contributed to me being at that table at that moment.


It was a weird moment, Kafkaesque... in the best way.

Treasure

In fourth grade I had made an appearance as one of the redheaded children in my sister's high school production of Carousel. It was my first taste of theatre and I enjoyed it and so when the new 8th grade English teacher Terry Kafka was putting together an after school drama program, I signed right up. It was 1975 and I was in 6th grade and officially in "junior high" so, you know, the big leagues and all. We changed classrooms and had lockers and it was all very adult and cool. Anyway, Kafka liked improv so the first production that I signed up for was Treasure Island and he had the basic outline of the story and invited all those in the group to simply join in as characters were needed and eventually I think that's how everyone got cast in their roles. I ended up being a part of the pirate crew which was OK by me as it gave me a chance to get more confident. The highlight of the show was going out to assistant director Barb Munson's farm and painting skull and cross bones on black t shirts and making other props (like fake knives) throughout the afternoon.


For me there are two things that make theatre the treasure that it is. The first is the imagination of telling a story and showing it to other people. The second is the camaraderie that one feels when one is in an ensemble of actors and everyone's contributing in one way or another. I've had that a few times in my life and this was one of those experiences and it was really cool that it was my first 'real' show.