Beginning

When I first started writing, I bragged to friends and family about how this was going to be a riveting autobiography. I had felt compelled to tell my story before time had a chance to rust away all the faces and names of those who stood by me in my innocence and the people responsible for dragging me against my will into adulthood.

I wanted to share with the world the tales of those many hardships that I’d managed, through wit and charm, to survive. How I coped with life while I grew up in my small Midwestern community amid the turbulent seventies.

So that left me there at my desk staring at the homemade pencil holder my grandchildren made me; filled with thirty sharp Ticonderoga #2 pencils. A soft yellow glow from the desk lamp illuminated the clean white pages of my writing tablet.

Those pages mocked me. Daring me to defile their virgin surfaces with some great words of wisdom that they in their youthful exuberance and naiveté believe I was capable of producing.

You would think that it would have been an easy thing to do. To recall all those great memories of what we all refer to as the best years of our lives. But reflecting back, I found that all those little decisions that seemed so life-altering to me then had somehow blended together to form one continuous blur.

It was like looking through the shower door. I could see the shape of things, but just couldn’t quite make out all the details.

Perhaps that’s the way it is with everyone. Our memories get more and more skewed with age. As we grow older it is easy enough to recall the good times. But we’ve hidden away all the bad memories into little cubby holes in our brains in order to survive life. With age, the keys to those memories become more and more rusted until eventually they won’t fit the locks at all.

Ultimately, even those good times start to fade away into the mists of time. I suppose that some people call that senility. But maybe it’s more like a defense mechanism against insanity. Perhaps those teenage years are meant to be forgotten.

So, as I started piecing together those fragments of my past and actually placing my words onto paper. I quickly realized that some people, after reading that story, might attempt to hunt me down with pitchforks and burning torches.

There may even have been a few irate mothers and fathers who could show up on my doorstep with shotguns in hand seeking to avenge their daughter’s reputation.

Especially since I’ve been told by those who know me best that sometimes what I believe to be ‘true enough’ is quite often a long way from the actual truth.

Therefore, in my attempt to protect the innocent, (or maybe not so innocent), but mostly for self-preservation. I’ve decided to forego the story of my life and leave you instead with this book of freestyle prose.

Let me apologize if in any of my ramblings you believe you recognize yourself or are offended by something that is, in your mind, farther from the truth and closer to a falsehood. I am sure that in most cases at least, I did not mean it.

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